ABEHILNR

Word of the Week:

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

ABEHILNR

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

HIBERNAL adj.

• Definition: of or pertaining to winter; appearing in winter; wintry

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

• When it comes to winter, English has got you covered.  Hibernal comes from the Latin hibernus, meaning wintry, the same root that gives English words such as HIBERNATE, HIBERNATION, HIBERNATOR, and HIBERNACULUM (a shelter for a hibernating animal or insect).  The word HIEMAL is another adjective meaning "wintry; of or belonging to winter"; it derives from a similar Latin root, hiems, meaning winter.  There's also BRUMAL, yet another adjective meaning "wintry; of or belonging to winter"; it derives from the Latin bruma, meaning the shortest day of the year, or the winter solstice.  (BRUMAL should not, however, be confused in meaning with BRUME or BRUMOUS; while the latter two also derive from bruma, they've come to mean "fog" and "foggy," respectively.)

• All of these WINTERTIME words can be been used in both scientific and literary contexts:
  
  "...the hibernal variety of the plant..."
  "...to sleep away the hibernal months..."
  
  "...the hiemal threshold..."
  "...his hiemal habits..."
  
  "...the brumal retreat of the swallow..."
  "...the brumal wind..."

• The more familiar WINTER (and its many forms: WINTERY, WINTRY, WINTRILY, etc.) is an Old English word (recorded as early as the 800's) that derives from Old High German (wintar) and Old Norse (vetr) words for the season.

"Walking lexicons"

In Other Words...

We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.
– Penelope Lively (1933- ), Moon Tiger (1987)

AELLST (2)

Word of the Week:
A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

AELLST (2)

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

STELLA n. pl. -S

• Definition:
  1. a four dollar United States gold coin, proposed and minted as a test but never issued into circulation (often capitalized)
  2. the nickname for a prominent Scrabble player, list mistress, and humorist (capitalized)

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: -R, -S
• Anagrams: SALLET (n. pl. -S, a rounded metal helmet with a brim flaring in the back, often featuring a slit or movable visor, worn primarily in the 15th century)
• Longer extensions: HAUstella, ROstella, stellaTE, stellaTED
• Wraparounds: CAstellaN/S CIRCUMstellaR CONstellaTE/D/S CONstellaTING CONstellaTION/S CONstellaTORY INTERstellaR ROstellaR
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

• The stella (often, but not always, capitalized) is a four dollar gold coin, proposed and minted as a pattern coin in 1879-1880.  It was designed to complement a host of coins of the same size and weight in circulation in Europe at the time.  The stella was never put into circulation, but a few hundred of the test coins were made available to congressmen.  Legend has it that a number of these were made into pendants, with many ending up gracing the necks of madams of prominent bordellos.  Stella coins are rare and typically found only in the collections of a few wealthy numismatists.

• The stella coin featured Lady Liberty on one side and a five-pointed star on the other, from which its name derives: from the Latin stella, meaning star.  The stella root is part of many English words pertaining to stars, including CONSTELLATION, STELLAR, and STELLATE.

• The anagram of stella, SALLET, also has an interesting history.  A sallet was a medieval helmet, worn primarily in northern Europe in the 1400s, featuring a visor or slit for the eyes and a brim flaring in the back to protect the neck.  Its design differed from the Italian BARBUT, a visorless helmet popular in the same era.  Both the sallet and the barbut were eventually superseded by the BURGONET, an open-faced helmet with a metal fin on top.  Other medieval helmets to add to your Scrabble arsenal include ARMET, BASINET, HEAUME, and MORION/MORRION.

"Most of all I love to play"

In Other Words...

I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I love to play.
– Boris Becker (1967- )

AAFGORR

Word of the Week: 

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

AAFGORR

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

FARRAGO n. pl. -ES

• Definition: a confused mixture; an assortment or medley; a hodgepodge

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: -ES 
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: FARRAGINOUS (adj.)

TileHead says:

• The Latin word farrago meant a mixed fodder for cattle (from far, meaning spelt or corn), and by extension any figurative mixture or jumble.  English adopted the figurative sense of the word, as well as its adjectival form FARRAGINOUS, at least as early as the 17th century, as illustrated in this colorful passage:
  
  For being a confusion of knaves and fools, and a farraginous concurrence of all conditions, tempers, sexes, and ages, it is but natural if their determinations be monstrous and many ways inconsistent with truth.
  -- Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries into Common and Vulgar Errors, 1646
  
  It's still used today in the same sense:
  
  In fact, a room with four or five mirrors arranged at random, is, for all purposes of artistic show, a room of no shape at all. If we add to this evil, the attendant glitter upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing effects.
  -- Shirley Morris, Interior Decoration: A Complete Course, 2007

"I-T-C-H-I-N"

In Other Words...

Aunt Mercy put down her tiles, one at a time. I-T-C-H-I-N.
Aunt Grace leaned closer to the board, squinting. "Mercy Lynne, you're cheatin' again! What kinda word is that? Use it in a sentence."
"I'm itchin' ta have some a that white cake."
"That's not how you spell it.... There's no T in itchin'."
– Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Creatures (2010)

CEHOORS (2)

Word of the Week:
A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

CEHOORS (2)

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This week's word is...

