We rather enjoyed this omnibus posting of rare and unusual English terms, which contained many we’ve encountered before but quite a few new words to us. We especially found useful to deacon, from Louisa 
May Alcott’s Little Women for careful product placement, arranging the top-shelve items up high and hiding the cheaper, lower quality merchandise below, snaste (from the archaic snite—to blow one’s nose—or snuff, as in a candle) referring to the burnt part of a wick, vestry (another non-church related terms though could appear otherwise) meaning the “smiling of [infants] in their sleep,” degombling (a backronym—see also—that comes courtesy of arctic explorers) for removing clumps of ice and snow, dextrosinistral describing a naturally left-handed person taught to use their right for writing, something sesquihoral lasts ninety-minutes, the perfect length for a movie, resistentialism from the belief, half facetiously, that inanimate objects will express spite towards their human users and witworm, coined by Ben Jonson—possibly with some meta-irony—for a someone’s else cleverness as a surrogate for their own. Much more from Mental Floss at the link above.
synchronoptica
one year ago: an experimental Nazi-era nuclear reactor plus assorted links to revisit
two years ago: politics of a monetary union (1972), the Trojan Horse, the UN body for the under-represented (1991) plus revisiting airships
three years ago: a rendition of a Daft Punk classic, preserving artefacts of the pandemic, indoor gardening tips, the Situationists plus a survey of map projections
four years ago: China enters the space race, more on eggcorns, signs of social-distancing, dancing mania, a new song from the Rolling Stones plus COVID misinformamtion
five years ago: effervescence, mortgage-backed securities, the tradition of telling the bees plus more logophilia
