WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!

A pinkie is really a minimus

My oldest sister, Laura, was always meticulous about whatever she did. When she made drop cookies, they were the roundest cookies ever. All the items in her closets were scrupulously organized.

Her approach was no less thorough when she was getting ready to eat a banana. She would stand by the garbage and peel every bit of string off that fruit.

I thought of Laura as I searched for words for things we may not realize have names.

Those annoying banana strings are called "phloem." Their job is to distribute nutrients up and down the banana as it grows.

Its root is from the Greek word for bark. I suppose a banana's bark is worse than its bite.

LUNULE

How about that white part at the tip of your fingernail? When you have perfect nails, as, by the way, Laura always did, that white part resembles a crescent moon. Its name is "lunule," and it comes from the Latin word for moon, "luna."

FERRULE

The tip of the umbrella is a "ferrule." Its existence is hard. It's ground zero for the droplets when it's raining, and it gets scraped across the ground when it's not.

A ferrule is also the name for other familiar things. The metal band wrapped around a chair leg for added strength is a ferrule, as is the metal bracelet on a paintbrush, just below the bristles. Its root is "viriola," the Latin word for little bracelet.

FOURCHETTE

Next time you pull on a pair of gloves, notice that strip of material that connects the front and back sections. The fork-shaped material between the fingers is called the "fourchette." The word comes from the Latin word "furca," meaning two-pronged fork.

MINIMUS

I call the littlest finger on my hand the "pinkie." I call the smallest digit on my foot the "pinkie toe."

I am so pedestrian. The anatomical name is "minimus." Its origin is straightforward: In Latin, "minimus" means the smallest.

GLABELLA

Some more anatomy: The area on the face between the eyebrows is the "glabella." It comes from a form of the Latin word for hairless.

We all know characters with unibrows, though; Oscar the Grouch comes to mind. I was unable to determine whether that middle area is still called the glabella if it's covered in hair.

GRIFFONAGE

In the Woody Allen movie Take the Money and Run, Virgil tries to rob a bank. He scrawls a note demanding money and ends it threateningly with, "I have a gun."

The teller he hands the notes to has trouble reading his handwriting and is sure it says, "I have a gub." Virgil's horror grows as the teller shows the note to nearly everyone in the bank, asking whether the would-be robber has written "gun" or "gub."

Well, Virgil's terrible handwriting is called "griffonage."

Being able to say that the word comes from the mythical creature called a "griffin" would be romantically cool. The griffin has the head and wings of an eagle and a lion's body. A lion's paw would no doubt produce horrible penmanship. Or penfelineship. But the word simply comes from "griffonner," a centuries-old French word meaning to scribble or scrawl.

Griffonage entered English about the 19th century, perhaps when handwriting began to go downhill.

MUNTIN

This next one sounds made up. "Muntin" is that strip of wood separating panes of glass in a window. The person trying to paint the muntin flawlessly on a window full of panes soon grows to hate the muntin. Its root is the Old French verb "monter," to mount.

PHOSPHENE

When you close your eyes and rub them, you sometimes see a flashing of tiny, colorful dots. This is your retina reacting. Someone with too much time on his hands came up with a word for the phenomena: "phosphene." The word comes from two Greek roots, "phos" for light and "phainein," to show. I guess it's a little light show in your head.

SCROOP

And, finally, a sound word: "scroop."

Scroop is the sound that silk makes when it rustles. Sure, this sound was probably heard more often in the days of hoop skirts. Merriam-Webster has little to say about the origin of the word. It just says it's "imitative." But cleverly imitative, I'd say.

Sources: m-w.com, American Heritage Dictionary, imgur.com, healthdiaries.com, worldwidewords.org, freedictionary.com, mentalfloss.com

Reach Bernadette at

bkwordmonger@gmail.com

ActiveStyle on 12/18/2017

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