Words You Never Heard!

Waggle Dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. Dogs eat bees because they like to chase and capture things. Did you know that one of every three or four bites of food we eat is thanks to honeybees? Bees pollinate about 90 different crops, from apples and oranges to almonds and blueberries! People have known about the importance of bees for centuries.  Cave paintings in Europe show that people were harvesting honey 8,000 years ago!  The Egyptians were beekeepers, and their methods were copied throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East.   The average honey bee can fly at speeds of 20 miles per hour and communicate with each other by dancing!  A typical hive has up to 60,000 honey bees in constant bombination.  The world couldn’t survive without bees.  Einstein predicted that “if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only 4 yrs of his life left!" The stinger of a bee is one-tenth of an inch long the other nine-tenths is pure imagination. What do you call a person whose grand terror is being stung by a bee? An endidophobe  (NI-de-FOBE!)  The average American consumes 1.3 pounds of honey a year. We steal honey from the bees and then get mad when they sting us.  What’s another word for this kind of hypocrisy? Tartuffish (tor-TOOF-ish)!  What is a word for fear of bees? Melissophobia or apiphobia.

Well, we’re leaving the goblin season and entering the gobbler season! Did you know only male turkeys (or toms) gobble? Females (or hens) make a clicking noise.  The heaviest turkey on record was raised in England and weighed 86 pounds! Hey ladies, if you’re tired of cooking Thanksgiving dinner every year, you might try to get your guy to barbeque or deep fry a turkey.  This involves danger and men love danger. What’s a word for a male cook? A bobachee!   Other countries such as  Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Canada, and more celebrate Turkey Day.  Ironically the country of Turkey doesn’t.  One thing’s for sure, at my house my sons always fight over who gets the wishbone.  What’s a word for stealing food from another person?  Leptobiosis!

Did Scotch tape originate in Scotland? Nope, the popular gift-wrapping tape was actually developed right here in the United States!   In 1926, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company,  (3M) was being a bit rapacious, tried to save a  little scratch,   and started using a cheaper adhesive on their sticky tape! A Detroit automaker ordered some of this newer, cheaper tape to use for spray-painting auto bodies. The automaker complained that the tape was “Scotch” a politically incorrect word that meant cheap or stingy). While the tape didn’t have the adhesion to satisfy the automaker,  it was hardly a gefoojet, that’s an unnecessary thing-it had many other uses, as we all know: so the tape was kept in production, and the name SCOTCH just “stuck”!

Autumn used to be called “harvest” Until about 1500, autumn was just called “harvest.”  The full moon closest to the autumn equinox is known as a harvest moon. Before cities were electrified, the bright night, the harvest moon was essential for farmers harvesting their late-year crops.  Apple cider is nearly as popular as pumpkin spice during the fall. But keeping up with the demand for fresh cider requires a whole lot of apples—just one gallon of apple cider requires 36 apples [https://www.reference.com/food/many-apples-create-1-gallon-apple-cider-f4b63aa1520e7500]. What’s a word for the last small apples remaining on the tree after harvest? Griggles! Churn Supper  is a term from the 1800s  for a feast at the end of the hay harvest, (the onset of autumn with memories of  the sweet tang of the newly-crisp air, and the colors of the foliage.) Pumpkins, perhaps the most iconic image of autumn, are grown on six of the seven continents (sorry, Antarctica). Their name comes from the Greek word pepon, roughly meaning “large melon.”

Let me get right to the question: “Do you have an “innie or an outie”?  Yes, we’re talkin’ bellybuttons!” If you’re an outie you are definitely the minority, but that’s good news because you don’t have to worry about a little problem that people with innies have. Bellybutton lint.  I know it’s disgusting but someone’s got to talk about it.   Did you know there’s a word for “the small mass of lint, such as that which accumulates in the belly button”?  It's called pledget. Researchers say the color of the pledget in your belly button is related to the clothing you wear, it usually ends up being a blue-grey color just like the lint that collects in your clothes dryer! Have I turned you into an omphalopsychite yet? That’s a person who’s obsessed with their belly button. Why do you suppose women pierce their belly buttons? Maybe it’s because of all that pledget they need a place to hang some air freshener!