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Reading the Scrabble Dictionary: Week 11

3/19/2014

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Picture
Dipsas: genus of non-venomous colubrid snakes that belong to the Xenodontinae subfamily. Also a fabled serpent whose bite supposedly induced a raging thirst.
(Pages 141–154)

Doing something different today. Here's a paragraph to decipher using this week's words:

"The ground dehisced and under the dimout of the demilune arose a dishy dickens, denuded and depilated, with double denticles; deraying with dewclaws dirling, it declared, through its diastema—dewlap dripping!—that ‘demonic’ was but a diminuitive distance from ‘demotics’ and that to develop one must devel. And with that the deil departed, demising dejecta and diobols as he danced downward to its dear devilkins and domesticated dipsas. I disbosom this dilly not as a dipso but to disclose the dinkum!"
⚛ Units of the Week
    Decury: a group of ten soldiers in ancient Rome
    Dekagram: a measure equal to ten grams
    Dekare: a measure equal to ten ares
    Demy: a size of paper
    Denar: a monetary unit of Macedonia
    Denarius: a coin of ancient Rome
    Denary: containing ten
    Deni: a monetary unit of Macedonia
    Deuteron: an atomic particle
    Dime: a coin of the United States
    Dinar: an ancient gold coin of Muslim areas
    Dinero: a former silver coin of Peru
    Diobol/diobolon: a coin of ancient Greece
    Diram: a monetary unit of Tajikistan
    Dirham: a monetary unit of Morocco

!!! Unexpected Words of the Week
    Deemster/dempster: a judicial officer of the Isle of Man (I find this bizarrely specific. The Isle of Man is between England and Ireland, and is important enough to warrant its own judicial officer names. Two variants, even.)
    Dehisce: to split open
    Deil: the devil
    Dejecta: excrements
    Demilune: a half-moon
    Demirep: a prostitute
    Demise: to bequeath
    Denazify: to rid of Nazism (I just finished reading Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. I was surprised to note how many Holocaust deniers there are in the world, as well as normal-seeming people who still believe, with all their hearts, that aliens abducted them. Super fascinating.)
    Denticle: a small tooth
    Denude: to strip of all covering
    Depilate: to remove hair from
    Deray: disorderly revelry
    Devil: to prepare food with pungent seasoning (another devilish word I didn't use in the paragraph; as far as I can tell, it's used only because the seasoning is really hot, devilishly hot. There's also dish called devils on horseback, consisting of a prune or plum wrapped in a bacon-rasher and served on fried bread; angels on horseback, in contrast, is a dish of oysters rolled in bacon and served on crisp toast. Okay, thank you OED!)
    Dewclaw: a vestigial toe (like dogs' thumbs)
    Diastema: a space between teeth
    Dewlap: a fold of loose skin under the neck
    Dickens: devil
    Dicrotic: having a double pulse beat
    Digerati: persons skilled in the use of computers
    Dikdik: a small antelope (antelope are everywhere)
    Dilly: something remarkable
    Dimout: a condition of partial darkness
    Dinkum: the truth
    Dipsas: a fabled serpent
    Dipso: a person who craves alcoholic liquors
    Dirl: to tremble
    Disbosom: to confess
    Dishelm: to deprive of a helmet (this strikes me as funny, as does "detassel"—to take away the tassels)
    Dishy: attractive
    Disject: to disperse

♡ Favorite Words of the Week
    Defang: to make harmless
    Deiform: having the form of a god
    Demersal: found at the bottom of the sea
    Derry: a meaningless word used in the chorus of old songs (ancient version of “watermelon”)
    Detassel: to remove tassels from
    Deterge: to cleanse
    Devilkin: a small demon
    Deviltry: mischief
    Diablery: sorcery
    Dial: to manipulate a calibrated disk (some of these definitions are impressive; if someone asked you for a precise definition of “dialing,” what would you say?)
    Diapason: a burst of harmonious sound

It's really only appropriate to end with this (who else was scarred by this as a child? Am I the only one?). Until next week.
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