An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents

Ahoy, my sea whisperers, and welcome back! Today we go to the depths of the Arctic seas, to explore a creature both mystical and beautiful - sometimes referred to as the sea unicorn, today’s word is: narwhal.A narwhal is a type of whale found in Canadian Arctic, Greenlandian, and Russian waters, that is distinctive due to the tusk that protrudes from its head. It is, in fact, a canine tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw, through the lip, and forms a left-handed helix spiral. The tusk is found in around fifteen percent of female narwhals but is far less common. It has been deduced that the tusk has no critical function, as females live to be the same age or longer, but proposed functions include use of the tusk as a weapon, for opening breathing holes in sea ice, in feeding, and as an acoustic organ. They have been known to dive as deep as 800 meters up to fifteen times a day, and have been recorded diving as deep as 1500 meters, one of the deepest known dives of all marine animals. Narwhals do not have a dorsal fin, which is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation to swimming easily under ice, to facilitate rolling, or to reduce surface area and heat loss.The word ‘narwhal’ comes from the Old Norse word ‘nár’, meaning ‘corpse’ and ‘hvalr’ meaning ‘whale’. This is supposedly in reference to the whale’s pigmentation, which is grey and mottled, similar to that of a drowned sailor. Adding to the comparison of this cheery image is the narwhal’s summertime habit of ‘logging’, where the whale will lie still at or near the surface of the sea. The scientific name, ‘Monodon monoceros’, is of Greek derivation, and means ‘one-tooth, one-horn’, where ‘mono’ means ‘one’, ‘don’ means ‘tooth’ - as in orthodontist, and ‘ceros’ means ‘horn’ - as in rhinoceros. (the ‘rhino’ in rhinoceros means ‘nose’ as in ‘rhinoplasty’.) Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good day to you, sparkling people of the word, and welcome back! Today’s word is for my social butterflies, my people persons, and my extroverts. Don’t worry my darling, introverts, you can listen to this one too, but today’s word might not be one you associate with, as today’s word is: anthropophilia.Anthropophilia is a biological word which means ‘to prefer human beings over animals.’ More specifically, it can refer to a parasite or dermatophyte preferring humans over animals, such as mosquitoes, who prefer the blood of humans, or dermatophytic fungi, that prefers to grow on humans. It can also refer to animals that prefer to live close to humans rather than in nature, such as geckoes or cockroaches. The word ‘anthropophilia’ comes from the Ancient Greek ‘anthropo’ meaning ‘man or human’ and ‘philia’ meaning ‘fraternal love’, thus, the love of humans. Cute? Gross? You be the judge.Sexual anthropophilia is a sexual attraction to humans developed by birds or mammals who imprint when being raised by humans in close contact. One example is a female giant panda from the London Zoo named Chi Chi, who refused to mate with a male panda when taken to the Moscow Zoo, but made a ‘full sexual self-presentation’ to a zookeeper.A similar word, ‘anthophilia’, is used to refer to the colloquial ‘furries’, or ‘sexual attraction to non-human but humanoid creatures’. Urban Dictionary states that ‘extreme cases of anthrophilia cause the impure to disregard gender when it comes to their sexual preference, and may cause them to find human men/women boring in comparison thereby removing sexuality from humans.’ Hopefully that made more sense to you than it did to me.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello my little lambs, and thanks for being with me once again! Today I ask you to dig out your valuables, take down those old paintings, and find that weird tchotchke Nanna gave you for your sixteenth birthday, because who knows? It might be worth something. We may just find out as we explore today’s word: impignorate.Impignorate is a word meaning ‘to pawn or mortgage something’ and comes from the Latin ‘pignoration’, which is from ‘pignoratio’ from ‘pignerate’ meaning ‘to pledge’. For example, you might say, ‘I wish to impignorate this weird tchotchke from my Nanna, as I cannot tell whether it is a naked lady or a melted Empire State Building, and I would prefer the money in any case.’ Next time, perhaps think to clarify with your Nanna when she gives it to you.Robert Louis Stevenson, uses the word in what might be called a fair better example, used here in a letter to a friend from Honolulu in 1889: ‘I have got the yacht paid off in triumph, I think; and though we stay here impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us no extra help from home.’A similar word, ‘pawn’ means ‘to pledge, stake or wager’ comes from Middle French ‘pan’ meaning ‘pledge or security’ and is comparable to Middle Dutch ‘pant’, and Old High German ‘pfant’. Similarly, there is ‘hock’ meaning ‘to leave with a pawnbroker as security for a loan’, which comes from the Dutch word ‘hok’ meaning ‘hutch, hovel, jail, pen, or doghouse’. It’s also comparable to the Middle English ‘hukken’ meaning ‘to sell; peddle; sell at auction’. Anyone else ready for an episode of ‘Pawn Stars’, the reality TV series from 2009 that ran for a whole seventeen seasons? Yep, me too. