Category: Word Trivia

rush

exigent – A good word to write on letters or packages, since everyone else writes “urgent” or “rush.” More…

rush candle, rush light – A rush candle or rush light is a candle of feeble power made by dipping the pith of a rush in tallow or other grease. More…

spate – A sudden flood or rush, an outpouring. More…

debacle – Comes from French debacler, “to unbar, free,” with the root sense being “to shatter with one’s rod”; its original meaning was “a breaking-up of ice in a river” or a “sudden flood or rush of water carrying debris.” More…

torture

ordeal – From Old English ordel, “judgment,” figuratively, an experience testing endurance, patience, courage, etc.—also a test of guilt or innocence that was one of severe pain or torture. More…

torment – Comes from a Latin word, tormentum, for an instrument of torture. More…

tortuous, torturous – Tortuous is “winding, crooked, full of twists and turns,” and torturous, based on “torture,” is “painful, characterized by suffering.” More…

travel – From Latin trepaliare, “torture,” it evolved into “journey” from the allusion to the inevitable trouble of medieval travel. More…

horn

bugle – Originally the word for ox, whose horn was used to give signals, it came to mean such a musical instrument. More…

tantara – Fanfare on a trumpet or horn. More…

rhinoceros, rhinoceroses – Rhinoceros comes from Greek rhin-, “nose,” and keras, “horn”; the correct plural is rhinoceroses. More…

unicorn – From a Greek wild ox known as monokeros, “one horn,” which, in Latin, became unicornis. More…

healthy

healthy, healthful – Healthy is a positive descriptive of a person’s (or personified thing’s) physical state; healthful is used of something that favorably affects or promotes that state. More…

vegete – Describing something healthy and active, flourishing in respect to health and vigor. More…

orthorexia – An obsession with eating only “healthy” food. More…

insane, insanity – Latin sanus, “healthy,” is part of insane and insanity. More…

outline

write – From Proto Germanic writanan, “tear, scratch.” More…

curriculum, syllabus – A curriculum is a complete course of study offered by a school; a syllabus is the outline of a single course. More…

profile – Literally “draw in outline” or “shown by a thread,” from Latin pro, “forth,” and filum, “thread.” More…

scarify – From Greek skariphasthai, “to scratch an outline,” it now means “to break up the surface of.” More…

pink

pink – If you pink your eyes, you half-shut them. More…

in the pink – Comes from the English foxhunting tradition; people who foxhunt often wear scarlet jackets and are called pinks—so if you are in the pink, you are about to set off to gallop your horse across country. More…

incarnadine – Can mean “flesh-colored or pink,” but also “crimson, blood-red.” More…

pink – The color gets its name from the flowering plant of the same name. More…

interested

acquisitive – Means “very interested in acquiring money or material things.” More…

athenaeum – Can refer to “an association of persons interested in scientific and literary pursuits, meeting for the purpose of mutual improvement,” or a reading room or library. More…

speed dating – A type of matchmaking service in which participants meet for seven to eight minutes each before moving on to another participant, ultimately making a list of those they are interested in dating. More…

imparlibidinous – When one partner is more interested in sex than the other, their relationship is imparlibidinous. More…

hurt

aposiopesis – Stopping in the middle of a statement upon realizing that someone’s feelings are hurt or about to be hurt; when a sentence trails off or falls silent, that is an aposiopesis. More…

innocent – From Latin in-, “free from,” and nocere, “hurt, injure.” More…

innocuous – “Harmless, not hurtful,” from Latin in-, “not,” and nocere, “to hurt.” More…

collide – Its Latin base is laedere, “hurt by striking.” More…