Posted inDictionscary

Asphixiation

Try saying "asphyxiation" five times fast. You will know what it means from experience. But if you survive, read on... You probably know the term refers to "choking to death" and that it is the fancy pants medical name for strangulation. But did you know the term derives from the Greek, meaning a- ("without") + sphyxis (a "heartbeat")? If you thought it had something to do with the Egyptian term "sphinx" (which I think means "without + a nose), then you were wrong. (To "asphynxiate" actually means to turn into a giant cat with wings and tell riddles till your…
December 24, 2013Posted inDictionscary
Posted inDictionscary

phlegm

Phlegm rhymes with gem, stem, and them...words that sound normal enough. In fact, it wouldn't be such a disgusting word if it weren't for that perfectly placed letter "g" -- that most mucousy of consonants that we can only sound out by constricting the back of our throats. Yet it's also the one letter in the word we do not pronounce -- as if we DARE not pronounce it. For if we ever did, green sputum would gurgle from between our lips like something vile burping up from a sewer drain. It is a perfect word. Perfectly disgusting. It's very…
December 14, 2012Posted inDictionscary
Posted inDictionscary

ichor

Ichor. You want it to taste like liquor, but it doesn't. It's just icky. Pronouncing the term aloud is enough to make most people reach for some hand sanitizer and drink a glop of that instead. It's a weird word, so it's no surprise that you'll stumble over it in horror stories everywhere. "Ichor" is used quite a bit by HP Lovecraft and others of his ilk to describe oozy things like the slime that dribbles from the dread nostrils of the Great Old Ones (especially that nasular monstrosity known only as "Achoolu"). It's a fun word to say, since…
October 3, 2010Posted inDictionscary1 Comment
Posted inDictionscary

gavage

Tap-tap-tap. Class, pay attention. I'm going to teach you a new word today. It's called "gavage." Say it out loud. No, not like "savage," Little Jimmy. It's pronounced like "garage." That's right, Mary: guhvahzh. Really resonate that last syllable in your mouth. What? No Patty, "garvage" is not a word. Gavage. Do any of you know what it means? No, Jimmy, it's not the trash you run over in your garage. No, Mary, it's not a battlefield dressing invented during the French revolution. What's that, Patty? No. Absolutely not. That's not even humanly possible. Take notes, class. "Gavage" is a…
October 31, 2009Posted inDictionscary
Posted inDictionscary

offal

It's funny: when I turn to my dollar-store dictionary for advice on the correct way to pronounce "offal" it says "awful"! I thought so. There's nothing wonderful about offal: it's all awful, even in its very utterance. Offal is butcher's term for the "less valuable edible parts of a carcass" -- which is another way of saying the "guts" that are left over after the "meat" has been cleaved into muscular, familiar chunks. But the important thing to remember is that while these aren't worth much, they're still "edible." I think horror writers often use the thesaurus to look up…
June 13, 2009Posted inDictionscary