Zugzwang! Totally Creepy!!!!! (^ w ^) <-Pumpkin

(^ W ^)   << That Jack 'o Lantern... Mmhmmmmm

As Promised, I chose a veeeerrrrryyyyy scary word for this week, called a Zugzwang.  And, hold on to your knickers, because your socks are about to be scared off.  Put some gel and hair dye in that hair, because it's about to stand up straight and turn white! Gather your candles, because I'm gonna scare the daylights out of you. Sin quickly, because the living Hell is about to be scared out of you! Have your starch at hand, because you will get scared stiff!  I'm glad you look like a clown because you're about to be scared silly! Is your grave ready? You'll be scared to death!

So, instead of asking the usual people, today I, with permission, interrupted the Odyssey of the Mind class. This is what they said for ZUGZWANG:
Mom: An African Parrot with a Black Head...
Gianni: The sound a rubber-band makes.
Nick: A dumb-ass.
Owen: Like a Sham-wow, a Towel.
Jared: Honestly, I forget what he said...
Megan: A German word for Penis.
Eli: A place in Africa.
Oh, and Allison was here too: A furry animal that eats small creatures.

They got distracted. Not doing that again...

Anyways, they were pretty... Not close at all.

So, anyways, a Zugzwang is a German Originated word that describes a move in chess or checkers in which the move will always end with a death of some sort.  The word originated in Germany, as previously stated, in the 19th century, in an 1858 German Magazine. But it was pretty unofficial then. Almost 50 years later, Zugzwang first appeared in English in a 1905 issue of  Lasker's Chess Magazine. 

The word Zugzwang comes from the German Roots Zug-, meaning pull or move, Zuc- and Ziohan-, which also mean to move, and -Zwang, a suffix meaning Compulsion.  Therefore, Zugzwang literally means a Compulsion to Move.  And it can mean mor--

*I've been pronouncing it wrong. I pronounced it the way it looks, but is really pronounced Tsoog-Tsvang*

--e than just a move in chess.  The term can be used in real-life situations in which everything possible will end badly. How unfortunate. For example...

Say there is a guy. Let's name him Fernando. He hooks up with a girl, let's call her Hope Eath, and Fernando is Christian, and Hope's dad is a terrible guy who believes that only his religion, whatever it is, is so much better than all others and wants the best for his only daughter Hope, a guy who is this same religion. So, when Fernando meets Hope's father, now named Dwight, he can tell that he [Dwight] disapproves. He now wants to break it off with Hope, because he doesn't want to die by toothpicks. (Dwight is a very cruel man.) But, Hope really loves Fernando, and he can't just end it with her. But he is in trouble with the government, so he can't just leave the country.  Also, he can't fly under his own power. So, you could say that Fernando is in some real Zugzwang.  Also, he can't just abandon all Hope. He also can't face D. Eath.  And since he doesn't know of shovels, he can't even dig his own grave...

My word for next week will be Quincunx.

Also, I will briefly explain to you the Googlegänger, but only because I can't explain it in a whole post.

Wamble?!

Wamble

I know. You are just dying to know what Wamble means.  You are? Great. I get to keep you waiting for even longer!

So how was your day?

Awesome!

My day? Oh, it was fine. I ate cereal.  I can't wait for Halloween. Ooh! That reminds me! I have to have something spooooooooky for next week's word............

I don't know how I'll do that...

Okay. You've waited long enough.

Wamble is both a verb and a noun.  The verb portion of it means "An unsettling, weaving, and rolling motion (of a stomach), to feel nausea." So, whenever your stomach is rumbling, it is not. It is wambleing.  The noun is the counterpart to that.  A wamble(n.) is a stomach rumble.  But I like my family's responses more...

Jessie: "A type of walk, like a waddle. But a wamble. Penguins."

Mom: "A pumpkin that looks like Robert Plant."

Pop-sicle: "The process of stalling when you don't know the answer to a question your son asks you."

The only conclusion that I have drawn from those answers is that my family is astronomically insane.
The origin of the word wamble is unknown, but it has been around since at least 1887.  In Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders (1887), it is said "She may Shail, but she'll never wamble".  In this case, Hardy uses the word to mean to wobble or totter, to walk with an unsteady gait. (Merriam Webster Dictionary)  As the word has no recorded usage before that, it is rumored that Hardy himself invented the word.  Nowadays, the word is hardly used, and used mainly for things like Blogs run by... Me...
Wamble's origin is actually unknown, though it is thought to have come from the Latin word vomere and the Norwegian Vamia. I understand where people are coming from when they say this.  But very vaguely. I mean, Vamia kind of sounds like wamble.  
I really wish I could continue, but there is hardly any information...
                             By the way, my next word will be... Zugzwang...

A truly frightening word, indeed.

Grawlix

Grawlix (And some other related words)

I bet you're really wondering what a grawlix is, right?

First, what my family thought:

Mom: A Combination of a Colon and Semicolon

Jessie: A mixture of Red, Brown, and White

Papa: A tool used for punching holes in a canvas cloth

Well, they were wrong.

A Grawlix is actually the symbols in a comic that replace a cursing word. For example, some four-lettered word beginning with an F that I prefer not to say would become $@#%.

Grawlix. I could see this happening.

The term Grawlix came around in 1980, and the book, The Lexicon of Comicana. This short book was written by Mort Walker, creator of the Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois.  Walker defines words that he made up and made popular, like solrads, lines that emanate from light sources.  Many of the words he created even appear in dictionaries, but not doozex. 

(Don't look that one up.  Just... don't...)

Dites, Hites, and Vites. They all sound similar, and they are all somewhat related. By the way, they were also created by Mort Walker.

Dites: Diagonal Lines across a reflective surface

Hites: Lines used very commonly in comics, showing a line of motion, as if after a fist punching someone, or just someone running.

Vites: Nevermind. Vites and Dites are the same thing.

See, so Mort Walker was actually a pretty influential comic-writer, at least for people who do blog posts on weird words...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexicon_of_Comicana

Next Week's word/phrase: Semantic Satiation

I bet you really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really can't wait for this one...