summer is finally over!

there are only about 19 hours left of summer—so now’s your last chance to steal a smooch underneath the boardwalk or to “experience” the latest superhero movie and then pretend you had no idea it would be so supremely awful. all we have now to keep us warm during the cold, dark days ahead are the 12 words of the word summer series.

the annual challenge*: write a story about your 12 weeks of summer using the following 12 words of the word summer series.

1. crookle · to coo as a pigeon
2. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis · a factitious word alleged to mean ‘a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust’ but ocurring chiefly as an instance of a very long word.
3. gossipry · a body of gossips
4. pulvil · perfumed powder for powdering the wig
5. enatation · an escape by swimming
6. lakke · one hundred thousand items, especially coins
7. ben trovato · of a story: appropriate even if untrue
8. gongoozler · a person who stares at anything for a long time
9. belgard · a kind or loving look
10. palpebrous · having large eyebrows
11. tyromancy · divination by means of cheese
12. polydoggery · the keeping of a number of dogs

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*if you take me up on this tempting challenge, let me know and i’ll link to your efforts in a subsequent post.

week 12: ogg

so here’s the full story: pregnant turtles. other than that, i should be back in boston next week and making internet posts on a daily basis. in the meantime, here’re a few of the 600+ ogg words in the oed that are interesting on some level.

boggledy botch · a complete bungle
coggledy · shaky, unstable, rickety
dogging · the practice of watching or engaging in exhibitionist sexual activity in a public place, typically at car parks
floggee · one who is flogged
foggish · somewhat bloated or fat
harpy pettifogger · a legal practitioner that preys upon others
oggannition · snarling, growling, grumbling
oggin · the sea
smogger · the road-sign language of vagabonds
squoggy · wet and miry

week 9: elg

it turns out that my “downstairs” rash is actually just a run-of-the-mill case of poison ivy and not something exotic like tex-mex gonorrhea or bovine herpes the way that i first feared. either way, i promised my doctor that i would do my best to exercise self-control the next time my nudist group hosts a retreat in the woods.

anyway, my invented girlfriend, candra callon, just arrived and is going to give me a calamine sponge bath—so here are some interesting words with elg inside of them for your amusement.

bowel-gazer · one who inspects the entrails of sacrificed animals for religious purposes
doctor feelgood · a physician who readily prescribes mood-enhancing drugs
gorrel-guts · a fat-paunched person
shevel-gabbit · having a wry mouth
telgevie · a reeling or rocking from side to side
tercel-gentle · the male of the falcon
welge · to have might or power, to prevail

week 6: akk

can you believe that it’s september already? where has the summer gone?! anyway, as you all know, i have been spending my summer mowing yards at random as i make my way from my home in boston’s exclusive old herringbone neighbourhood to my grandpa’s fishing cabin in thermopolis, wyoming on a john deere x749 ultimate tractor mower.

fortunately, i brought along my 11 volume oxford english dictionary and have been able to locate all the words that have the akk sequence inside of them. here are my favourites. happy trails!

brakkener · a servant who attends to the hounds
clakke · to remove the dirty parts from a fleece of wool
hard yakka · work, toil
kakkerlak · an albino
pakke · to agree in a secret or underhand design; to plot, conspire, or scheme
plakke · a plaything, toy
vakky · an evacuee, especially a child evacuated from the city to the country
ylakked · blamed

week 4: ulv

aloha everybody. i am still tending to my duties in this lighthouse even though gps was invented 100 year ago and the only vessels that get shipwrecked on the nearby cliffs are ghost ships and kite-surfing dudebros. but whatever, i promised you that i would suss out some interesting words from the dictionary every week this summer and i am not about to let you down despite my 3rd degree sunburn and buttery crab fingers which are even now making short work of my aunt’s acer laptop keyboard. anywhoosies: here are some triple-delicious ulv words:

