Anile

Anile is an adjective meaning old-womanish; of or like a feeble old woman; like a foolish, doddering old woman; or weak-minded.  The word was first used as long ago as 1652.

I'm a bit anile in all of its senses until I've had my first tea or coffee in the morning. 

Balaniferous

   Balaniferous means acorn-bearing.  More photos -

Coniferous

 
Coniferous means cone-bearing.  It's as simple as that.  I just wanted an excuse to show some of my photos...  (And yes, the top ones are cones - the Alder tree is both coniferous and deciduous.)

Maudlin

 Maudlin is an adjective meaning self-pitying or tearfully sentimental. One dictionary suggested it was feeling sad and sorry for yourself, especially after you have drunk a lot of alcohol. I shall have to stop using the expression to refer to how I'm feeling or people will get the wrong impression.

Sophomania

Sophomania is yet another word that isn’t in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary but which is defined on-line.  It means having the delusion that one is wise; an abnormal over estimation of one’s own wisdom; a passion for grandiose statements about one’s own wisdom. I suspect a lot of us suffer from this at one time or another!

  

To take meat before grace

The phrase to take meat before grace is not what it seems.  To begin a meal before saying grace would at one time have been extremely impolite and certainly frowned upon in better households. But the phrase was actually a subtle way of referring to the taking of conjugal pleasures before marriage and that was even naughtier!

Fornale and subprime

   Fornale is an obsolete Scottish word.  It was an adjective and meant having spent one's money before it had been earned.  Surely it should be revived!  As Ammon Shea writes in 'Reading the Oxford English Dictionary' -  "We live in a nation that is overwhelmingly and crushingly in debt, awash in credit card debt and subprime mortgages.  How is it possible that the only word for 'spending money before it is earned' is an obsolete Scottish one?"

Interestingly, the word subprime was not one I had come across before.  It is an adjective referring to credit or loan arrangements for borrowers with a poor credit history. Typically subprime borrowing has unfavorable conditions such as high interest rates.

Guttle and guzzle

   To guttle was to swallow or to feed luxuriously - in which latter sense it was, according to Johnson, a low word.    Presumably it was a forerunner of the word guzzle which is still in use today and means to eat or drink (something) greedily.   Cars, for example, are notorious for guzzling petrol. 

ATB

  

A friend signed off her e-mail recently with ‘ATB’.  I had to look it up so I thought I’d share it here.  ATB is ‘internetese’ for "All The Best".

P.S. I appreciate that internetese is not a word - yet!!  I have just invented it.  I wonder how long before it makes it into the Oxford Dictionary (and will I be quoted as the first written reference??)

Gulosity

   Gulosity is an archaic term for gluttony, greediness or voracity.