RochelLeah's RealLife

Monday, October 10, 2005

A Friendly Adjective

One of my more pleasantly geeky friends sent me the following nifty vocabulary word. Apparently, she read the A.Word.A.Day on Friday (see below) and thought of me... I guess I'm flattered. I do have long, thin fingers. More importantly, this is daily list actually has words I haven't heard before (unlike the ones on Dictionary.com, et al). Every week has a theme. This week's (starting today) is words derived from the names of persons.

The entry below can be found in this archive.
> Subject: A.Word.A.Day--leptodactylous
> Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 22:11:54 -0700
> From: "Wordsmith" <wsmith@wordsmith.org>
> To: <linguaphile@wordsmith.org>

This week's theme: words formed using combining forms.

Leptodactylous (lep-tuh-DAK-tuh-luhs) adjective


If you are still stuck to those tired words to describe
your sweetie, here is a new one for you. Leptodactylous
means having fine, slender digits. No, not, digits on a
bathroom scale or on a bank account. Here digit means a toe
or a finger.

It all sounds Greek to me: from lepto- (thin) and -dactylous
(fingered or toed).
-Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org)

"Hitchock described many examples of strangely-shaped,
thin-toed footprints and classified them as leptodactylous
footprints."
Brendan Hanrahan; Great Day Trips in the Connecticut Valley
of the Dinosaurs; Perry Heights Press; 2004.

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