culvard · infamous, villainous, treacherous
culver-dung · dove or pigeon excrement
impulverable · incapable of being pulverized
moulvee · in india, a complimentary designation among muslims for a learned man
peulvan · an undressed stone pillar of prehistoric age
pulveratrix · a bird which cleanses itself by wallowing in dust
pulvinar · a couch or cushioned seat of the gods; also, the cushioned seat in the circus
vulviform · like a cleft with projecting edges

from your friend,
raynor the impulverable

week 3: pry

a very close friend from barber college is getting married in—of all places—a furniture showroom in atlanta, georgia and guess whose mariachi band is going to play at the reception? that’s right, i’ve been practicing my guitarrón on a barcalounger™ since late april and am now ready to blast mexican power ballads (of original composition) throughout the sofa warehouse.

but anyway, i’m being unusually candid about my weekend plans so you will understand why i have to cut this post short without first explaining how caprylic is a great word to describe my footlocker at my gym and how blowing the pryse is not as dirty as it first seems.

caprylic · like an animal’s strong smell
diapry · of the nature of diapers
opry · representative of a u.s. dialect pronunciation of opera
overpry · to examine inquisitively
to blow the pryse · to sound a blast on the hunting-horn as a signal that the stag is taken

week 2: csi

it should now be quite clear that the real reason that i didn’t select bibliokleptomaniac last week was because i knew that an even longer word was in the queue. and not just any long word, apparently the longest word in the oxford english dictionary. but—as your girlfriend constantly reminds you—length is not critical. in fact, the search for long words (just as the search for the farthest reaches of pi) is folly. no word illustrates this better than pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis which was coined in a word competition to coin large words.

betocsin · to furnish with tutors
k.c.s.i. · knight commander of the star of india
tocsin · a signal, especially an alarm-signal sounded by ringing a bell

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incidentally: among word nerd circles (of which i am mostly a tangent) this word is simply referred to as p45, thus reducing a 45 letter word to a mere 3 characters.

the inevitable return of the ragbag word summer series

last summer, i began the word summer series as a way to discover unfamiliar words lurking between the covers of the oxford english dictionary. i explained the premise like this:

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.

the problem is that i started the “summer” series in the first week of may and i was soon bombarded with a smattering of hate letters from grade schoolers telling me that my definition of summer was biased and favored a more collegiate understanding of when summer begins. they argued that each exciting installment only served to remind them of how while everybody else was frolicking in their gardens enjoying esoteric words, they were chained to their desks learning a subject called social studies <gasp>.

because i’m sympathetic to their argument (and also because it’s been a frigid 15° celsius since april), i held off word summer series posts…until now.

week 1: okl

once you read through these words, you’re gonna be like “raynor, bibliokleptomaniac has got it all: books, obsession, vice, a greek pedigree and a porn-worthy length of 17 letters! why have you chosen the comparatively puny crookle as the winner?” my response to this theoretical heckler is: “because bibliokleptomaniac is the predictable choice and the word summer series will not be influenced by vegas oddsmakers, also the crookle lobby bought me a hot lunch once.”

bibliokleptomanic · an book-thief who is insane
bookling · a little book
brokle · easily broken, fragile
brooklynese · the form of speech generally found in uncultured use in new york city, but especially associated with the borough of brooklyn
monoklinohedric · a flower with both stamens and pistils, a hermaphrodite
rooklet · a young rock
yse-schokkill · variant of icicle

apocryphal word summer series: chm

as i was going through my files and sorting what was porno from what was my colleagues’ dissertations (sometimes it isn’t always obvious) i came across this *chm* series of words that i never posted. why it slipped through the cracks we may never know. but what we do know is that since it is no longer summer these words cannot—can never— be part of the word summer series and thus despite their seductiveness shouldn’t be considered wss canon. 

