ABEHILNR

Word of the Week:

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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: 

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AAFGORR

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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)