ANEMOPHILOUS

[Dr. Goodword]

• anemophilous •

Pronunciation: æ-nê-mah-fê-lês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Wind-loving, wind-blown, currently used exclusively by botanists in referring to those plants that depend on the wind to distribute their pollen (opposed to those that depend on insects attracted to their nectar).

Notes: I keep finding little lexical gems like today's Good Word that should be in the poetic if not general vocabulary but are instead secreted away in one of the sciences. Anemophilous applies to anything that loves or thrives in wind, not just plants that use the wind for propagation. The noun is anemophily "love of wind", which makes a lover of wind an anemophile [ê-nee-mê-fail].

In Play: Anything you can imagine enjoying or thriving on wind is anemophilous: "Anemophilous gulls sailed aimlessly above on billowing drafts of warm summer air as the water-bound sailors below stared up at them in awe and admiration." It is a word that works well with imagination: "Gunilla claims to have bought a convertible to slake the thirst of her anemophilous hair for rushing air."

Word History: Today's beautiful Good Word is a compound based on Greek anemos "wind" and philos "love" plus an adjective suffix, -ous. Anemos also underlies anemone, the 'wind flower' that the Greeks thought bloomed only when the wind blows. The sea anemone was so named for its resemblance to the flowering plant. Anemos comes from a root that originally referred to breathing, for we find it again in Latin anima "soul, spirit" which underlies English animal: in the human mind, beings with a soul or spirit.

[Stargzer]

... Word History: Today's beautiful Good Word is a compound based on Greek anemos "wind" ...

Whence comes anemometer (wind measure), as I just realized this morning. See also anemoscope.

[Perry]

Those poor cats. Everyone is always trying to gut them for some reason or other.

[Bailey]

well the cats have it better than Neets, they line those poor creatures up and they have to watch as each is grabbed up and the oil is wrung from each tiny foot. I hear going into the wringer is not nearly as bad as having them wrung out the wringer, And the poor little things are watching this is each bleats pitiously and know they will be next.

mark has-witnessed-stuff-never-dreamed-of in-your-philosophies-Horatio Bailey

[Perry]

well the cats have it better than Neets, they line those poor creatures up and they have to watch as each is grabbed up and the oil is wrung from each tiny foot.

Have you actually seen this done, or did you read about this in a Dr. Suess version of "How Things Work"?

[gailr]

I think it was on the Discovery Channel, back in March...

[Stargzer]

Bailey strikes me as the type who would ask a waiter at a delicatessen an indelicate question: "What they do with the rest of the Matzoh?" ...

[Bailey]

Life is cruel geezer, and don't we know it? As soon as the hair shifts off our heads due to advanced wisdom, it begins to migrate into our ears and noses, ewe, and plucking a nose hair is awful! no worse!

mark no-geezer-but-will-be-next-week Bailey