Pica

Some pregnant women are said to suffer from pica but I have never actually met one.  Pica is the craving for eating non-comestible items like chalk and ashes.  It is pronounced PIKE-er and the word has been around since 1563.  

It appears to have its origins in the habits of the Magpie (French pica and now scientific name Pica pica).  Known for picking up glittery things, Magpies were thought to eat them.

Aboulia

Aboulia, also spelled abulia, means loss of will power.
 

Aboulia in neurology, refers to a lack of will or initiative and can be seen as a disorder of diminished motivation. Aboulia falls in the middle of the spectrum of diminished motivation, with apathy being less extreme and akinetic mutism being more extreme than aboulia.  A patient with aboulia is unable to act or make decisions independently. It may range in severity from subtle to overwhelming.

Put a sock in it

  

Put a sock in it means quieten down and is a politer, more jocular, alternative to shut up or stop that row.    

Its first appearance in print was in The Athenaeum on 8^th Auhust 1918.  That august (s well as August) magazine defined it as “Leave off talking, singing or shouting” and the fact that it had to be defined suggests it was a relatively new phrase.  Its most likely origin is in World War One slang and the thing that the sock was to be put in was the mouth – like the earlier expressions ‘put a cork’ in it and ‘put a bung in it’.

There is a popular story that the phrase originated with the idea of putting a sock in the old style phonograph which lacked a volume control but there is no evidence for this and it appeared after the gramophone had already been around for some time.

This cat is trying to get the phrase ‘put a cat in it’ into the books of English idioms but I doubt it will catch on!

Gound

   When I was a child, if one rubbed one’s eyes upon waking up the natural question to be asked was ‘Have you got sleep in your eyes?”  ‘Sleep’ in that context was a colloquial word for gound, the matter that collects in the corner of the eyes or on the eyelashes when rheum dries.  Although gound and rheum are sometimes said to be synonymous they aren’t. Gound is solid matter whilst rheum is thin mucus naturally discharged as a watery substance from the eyes, nose, or mouth; the word rheum coming from the Greek for ‘to flow’.

All this probably comes under the heading ‘Things one didn’t wish to know!’

Agelast and Hypergelast

   
An agelast is a person who doesn’t laugh; a mirthless person.  The word is still extant but is rarely used.   

The antonym is hypergelast - someone who laughs excessively.

Gerocomy

Gerocomy is a rarely used word meaning the care or treatment of the aged.  Its adjectival form gerocomical (meaning of the treatment of the aged) sounds as though it should really mean 'oldies with a sense of humour'!

Fubsy

  
I  suspect the word fubsy is no longer acceptable in these days of political correctness.  It means plump and squat. 

The word is first recorded in Fanny Burney’s diary for April 1780 – “Her daughter, a fubsy, good-humoured..merry old maid.”  But my favourite example is from J Wilson in the early nineteenth century when he referred to “Fat and fubzy Fellows of colleges”.

Fubsy, fubzy