Hotmail's home page today has a link to this, titled "Cool Words To Know".
(Hey, I get a long post in for free. )

British novelist Evelyn Waugh once said, "One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilisation or it will die." Editors at MSN Learning & Research picked some of their favorite words to nourish your vocabulary. Some of them you may even use.

1. Defenestrate: "to throw somebody or something out of window (formal or humorous)" It is quite entertaining to defenestrate paper airplanes.

2. Garbology: "study of waste materials: the study of a cultural group by an examination of what it discards" Garbology might be a good career choice for dumpster divers. Recycling may make the job of future garbologists extremely difficult--they'll have less to study.

3. Digerati: "computer experts: people who have or claim to have a sophisticated expertise in the area of computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web"
Not too long ago, computer expertise was considered nerdy. These days, many people strive to be among the digerati.

4. Antipodes: 1."places at opposite sides of world from each other, or the areas at the side of the world opposite from a given place" 2."opposites: two points, places, or things that are diametrically opposite each other"
One could say that Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli and Warren "Potsie" Weber are antipodes.

5. Hallux: "first digit on the foot: the big toe on the human foot, or the first digit on the hind foot of some mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians (technical)"
The ballerina had her hallux insured for $10 million!

6. Otiose: 1. "not effective: with no useful result or practical purpose" 2. "worthless: with little or no value" 3. "lazy: unwilling or uninterested in working or being active (archaic)"
Will e-mail render traditional letter writing otiose? Let's hope not.

7. Cullet: "glass to be recycled: broken or waste glass returned for recycling"
Don't forget to take the cullet out to the curbside, and be sure to put it next to the trash, not in it.

8. Pellucid: 1. "clear in meaning: easy to understand or clear in meaning (formal)" 2. "transparent: allowing all or most light to pass through (literary)"
The police officer's warning was pellucid: drivers must go the speed limit in the school zone.

9. Borborygmus: "stomach rumble: the rumbling sounds made by the movement of gases in the stomach and intestine (technical)"
If you lay your head on someone's stomach, you are likely to hear borborygmus.

10. Embrangle: "perplex somebody: to confuse, perplex, or entangle somebody or something (archaic)"
As Lord Needlebottom attempted to explain the rules of cricket, his American friends became more and more embrangled.

[This message was edited by shufitz on Fri Aug 22nd, 2003 at 17:33.]

Now, those aren't half bad, for MSN anyway! I really like "embrangle", though I am sick to death of "borborygmus"; the latter used to be just a medical term, but it has crept into daily conversation. How embrangling!

It's a very good idea to use the right word if the right word exists and I use several of the words cited.

Indeed, antipodes is a relatively common term in the UK. That might be because, of course, we do have an antipodean country with which we are closely associated.

The USA has no land mass at its antipodes and the word must therefore be less useful.

Richard English

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the USA has no land mass at its antipodes

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What about China?

Arnie, I think Richard is using "antipodes" to mean opposite in longitude and in latitude, so the antipodes of the US would be an area in the southern hemisphere; as it happens, in the south Indian ocean.

In fact, he has to be using it that way. If he meant "opposite in longitude only", the antipodes of England would not be a land mass; it would be in the North Atlantic, off of the Alaskan Islands. But in the sense he uses "antipodes", England's antipodes is very close to New Zealand.

As it happens there aren't many places on earth where land is precisely antipodal to land, partly because there isn't much land in the southern hemisphere, and few of those parts fit. (I'm curious whether this is coincidental or has some geological reason.) For example, that hemisphere includes Australia and much of Africa, but their antipodal northern-hemisphere points happen to lie in the north Atlantic and the north Pacific oceans. The only substantial land-antipodes is that a goodly part of South America (about half, I'd guess) lies opposite land in the area of east China and Indo-China.

Indeed. That is my understanding of the meaning of the term.

And I, too, had noted the singular fact that there are very few antipodal land masses.

Richard English

I should have checked a globe before posting.

I was thinking of the common phrase about "digging down to China".

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Originally posted by wordnerd:
Arnie, I think Richard is using "antipodes" to mean opposite in longitude _and in latitude,_ so the antipodes of the US would be an area in the southern hemisphere; as it happens, in the south Indian ocean.

In fact, he has to be using it that way. If he meant "opposite in longitude only", the antipodes of England would not be a land mass; it would be in the North Atlantic, off of the Alaskan Islands. But in the sense he uses "antipodes", England's antipodes is very close to New Zealand.

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Yes, here in Aotearoa, our antipodes is much more nearly Spain, than the UK. The colonial aggressors simply decreed that we were their antipodes, paying scant heed to geography, and we've been lumbered with the designation ever since. My province makes much of its similarities with its Antipodean region, central Spain.

So central Spain is a bit like 1950s Britain is it

quote:

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Originally posted by Graham Nice:
So central Spain is a bit like 1950s Britain is it

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You didn't really expect a bite on that one, did you? The one thing my part of this country has never had in common with Britain of any era, is the frequent, prominent presence of a bright glowing yellow orb in the sky, unfamiliarity with which causes Poms here great fear and bewilderment.

the frequent, prominent
presence of a bright glowing yellow orb in the sky,
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It's the same here in Oregon 2/3 of the year as it is in the UK. People panic and think the world is coming to an end when that UFO does finally pop out from the clouds. People here don't tan - they rust or mildew.

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Originally posted by maxqnz:
the frequent, prominent presence of a bright glowing yellow orb in the sky, unfamiliarity with which causes Poms here great fear and bewilderment.

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Mad dogs and Englishen do have their similarities, eh max?

We have had the most fantastic summer in Cambridge. I have even left my umbrella at home on a few days.