debouchment · the mouth or outlet of a river, a pass, etc
fleechment · cajolery
inchmeal · inch by inch; little by little
kloochman · an indian woman
leechman · a physician
pentecontadrachm · cyrenaic coin worth 50 drachmas
schmaltz · melted chicken fat
schmecker · a drug-addict
schmegeggy · a contemptible person, an idiot
schmerz · grief, sorrow, regret, pain
schmozzle · a muddle or complication; a quarrel, row, rumpus, mêlée
truchman · an interpreter
witchmonger · one who has dealings with witches, or believes in witchcraft
yllischman · an inhabitant or native of a group of islands

summer is over, finally

thank goodness, i sure was getting tired of playing beach blanket bingo with breast models and curling fifty pound dumbbells while sprinting up sand dunes. if you are like me and missed out on much of the internet this summer, the robot guestblogger that wrote all my posts for me these past few weeks has kindly recapitulated all of the words of the word summer series.

today’s creative writing assignment: write a short story employing the following 19 words from the preceding 19 weeks of summer:

1. acyrological · incorrect in use of words
2. lobcock · a blundering fool
3. crwth · an ancient celtic violin
4. pfuiteufel · an exclamation of contempt or disgust
5. tenebrio · one who lurks in the dark
6. agathokakological · composed of good and evil
7. ville lumière · an exciting modern city
8. sythe · one’s pilgrimage on earth; the course of one’s life
9. pruno · in prison, an improvised alcoholic drink
10. transclout · to alter appearance by wearing ill-fitting clothes
11. kill-cow-fray · something made up to terrify
12. quia timet · an action brought to prevent possible future injury
13. catoptromancy · divination by means of a mirror
14. gyte · mad, out of one’s senses
15. sanguivorous · feeding on blood
16. whiskerandoed · heavily whiskered
17. triacontaëterid · a period of thirty years; a festival occurring every 30 years.
18. eirmonger · a dealer in eggs
19. schlimazl · a consistently unlucky person

while the word summer series has terminated, autumn brings with it the exciting season premiere of f-words and—as i’m sure the suspense has been gripping you through may, june, july, and august—the cliffhanger involving a bike ride, a salami, and a fanny pack will finally be resolved.

week 19: maz

as summer now unofficially draws to a close, so too does our word summer series. while i am sad to see both become a thing of the past, autumn will bring with it a few things to cheer me up—the most notable being the broadcast premier of the seventh season of medium on friday, september 24 at 8/7 central (check your local listings).

but before i re-activate my account on the patricia arquette message boards, and before we get into an argument over which cartel of acting siblings is the superior (the arquettes or the baldwins), let us first concentrate on the random letters: m, a and z and the 166 english words which contain them in that order.

of those 166 words, many had to do with breasts. as much as i would like to spruce up the ragbag with medical words for various boob disorders and descriptions, in the end i decided that the yiddish word schlimazl was just too darn weird-looking and too darn useful to pass up. here are the best of the rest and best of the breast:

gynæcimazia · the condition of a man’s breasts in which they are as large as a woman’s
mazard · to knock on the head
mazarine · to decorate with lace
pleiomazia · the condition of having a superfluous nipple, or superfluous breast
mazuma · money, cash
mazy · giddy, dizzy, confused in the head
mizmaze · dazzling radiance

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this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride.

week 16: oed

i suppose that it was inevitable that the three random letters that i generated for my oed game would eventually be o, e, and d themselves. but 16 strings in? this is highly highly unlikely. but what is also unlikely is how the word œdipean describes someone who is clever at solving crossword puzzles—and not someone who wants to marry the person that gave birth to him.

while œdipean is a good word, whiskerandoed is a great one. you can have bearded, shaggy, bushy, and even hirsute, but you can’t have whiskerandoed without the oed.

ambuscadoed · placed in ambush
infœdation · defilement
œdipean · pertaining to, or like that of œdipus; clever at guessing a riddle
œdipodic · swollen-footed, gouty
paratragœdia · mock-tragedy
triexoctoedron · a solid figure having 18 square and 8 triangular faces
vuligoed · filth, rubbish; used as an expletive

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this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride.