Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Today's words

quidnunc \KWID-nunk\ - a person who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip : busybody
Oh, what a great new word!! (okay, it's three centuries old, but still!)
quiddity \KWID-uh-tee\ - 1. whatever makes something the type that it is :  essence  2a.  a trifling point :  quibble  b.  crotchet, eccentricity
I had heard of definition 2b. of this one, but not so much the others. (Not to be confused with liquidity.)  Also, doesn't the first definition seem a sort of opposite of the second ones?
And two more from today's Dictionary Devil:

prase \ˈprāz, ˈprās\ - a chalcedony that is translucent and yellowish green
I'm pretty sure I've never encountered this particular variety of quartz.
foehn \ˈfə(r)n, ˈfœn, ˈfān\ -  a warm dry wind blowing down the side of a mountain
What a specifically wonderful word that I will probably not recall when I want to use it, though I suppose that my friends out west may be more familiar with it than I am. My brain instinctively grabbed the last pronunciation; if I ever hear the first I'll be two sentences behind before I realize they're not talking about a fern.



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