micropigmentation
ophthalmologist
permeability
paleomagnetism
fractional crystallization
hydraulic conductivity
Eratosthenes
Copernicus
Archimedes
bioluminescent
dodecahedron
pagination
Leaving room (and time) to take advantage of enthusiasm for learning as it appears in our family, is an
9 comments:
Great words - but you missed "enthusiasm"! Hee hee.
Here's a handful of my favourites:
"remacadamized" - it has roots from FIVE different languages:
RE - Latin prefix = "again")
MAC - Celtic = "son of"
ADAM - Hebrew = "man" (soil?)
IZE - Greek verb-forming suffix
ED - English (Anglo-Saxon) suffix indicating past tense
"strengths" - nine letters with only one vowel
facetiously - has all the vowels in order (counting "Y"!)
crwth - an ancient British string instrument
"smiles" - the longest word in English because there is a "mile" between the two S's (hee hee)
Oh, my - I have to stop or I will get over-dosed on words - think King Azaz in the marketplace! But the Mathemagician would be pleased to hear me say that there are numbers which are just as intoxicating - like the perfct 496, for example...
And a very rich mine is the Periodic Table of Elements - so many interesting words! Just one example:
Yttrium, Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium - four elements all named for a village in Sweden.
And if you want some fun with roots, look up the meaning of "praseodymium"...
OK-- what does the first word mean?
Ana
Fear of Friday the 13th. heehee
If you meant "triskaidekaphobia" - it's from some nice Greek roots:
tris = three
kai = and
deka = ten
phobia = fear
so it is "fear of three-and-ten" or "fear of 13"
But if you meant "remacadamized": that is the (past) act of paving of a well-drained convex road surface with small broken stone (as did John McAdam a Scottish engineer)
Sorry I must have just missed your answer, L2L! Hee hee.
Well, it looks like my answer might not have been quite accurate if it's really the fear of the number 13. I found it in a news article - thanks for the detailed etymology!
Thanks Margaret - I didn't have sluice. Isn't paleomagnetism fun? That's one of my personal favorites.
I knew a professor in my undergraduate time who worked on paleomagnetism. Geology has so many nice words, like "horst and grobben" - I use that as a geo-figure of speech ("don't put the horst before the grobben"). Also "schist" which sounds dirty, because it's metamorphic.
And we cannot forget "syzygy" from astronomy, with its six letters and three Y's - such a great word (and from a Greek root "to link or yoke together"!)
There are so many great science words, but there are some nice words from other disciplines too - let's see a few I like:
From Music:
Appoggiatura (sounds like an Italian dessert)
Gedeckt (sounds like a Germa sneeze, but is a kind of flute from a pipe organ)
Fagotto (sounds like a kind of pasta, but means "bassoon"!)
From Theater:
cue (important in TV also! comes from the Latin word quando for "when")
proscenium
alarms and excursions (GKC has a book called something like that)
From Literature:
synecdoche (sounds like some kind of formal Vatican edict)
pleonastic (I use this in poetry about cable TV)
iambic pentameter (sounds like some kind of very technical measuring device... "Well, Joe, I think this computer's shot; your synecdoche went pleonastic - just look at that reading on the iambic pentameter!) And then there's the "integrating goniometer" (oops, another tech one) and "phlogiston" and "periwinkle" and "scarp"... Oh! and SCADS more...
King Azaz must sure LOVE this blogg... I guess now I'll have to post something to keep the Mathemagician happy.
Great stuff! I've already decided that botany and geology are two of my favorite areas for finding new words - but math is a great place too. I'm gonna have to do a post on favorite Math words and we'll make the Mathemagician extra happy.
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