SOROCHE n. pl. -S

• Definition: mountain sickness, especially in the Andes Mountains; altitude sickness

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: -S
• Anagrams: CHOOSER (n. pl. -S)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

• English borrowed SOROCHE from Spanish, but it derives ultimately from the Quechua suruchi, the name for a mineral (antimony) found in the Andes Mountains to which altitude sickness in that region of the world was once erroneously attributed.  Hence, it came to mean "mountain sickness" in general.

• Quechua is a language spoken by some South American native peoples of Peru and parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. It has contributed a relatively small number of terms to English, but a few other Scrabble-acceptable words derived from Quechua include GUANO, INTI, JERKY, PUMA, QUINOA, QUIPU, and VICUNA.

"Words that open our eyes"

In Other Words...

Words that open our eyes to the world are always the easiest to remember.
– Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007), in Shah of Shahs (1982)

AADILNPR

Word of the Week: 

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

AADILNPR

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This week's word is...

PRANDIAL adj.

• Definition: of or pertaining to a meal

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: PRE-, POST-
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

• The Latin prandium was a light meal, usually eaten around noon, but the modern English word PRANDIAL can refer to any meal and is probably used most often to refer to dinner. 
• The pre- and post- forms of the word are more common and more flexible: one might refer to "a preprandial drink," "preprandial preparations," and so on; or to "a postprandial speech," "a postprandial stupor," or perhaps (especially among readers of this blog) to some postprandial wordplay!

"A certain succulence"

In Other Words...

Every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a certain succulence.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894), Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

ACEGMRRY

Word of the Week:

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

ACEGMRRY

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This week's word is...

GRAMERCY n. pl. -CIES

• Definition: an expression of gratitude; many thanks; also used as an interjection expressing surprise or gratitude

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• Longer extensions: (none)
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• Other Spellings: (none)
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TileHead says:

• Thank your French teacher if you guessed that GRAMERCY comes from the combination of two Old French words: grand, meaning great, and merci, meaning thanks.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds: "The primary sense of merci was ‘reward, favour gained by merit’; hence grant merci originally meant ‘may God reward you greatly’... grant merci and merci without the adj. came to be used interjectionally = ‘thanks’, in which use the shorter form survives" in modern French.

• When it comes to words to be THANKFUL for, our list has rarities such as BETHANK, THANKER, THANKWORTHY, and THANKLESSNESS.  But one of the most interesting "THANK" words has to be PICKTHANK (n. -S), which Webster's Third New International defines as "one who tries to curry favor by flattery, sycophancy, or talebearing" (deriving from an old phrase "to pick a thank," meaning to seek someone's favor).  To cite one notable example, William Shakespeare used it deftly in Henry IV, Part 1, referring to "smiling pickthanks and base newsmongers."

"At the mercy of words"

In Other Words...

I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
– Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

FINORSS

Word of the Week: 

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play).  The word's "alphagram" (letters arranged in alphabetical order) will always be given first, for those readers who may wish to try to anagram the word before learning more about it.

FINORSS

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

FRISSON n. pl. -S

• Definition: a brief shudder of excitement or terror; a thrill; "a pleasurable sensation of fright or gloom" (MW)

• Front hooks: (none) 
• Back hooks: -S
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

• Deriving from the French for "shiver" (probably ultimately from the Latin frigere, "to be cold"), frisson can be a delightful word in the hands of a good storyteller.  Louise Erdrich used it well in Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001): "They were eager to get to the exciting part of the fight where they lost their tempers and approached each other with a frisson of rage that turned sexual, so that they could be slightly cruel and then surrender themselves to tenderness."  And T.C. Boyle crafted an unforgettable sentence with it in Budding Prospects (1984): "There were risks, sure, but that was what made the project so enticing -- the frisson, the audacity, the monumental pissing in the face of society."

"What a wealth of words"

In Other Words...
A feature wherein TileHead presents a quote that is interesting, informative, inspiring, or humorous:

What a wealth of words in almost every language lies inert and unused; and certainly not fewest in our own. How much of what might be as current coin among us, is shut up in the treasure-house of a few classical authors, or is never to be met at all but in the columns of the dictionary.
– Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886), in On the Study of Words

The Quiddity of TileHead

TileHead is a blog about words and word games.  At least two regular features are planned at the outset:  

1. "In Other Words..." a feature wherein TileHead digs up quotes pertaining to the blog's subject matter that are interesting, informative, inspiring, or humorous; and  
2. "Word of the Week," a feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play)

Posts of other kinds (ruminations, strategies, etc.) pertaining to the blog's subject matter will also appear from time to time.

Quiddity, for those who may not know, is the "whatness" or "true nature or essence of a thing."  It seemed like a good place to start.

* A few things have changed since this original post, but the quiddity of TileHead remains much the same.  The "In Other Words..." feature is now just called "Quote of the Week," and the longer "Word of the Week" feature has been converted to a shorter "Word of the Day" feature, but the focus remains, as always, on words, wonderful words.  Thanks for your continued (or newfound) readership.
— TileHead, 28 August, 2011