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.

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!

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!

Cockshut or Cock-shut

Evening twilight.

Probably deriving from the time when poultry go to rest and are shut up for the night although it is also suggested to derive from cockshoot, the time when woodcock ‘shoot’ or fly. In consequence of the latter it has been recorded as used to mean a net to catch woodcock, although this seems to be unusual and isn’t recorded by the OED.

The first use recorded by the OED is 1594 in Shakespeare’s Richard III.

Binnacle

A box or case on the deck of a ship near the helm, which supports and protects a ship’s compass.

According to the OED the current binnacle first appears after 1750, as a corruption of the earlier bittacle of which the earliest cited reference is in 1622.

I met these two on the intertube this morning …

Gambeson

A quilted and padded, or stuffed leather or cloth, garment worn under chain mail in the Middle Ages and later as a doublet by men and women. A military tunic, worn especially in the 14th century, made of leather or thick cloth, sometimes padded; it covered the trunk and thighs, and was originally worn under the habergeon, to prevent chafing or bruises, but was sometimes used as a defence without other body-armour.

Habergeon

A sleeveless coat or jacket of mail or scale armour, originally smaller and lighter than a hauberk. A short, sleeveless coat of mail.

Hauberk

A long tunic made of chain mail. A piece of defensive armour (originally intended for the defence of the neck and shoulders but already in 12th and 13th centuries developed into a long coat of mail) or military tunic, usually of ring or chain mail, which adapted itself readily to the motions of the body.

Over time Habergeon and Hauberk seem to have become more or less interchangeable.

Petrichor

The sweet smell of rain on earth.

The pleasant, distinctive smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions. Also applied to an oily substance obtained from the ground in which this smell was concentrated.

The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature. In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. In a follow-up paper, Bear and Thomas showed that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth.

Petrichor was concocted from the Greek petros (stone) plus ichor (the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology).

Maculate

Verb. To spot, stain or soil.
Adjective. Spotted or blotched; stained or impure.

Hence immaculate: unspotted, pure, undefiled.

According to the OED the first usage is in a legal roll from 1432-50, shortly followed by Caxton in 1481. Sadly maculate is now confined to medical and zoological usage.

The Panther (or Rusty-Spotted) Genet (Genetta maculata)

Zaftig

Of a woman: plump, curvaceous, ‘sexy’.
Full-bosomed.
Having a full, shapely figure.

From the Yiddish zaftik, juicy.

The first use recorded by the OED is in 1937.