"There are many similar examples of common names being applied to disparate plants or plant groups. One is snotty-gobble (the parasite Cassytha [filiformis] in South Australia, Persoonia saccata in Western Australia)."

e

I think you just made that up.

AC *you're just a snotty-gobble*

ancilla : The sidekick who helps another to accomplish or master something difficult or complicated. A loyal, trusted aide for whatever task is at hand, from learning Japanese in one month to building a Transylvanian android to just defeating the bad guys. An ancilla can also be called an adjunctory. A trusted assistant to a magician, incidentally, is a famulus.

affine : An in-law, or any relative whom through mere marriage you have acquired, earned, valued or put up with. Announcing that your affines are coming this weekend will impress other people that you're expecting an important delivery.

bête noire : That particular dreaded or detested or feared person (literally, "black beast") to be at all costs avoided, to whom one is perversely averse. An old rival? An aggravating pest? An ex-husband? Whichever, your bugbear and pet hate as a human or subhuman being.

brockie : Anybody with a dirty face (and a word borrowed truly from the barnyard, where it means a cow with a black-and-white face). Brockies include smudged people working on the undersides of cars, housewives on cleaning day, gardeners on rainy days, and children left to themselves for more than a half-hour.

cnidophobe : The person whose grand terror is of being stung, as by a bee or a wasp. Picnicking or summer-strolling cnidophobes tend to overreact to airborne insects, jumping up at the sound of a distant, droning airplane or swinging wildly at a stray dogwood petal that grazes the cheek. More specifically, one who fears bees is an apiphobe or melissophobe, and the fearer of wasps is a spheksophobe. All cnidophobes have their ears cocked for bombination (buzzing or droning).

cynophobe : The dog-fearer or hater, and not just the mailman and milkman. The avoider of canines knows that their bite is even worse than their bark, not to mention the shedding and drool of certain breeds, the yelping and neuroses of certain other breeds, and the big or small do made on sidewalks by all breeds. To say nothing of the cold sweat induced by the sight of a Doberman or German shepherd or the ineffable odor of a heavily rained-on dog.

mattoid : Nobody is ever partly pregnant, but what about being semi-insane? If you know an unhinged genius, borderline psychopath, quirky monomaniac, extreme eccentric, deranged philosopher or restless crank, you know a mattoid. The mattoid is not quite around the bend but always has the turn signal switched on. From an Italian word for "insane".

misodoctakleidist : The piano student who just hates to practice. How many millions of misodoctakleidists have suffered from their key aversions? How many, hard-pedaled by parents into learning the piano, have felt that sitting down to practice octaves and études is like pulling a chair up to a meal of cold dominoes and graph paper? Practice makes perfect, and makes misodoctakleidists, too.

misopedist : The hater of children. When the baby is trundled out to coo, the misopedist sees not an infant but a stubby little flesh-coloured homonculus (grotesque little creature). He or she does not enjoy passing school-yards, visiting couples who have a brood of brats, or answering the door on Halloween. To paraphrase W. C. Fields: "Anybody who is a misopedist and a cynophobe can't be all bad."

nebbish : A haplessly, sadly unfortunate and innocuous being, kind of a cross between a poor soul and a sad sack. Along with schlemiel and schlimazl (and the similar Yiddish words schlump, zhlub, schnook, schmendrick, schmo, nayfish, yutz ...), a jerk. As Leo Rosten explains, the schlemiel trips and knocks down the schlimazl, and the nebbish repairs the schlimazl's glasses.

philargyist : One who loves money, or who is nummamorous or lucrepitous. Estimates vary, but there is general agreement that the portion of our planet not covered by water or ice is covered largely by philargyists. Philargyists are otherwise known as mammonists, chrematists, philoplutaries, aphnologists and plutolators. The money lover who is driven by a fear of poverty is a peniaphobe.

philocynic : A dog lover. The world is pretty much divided into philocynics and ailurophiles, the kitty lovers. A dog keeper, especially someone who looks after greyhounds, is called a fewterer.

phaneromaniac : The picky person - picking compulsively at scabs or pimples or ears, scratching the scalp, or fingernailing possible wildlife on his or her own person. Most people do not enjoy watching skin-frisking phaneromaniacs in action, never knowing, or wanting to, what they'll come up with in their nervous self-scavanging.

