New Words or Deja Vu?

The new dictionary isn’t just a whole bunch of words that you have never seen before. A lot of them are words that you already knew. Some of them are part of the modern vernacular and some of them may surprise you that they were not already in our dictionary.

I will prove that with this week’s quiz. They are all 7 letter words that are new in the 2019 update. None of them are words that I covered in my blog last week. Despite the fact that you probably haven’t studied the new dictionary I think you will be able to solve some of these anagrams.

C E E H M S X A B D D D O S A A C D H M S

A B E F G R T D E G I J R U A C D F I L M

D F I L M O S E H I M S S U A E E K M P R

A D G L L O R A J N O R S T D E I L M N W

The answers are at the bottom of the page, but just while you are considering the quiz have a look at this list. I noticed that there are a lot of new words thatare 7 or 8 letters ending with the letters LIKE.

Obviously anything can have something else that is ‘like’ it. For example:

Mammoths are elephantlike Alpacas are llamalike Big lizards are dragonlike

You might think that none of those are probably words, but in fact the last one – DRAGONLIKE – is allowed at scrabble. That does highlight the problem though. How do you decide which things are common enough that other things can be said to be like them. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but here is a list of the newest 7 and 8 letter LIKE words

BURLIKE CAPLIKE EGGLIKE

FIGLIKE FURLIKE ORBLIKE

PENLIKE PITLIKE TITLIKE

VANLIKE

ADZELIKE ARCHLIKE BANDLIKE

BARKLIKE BELTLIKE BONELIKE

BOOKLIKE CAPELIKE CARPLIKE

CLUBLIKE COATLIKE CONELIKE

CROWLIKE CUBELIKE CUSPLIKE

DICELIKE DOORLIKE DROPLIKE

FLAPLIKE FLAXLIKE KNEELIKE

LENSLIKE LOBELIKE LOOPLIKE

LUNGLIKE LUTELIKE MINTLIKE

MOLELIKE PIKELIKE POMELIKE

POSTLIKE RAKELIKE ROBELIKE

SLUGLIKE SPURLIKE STUDLIKE

VOLELIKE

I think it is interesting that you can have POMELIKE which says that something is like an apple, but you cannot have applelike. Occasionally I write things that are not exactly poetry, but are poemlike. That is also no good. Neither is poetrylike. The least familiar looking word - POMELIKE - is the one that is allowed.

Now that I have said my piece about that we had better, like, get on with the answers to the quiz…

CHEMSEX Sexual activity under the influence of psychoactive drugs

DADBODS Untoned and slightly plump male physiques

DASHCAM A small video camera on the dashboard of a vehicle

FATBERG A large mass of fat and waste in a sewerage system

JUDGIER Being more inclined to judge others

MIDCALF A garment reaching to the middle of the calf

MISFOLD To fold wrongly

MUSHIES A colloquial term for mushrooms

PREMAKE To make in advance

RAGDOLL A breed of domestic cat

TROJANS Programs used to nefariously gain access to another computer

WILDMEN Men who live outside of civilisation

The one that annoys me a little is PREMAKE. My job as a bridge director means that I predeal boards to be used my multiple sections. I have been predealing boards for over 30 years. Although premake has now come in you still cannot have predeal. It is true that you have 4 other options - PEARLED, PEDALER, PLEADER and REPLEAD - but it still feels wrong that the job that I have been doing for so long is not a word

Happy Scrabbling

Patrick