I was trying to identify a lovely, speckle-leaved purple-flowered plant. It was lungwort.
The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
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Every rare word has a story behind it. A grandmother’s saying, a sailor’s slang, a hometown word the rest of the world forgot. Here’s how OUTLIER players know the words they find.
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I was in a seminar on Chaucer's verse in the original middle English. Everyone in the Canterbury Tales introduces themselves, some by first name.
Among other things, I am a civil officiant for marriages. I've done a lot of handfasting ceremonies because the gaelic traditions in my part of the world are still pretty strong!
From my mum referring (affectionately) to her kids as "you great galoots" when we'd done something foolish 🤪
I was obsessed with the Arthurian legend as a teen! "So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur / But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm / Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful / And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him / Three times, and drew him under in the mere." 🗡️
I play a Druid in DnD and I've been collecting plant terms. Thought it was a sweet name for wee climbing plants
An old friend from the east of Scotland wrote a collection of humorous minutes of the fictitious Turriff and Auchterless Astronomical Society. Much Doric was used therein, and I'm pretty sure "aboon" was included.
One of the few things that stuck in my mind from geography lessons at school—what, ~54 years ago?— is "clints and grykes", I guess because of the magnificent sound as a pair of words. I doubt I've come across either word since then.
The Reptile Room, second in a Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Thanks Uncle Monty! 🐍
Naval unit in the Age of Empires/Age of Mythology videogames
Reading the Bartimaeus trilogy and the Robert Asprin Myth series of books. There's different tiers of demon summonings in Bartimaeus an alien? DnD? species based off Djin in the Myth series.
While making Hot Cross Buns with Mum as a kid, I asked about yeast rising. Dad loved to turn baking into science class and is chronic for going on tangents, so I learned a fair bit about asexual yeast multiplication. 'Blasto' stuck because Blastoise was my favourite Pokémon
Was thinking about Jason and the argonauts, took a stab that paid off
Writing a story set it 17th century Italy so I was researching era appropriate Italian foods/desserts. I remembered this one because as well as being a cool looking word, it's basically just custard
Another one to thank the botany curators at Te Papa museum for. Shout out to Leon for showing me his moss collection! The air con in collection room has to be the exact temp and humidity to keep all the wee sphagnum mosses alive.
From a romance novel set in the Middle Ages. I believe the line was "Thou art lickerous."
My partner told me this one- we were both special interest = Ancient Egypt kids and it came up while we were discussing the 90s TV show Mummies Alive! Plus who doesn't love a weird hat?
I have recently moved to the high desert near the Sierra Mountains in California. I have been charged with interest about the flora and fauna here, and have been poring over Calflora and iNaturalist. When I came upon the beautiful word ‘chamisal’, how could I resist looking it up
If you've ever done a sound check you know this word because it tests for pop and crackle.. check 1-2, check 1-2, ...sibilance... sibilance.
A Wodehouse character is named Freddie Threepwood. I surmised, correctly as it happens, that Threep must therefore be a word.
A local writer wrote a best selling book of Mennonite recipes called "Food that Really Schmecks".🥖
The webcomic Wondermark referred to "The Oenophile's Quandary" as a philosophical problem. It didn't exist but it's a great expression of an important problem. I have used the word often since. 🍷
I learned this word from the track “Read, eat, sleep” by The Books. My high school best friend gave me the album it’s from (Thought for Food) & I played it (and nothing else) for months ❤️
I learnt this word from my tattoo artist, who explained that MICROPHAGES are these busy little dudes in our immune system, and the reason a tattoo will spread and blur over decades. The macrophages are picking up tiny bits of ink and trying to hustle them out of the body. 🤯
Genuinely shocked no one has ever found this word before. The person who keeps an inn is called an innkeeper. Pretty sure I learned this from the nativity story when I was like 6
The definition given is not how I know it. This a woodsman's tool, a short pick on the end of an axe handle for moving logs without bending over. I found it on a random path through Wikipedia just before I first played this game. So now I associate this game with the tool
I learned this word from playing Age of Empires III back in 2007
I ate it.
Reading about the collapse of traditional Tamil fisheries.
Alternate form of chaos. I was just guessing.
I remember reading this in "A Swiftly Tilting Planet," one of the sequels to "A Wrinkle in Time."
Encountered Obelia as a fascinating little marine hydroid. I like to paraphrase Hamlet, "the fair Obelia". Also remember Little Obelia as a gum-nut baby from May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie books.
I heard Harvey Korman’s character in “Blazing Saddles” say, “Gentlemen, please, rest your sphincters!”
So I tried Hurlocks first, and then Genlocks, imagine my surprise when I found it WAS a word, and not just for Darkspawn.
This is another word from my childhood, Mither/ mithering/ mithered/ mithers. It meant to bother someone or sort of mutter/ sniffle to yourself. It was something you would say to a child. "Stop your mithering"
My grandmother always liked casaba melons, and I thought it was a common term. Imagine my surprise when it was my first Pioneer find!
Once you've seen this word - and the cute spiky animal it represents - it's hard to forget. To be clear though, have not had the privilege of seeing an echidna in the real world. But I've met it in books.
I knew the word before this, but it popped into my head because I was recently watching the TV show Severance, and there's a scene where a character calls another a "feculent moppet." Man, what an all-time insult.
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An old friend of mine, with many and varied interests, got me to take him fossil-hunting a few times (I had the car), and we often found the bullet-shaped belemnites.
I know this word only thanks to Armando Ianucci's "The Death of Stalin". Quorate is used in the first meeting of the Politburo after Stalin's death when everyone is trying their best to overcome their terror of Beria by making minor procedural points!
From my anatomy class in undergrad. It's the pointed end of your breastbone.
While I may not have it, I've heard of it before, and why microphilia isn't here, well it's quite a sore.
Egg have yolk
I'm a chorister myself - I think that's why this word stuck in my head when I first read it.
I just finished reading a book called "The End of Drum Time" about the Sami people of Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Yoiking is a traditional style of vocalization that evokes or calls up the essence of a person or thing. At least that's my limited understanding.
I recently read Lolita and boy does H.H. have a huge vocabulary, with some of the words being ... creepy. This is one of the creepy ones. Seared into my brain forevermore.
I was watching Taskmaster and the tall British man called spit "flob" and I threw that at the Outlier wall hoping it would stick. Turns out, it did!
I wrote a short story involving the moon turning into a shark, and a proofreader used this word to describe the bad science of my writing. I went, "Oh that'll score well in Outlier" and here we are!
In minature painting, if you prime a miniature with black and then hit it from above with white, that's considered a zenithal highlight, so that's how I learned this one. I assume it has more interesting definitions outside of this context that I do not know.
I cheated one day and looked at the top scoreboard of someone else and went, "wait how is this a word? It's just an alternate spelling this is stupid" then abused my newfound knowledge for high points.