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Servus, my lovely literary loves, and thank you for listening in once again! You may have guessed by European greeting, that we are once again heading to the wonderful land of Germany, to explore today’s nifty word: treppenwitz.Treppenwitz is a German word meaning ‘a clever remark that comes to mind when it’s too late to say it’. You might, for example, be lying in bed one night, when the rap battle of the previous day drifts to mind, and you experience treppenwitz, as you suddenly think of a better rhyme than you first uttered to fit the first line about your opponent’s dog looking like a squashed bagel. Ah well. You’ll get ‘em next time. The word ‘treppenwitz’ comes from the German words ‘treppe’ meaning ‘stairs’ and ‘witz’ meaning ‘wit or joke’; thus, staircase wit, or a remark thought of only too late. It is a calque produced from the French expression ‘l’esprit de l’escalier’ which means ‘mind of the staircase’. During a dinner at the home of a statesman, Denis Diderot was left speechless by a remark made to him. He wrote, ‘a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again at the bottom of the stairs’, and thus the idea of the ‘staircase mind’ - thinking of something only when the moment has passed. ‘Espirit’ in French means ‘mind’ or ‘immaterial or incorporeal substance’ and ‘escalier’ means ‘stairs’. If we return to the German, the word ‘treppe’ comes from Middle High German ‘trappe’, which is from Old High German ‘trappa’, and possibly from Proto-Indo-European ‘*dremb-’ meaning ‘to run’. ‘Witz’ comes from the from Old High German ‘wizzi’, from Proto-Germanic ‘*witją’, in turn from Proto-Indo-European ‘*weyd-’ which means ‘see or know’. And it all makes sense.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Salutations, you beautiful thing, you, and thank you for joining me once again. No, I’m not sick, and it’s not the mumps. In fact, cast the viral infection that affects the salivary glands, easily preventable by vaccination FAR from your mind, as we explore today’s word: mumpsimus.‘Mumpsimus’ is a word to describe ‘a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong’. Okay, bring the mumps back into your mind as I provide you with this example: you might say, ‘Geraldine is being a real mumpsimus - she insists on not vaccinating young Sammy for mumps even though we’ve given her numerous pamphlets detailing scientific research, procedures and outcomes!’. Okay, you can forget the mumps again now. Thank goodness none of us know a mumpsimus like that, right?The origin of this word is rather clever - it’s a malapropism, or incorrect but amusing adaption of the word ‘sumpsimus’ which means ‘adherence to or persistence in using a strictly correct term in rejection of a more common, but technically incorrect, form. The story goes that an illiterate priest used ‘mumpsimus’ instead of ‘sumpsimus’ during mass, and when someone attempted to correct him, he replied that he ‘would not change his old mumpsimus for his critic’s new sumpsimus’. Perhaps the first time we see it in writing is 1530, where William Tyndale's book ‘Practice of Prelates’ states that the men whom Cardinal Wolsey had asked to find reasons why Catherine of Aragon was not truly the wife of King Henry VIII of England were "all lawyers, and other doctors, mumpsimuses of divinity”’. An excellent use, I think you’ll agree. In 1883, John Burgon commented on errors in translations in the bible, ‘If men prefer their 'mumpsimus' to our 'sumpsimus', let them by all means have it: but pray let them keep their rubbish to themselves—and at least leave our SAVIOUR's words alone.’ Oof. Heated stuff. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A warm and sunshiney day to you, dear listener, and thank you for joining me once again! Today, we’re thinking sunflowers, we’re thinking lemons, we’re thinking rubber ducks, taxis and bananas! Have you guess it? Today’s word is: yellow.Believe it or not, the word for the colour yellow has a long and tangled evolution. Hope you’re wearing your best yellow boots, because here comes the etymology of ‘yellow’: from Middle English ‘yelwe’ or ‘yelou’, from Old English ‘ġeolwe’, which is an oblique form of of Old English ‘ġeolu’, which is in turn from Proto-West Germanic ‘*gelu’, which itself is from the Proto-Germanic ‘*gelwaz’, which, in turn, is from the Proto-Indo-European ‘*ǵʰelh₃wos’ meaning ‘gleam or