Monday, July 16, 2012

1783 Furbelow

The other day I was in the Merriam Webster Online dictionary and I found something cool. Their little artificial intelligence thingie that makes suggestions has a interesting sense of what to choose.
I already like their dictionary because it has out loud pronunciations of words. It's hard sometimes to figure out all the different diacritical marks they use to depict the sounds of vowels and what not. So they have this great sound file system that allows you to actually hear someone saying the word.
But they also had this other thing. I suppose it's the same technology Amazon uses when they suggest books related to books you've already read but this one was lot more subtle. And a lot more fun.
The word I had originally looked up was balaclava, a fancy-schamncy way of saying ski mask. The related words they thought I might like to look up were as follows:
Babushka, brogue, and bumbershoot.
A head scarf, a shoe, and an umbrella respectively.
Cravat and dishabille. A tie-like thing and the archaic word for negligee. Dishabille can also mean a state in which one is in their lounging clothes. Sounds like you're dressed for being able to do dishes. Dishabille.
Webster also suggested for my interest spectator and raiment.
Spectators are shoes. Sometimes worn by people watching things. Raiment is actually just short for arrayment. It basically means attire, but fancier. So remember; if you tire of attire everybody loves raiment.
Then there's furbelow and layette. A furbelow is a flounce or pleat in material. Though it sounds to me like arctic underwear. A layette, though it sounds like some sort of lab equipment, is actually a complete outfit for a newborn child.
In Alaska that may include a furbelow.
For when it's really furbelow zero.
America, ya gotta love it.

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