Unusual and Obscure Words Trivia

61. What profession would be interested in a raster?

From Quiz All Boggled Up II

Answer: Television repairman

A raster is a pattern of lines produced by scanning an electronic beam, as on a television screen. It comes from the German word 'raster' which means screen.

From Quiz All Boggled Up I

Answer: Indulge to satisfaction or excess

To sate means to satisfy an appetite, sometimes to excess. Sate can also be the past tense of sit.

From Quiz More Fun with Words

Answer: bacteria

Actually, the word "nidus" has several meanings: 1) A nest, such as for the eggs of insects, spiders, or small animals 2) cavity in which spores develop 3) central point or focus of bacterial growth in a living organism 4) point or place at which something originates, accumulates, or develops, as the center around which salts of calcium, uric acid, or bile acid form calculi. (from the American Heritage Dictionary)

From Quiz Unusual Words and their Meanings

Answer: A tool

A mattock is an agricultural tool shaped like a pick axe, with an adze and a chisel edge as the ends of the head.

From Quiz Odd Words

Answer: A European mountain plant

This is a plant from mountain areas in Europe. It is also know as baldmoney or meu. The origin is obscure.

From Quiz Fun with Words

Answer: Seeds

A spermologer is a collector or gatherer of seeds. I have also seen this word used to describe someone who collects trivia.

From Quiz Rare Words

Answer: grossly criminal

Can you creatively use that with malversation? (bad behavior).

From Quiz Difficult Words

Answer: Artificial food

From Quiz Useful but Obscure Words

Answer: remembering uncompleted tasks

Another of my favorite words is Zugzwang, a chess term.

From Quiz Wine-Dark Depths of English

Answer: oenophlygia

FARCTATIA is a fake word based on a word meaning 'having over-eaten.' OINOBRILIA is a fake word containing a Greek root meaning 'wine.' SAPONACIA is a fake word based on a real word meaning 'soapy.'

From Quiz Bizarre Words

Answer: someone who speaks with closed teeth

Dentiloquist is a noun.

From Quiz Some interesting or offbeat words

Answer: ullage

This term is frequently used in connection with wine bottles, to refer to the air space between the top of the wine and the base of the cork. Over time the ullage will increase as evaporation occurs, especially when the bottle has been kept in an environment which is too dry.

From Quiz Vocabulary Warm-Up

Answer: encraty

From Quiz Odd-Sounding Words

Answer: Drink

Several liqueurs are used. They are different colors and do not blend, thus creating a striped effect - one color on top of the other.

From Quiz Difficult Words

Answer: parley

From Quiz Five Interesting Words

Answer: Medicine

As 'witchcraft' is to witches, 'leechcraft' once was to doctors, who used leeches. From Brewer's dictionary we are told of the following etymology: 'Anglo-Saxon, læce, one who relieves pain, læcecræft.'

From Quiz Sesquipedalius' E Words

Answer: charitable, benevolent

The word "eleemosynary" means beneficent, generous, benevolent, given to charity, and/or philanthropic. Blessing used it as the title of her play in the sense that the reconciliation of generations at odds with each other can only occur in a spirit of charitable goodwill. The term eleemosynary entered English in the late 16th century denoting an almshouse, a place where money, food, and clothing were distributed to the poor. It derived from the Medieval Latin "eleemosynarius", which was derived from the Ancient Greek "eleemosyne", meaning pity or mercy.

From Quiz Sesquipedalius' D Words

Answer: to cross over each other

The adjective "decussate" describes a crossing and derives from the Roman numeral X - an uppercase X in Latin is called a "decussis". Decussate things are intersecting or crossed. In botany, decussate leaves are those arranged alternatively at right angles to each other. A Roman "decussis" was a bronze coin issued 215-212 BC with the letter X marked on it.

From Quiz Sesquipedalius' C Words

Answer: a Lovecraftian subterranean realm

H.P. Lovecraft did not himself write about the Chthonians. Other authors expanding upon Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos did. Brian Lumley referred to them in his short story "Cement Surroundings". Other writers developed this part of the mythos. Chthonians are fictional creatures, burrowers under the Earth's surface. The adjectival use of the term refers to things located underground, to subterranean creatures, to anything below the surface of the earth. [How on earth did Christopher Buckley know that!?]

From Quiz Portmanteau? Don't Mind if I Do

Answer: Smoke

The word "smog" was coined by Dr. Henry Des Voeux while writing a paper to the English Public Health Congress in 1905. Doctor Des Voeux knew that he needed to illustrate the difference between regular fog and the coal infused fog that draped over London during the Industrial Revolution so the word "smog" was formed. "Smog" is identified as emissions and fumes from cars and how they react to sunlight.

From Quiz Can You Define These Words 2

Answer: Pale and sickly looking

Anything that makes your stomach churn in a rather unpleasant fashion can have you looking welmish - pale and green around the gills - not just an over consumption of alcohol. Some people can't handle the sight of blood, for example, and their faces reflect that aversion. And children with dark green mucous running from their noses down towards their mouths - that's when you'll see me looking most decidedly welmish. It makes me feel really ill. Welmish appeared in the vernacular in the late 17th century, but quickly faded from use within a couple of years.

From Quiz Ten Very Unusual Words

Answer: Having straight hair

And there's not much else to say about lissotrichous than that. It simply means you have long, and hopefully smooth and glossy, locks. Somewhat akin to the look of an afghan hound.

From Quiz Words with Unusual Starting Letters

Answer: Russia

The term "czar" comes from "Caesar". Ruler were also called czars in Bulgaria and Serbia.

From Quiz An Iota of Obscure Words

Answer: Loud and hysterical laughter

Cachinnation is a sound most frequently heard on this site when players come up against a particularly difficult challenge they have to overcome. Gales of loud, convulsive laughter verging on the hysterical can be heard echoing right throughout the halls at such a time.

From Quiz Start a New Dictionary

Answer: A mathematical term

This is a ghastly mathematical term that means the square of the square of a square. A number to its eighth power in other words. As I can't even pronounce it, let alone put it into practice, will have to leave the explanation at that. Fortunately for all concerned, this is an obsolete term no longer in common use. Sometimes we get lucky.

From Quiz Misleading Words

Answer: An old type furnace for smelting iron

These fascinating old pieces of equipment were initially made out of clay, stone, or even earth, and packed so densely that their walls were heat resistant. They looked a little like overturned flowerpots. A pipe fed in through one of walls at the bottom, which, when attached to bellows, allowed air to enter the furnace. On another side was another small opening to allow for the burning of charcoal. The ore to be smelted was broken up into small pieces and dropped down with equal amounts of more charcoal through an opening at the top of the furnace onto the already burning charcoal below. Amazingly so, the heat within then alters the content of the iron oxides in the small pieces of ore into metallic iron, BUT without melting the ore. Instead they drop down to the bottom of the bloomery into a mass. This is later reheated to remove the impurities and then beaten into the required shape. This is even more amazing. By altering the heat and air flow within the furnace, the iron ore can be changed into steel as well! These old bloomeries have been found from eras in history dating back to more than 3,000 BC. Oh my goodness, the mind of man and his thousands of inventions is a never ending source of fascination for me. How on earth did they ever think of that in the first place?

From Quiz It's a whatch-amacallit, you know?

Answer: He's a fisherman

In the mid 15th century, the word described a 'fisher with hook and line'.

From Quiz Bodacious Word Endings

Answer: papilionaceous

Papilionaceous means resembling a butterfly; carbonaceous has to do with carbon; sequacious means following in a sequence; and rapacious relates to seizing by force.

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Last Updated Apr 13 2024 5:45 AM

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