Helminth. This word cropped up in conversation over our postprandial coffee with friends last evening (you know who you are!) and it is one I’ve been meaning to write about for some time.
Helminth : A worm, especially a parasitic intestinal roundworm or tapeworm.
Yes, nasty things that you really don’t want to know about.
Hence anthelmintics or antihelminthics are drugs that expel such parasitic worms from the body, by either stunning or killing them. The drugs may also be called vermifuges (which stun) or vermicides (which kill).
Interestingly though, according to the OED, helminth is also a chlorite mineral which occurs in felspar and quartz.
Oh and the word comes from the Greek ἕλµινς, ἑλµινθ-, a worm.
[PS. No image with this one as nobody is that keen to be put off their tea!]
Category Archives: words
Word: Ecolect
Ecolect
According to wiktionary an ecolect is a language variety unique to a household although I might cast the net slightly wider than a single household, maybe to an (extended) family.
However it appears that as yet it has not made it’s way into the OED or many other mainstream dictionaries.
Compare with:
Idiolect: The language variant used by a specific individual.
Ethnolect: A language variety specific to an ethnic group.
Sociolect: The variant of language used by a social group such as a socioeconomic class, ethnic group, age group etc.
Dialect: A variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular area.
Word: Kleptocracy
Kleptocracy
A ruling body or order of thieves.
A government by thieves; a nation ruled by this kind of government.
Hence a government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.
[See also politics, from the words “poly” meaning “many”, and “ticks” meaning “blood-sucking parasites.”]
The first use recorded by the OED is in 1819 although regular use does seem to appear until the late-1960s.
Word: Jarvey
Jarvey
1. A hackney-coachman. Now frequently applied to the driver of an Irish car.
2. A hackney-coach or jaunting car.
Pace Wikipedia, a jaunting car is a light two-wheeled carriage for a single horse, in its most common form with seats for two or four persons placed back to back, with the foot-boards projecting over the wheels. It was the typical conveyance for persons in Ireland at one time (hence the reference by the OED to an “Irish car”).
The Hackney Carriage (forerunner of the Hansom Cab, pictured) was first regulated in in London in 1654.
The OED gives the first use of jarvey (in the meaning of a coachman) in 1796. It is thought to derive as a by-form from the personal name Jarvis or Jervis.
Oh and forget the use of jarvey in Harry Potter. That’s just part of the fiction.
Word: Speleology
Speleology
1. The scientific study of caves, , especially in respect of their geological formation, flora, fauna etc.
2. The the sport or pastime of exploring caves; caving.
First coined, according to the OED, by EA Martel in the Report of the 6th Geographical Congress of 1895.
Hence speleological, of or pertaining to speleology; speleologist, a student of, or authority on, cave-research; an explorer of caves.
Word: Vespiary
Vespiary
A nest or colony of wasps or hornets.
From the Latin vesp, a wasp and formed by analogy with apiary.
The first use recoded by the OED was in 1817.
Words: Atheism, Secularism and Humaism
Today let’s look at three words which seem to be becoming increasingly misunderstood and misused: atheism, secularism and humanism.
Atheism
1. Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God or gods.
2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
Secularism
1. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.
2. The doctrine that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or in a future state.
Humanism
1. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centres on humans and their values, capacities and worth.
Hence one can be a secularist without being an atheist, although the reverse is I suspect rather difficult. While atheists are generally secularists, at least in Europe so are most believers because they know their own freedom of belief depends on freedom from the belief of others. Humanists are by definition atheists.
Atheism challenges belief but secularism challenges religious privilege. Humanism replaces a belief in god(s) with a belief in Homo sapiens.
And yes, for the record I am both an atheist and a secularist. I’m also a humanist but not one who identifies with humanism as an organised belief system, a là British Humanist Association — I don’t do organised belief systems!
Word: Psittacosis
Psittacosis
A contagious disease of birds transmissible (especially from parrots) to human beings as a form of pneumonia. A zoonotic infectious disease caused by the bacterium Chlamydophila psittaci (formerly Chlamydia psittaci) and contracted from parrots and many other species of bird.
Psittacosis is also known as parrot disease, parrot fever and ornithosis.
The word is derived from the Psittacus genus of parrots of which the African Grey is a prime example, although the genus also includes the New World macaws.
The OED gives the first use of psittacosis as being as late as 1897, but maybe that isn’t surprising as that’s when much of medicine was being codified. By comparison psittac for a parrot is recorded way back around 1400.
Word: Overmorrow
Overmorrow
The day after tomorrow.
The OED suggests it is derived from the German übermorgen and Dutch overmorgen.
The first recorded usage was in 1535.
Compare with nudiustertian, pertaining to the day before yesterday.
These have to be a useful words with which to confound the unwary!
Word: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
According to the Oxford English Dictionary Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is “a factitious word alleged to mean ‘a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs'”. A condition meeting the word’s definition is normally called just silicosis.
Wikipedia adds: “It occurs chiefly as an instance of a very long word. The 45-letter word was coined to serve as the longest English word and is the longest word ever to appear in an English language dictionary. It is listed in the current editions of several dictionaries”.
Facetious or not its coining in 1935 by Everett M Smith appears well documented, and the word does indeed mean what the OED says.
Whatever you want to call the disease, you don’t want it!