Recently while reading I came across a word that was new to me, buckler, which means a "small, round shield either carried or worn on the arm." It comes from the Latin word bucca meaning cheek, presumably because of protection. It coincided well with Wordcrafter's word of the day, jugulate, which obviously is related to the jugular vein.

I wonder what other general words are related to anatomical words....

I can't recall whether ultracrepedarian, which we've seen here before, came from a root for the foot or for a sandal on the foot.

We are all linguaphiles, aren't we?

lingua = tongue

PS: would the use of "tongue" to mean "language" be one of synechodche, or metony, or one of those durn Greek rhetorical terms I can never remember?

Italian being so close to Latin there are lots of food words with roots that make the names quaint and lovable, or perhaps even grotesque and revolting, depending on how you are feeling at the moment.

linguini -- flat tongue-like pasta
rotini -- twisting, corkscrew-like pasta
vermicelli -- fine long round pasta like little worms (did somebody say "dracunculus"?)

plus bunches of others whose names I never knew.


Who knows, there might even be enough material here for an entire thread of its own. ? (Rather than hijacking this one.)

Orecchiette-- ear shaped

This is more than I can stomach.

I have seen a lot of crepitus (air under the skin with a peculiar crinkly feeling when palpated) in patients throughout my years in nursing; it can also be used to describe a creaking noise heard in the joints.

The discussion of ultracrepidarian in World Wide Words says that it comes from the Greek word krepis, which means shoe, while crepitus comes from the Latin word crepare, meaning to creak. Supposedly, there is no relation between the two. Yet, surely we all know that shoes often creak. Plus, World Wide Words says that crepidarian is a rare word for shoemaker. It seems to me that they are related.

I could only find it defined in one sentence in 4 other dictionaries in Onelook. Hic, I couldn't find the previous discussion of ultracrepidarian when I searched for it.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh: Hic, I couldn't find the previous discussion of ultracrepidarian when I searched for it.

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You've forgotten your own thread about ultra-crepidarian!
-- though it's my fault; it would have helped if I'd remembered the hyphen. Bad hic!

Good grief! You are right! "Though she's not that bright, she really is kind of cute", Shufitz says!