Search Sesquiotica
Be a patron!
Support Sesquiotica and get extra premium content and goodies. Starts as low as $1 a month! Find out more and subscribe on Patreon.com-
Join 14.8K other subscribers
I am for hire
I earn my living as an independent editor, writer, and educator. Find out more and contact me at jamesharbeck.com.Buy the T-shirt (or coffee mug or hip flask)
Wear it proudly:
I operate on a NEED-TO-KNOW basis. I need to know EVERYTHING.
Buy it at cafepress.ca/sesquiphernalia12 Gifts for Writers ebook – free download
Buy my books
Buy my books on Lulu.com:
- Confessions of a Word Lush (paperback)
- Confessions of a Word Lush (ebook)
- Songs of Love and Grammar (paperback)
- Songs of Love and Grammar (ebook)
- The Truth About English (paperback)
- The Truth About English (ebook)
- 12 Gifts for Writers (print edition)
- PAINT
You can also get them on Amazon.com. Please note that I make less than half as much per book if you buy them there, however.
Word Tasting Notes Google group
Get just the word tasting notes daily by email – join the Google Word Tasting Notes group.-
Recent Posts
Top Posts
Categories
- album
- arts
- BBC
- biography
- Coffice Space
- Definition
- editing
- from the bookshelf
- fun
- language and linguistics
- life, the universe, and everything
- new old words
- NOV
- photography
- poems
- Poetry Minute and a Half
- Povember
- pronunciation tips
- recipes
- sentence tastings
- The Week
- translation
- Uncategorized
- Word Country
- word pictures
- word portraits
- word reviews
- word sommelier
- word tasting notes
- writing
Past posts
June 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Meta
Tag Archives: word tasting notes
chenocoprolite
As the Beach Boys sang (more or less), “It’s my little goose poop… you don’t know what I got!” And whatever you may think of filthy lucre (or anyway dirty dollars), thanks to their radio activity, that song surely filled their pockets with a lot of silver. Some of which may have started out as a little goose poop… or at least looked like it. Continue reading
alley
Let’s go, let’s go down now, let’s go down the alley
It’s long and it’s tight like an aisle in a galley
It’s close and it’s shady and wet like a valley
Allez-y, love, rally: we’re going to go dally Continue reading
ocularity
The eyes have it.
But do more eyes have more? How many eyes are enough to make what is seen undeniable? With one eye your initial perception is flat. With two eyes you gain depth. But do more than two eyes give more depth? Is it not enough to see both sides of a thing – do you need to know what’s above and below? In front and behind? Continue reading
perambulation, ramble
My beautiful wife and I went for a little walk yesterday.
Heh. Continue reading
catkin
In botany’s catechism, catercorner from the cactus is the catkin. It may seem a petty distinction – you want to pet the one and distinctly not the other – but they are as thoroughly unalike as anyone would like. Continue reading
hopper
A hopper, of course, hops, just as a shopper shops and a chopper chops and a whopper… um, whops, I guess. And a bopper bops and a lopper lops and a popper pops and a topper tops and copper… oh. Whoops.
But then what does a whopper of a copper hopper do?
A hopper could, of course, be part of a rabbit response team. But in truth hoppers are not often seen to hop. A person who is a hopper is one who cutshops, as in the conical catkins that flavour beer, which have no relation (that we know of) to the action of hopping (aside from what you do while waiting for the washroom after a pint or two of IPA). And when they drop their plucked hops into a hopper that feeds into the machinery, that hopper probably doesn’t hop either. Continue reading
Posted in word tasting notes
Tagged Dennis Hopper, DeWolf Hopper, Edward Hopper, Hedda Hopper, hopper, word tasting notes
bezelless
Alana doesn’t like this word, but I do.
What does it signify, bezelless? Is it a cross between a gazelle, a wildebeest, and a lioness? (No… and I’m not sure how that would work… sounds like a gory scene in the Okavango delta.) Is it a busy buzzy little demon, a minion of Beelzebub? (…n… …o…) Is it your friend’s German friend who joined you for the local Oktoberfest and was unimpressed? (Probably not… and that might seem a transgression of Gesellschaft.) Is it the word bevel as seen reflected in a pond with ripples from a dropped stone? (Well… maybe…)
What it is for sure is the kind of sports watch I prefer. Continue reading
Posted in word tasting notes
Tagged bevel, bezel, bezelless, bezzle, embezzlement, word tasting notes
krazy
Today I had to fix something that was cracked, so I used Krazy Glue. Which, depending on how you see it, is either ironic or apposite. Continue reading









