Saturday, April 15, 2006

Today's Word: Cavernicolous

Here's a word to which all of us work-at-home types can relate: Pronounced like "Cavern Nicholas," cavernicolous means "living in a cave." (Then there's troglodyte, or "cave-dweller," and its adjectival form, troglodytic, from Greek words that literally mean "to go down into a hole.") I was also pleased to learn, while fossicking through the Oxford English Dictionary just now, that a vug is a small cavity in a rock, like the kind in which geodes form--and that something full of cavities is said to be vuggy.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's even a novel that came out, oh, maybe 10 years ago, with the title "Vug". That's a word I'd like to know the etymology of.

10:11 PM  
Blogger Martha said...

I didn't realize that there was a novel.

And "vug" is from Cornish "voog." Um, of course!

9:03 AM  

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