Words You Never Heard!

Valentine’s day is approaching wiki wiki .  Are you ready?  Valentines Day, or as some men call it extortion day, is celebrated around the world. In Malaysia, women write their phone numbers on oranges and throw them into the nearest river.  They hope that the person of their dreams will find the fruit and call them.

You’ve heard the term “putting lipstick on a pig.”  In Germany, the pig represents luck and love and is often featured on Valentines Day cards and gifts.  The number of marriage proposals on Valentine’s Day is second only to Christmas proposals!  What do you call a poor guy who makes extravagant proposals of marriage but never gets a yes?  A gamomaniac! Sixty-four % of men do not make plans in advance for Valentine’s Day. What do you call the act of falling in love with a schnook when you ought to know better?  Anaxiphilia!  

You must admit, there's no better feeling in the world than a warm pizza box on your lap:)  Did you know the professionals cooking up your favorite pie/  have developed their own language when it comes to pizza? Tip Sag is what you get when the pointy end of your pizza starts to droop.  This most often occurs with topping-heavy pies like Neapolitan-style pizzas/   with generous helpings of fresh mozzarella piled on top!

Pizza chefs often refer to anchovies as guppies or smellies. The terms penguin food and carp are also heard in some pizza kitchens. Mutz is simply a quicker way of saying mozzarella and slices of pepperoni are often called flyers reportedly because of the way they are tossed around on top of the pizza like Frisbees. But be careful with a pizza that’s loaded with toppings or you could experience an avalanche.   An avalanche is what occurs when all the toppings slide off your pizza as soon as you pick it up:)!

Rocco, an African grey parrot has learned to use Amazon’s Alexa to shop.  Rocco's owner Marion Wischnewski told the Daily Mail that she was shocked when she discovered packages arriving at her home that she didn’t order!

It turns out Rocco had been using Alexa to order up his favorite snacks including watermelon, raisins, and broccoli.  African grey parrots are known for their ability to mimic human speech and the name Alexa has become a regular part of his vocabulary.  Apparently, Rocco has logorrhea or likes to talk incessantly and Alexa picks up on it and places the orders.

Marion says she doesn’t want to keep Rocco from expressing himself, but she does have to check the shopping cart and delete any items he may have inadvertently ordered.  What do you call a person or a parrot who loves to hear themselves talk?  A popinjay!

Did you hear about the moose that wandered into a hospital in Alaska?  The gaberlunzie moose was able to get into the building through the lobby doors which were frozen in the open position. The moose chowed down on some of the plants in the warm lobby before exiting the hospital the same way it got in.

A moose is the largest member of the deer family and can weigh up to 1500 pounds.  Moose have wide hooves that act like snowshoes allowing them to walk on top of the snow. Moose can have antlers that span up to 5 feet and weigh over 65 pounds!  A baby moose is called a calfmoose or a mooseling!

Hopefully, the moose didn’t suffer any ill effects from eating the houseplants in the hospital lobby, but I guess if he did, he can always take an Elk-a-seltzer:)

Recently a New Jersey man struck gold, metaphorically, while eating lunch at the Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant in New York.  While enjoying some delicious oysters, he was startled when he bit down on something hard.  He thought he had broken a tooth or lost a filling, but instead discovered the mysterious juggernaut was actually a pearl.

Pearls, also known as Oyster fruit are very rare and are the only precious jewels created by an animal.  Shobi-Shoji is a term used to describe the shineyness of a pearl.

Executive chef of Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant Sandy Ingber said that in his 28 years at the restaurant, this was only the second time a diner found a pearl in their meal. Experts say the pearl could easily be worth anywhere between 2 to $4,000 dollars. Not bad for a meal that cost less than 15 dollars:)

What’s another word for an unexpected gift?  A lagniappe.

A New York Post study states that women sleep better next to dogs than their human partners. Of the 962 women living interviewed, 55 percent of them said they slept better with a dog in their bed.  What’s another word for a soft and cuddly dog?  A  woopert.

The study found that dogs were less likely to wake their owners in the middle of the night than cats or humans as well.  What’s a word for the fear of cats?  Galeophobia.

In England, taking a nap is sometimes referred to as kipping.  A three dog night is a phrase used by Australian Aborigines, which means “a night so cold you will need to take three dogs to bed with you to stay warm”.

First dogs steal our heart, then they steal our bed.  Does anyone else tell their pets when leaving the house “I’ll be right back, or is it just me?”

A French theme park is using trained crows to pick up trash and dispose of it into wastebaskets!  Puy du Fou Park located in France’s western region was experiencing a litter problem.  But instead of hiring humans to police the trash, they were able to train Rooks, a type of crow to do clean-up duties.

The perspicacious Rooks have turned picking up trash into a game as everytime they collect and drop some litter in the trash bin, they receive a morsel of food as a reward.  Perspicacious (pərspəˈkāSHəs) means keen or intelligent.

The park is now much cleaner than before the employment of these Sapient or resourceful birds and visitors who enjoy watching the Rooks as well.  Now that’s something to crow about!  

If you like Kentucky Fried Chicken, how would you like to enjoy it in the bath?  I’m not talking about taking a bucket of chicken to the tub, but the colonel has just introduced a new KFC bath bomb! There’s nothing better at the end of the day than taking a long soaking bath in hot and bubbly, fried chicken scented goodness.  What’s another word for a great idea?  Unkabogable!

The bath bomb comes in the shape of a drumstick, so you know exactly what you are getting before you soak in the delectable scents of 11 herbs and spices! This is not KFC’s first foray into chicken scented products. Past offerings included fried chicken sunscreen, chicken scented candles, and fried chicken flavored lip balm!  One caveat to all this chicken scented fragrance is you might develop opsomania, that’s a constant craving for a certain food to the point of madness! 

We use a lot of slang names for parts of the body, but many of these terms have very old origins.  A shnozz, another name for your nose, dates back to the 1940s. You may have heard some people refer to your mouth as a rattle-trap.  This term originated in the 18th century and is especially applicable to someone who won’t stop talking.  The clapper is a 17th-century word for your tongue and refers to how it moves back and forth like the clapper inside a bell.

Dew-beaters is 19th-century slang for your feet, alluding to someone knocking the dew off the grass as they walk. The word was also once used to mean a pioneer or an early riser—namely someone who started their day before anyone else. And sometimes after a big meal, you might have a case of the trillibubs, mid-1700’s slang for a bloated belly.

My friend Celeste was devastated when the city said she couldn’t keep her pet pig in her Houston home. It caused quite a brouhaha.

Believe it or not, pigs make great pets.  Pigs are perspicacious and with a little food encouragement, they can learn many tricks. Perspicacious is another word for intelligent.  Pigs have very good memories and don’t forget easily.  Pigs demonstrate emotional awareness and respond to the feelings of love, hate, and forgiveness.

Pigs are actually very clean animals, they will not go to the bathroom where they eat or sleep and since they don’t perspire, they just need some water to cool them down. Plus pigs are happy just horbgorbling around the house and yard.

When it comes to pigs, Winston Churchill said it best: “Dogs look up to man. Cats look down to man. Pigs look us straight in the eye and see an equal."