What do you call that...

Ever play the "What do you call that thing that..." game? Obscure names of things interest me - I think I inherited the curiosity. I have a long-standing memory from my childhood  of such a question being asked by my father of others of his generation (and older). The question was, "What did they call that heavy object that was attached by rope to the buggy horse and dropped on the ground when one temporarily got out of the buggy?" Horse-carriage weight was too prosaic an answer; one name often mentioned, as I recall, was "a frog." Just in case you didn't know.

You don't have to be an academic logophile to be interested in words and the names of obscure and arcane things. For instance, what is the name of the small plastic table-like device that comes in the pizza box? In the 1983 patent application it was called a box tent. Most people in the business today call it a pizza saver.

Most are familiar with the phrase déjà vu, which is French for already seen. But if you stare at a word so long it starts to become unfamiliar to you, did you know that that is called jamais vu - never seen? Or that paresthesia is that tingling sensation when your foot falls asleep?

How about the string of typographical symbols comic strips use to indicate profanity, such as  (“$%@!”)? Did you know that is called a grawlix? American cartoonist Mort Walker (think Beetle Bailey) named it so about 1964.

 

The small, triangular pink bump on the inside corner of each eye is called the caruncula. It contains sweat and oil glands that produce rheum, also known as “eye crispies,” “sleep,” and “tear rocks.” Rheum, of course is the source of the term rheumy-eyed, long a description of drunken or inebriated individuals.

Another word for playful banter is badinage.

A gathering of rattlesnakes is called a rhumba.

To waste time by being lazy is to dringle.

 

The the wire cage that keeps the cork in a bottle of champagne is called an agraffe. Now you can impress all your classy friends on New Year's Eve.

A single slice of bacon is a rasher.

The web between your thumb and forefinger is called the purlicue (pronounced just like “curlicue”). Acupuncturists say pinching it will make headaches go away.

And what do you call the @ symbol? Amazingly, there is no official name, though it is universally called the at sign. It dates from the days of Monk copyists and in the Netherlands it is called the "monkey's tail;" the Danes call it the "elephant's trunk" and the Norwegians call it the "pig's tail."

Got any obscure items that need a name? Let's do some research.