Words are funny.<\/p>\n
Have you ever heard a word over and over and just never bothered to look it up? This is a bad habit of mine. And it has forced me to pay some dire consequences. For instance, up until sooner than I care to admit, when someone referenced “euthanasia,” my brain assumed they were talking about a specialized mission team that works with youth in Asia.<\/p>\n
I’ll pause here so you can judge me.<\/p>\n
In all honesty though, how many of us know what “oxter” refers to? Is it a creature that is half otter, half ox? If I ordered two “quire” of paper from Dunder Mifflin, would they know how much I wanted? What if I told you not to “xertz” your CapriSun?<\/p>\n
Words are funny. And since we had a good laugh at my expense earlier, I’m going to take the liberty of introducing you to five of the most obscure words I’ve ever had the misfortune to learn.<\/p>\n
Acersecomic \u2014 Before the nerds get all hyped up about this one, relax, it has nothing to do with comics. In fact, it is a name for someone who has never cut their hair. Like that Vietnamese guy everybody was talking about a couple years ago, Nguyen Van Chien. The guy didn’t get a haircut for 70 years, and they weighed it in at almost five pounds worth of hair. Look it up if you don’t remember.<\/p>\n
Yabby \u2014 Just so the animal kingdom is represented in this piece, a yabby is a small freshwater crayfish, supposedly very tender and succulent. I am foreseeing a new installment in the Eric Carle kid’s book series \u2026 The Very Gabby Yabby, or something like that. Pam, put that on my list of good ideas.<\/p>\n
Kakorrhaphiophoia \u2014 This impossible-to-pronounce specimen of the English language means “fear of failure.” I heard someone say once that this is the last word a kid would want to encounter in a spelling bee. Talk about agoraphobia, am I right?<\/p>\n
Okapi \u2014 While the animal kingdom has already been represented, I can’t resist introducing you to a little-known African critter that has the body of a giraffe, with a much shorter neck, and also zebra stripes. That’s right, zebra stripes. So, it’s a zebraffe, and it is native to the Ituri Forest in central Africa. It is supposedly very timid and elusive, however. Like Bigfoot.<\/p>\n
Pauciloquent \u2014 This last, beautiful adjective means “uttering as few words as possible.” So, basically, everything I am not.<\/p>\n
All this to say, look up words you don’t know. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Trust me, you don’t want to end up working for Youth in Asia. The health benefits are pathetic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(Also, for the record, oxter means “armpit.” I dare you to fit any or all of this newfound knowledge into conversation today.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Words are funny. Have you ever heard a word over and over and just never bothered to look it up? This is a bad habit of mine. And it has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14492,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-5584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-hurricane-florence"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}