Do you ever find yourself looking up a word in a dictionary, then reading the other words on the page, then the next page, and suddenly two hours have passed?
Encyclopaedias are even more dangerous.
And I can open the endlessly eccentric Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable and lose a day. But, it must be said, I will have learned what a locofoco was, when the Five Articles of Perth were enacted, and the portents around the day you choose to cut your toenails (you get new shoes if you cut on a Thursday, seemingly).
Anyway, when looking through dictionaries you find an extraordinary number of words for shapes.
Flabelliform is fan-shaped. Ancistroid is hook-shaped. Clithridiate is keyhole-shaped. Gluttiform is drop-shaped. There are literally (using that word in its correct form) hundreds of them.
Some are baffling. Plexiform is network shaped, soleiform is slipper-shaped, igniform is shaped like fire, gasiform is gas-shaped. What shape is that?
Some you could work out: stellate is star-shaped, cruciform is cross-shaped, digitiform is finger-shaped. Anyone who ever read Lord of the Flies could guess what conchiform is.
Some are, frankly, unneeded. Coviform is crow-shaped. Squaliform is shark-shaped, oviform is sheep-shaped. Name something sheep-shaped that isn’t a sheep!
Some are misleading. Pencilliform is brush-shaped, cingular is shaped like a ring, cauliform is shaped like a stem.
But what I really like about these words is that they are, in their own right, beautiful words. Strombuliform is shaped like a spinning top, xiphoid is sword-shaped, omegoid is horseshoe-shaped.
My favourite English teacher, Mrs Law, used to tell us that some words are “delicious”. She insisted it was satisfying and pleasurable to the mouth, tongue and lips just to pronounce them.
Many of us will have had teachers who inspired us.
I have never forgotten Ella Law, though she is long since gone. She had an infectious, almost innocent enthusiasm for the beauty of language and value of books. She would tell us: “Whatever you do in life, read”.
Her epicurean delight in delicious words will, I hope, never leave me.
Word of the week
Epicurean (adjective)
Fond of indulgence in sensual pleasures. EG: “There is a certain epicurean satisfaction in knowing the spirals round the edge of the semilunate Forfar Bridie could be corniculate, helicoid, or even (at a push) zonule.
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
