Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Learned another new word today, thank you sir.

I don't know about the "pleasure or sexual gratification" part, but I know several couples that are, how shall I say ... mutually obese.

Reminded me of the first time I saw that reality TV show about "hoarding." There again, I know several people who have such cluttered homes there's literally no place to set anything. Never really thought of it as a behavioral disorder (until I saw the extreme examples on that show). Knew the word "hoarding" but never really used it to describe people. Thought that squirrels hoarded nuts, but people "collected" stuff.

[EDIT] No ... on second thought, I guess one could say Imelda Marcos hoarded shoes.   🙂   And I recall people hoarding copper pennies back when they were still mostly copper. But as applies to hoarding "general stuff" that's still a new concept to me. According to the online dictionaries I've looked at, hoarding involves an aspect of secrecy, like caching. So this use of hoarding (meaning general stuff, like on the TV show) must be relatively new?