pococurante : The incredibly indifferent, careless or nonchalant person, a rolling stone who is less devil-may-care than never-may-care. (The word, from Italian, means "caring little"). The pococurante is gallionic - interested in little, bored with much and fazed by nothing - and might be considered cool if he or she weren't so uninteresting and aimless. Also known as a Laodicean, a word derived from an ancient Phrygian city noted for its lukewarm inhabitants. When two pococurantes get together to argue, they have a shrugfest.

sinistral : A left-handed person, or one who is afflicted with what is very infrequently known as mancinism (as opposed to dexterity, which means right-handedness). "Sinistral" could well be a word, like "mistral", for a mean wind, and indeed major-league managers look annually for hard-throwing sinistrals to add to the bullpen. Another word for sinistral is kitthougue. A person who is clumsy with both hands is ambisinister. A sleight-of-hand artist, or prestidigitator, is a chirosophist.

Ucalegon : A Ucalegon is a neighbour whose house is on fire. It seems impossible that there should be a word for this, but here you are (courtesy of Trojan legend, in which Ucalegon was an unfortunate, burned-out neighbour of Aeneas). An extremely rare word, though one should not be burning to have a chance to use it. A mere neighbour, whose house may or may not be in flames, is an accolent.

xanthoderm : A yellow-skinned person, or a lutescent (yellowish) individual whose race is Oriental. This is not a euphonious word, but then (not to be too jaundiced) neither are some for people whose hue is black (a melano or melanoderm), white (a leucoderm) or red (the aithochroi). Caucasians who have pale skin and dark hair are melanochroi.

scrod : a young fish (as a cod or haddock); especially : one split and boned for cooking

Ballistophobia: Fear of bullets.

Otophobia: Fear of opening one's eyes.

Peccatophobia: Fear of sinning.

Taphephobia: Fear of being buried alive.

Sitophoba: Fear of food. Dread of eating.

Trichophobia: Fear of hair.

Vestiphobia: Fear of clothing.

scobberlotch: to loaf around, doing nothing in particular

dudder: to deafen with noise

omphaloskepsis: contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation

leechdom: archaic word for the craft of medicine

gloze: (v.) fawn ; glout: (v.) frown or scowl

alexipharmacon: an antidote for poison

paronomasia: a form of pun ; more generally, any word-play

paronomania: an obsessive interest in word games ; a clinical obsession with word games

mulct n. fine imposed for an offence. ; v.t. to fine a person (in an amount); also, to obtain by fraud, duress or theft.

parasang n. ancient-Persian measure of length, about 3¼ miles [5.2 km]

punkah (n.) portable fan usually of leaf or palmyra; large swinging cloth fan on frame worked by cord or electrically. From Hindi

commensal adj. & n. (one) who eats at the same table; (animal or plant) living harmlessly with or in another and thus obtaining food

fid n. a tapered usually wooden pin used in opening the strands of a rope

chatoyant adj. Having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light [Etymology: from the French present participle of chatoyer to shine like a cat's eyes]

enology / oenology n. the science of wine and wine-making.

swinge v.tr. (archaic) To punish with blows; thrash; beat.

carnyx adj. an ancient Celtic or Pictish war horn

usquebae n. Earlier form of the word whisky.

macadamise v. to construct or finish (a road) by compacting into a solid mass a layer of small broken stone on a convex well-drained roadbed and using a binder

nares n. the pair of openings of the nose or nasal cavity of a vertebrate

persiflage n. Light good-natured talk; banter; light or frivolous manner of discussing a subject.

glaucous adj. light bluish green or greenish blue.

girn v. intr. (Scots and northern English dialect) 1. to grimace; to pull grotesque faces

I have run out of words

But i must be nearly there

Just a few more

Is it?

Or have i missed?

Phew
The sound you make after posting run!

e

You nabbed it! Congrats!
Emma

Or have i missed?

Not missed.
Congrats!
jo
ps wondered what you were up to while I had my feet up

Or have i missed?

Spot on!

well done!

Congrats!

Up into 5th on your own!
http://www.britishinvasion.co.uk/milestones/lmmain.php

codey

You misseth not.

Good to see the records kept up!

€z

I think you just made that up.

AC *you're just a snotty-gobble*

Oh no i didn't!

e*and you are a snibbling snotty-gobble so there :-P*

Thanks everybody and Ta for the rec's

e