Saturday, March 11, 2006

Today's Word: Horripilation

Speaking of hairy: Need a synonym for goose bumps? Try horripilation, (hoh-RIP-uh-LAY-shun), from Latin horripilare, "to bristle with hairs." The "bristling" in horripilation is the linguistic kin of the "shaking, shuddering" words horror and abhor, while the hairy stem -pilat- in horripilation is related to that hair-remover also known as a depilatory. By the way, anybody here speak a language that invokes some other kind of image for this besides "goose bumps"?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home