Quincunx

So, there's this pretty cool word called a quincunx. I'll tell you what it means, but first...

Dad said it was the sound an 8-ball made when sinking into a pocket.
Mom said 5 nesting eggs, like those Russian Dolls

Jessie was under the impression it was a type of coral with 5 limbs.

Jess's friend said it means a plant that lives for 5 years.

And my grandma thought it was a group of 5 quintuplets.

So, actually, a quincunx is a set of five dots, circles, or anything, arranged into a

cross-shape.  All playing dice have the 5 side as a quincunx. Quincunx literally means "five-twelfths", because the Romans actually had a coin, called a Quincunx, that was worth
5/12 of an asurias, or as.  It took 32 asses to get an average haircut. Back in the

day. That means ~77 quincunxes.

Another form of the word quincunx is that of a planting formation. Sometimes, when you pass by an orchard, you will see the trees in a pattern that resembles a criss-cross, and that is actually called the quincunx formation. It is the suggested pattern, as it gives each tree the maximum amount of space, while still allowing for many trees.  The stars on the American Flag also follow the quincunx pattern. Just so you know.

The quincunx planting pattern.
Also, a great game of pachinko.

"But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge"

-Thomas Browne, Sr., "The Garden of Cyrus"

Fun fact: The quincunx pattern is also commonly used as a tattoo, inked on the hand between the thumb and index finger.  The meaning varies between cultures, though it is most commonly used to mean fertility or a close group of friends.

Fun Fact 2: Thomas Edison, slight inventor of the tattooing machine, had a quincunx tattooed on his hand. In Europe, quincunx  tattoos were given to prisoners.

Third and final Fun Fact: It can also be a symbol for Vietnamese Gang members, meaning love, money, prison, crime, revenge.*

Oh, you're going to like next week's word:

Hobbledehoy

(And, no, it does not have anything to do with Hobbits.)

*Don't quote me on this.  It's Wikipedia.

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...

Natiforms!

Yay! Who wants to learn about Natiforms?

Simply put, a Natiform is something that resembles a butt.

Yeah. You didn't expect that.

What my family said:

"Someone who follows the ideas of Ralph Nader?" -Mom

"A Chemical Compund, like Chloroform?"  -Dad

"A Natural Structure"  -Jess

Yeah. They were wrong.

Anyways, the word Natiform comes from the Latin Nati- meaning buttocks and -form.  Meaning exactly that. Resembling the shape of a buttocks.  So yeah. Not as much information as I originally desired...
Natiform was originally a medical term, used mainly for a tumor/cyst that made that shape.
Ammon Shia used the word Natiform in his book "Reading the Oxford English Dictionary". He then learned that the word had never been used as an insult. So what did he do? He used Natiform to insult people. What else?

"The Natiform on the baby's skull actually was a mango taped on."

Grawlix. Next week's word is Grawlix.

Dysania, the newest outbreak of disease. But not really.

DYSANIA

Do you suffer from Dysania? You probably do. As do I. And basically everyone else on Earth suffers from Dysania! (In a loose sense of the term...)

Simply put, Dysania is the unofficial term for "Not wanting to get out of bed in the morning."  Right?! Literally 99% of people DON'T LIKE TO GET UP IN THE MORNING! But, hey, can you really blame them? I mean, does anybody really like getting up at... Whatever time? No. At least I don't.

Actually, the word Dysania is a more common word for the actual term, Clinomania.  And, apparently, it's an actually serious affliction!  I guess there are people out there that completely have problems getting out of bed. And, no. It's not that they just hit the Snooze button a couple of extra times. They can suffer from headaches to migraines, from extreme tiredness to depression.  So, I guess we don't actually all have it. We just like our beds. :)

Clinomania (Which is nowhere near as awesome-sounding as Dysania) comes from the Greek roots Clino- , meaning bed, and -Mania, meaning addiction.  So really, it's like having a drug addiction in a sense. You just love it so much that you always need more.  Although, in this case, it just means more than you already had, not more each time.  Okay. So it isn't like that at all. Sue me.

How could you use this in a sentence? Wow... Uh... How about like this:
The red Dragon, afflicted by dysania, often had trouble waking up, so he rigged a bucket of hot ashes to fall on him every morning.
That works, right?

Yeah. I didn't really have much to go on this week. But next week (Or rather in 2 weeks), I will make up for it completely with the word Natiform. And, again, please don't look it up ahead of time. This will be your last warning.

ALSO! I had a question.  I've heard (From Wikipedia) that you can use the sentence Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. This would technically mean "The Bison from Buffalo, NY, that are bothered by the Bison from NY, bother the Bison from NY." So, in the Buffalo Buffalo... etc, would you need a the and a that in there, as in:
The Buffalo buffalo (that Buffalo buffalo buffalo) buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Right?

Petrichor

Finally! The moment you have "all" been waiting for.....

*Insert Drum-Roll Sound here*

PETRICHOR

Okay. Okay. I know you've been waiting all week for this, so...

Petrichor is the actual word for the smell of rain on dry ground! Who knew that actually had a name? I did. Only because I looked it up. Anyways, the word Petrichor is derived from the Greek roots Petri-, meaning stone, and -ichor, which is the fluid that flows in the veins of the Gods.  So, really, when you smell that first rain, you are technically smelling the "blood" from Poseidon's and Zeus's veins being thrust upon the stones of the ground.                                                     HOW METAL IS THAT!?!?!*

The term Petrichor was coined by two Australian research scientists.  I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas described the smell in a 1964 article in Nature, an Australian Journal. They described a smell of "The oils exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks." Bear and Thomas, 1964.

Also, not really related, but the word Petrichor was used in 2 episodes of Doctor Who.  In one episode, it appeared as a smell of perfume!

Be on the lookout** for next week's word, Dysania!   "Who will contract it next?!"

*The combination of an exclamation mark and Question mark is called an Interrobang.  ( ‽ ) THE MORE YOU KNOW!

*But again. Please don't look it up ahead of time.