Inkhorn terms are bloated, fancy, show-off words formed by cramming Latin and Greek roots into English. The name references little bottles made from animal horn that 14th-century English scribes used to carry their ink. Lexicographer Henry Cockeram’s 1623 volume, The English Dictionarie (Amazon) features lots of them, including catillate meaning “to lick a plate,” from Latin word for “small plate” and agelastic, an adjective that describes someone who never laughs, from Greek words for “not laughing.” Another is latibulate, defined as “privily to hide ones selfe in a corner,” from lateo, Latin for “I lie hidden,” also the source of English latent. This is part of a complete episode.
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...
A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...
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