Word of the Week
Created | Updated Mar 29, 2004
In the dim dark recesses of h2g2 history before we moved lock, stock and barrel to
our new BBC home there used to be a front page feature The h2g2 Word
of the Day. It was a way to highlight some of the lesser occurring or largely obscurer
words in the English language. Sadly this feature was discontinued.
Until now...
Word for the Week
Weather, weather everywhere. Last week Monty Don told us all on Gardener’s World
there
would be no frost over the weekend., so why then did I have to get the ice scraper out on the car on
Sunday night. More to the point the wind in Britain was mainly gales at the weekend. We have no
idea quite when she wants it back. So started the week that contains today World
Meteorological Day.
As the British spend so much time talking about the weather and seeing as the Inuit communities
have so many words for snow. Today I hope to add the Brits in one way to describe what they are
more than likely to get up in the unlikely event of actually participating in this weeks word. My
thanks go to cari for suggesting this word.
Mallemaroking
n. carousing of seamen in icebound Greenland whaling ships.
Oddly enough not many of h2g2's researchers have partaken or mentioned mallemaroking not even
our Antarctic Correspondent Extraordinaire Tim Smith. However
this is one of those rare words which seems to stem from Greenland that great ice cap covered land
in the Northern Atlantic. The word is properly only exclusively used for the merry making that
Greenland's whalers would get up to while ice bound in their attempts to capture some Greenland
right whales. So no wonder we don't know about it. This is a word even the keenest wordsmith
on hootoo would find it hard to drop into casual conversation, but I'd like to hear about your
efforts
if you try.
From the Archive
With all this foul weather I'm surprised we didn't encounter more of this weeks word from the
archives.
Lagan
n. 1. archaic (In legal contexts) goods or wreckage laying on the bed of the sea.
2. Gaelic little hollow.
The word in it's use as the second longest river in Northern Ireland crops up in two edited
entries on the guide. Both The Geography of Northern Ireland
and The River Bann, Northern Ireland come from Northern
Irish expert, um, Demon Drawer. Obviously the River takes it
name from the second definition. However, the world's most famous lagan of the other definition
R.M.S. Titanic was ironically launched at the mouth of the River
Lagan from Belfast's great Harland and Wolff shipyard.
However, this weeks week award for comedic use of a word totally out of context goes to Lucky Star for stringing three of Northern Ireland's foremost rivers
into the following sentence in a conversation which deliberately was to take river names and twist
them:
oops, I've been Lagan behind here...we could Bann all foreign rivers and Foyle any
attempt to make this a global convo!
How can you contribute?
- Go and check out words in the archive to avoid
duplication. - Check out the discussion threads and nominate a word that you feel was overlooked before
discontinuation. - Suggest a new word or your forgotten word in the word of the week archive conversation.
