Natural Words

Alright. All these words you're about to learn about all relate to nature and plants. Have fun. 

Ramose is a relatively common word. I've heard of it before, so it's not too weird, but I am really glad this words exists. It simply means "Consisting of, or having, branches." Now, you're probably immediately thinking of a tree, and so did I. But after doing some research, I found that it meant something more along the lines of Branchy Sponges or Corals.

It comes from Latin, as many of the words on this blog do. Ramosus "branched" can also be found in words like Ramify, meaning to form branches.

Pomaceous is a really interesting word and I'm so glad I found it. It means "of, or relating to, apples" like who would have thought such a word existed?

It comes, yet again, from the Latin language. Pomum means Apple. You may have heard of pears being referred to as part of the Pome family, which is not wrong. Recently, the word has taken the meaning of something that is shaped like a pear.

It was created by an American, actually. That's so rare on this blog! Edward Baynard was a physician, of all professions. He claimed "apples and pomaceous juices, are the greatest pectorals."

And now, what is my favorite word of this blog? Personally I like the word nosegay. There's so many things it could mean, so I'm sure you couldn't just guess. So I'll tell you.

A nosegay is actually a small bunch of flowers! This word also originated in English, but not America. Back in the 1400's, nose still meant what it means today. But gay did not mean what it means today, or even what it meant in the 19th century. Back then, instead of meaning happy, gay meant decorated and ornamented. So a nosegay is representational of a decorated nose! How fun!

So go! Use your newfound knowledge of natural words! Pick a nose...gay... Eat some pomaceous fruit!

Garden Path Sentences

I don't know if you've ever heard of garden path sentences, but they're my new favorite kind of sentence. Much like a garden path, winding through the eurytopic plants and scenery, these sentences take twists and turns before they reach their main point. Let's look at a few examples, shall we?

Groucho Marx was an iconic user of garden path sentences. One of my favorites:

"Outside of a dog, books are a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Marx takes the famous saying that dogs are a man's best friend and makes the phrase "Outside of a..." a bit more literal. Because hey, it's true. It is pretty dark inside dogs...

Other ones of my favorites:

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

The first sentence takes Fly to be a verb and Like to be a comparing word. But in the second sentence, Fly is a noun, followed by the verb Like.

"The old man the boat."

This one took you a bit longer to figure out, didn't it... It's most often that Man is meant as a noun. Not a verb. But if you rearrange th sentence, it becomes more understandable: The boat is manned by the old.

And one final one, that still takes me a few seconds to remember how it works:

"The mouse the cat the dog chased killed ate he cheese."

 That's wayyyy too wrong, isn't it? There's no way that can be a sentence! Ah, but it is.

Take it like a math problem:

The mouse [that the cat (who the dog chased) killed] ate the cheese.

Garden Path Sentences. Aren't they cool?!

Grawlixes

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