AHLMOOPS

Word of the Week

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

AHLMOOPS

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

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(answer below, after a little more spoiler space....)

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This week's word is...

OMPHALOS n. (pl. OMPHALI)

• Definition: a central point; the heart or hub of a place, organization, or activity

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: -KEPSES, -KEPSIS
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: OMPHALI (plural of OMPHALOS)

TileHead says:

• The original omphalos (a Greek word meaning "navel") was a round stone in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, believed to mark the center of the earth.  By extension, it came to mean the central point of any place or activity, especially one having spiritual or mystical qualities.
  

  I downed the libation like honey and water. An hour and a half later I was two sheets to the wind and getting cocky. Here I was, embosomed in the very nave, the very omphalos of furtive femininity — a prize patron of the women's restaurant, a member, privy to its innermost secrets.
  – T.C. Boyle, Descent of Man: Stories (1979)

• By further extension, we arrive at OMPHALOSKEPSIS, a word combining omphalos and the Greek skepsis ("examination").  It therefore means "contemplation of the navel or center of something," or "navel-gazing."  This can be used to refer to certain forms of meditation, though it is also often used mockingly or humorously:
  

  Presumably, one arrives at game theory through omphaloskepsis.
  -- Verbatim magazine (Summer 1983)
  
  Mostly absorbed in the time-honored pursuits of adolescents in any era — school, social life, the opposite sex, omphaloskepsis — we grew up blessed, as we thought then, to be living in the greatest country on earth, where we were free to develop ourselves as far as we could imagine.
  - Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005)