This word comes straight from the Latin word corvus, meaning “raven”. Merriam-Webster shares an interesting bit of etymology:

Another word from “corvus” is “cormorant,” which refers to a dark-colored seabird and comes from Old French words meaning “raven” and “of the sea.”

Bonus trivia: Cormorants are known for their voracious appetites, so the word cormorant also means “a greedy person” or “glutton”.

This word is usually used to describe plants, but I think it’s a shame that it rarely shows up in any other context. There are plenty of glabrous globs of goop that need to be described as such!

At least I found one example sentence that uses glabrous creatively: “Colleen had her favorite hat on, and I decided to drive glabrous and unadorned; the sun felt wonderful and there would be plenty of time for hats later on” (Bob Ecker). I thought that was a humorous way to describe a bald guy driving a convertible.

Even though many people seem to like this word, it actually doesn’t show up that often (except when referring to the 1987 film starring Cher and Nicolas Cage). Maybe the word’s strong association with the film is precisely why writers don’t use it much anymore. Did Hollywood ruin this word forever? Will people always think of Cher when they see the word moonstruck?

World Wide Words explains that obnubilate is a rare word today, but it had its uses:

Nineteenth-century reviewers used it to suggest that a writer had been less than transparently clear in his exposition, as here in a squib in The Princeton review in 1832 about a book by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “There is here fine criticism, classic wit, poetic dreaming, and some grains of sound doctrine, but so obnubilated with the fumes of German metaphysics, that we become giddy, and lose all power of comprehension”.

It’s often used in a figurative sense, but Merriam-Webster explains that it comes from the Latin words ob-, “in the way”, and nubes, meaning “cloud”. So the word obnubilate literally means something like “to cover up with clouds” or “to put clouds in the way”.

The English word cloud sounds nothing like nubes, because cloud comes from the Old English word clud, meaning a “mass of rock” (OED). I don’t see how soft, floating puffs of water vapor resemble rocks in any way, but there you have it.

This obscure German word (meaning “know not where”) was made up by Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle. Weissnichtwo was the name of a fictional city in the book Sartor Resartus, Carlyle’s major work. You’ll have to read the book (or at least the Wikipedia entry) to figure out the reason behind the name.

By the way, I’m actually very familiar with that other word, humuhumunukunukuapuaa. We had one in our fish tank when I was little. It was a cute, tiny little thing; as they say, “the name is longer than the fish” (see Wikipedia). But wow, did that fish have teeth! Ever since then, those painful nips at my fingertips are what I remember best when I think about the state fish of Hawaii.

I discovered this word while searching for an example sentence for otiose last week: “I will not be drawn into the miasma of premature analysis and debate, an otiose exercise” (David Hayford). The noun miasma has a couple definitions:

1. “A dangerous, foreboding, or deathlike influence or atmosphere”
2. “A poisonous atmosphere formerly thought to rise from swamps and putrid matter and cause disease”
3. “A thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation”

The example sentence I found last week makes good use of miasma’s first definition, which appears to be the most common usage now that the miasma theory of disease has proven false.

Merriam-Webster points out:

“There is also the noun form “otiosity,” which predates “otiose” by approximately three centuries. That noun is rarely found in writing today, but it makes an appearance on the occasional spelling bee word list.”

They’re right; I can’t find any example sentences for otiosity. But otiose shows up a few times on Google News, usually to mean “useless”. For example: “I will not be drawn into the miasma of premature analysis and debate, an otiose exercise” (David Hayford). Two vocab words in one sentence! What a deal! I’ll save miasma for next week.

But it is related to bland, because both words come from Latin blandus, meaning “mild” or “smooth”. So, even though bland usually refers to something dull or flavorless, it can also mean “tranquil”, “soothing”, “gentle”, or “agreeable”. I assume that those more positive meanings are from a long time ago, because I’ve never heard anyone use bland in a good way. Have you?

Meanwhile, the word blandish doesn’t seem to exist at all! I couldn’t find any real-world example sentences — only Dictionary.com’s example: “They blandished the guard into letting them through the gate.”

I guess there’s no real need for the word blandish, since its synonyms coax and cajole do the job just fine. But hey, for all you poets out there, it’s one more rhyme for brandish.

Even though posit comes straight from the Latin word ponere, “to place or to put”, I’ve never seen anyone use posit in that literal sense. You don’t posit a book on your desk; you just put it on your desk. For whatever reason, the word posit is only used in the figurative sense: “posit an opinion”, “posit a theory”, or “posit a solution”.

The word posit may not come up too often, but it’s related to the words position, posture, deposit, depot, repository, suppository, suppose, and more. Those words don’t have that much in common, but if you think about it, they all involve the concept of place, placement, or putting something somewhere (either literally or figuratively).

Here’s what is interesting, though: jacent is actually a word by itself. Weird, huh? It means “lying at length”, as in “the jacent posture.” It comes from the Latin word jacere, which means “to lie” or “rest”.

So, just slap on a random prefix like ad- or super- and you have a new word! Merriam-Webster also mentions the words subjacent, “lying below”, and circumjacent, “surrounding”. I also discovered interjacent, “between or among others”.

But there’s no such thing as transjacent, prejacent, postjacent, cojacent, or nonjacent (though nonadjacent is actually a word). Can you think of any others?