7,351 Words, and a Dave Fun Quiz
I had an amazingly productive day today (7, 351 words) and I'm going to celebrate by popping online briefly and posting a Dave Fun Quiz that's easy to research. I discovered it recently by looking up the word "avocado" because it sounded suspiciously like a lawyer-related word and I wasn't sure why.
Here's the Question: Which of these words doesn't belong, etymologically?
avocado
orchid
feist
cullion
musk
As usual, the answer is in Comments.
P.S. I now know how to get the maximum writing done. 1.) remove the wi-fi card (duh), and 2.) start writing first thing in the morning. You can exercise later, after the first two or three thousand words.
Here's the Question: Which of these words doesn't belong, etymologically?
avocado
orchid
feist
cullion
musk
As usual, the answer is in Comments.
P.S. I now know how to get the maximum writing done. 1.) remove the wi-fi card (duh), and 2.) start writing first thing in the morning. You can exercise later, after the first two or three thousand words.
Labels: Dave Update, games
posted by Cowboy Dave Dickerson | 1:39 AM
3 Comments:
Answer: feist doesn't belong. All the other words (orchid, avocado, cullion--which means a scoundrel--and musk) are related to a word for "testicles" in one language or other. Feist, by contrast (which is a small dog), is related to the word "fart." (Or, to use Merriam-Webster's polite phrasing, "to break wind.")
How on earth do you just know this stuff?
I would love to tell fantasy author Raymond Feist this juicy bit of etymology.
-Brian Reeves, who couldn't post on Blogger for some reason.
I knew the "orchid" factoid because, frankly, if you look at an orchid it's pretty easy to remember. So when I ran across "avocado," I remembered the orchid and thought, "how many other words like this could there be?"
If you own the Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary, it comes with a CD-ROM that's just about the most useful thing ever. You can search it by ANYTHING: word in the definition, date of introduction to the language, letter pattern...and words in the etymology. So really, the whole thing took only ten seconds. But what fun!
(I knew "feist" for some other reason entirely, and I don't remember why. Like I tell people, memory for words is what I have instead of job skills.)
--Dave, who should be writing right now but he needed to transcribe the phone numbers people have been sending him.
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