Tag Archives: #WildWords

Wild words: primaveral

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by in flowers, nature, spring, trees

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Primaveral: adjective, meaning of, relating to, or taking place in early spring (as in, for example, the primaveral blossoming of the Cherry plum tree in my photo).
According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word appeared in the English language in the early 19th century, having come possibly from the Catalan primavera, the Spanish primavera, the Portuguese primavera, or the Italian primavera, which all mean ‘springtime’. And those words probably came from the Latin prīmum vēr, meaning first or earliest spring.

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Wild words: apricity

07 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by in birds, nature, winter

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This wonderful old word doesn’t appear in the Oxford Dictionary online, presumably because they’ve replaced it with something trendy like ‘mansplain’ and ‘youthquake’. Well, call me old-fashioned but I much prefer something old and meaningful to these modern inventions.

So, then, apricity (thanks to the Merriam-Webster) ‘appears to have entered our language in 1623, when Henry Cockeram recorded (or possibly invented) it for his dictionary The English Dictionary; or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words.’ And it means ‘the warmth of the sun in winter’, something even this gull was seen, last week, to enjoy and appreciate.

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Wild words: chlorophilia

24 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in leaves, nature, trees

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Chlorophilia: from the Greek khlōros, meaning green, and philia, meaning loving; thus, loving all things green and growing.
Now, that sounds straightforward enough and many of us would willingly admit to having chlorophilia but a word of caution. I’ve just been reading on the Wiki Knowledge Dump blog (the place where rejected Wikipedia articles often get resurrected) that the word (which does not appear in standard dictionaries) was ‘invented’ in 2004 to describe a physical or sexual attraction to plants. Tree-huggers, take note!

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Wild words: brake

17 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in nature, trees

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Brake is a word with several meanings. Aside from those to do with stopping, there are also these to do with the enviorment:
From the Oxford Dictionary: a botanical term for a thicket; from the old English bracu; first recorded in the plural in fearnbraca, meaning ‘thickets of fern’; related to the Middle Low German brake, which means ‘branch’ or ‘stump’.
The Merriam-Webster has a slightly different interpretation: a geographical term meaning rough or marshy land overgrown usually with one kind of plant, as in cedar brakes or coastal brakes.
The Collins Dictionary agrees with the Oxford: an area of dense undergrowth, shrubs, brushwood, etc., a thicket.

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The word is often seen in English place names as, for example, in Boughton Brake (a forest in Nottinghamshire), Huxham Brake (a coniferous woodland in Devon), Stratfield Brake (a broadleaf woodland near Oxford, owned by the Woodland Trust), and Combe Brake (another Woodland Trust woodland, this one in Exmoor National Park).

Wild words: pluviophile

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in nature, weather

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Pluviophile: a lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.

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Of course, some might label such a person crazy and I’m not sure I would categorise myself as a pluviophile but, if I’ve got plenty of indoors things to do, some tasty food to eat, and I’m warm and cosy, then I do find pleasure in the pitter-patter of raindrops on the window panes.

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Wild words: brumous

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in nature, weather, winter

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171227 brumous (1)

brumous: adjective; meaning foggy and wintry; dating from the mid-19th century; from the French brumeux, meaning misty, from late Latin bruma meaning winter and also the winter solstice (I should have posted this blog last week!). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives the following list of synonyms for brumous: beclouded, befogged, hazy, clouded, cloudy, foggy, gauzy, misty, murky, smoggy, soupy. I think you get the idea.

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Wild words: Pareidolia

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in nature, trees

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Pareidolia: noun; this is a general term to describe how we humans with active imaginations can bring ourselves to believe that we can see familiar patterns where none, in fact, exist. That’s a bit vague but it will become clearer if I give you some examples: the face of a man in the craters and shadows of the moon; figures of humans and animals in the shapes of clouds, and, in my examples below, human-like faces in trees. Do you see them?

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Wild words: Werifesteria

13 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in nature, trees, walks

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Although you might read in some corners of the internet that werifesteria is a word with its origins in Old English, this word will not be found in any dictionary. It seems it was invented in late 2014 and can now be found most commonly on social media, overlaying images of trees and forests.

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Despite this, I like the word and the meaning that has been attached to it: ‘to wander longingly through the forest in search of mystery’. That’s my kind of verb!

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Wild words: Psithurism

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in autumn, leaves, nature, trees, winter

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Here’s a word that’s not in the Oxford Dictionary because it’s now considered obsolete but, as Oxford University Press has a habit of somewhat arbitrarily removing words from its dictionaries (since 2007 it was deleted words like ‘buttercup’ and acorn’ from its Junior Dictionary) and replacing them with modern lingo (like ‘cut-and-paste’ and ‘analogue’), I’m doing my bit to revive words before they’re forgotten.

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Psithurism, then, is a noun used to describe the sound of rustling leaves. It is, apparently, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek ψιθύρισµα (psithurisma) or ψιθυρισµός (psithurismos), which are derived from ψιθυρίζω (psithurizō, meaning ‘I whisper’) and from ψίθυρος (psithuros, meaning ‘whispering’ or ‘slanderous’). Can you hear them rustling? And, here’s a little test: what’s the word for leaves like these that wither but stay attached to the stem?

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