Words

animals, which makes for fun Google searches to see what they look like. When I looked up tenuiroster, which is any group of mostly passerine birds having slender bills, the top search result was the great knot, which is a small wader most likely to be found in Siberia, southern Asia or Australia than anywhere here. But to be honest (and bird enthusiasts don’t hate me for this) it looked pretty similar to many of the waders I see when I go to the beach.

I was actually more interested in finding an image of a upeygan (a black rhinoceros) but was unsuccessful. Maybe someday when I have a little more time to dedicate to the search. Funnily enough, many of the top search results were related to the use of the word in spelling bees. As someone who often spends too much time not using proper posture at the computer, omodynia (pain in the shoulder) is all too familiar.

In a previous spelling bee, I learned about alectryomancy, which is divination by means of a rooster encircled by grains of corn placed on letters of the alphabet which are then put together in the order in which the grains were eaten. In this bee, I learned the meaning of catoptromancy, a divination by mirror or by crystal gazing.

Like crystal ball gazing, there are things I understand because I have seen them in practice but I couldn’t tell you the actual word that defines them. Such was the case with manoletina, which is a right-handed movement of a cape by a matador in bullfighting, in which a red cloth attached to a stick is held by the left hand behind the back. I am going to say I will stick to the cartoon representation of this action as I don’t have the stomach for the real thing. Rounding out some of the other random words I learned were mandragora (an herb that has been credited with human attributes and made the subject of many superstitions, also known as a mandrake), which was giving me Harry Potter vibes even before I read the definition; pogonip, a dense winter fog containing frozen particles that is formed in deep mountain valleys of the western United States; and tamarin (small South American marmosets having elongate canine teeth, silky fir and long nonprehensile tails), some of which have fantastic looking mustaches.

Seriously, I didn’t expect to find an animal that rivaled the adorable features of the previously learned binturongs, but the tamarins give them a run for their money.

Laura McFarland may be reached at Lmcfarland@powhatantoday.com.