Muggy

   
Muggy means hot or warm and humid. It strikes me that 'muggy weather' might be a particularly British expression. Is 'muggy weather' something that is ever said in US English?

Answers on a postcard, please....

Luthier

   
A luthier is a craftsman who makes or repairs stringed instruments (as lutes or guitars or violins).

Maugre

   

Maugre, as an adverb and preposition, meant notwithstanding or in spite of. It was usually found in poetry and is now obsolete.

As a verb it meant to wish ill-will.

Gangling

 
Gangling means tall and thin and having long slender limbs - often used of teenagers who have yet to put on body weight.

Spindly

 
I came across the word spindly - describing someone - the other day and whilst it wasn't an unknown word it did strike me as one of the more amusing words in the English language. I don't know why but it just hit my funny bone.

Spindly means tall, slender and frail; lank; long and lean; charcateristic of a spindle - slender and of weak appearance.

A spindle is a stick or pin used to twist the yarn in spinning.

There is also a Spindle tree (Euonymus europaeus)which is quite spidnly - I wonder if the name came from the tree or vice versa?

The spindle-side of a family tree is the female line of descent and spindle-shank is a term used for someone with long thin legs.

Pabulum

   
Pabulum is a word for food; especially a suspension or solution of nutrients in a state suitable for absorption. It is also used to refer to intellectual sustenance. A third meaning is something (as writing or speech) that is insipid, simplistic, or bland.

Catafalque

   
A catafalque is an ornamental structure sometimes used in funerals for the lying in state of the body; a pall-covered coffin-shaped structure used at requiem masses celebrated after burial

Eschew

  
To eschew means to shun; avoid; stay away from deliberately; stay clear of; to avoid habitually especially on moral or practical ground.

It is generally pronounced e-shu.

Label-stops and Head-stops

 

Many church windows have decorative hood moulds, or drip stones, projecting above the windows to protect them from rainwater running down the walls. They end in what are generally called label-stops. When these label-stops are in the form of a human head they are called head-stops.

For more examples of head-stops see On the Wirral.

Greenfield and Brownfield

 
A greenfield site is one to be used for housing or commerce, whose previous use (if any) was agricultural. The term can lso be used generally to refer to any undeveloped lands such as fields or forests. The term has been around for many decades.

It was only recently that I heard the term brownfield site. Brownfield sites iare abandoned or underused industrial and commercial facilities available for re-use. Expansion or redevelopment of such a facility may be complicated by real or perceived environmental contaminations.