Words You Never Heard!

As much as I love Words You Never Heard, I enjoy a good word joke just as much. Did you hear about the oxymoron that walked into a bar?  The silence was deafening.  I dated an apostrophe once, but he was too possessive.

Having fun with words has always been a passion of mine and I say this with all jocoseriosity.  Jocoseriosity implies a combination of humor mixed with seriousness. 

Oddly, I have never been much of a grammar nazi though.  Why get all worked up over it I say?  Someone who gets upset over trivial things is called a microlipet.  Of course, this is just my opinion.  What’s a word for a person who loves their own opinion?  A philodox.  Arial and Helvetica walk into a bar, but the bartender hollered at them to get out!  He said they didn’t serve their type!

You may have heard about the fox that was caught stealing shoes from people’s porches and gardens in Germany. 

Berlin resident Christian Meyer noticed that his expensive running shoes went missing from his porch and decided to investigate the theft.  After checking with neighbors, he learned he was not the only one who recently experienced missing footwear. Days later, he spotted a red fox with two blue flip-flops in its mouth.  He followed the fox to a thicket and discovered a stash of more than 100 shoes!

A group of foxes is called a skulk or a leash.  A male fox is a dog and a female is a vixen.  Baby foxes are called pups, kits or cubs.  Foxes can run up to 31 mph and jump over 6 ft fences.  Foxes are also smarter than most dog breeds. The foxy shoe thief apparently preferred Crocs as the majority of the shoes he made off with were these popular sandals and clogs.

Is an African grey parrot smarter than a Harvard University Student?  Probably not, but it does appear to be better at the classic Shell Game!

The perspicacious parrot did as well as or bested the Harvard students in 12 out of 14 trials, using his beak to point! Perspicacious is another word for wise or shrewd. Parrots have zygodactyl feet which means they have 2 toes pointing forward and 2 pointing to the back!

Griffin has been the subject of cognitive and communicative studies since he was two months old.  What’s a word for the will to win? Spizzerinctum!

Rocco Figaretti recently hit a hole-in-one on a par three at the Oglebay Park Golf Course in Wheeling, West Virginia.  That might not be so remarkable, except that Rocco is only four years old.  The odds of the average golfer hitting a hole-in-one are about 12,000 to 1.  Even Tiger Woods didn’t hit his first hole-in-one until he was 6 years old.  Rocco’s incredible shot is the reason for a little cock-a-hoop or celebration.

Rocco swings right-handed with a left-handed grip.  A mollydooker is a slang for a left-hander.  He started practicing his golf swing at 3 years old hitting balls around the yard at home.  The first golf balls were known as gutta-percha balls because they were made from gutta-percha, a substance obtained from a tree native to East Asia.  Gutta-percha was also used by dentists to fill cavities.  Some people say that golf is just an expensive way of playing marbles!

Comic book fans seem to have a language all their own. With terms like Variant cover, Retcon, Splash page, and Zine, one would have to be a Pannapictagraphist to understand it all.  A Pannapictagraphist is a collector of comic books.  A Zine is a self-published and often hand-drawn comic and a Floppy is a slang term for a single issue comic.

Comic book collecting can be quite lucrative for those who are a part of the Comixology crowd.  An original copy of the Action Comics first issue which introduced Earth to Superman sold for 3.2 million dollars on eBay making it the most expensive comic book in the world.

What do you call the Boom, Pow, Bang sounds often depicted in comic books like Batman and other superheroes? Onomatopoeia!

Why are mosquitos more attracted to some people than others?  Mosquitos in general find their prey by sensing the carbon dioxide humans and animals produce when they exhale.  Mosquitos can lock onto a carbon dioxide emission from over 50 meters away.

Recent studies have shown that mosquitos or gallinippers are also more attracted to people with type O blood.  However, the most important variable that determines if a mosquito prefers you to someone else is the scent of the chemical compounds produced by microbes and bacteria that live on our skin.  That’s why insect repellants that use DEET are the most effective for masking the smell of our skin.

What’s a word for the fear of itching? Pruritophobia!

The real question is, “Why didn’t Noah just swat those two mosquitos in the first place?”

As the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in lockdowns of much of India, monkeys, who are common on the streets of Delhi are rapidly becoming a nuisance.  Normally the streets of Delhi are filled with people who regularly give food handouts to the Rhesus Macaques who live there, but now without their regular food source, the emboldened monkeys have resorted to sneaking into homes and stealing food and personal belongings.  What's another name for a thief?  A Jackroller!

Recently a lab assistant from the Meerut Medical College in Delhi was attacked by a group of monkeys who ran off with some patient coronavirus test samples.  Fortunately, the monkeys weren’t able to get into the sample packaging and left them on the ground under some trees. What’s another word for taken aback?  Sharooshed!

The Social Security Administration has released a list of the latest frequently used baby names in the US.  Currently, Emma and Liam are the most popular for 2020. Luna tops the list for baby girls in the UK.  Luna was the name of the Roman Moon Goddess.  The most popular girl’s name in the world right now is Sophia!

Apollo, Birdie, Bear and Zelda are trending for baby names in Italy, and Cian and Roisin are peaking in Ireland.  A sobriquet is a descriptive name given to someone because of a physical trait such as Red, red hair or Peanut because of diminutive size. Food oriented names are also gaining popularity worldwide such as Cinnamon, Dijon, Kale, and Benedict. Of course, if you don’t like your name, it’s not that difficult to change it.  What’s a word for the fear of change?  Kainotophobia.

It’s been just over 100 years since the first traffic light appeared.  Early traffic lights weren’t automatic but operated manually by a police officer in a booth next to the road.  At first, there were only red and green lights.  The yellow light didn’t come into use until the 1920’s when officers noticed that drivers needed an interval of time to be able to slow down in order to clear the intersection.

The first fully electronic traffic light was installed on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914.  But stoplight technology has evolved over the decades into sporting energy-saving LED’s and being controlled by traffic management computers.

A Korean company is working on a traffic light that displays news headlines to keep drivers from looking at their cell phones at a red light.  What’s a word for that fuzzy state of almost falling asleep while waiting at a traffic light?  Hypnopompic.

This summer marks the 45th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s epic blockbuster Jaws.  This movie that literally scared moviegoers out of the water, was the first movie to gross over $100 million at the box office.  Now that’s a lot of dooteroomus!

The movie Jaws was adapted from author Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel of the same name, which was based on a series of shark attacks that occurred off the coast of New Jersey in 1916.  The filming of Jaws was marred with numerous technical issues including constant mechanical failures with the animatronic shark nicknamed Bruce.

Jaws Amity Island was actually Martha’s Vinyard and the famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” wasn’t in the script, but improvised by Roy Sheider while shooting the scene. What’s a word for the fear of sharks?  Selachophobia!