September | 2025 | Wordfoolery
4 posts published by wordfoolery during September 2025| Wordfoolery
Hello, I’ve no record of where I found this week’s word, aliferous. I scrolled at random in my (exceedingly long) word list and it popped out, seeking a story. Aliferous means having wings. You might describe an angel, bird, or butterfly in this way. Butterfly sprang to mind in my case as I recently visited […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, A friend asked me last week what writing I’m doing currently. I explained that I was supposed to be working on formatting “Words the Weather Gave Us” for proof printing but…| Wordfoolery
Hello, This week’s word, feisty, comes with thanks to “An Emotional Dictionary” by Susie Dent. I was surprised to learn from this excellent book that feisty has more to do with little dogs and farting than it does with the ever popular feisty female trope in fiction. I’m always wary of adjectives only used to […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, I’m enjoying season seven of “Outlander” on DVD at the moment and there’s much talk of traitors as most of this series is set during the American Revolution (1778 to …| Wordfoolery
Hello, It’s late August now and something is in the air – the back to school vibes. Dreaded by students and teachers alike and a busy time for them, as well as for parents buying supplies. Some schools (for teens) have already started back in my area but it will be another couple of weeks […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, There is a small black and white cat who poses an insidious threat to my garden’s wild birds. She likes to sit underneath the spreading, and concealing, branches of the low-growing Japanese maple tree and wait for an unsuspecting bird to visit the birdbath. Despite liking cats this seems unfair on the unsuspecting birds […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, If anything is in short supply, it’s important to eke it out until you can replenish supplies. This usually happens in my house on a Wednesday when my offspring stare into the fridge, …| Wordfoolery
Hello, The word scavenger today means somebody who collects things discarded by others – perhaps through a spot of skip-diving, car-booting, or literally in the rubbish bins. It is also used of animals who feed on decaying organic matter. That animal sense was added in the late 1500s. A human scavenger in the past, however, […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, This week’s word is ubiquity, with thanks to the teen I passed on my walk last week who claimed to her friend that somebody was ubiquitous. She reminded me how much I like this word. T…| Wordfoolery
Hello, I love finding a word whose meaning has changed dramatically over its lifetime. Some even achieve the total opposite of their original meaning. Penthouse doesn’t quite fall into that category, but it’s close. The word entered English as pentis around 1300 to describe a shed or sloping roof which jutted out from the main […]| Wordfoolery
Looking for my Media Kit? Try here. “Words Christmas Gave Us” (2024) unwraps the stories behind the season, via festive words from advent to yule and grinch to scurryfunge. This book, the third in …| Wordfoolery
