Welcome!

Scrolling through my Facebook feed the other day, one of those funny links came up that gave me a laugh. It was a list of olde-worlde words we should bring back., which is an old Scottish word to describe someone who stares at you, hoping you’ll share your food. Not surprisingly, it originally used to describe what dogs do when they stare at you, unblinking and licking their chops incessantly, while you eat. Our dog, Dizzy, is a master groker, both when we are eating and cooking. He takes groking to new levels if we are eating outdoors and there’s a toddler in sight. Toddlers, of course, are excellent sources of dropped morsels that can often be caught before they even hit the ground. Another word I loved, , first appeared in print in the 1530s. If you were feeling crapulous 500 years ago, you had drunk and eaten too much the night before. Basically, you feel like crap, which makes crapulous not seem so old at all. I can’t remember when I last felt crapulous but I will admit to enjoying a good old twattle. Twattling also appeared in the 1500s and can be best described as gossiping idly about unimportant things. Twattle is a forerunner of the word twaddle, which you still hear sometimes. It’s always fun to find and use a word that isn’t commonly heard. When I was in primary school, a kids’ science book I adored had an entry about the word ‘googol’, which is the number one followed by 100 zeros, so more million billions than I could ever describe. It was one of my favourite words. Little did I know that when I was a grown-up, the same word, although spelt differently, would be so incredibly common as a noun and a verb. in fact, I’ve done lots of googling just now for this letter! I’d love to hear your favourite unusual words.