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Saturday, July 14, 2012

How You’re Complimenting Large-Eyed, Long-Necked Beauties

The science wonks of the English-speaking world have no shortage of animal words thanks to the “ines” — feline, canine, bovine as well as weird ones like pavonine for peacocks, dasypine for armadillos and even asinine for donkeys. But the “ines” all tend toward a high-minded, labcoast-and-beakers sort of conversation. Do you have anything in a regular sort of suffix?

Yes. Yes we do, and it’s the word of the week.
struthious (STROO-thee-us) — adjective: of or relating to ostriches or similar birds.
Tweeted out not too long ago by the OED, struthius might seem like the kind of word you non-ostrich ranch-owning readers might have little reason to use. And that night be true, but you never know when you might need to recap an episode of Top Chef.

Allow me to demonstrate:




Yes, Carla Hall — the best thing to come out of any reality show ever — has a struthious way about her. And that’s not an insult, exactly. Hall used to model back in the day, and even then exhibited a struthious beauty:


However, I’m happy to have her as we have her today: cooking and looking animatedly struthious.


Indeed.

Previous words of the week after the jump.

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