Believe It or Not, There’s a Word for That!
Believe It or Not, There’s a Word for That!
By D.S. Mitchell
Basement Cabinets
I was cleaning out an old cabinet that had been relegated to a darkened corner of my basement when I uncovered a treasure trove of nearly 500 fossilized Reader’s Digest, Vogue, Glamour, O, Style, and AARP, magazines. Yes! What a glorious way to spend a rainy Thursday, scrounging through dusty boxes of outdated magazines, I laughed. I gauged how long it would take me to flip through every page of this unanticipated bonanza and figured I could do it in a single day, if I devoted myself to the task fulltime. Obviously, I’ll need pee and refueling breaks.
Pretty Packaging
Why would I be so interested in old magazines, you ask. First of all, I love touching that slick paper that they used to make magazines out of. Second, I love the fact there is this encyclopedia of near useless information, wrapped up in astoundingly pretty packaging. Just Awesome! Anyway, my ulterior motive was to find a few interesting filler topics for my calamitypolitics.com website. I found a motherlode. The first one I decided to share with my readers came from Reader’s Digest, the September 2017 issue (there was no writer credit given in the magazine). A great piece on “whatta’ ya call this?” In alphabetical order,
- aglet (aiglet): an aglet or aiglet is a small sheath, often made of plastic or metal, attached at each end of a shoelace, a cord, or a drawstring. An aglet keeps the fibers of the lace or cord from unraveling; its firmness and narrow profile make it easier to hold and easier to feed through eyelets, lugs, or other lacing guides
- ferrule: the circular metal part holding the eraser to a pencil
- glabella: the area of skin between the eyebrows and above the nose. The term also refers to the underlying bone that is slightly depressed, and joins the two brow ridges
- lunule: the white or wedge-shaped part of the fingernail
- peen: the round or wedge-shaped end of a hammer-i.e., the part that doesn’t hit the nail
- petrichor: the way it smells when rain falls on parched earth
- philtrum: the vertical groove between the base of the nose and the border of the upper lip.
- phosphene: the light you see when you close your eyes and press your fingers to them
- punt: the indention in the bottom of a wine bottle, a punt is also a wooden boat with no keel, stem, or sternpost, and is constructed like a ladder, and it’s even a football kick
- rasceta: the lines and wrinkling on the inner surface of the wrist
- souffle cup: a paper of plastic cup for ketchup, mustard, and other condiments
- Snellen test: the test during an eye exam involving reading from large to smaller letters
- tittle: a small written or printed stroke; the dot over a lower case i or j
- wamble: a weaving or rolling motion, stomach rumbling
That was fun. Did you learn anything? Of the fifteen listed I knew only one.
