Language Archives

Autotelic is an adjective that means “having within itself the purpose of its existence”.
I’m taking a creativity workshop class, which had me read part of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. If you haven’t already heard of it, read Wikipedia’s entry on Flow for a summary — or, better […]

The dog days refer to “the sultry part of the summer, supposed to occur during the period that Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun: now often reckoned from July 3 to August 11″. More generally, this phrase can also refer to “a period marked by lethargy, inactivity, or indolence”.

The adjective fey has a few very different meanings, including “supernatural”, “whimsical”, and “being in unnaturally high spirits, as were formerly thought to precede death”.

The adjective abstruse means “hard to understand”.

This word came up for me recently in both a math book and in some random Star Trek trivia. A vinculum is “a bond signifying union or unity”.

Contiguous is an adjective that means “touching”, “adjacent”, or “near” — either physically or with respect to time.
It comes straight from the Latin word contiguus, a combination of com-, “together”, and tangere, “to touch”.
I like this word because of the overarching, fundamental concept it represents. Just take a look at Wikipedia’s page on Contiguity to […]

Maybe I’m the only person who didn’t already know this, but simoleons, the currency from The Sims series of video games, is actually a slang term for dollars!

I haven’t come across any particularly interesting new words lately, so I’m just going to share one of Merriam-Webster’s words of the day, corvine. It’s an adjective that means “resembling a crow”.

The adjective glabrous sounds like what it means: “smooth”, “bald”, or more specifically, “having a surface without hairs or projections”.

The adjective moonstruck means “mentally deranged, supposedly by the influence of the moon” or “dreamily romantic”. Since people who are in love are also described as crazy, it’s not so surprising that this word refers to both at the same time. Love, insanity, the moon — this word has a dramatic story built right into its definition!