Ever find yourself at the coffee counter in need of one of those cardboard insulators for your hot paper cup? What’s that called? Few people know — including many, I discovered, who work at Starbucks. It’s a zarf.
Zarf is an Arabic word for “vessel” and was originally used to describe an ornamental metal holder for a drinking cup.
It’s been estimated that by age 20 a native English speaking American knows about 42,000 words. But does your personal list include the word for that twisted wire above the cork on a champagne bottle? It’s an agraffe.
Words like zarf and agraffe might be seem a bit exotic for everyday chit-chat but they come in handy in word games — which Americans are playing at an amazing pace. The global market for such games stands at about $2.5 billion, with roughly 80% of it here in the U.S. Games like Wordle, Words with Friends, Wordscapes and Boggle are soaring in popularity, despite competition from a raft of other online activities.
A few notes from recent research: Improvements in cognition has been confirmed in people who play a word game daily. Among kids, 35% of the best academic performers come from homes where word games are encouraged.
Wordle is far and away the most popular game, having attracted more than 43 million players since The New York Times bought it in 2022. In this seemingly dumbed-down age, who would have thought we’d become a nation of logophiles (lovers of words)?
Wordle will never have wamble as an answer, because words must have only five letters. But you can use wamble in Scrabble. It’s the noise your stomach occasionally makes.
In addition to expanding vocabulary, today’s popular word games promote interaction with other people — friends, family and even anonymous competitors who might be halfway around the world.
So, what’s the word for the smooth part of your forehead between the eyebrows? Or, the dip that naturally occurs in your upper lip?
The area between the eyebrows is the glabella and the indentation on the upper lip is the philtrum.
Ever wonder what to call that thing in the center of a steering wheel that you push to honk the horn? Is it the honker? No. The mechanical gizmo is known as the diaphragm.
When I write “is” or “just” is there a word for the dot above the I and J2? You betcha. It’s tittle.
My goal in the New Year is to avoid using “whatchamacallit” or “thingamabob” to describe things that have actual names. Of course, I’ll type my words. I wouldn’t want to write them by hand and be guilty of griffonage, which Merriam-Webster explains is “a crude or illegible scrawl.”
Peter Funt’s latest book is “Inside Fantasy Football: America’s Favorite Non-Contact Sport.” His column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
