word summer series

as i mentioned yesterday, f-words is enjoying a summer hiatus. but while it sunbathes in the azores with eastern european gymnasts in the off season, how are we to get our word fix? enter the ragbag word summer series.

whereas f-words is an indiscriminate strumpet, haphazardly getting jiggy with any ol’ lexicon (regardless of editorial standards), the word summer series is a patient penelope with her sights set on only one man—the oh ee dee.

but if you think that i’m only going to be word blogging f-words from that venerable tome, you got another thing coming, poindexter. when i circuit train at the gym, i work every machine HARD. likewise, it’s now time to start exercising our knowledge of words that begin with other letters. here’s how the summer series is going to play out:

every week, i will generate a random string of three letters (via this). i will then search for every entry in the oed that contains that string and report back the BEST word there is that fits this criterion.

for the pilot of this program, i generated cyr and only had to wade through 29 entries. the winner is—somewhat appropriately—acyrological and it means “incorrect in use of words.”

here are the maids of honor:

amphicyrtous · curved on both sides
ancyroid · anchor shaped
cyrenaic · belonging to the doctorine of practical hedonism
cyriologic · relating to capital letters
scyrmyssh · early form of skirmish

as for me, i am off to practice my cyrenaic ideology at the beach where i may start a minor scyrmyssh if i hear any lunkheads being acyrological—especially the variety of lunkhead with ancyroid tattoos adorning their sweaty biceps.