The Friday Fillip

As with oatmeal cookies, pints of beer, and bags of wine gums, I keep coming back to them. Can’t really stay away long. Oh, I go graphic as often as I can and audio too. But words whistle me in quite regularly in these Friday Fillips. And here I am again banging on about words.

Only last April I “bloviated” about “swale” and “decrement.” A kind reader, Paul Dawson, suggested that if I liked odd words that much I might enjoy the website World Wide Words. I did. I do. And now you might, too.

It’s the work — well, one of them at least — of Michael Quinion, an Englishman who opines on international English and particularly on its peculiarities.

You can get into the fun of the site in many ways. There’s his alphabetically ordered “questions and answers,” or his lists of “topical words,” “turns of phrase,” and “weird words.” Or you might simply confront the large “complete index.” However you do it, you’ll come up against such lovelies as tripudiate [Take that, Ms. Palin!], lexiphanic, and clinquant.

There’s also a link to a sub-site based on a book by Quinion that explores the “affixes” that help construct English — the (very) many prefixes, suffixes, and infixes we use. A lot of these are Greek to you. And me. Sphygm(o)– the pulse, hygr(o)– moisture or humidity, nepho– cloud… There’s a thematic index of these word bits, but, as is common, there’s no heading for law.

So if you’re ever at a loss for words, head on over to Word Wide Words. You can subscribe to Quinion’s free weekly newsletter and never have words fail you again.