yellow’. Still with me? There’s more! You can compare the origins of yellow to: the Welsh ‘gwelw’ meaning ‘pale’, Latin ‘helvus’ meaning ‘dull yellow’, the Irish ‘geal’ meaning ‘white or bright’, the Ancient Greek ‘khlōrós’ meaning ‘light green’, and the German ‘gelb’, meaning, of course, yellow. These words can be traced back to a few different ideas or meanings, including gold and shining. The word yellow can also be used to describe a coward, or someone weak or scared. The origins of this are debated, and rather unclear. Some surmise that it comes from yellow-bellied birds such as the sapsucker, or even eels or fish. Some say it goes back to a derogatory slang for certain races, or as a way to describe people living in remote areas with a pale or sickly complexion. Another guess is that it refers to a gut related illness or even jaundice, describing the colour of...well, certain biles or bodily fluids. It’s anyone’s guess, really.Yellow can also be used in conjunction with journalism, to describe a kind of false storytelling, usually bundled with sensational headlines, exaggerated facts, rumours, and even scare tactics. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hola my little prickly pears! Thank you for joining me as we take a trip to Mexico to explore one of the world’s favourite fruits and today’s word: . I’m sure you’re familiar - avocado is a fruit with a soft, squishy centre, often mushed to make guacamole or spread on toast with a smattering of feta and offered for an increasingly high price by small cafe owners. The word ‘avocado’ is from the Spanish ‘aguacate’, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word ‘āhuacatl’. This Nahuatl word could also mean ‘testicle’, likely due to the similarities between the fruit and the body part in shape and appearance. This word can be combined with other words - for example ‘ahuacamolli’, meaning avocado soup or sauce, from which the word guacamole derives. Today’s English word ‘avocado’ comes from a rendering of the Spanish ‘aguacate’ as ‘avogato’, first written in English in 1697 as ‘avogato pear’. This was later corrupted to ‘alligator pear’, a term still used by many to describe avocados in the Southern USA and the Caribbean. Some guess that ‘alligator’ also refers to the likeness of texture or rough green skin of both alligators and avocados. Because the first translation ‘avogato’ sounds like ‘advocate’, many languages reinterpreted the word avocado to share this meaning. The French word for avocado is ‘avocat’, which also means lawyer, comparable to the Dutch word ‘advocaatpeer’. In India, the avocado is referred to as ‘butter fruit’. In Australia, avocado is commonly shortened to ‘avo’, a colloquialism that has also become popular in South Africa in the United Kingdom, but one that also causes confusion between the regularly used ‘arvo’ - an Australian abbreviation for afternoon. Afternoon on toast anyone?Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good day to you, my sweet smelling flowers of language! Today we journey to the centre of your very face, to the nose! To explore today’s word: macrosmatic. ‘Macrosmatic’ is a word meaning ‘to have a good sense of smell.’ You know that one person who goes, ‘Has Terrence been over lately? I swear I can smell his eau de cologne’, when in fact Terrence hasn’t been over in at least five weeks. Creepy.‘Macrosmatic’ is made up of ‘macro’ meaning ‘large or long’ and ‘osmatic’ meaning ‘relating to the sense of smell’; thus, large sense of smell. Macro comes from the Ancient Greek ‘makrós’ meaning ‘long’. You might, for example, have had the misfortune of studying macroeconomics in your first year of business studies, which relates to the ‘branch of economics concerned with large-scale or general economic factors, such as interest rates and national productivity.’ ‘Osmatic’ comes from the French osmatique, supposedly coined by one Paul Broca, and from the Greek ‘osmē’ meaning ‘smell, scent, odor’. One can also be microsmatic: having little sense of smell, or anosmatic: lacking the sense of smell entirely.Let us take a moment to examine the word we use to describe the place all smells are smelt - the nose! ‘Nose’ comes from Old English ‘nosu’, from Proto-Germanic ‘*nusō’. My favourite comparison is to the Norwegian ‘nos’ meaning ‘snout’. ‘Nos’ in Norwegian can also refer to a steep protruding point on a mountain. The word ‘nose’ can be used as a verb in many different ways, including to snoop, detect, push or to move cautiously somewhere. It can also mean ‘the bulge on the side of a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, that fits into the hole of its adjacent piece.’ Who knew? Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello hello my shining stars! And thank you for joining me this glowing day and/or night. Today, we are shooting for the stars, aiming for the moon, and flying high in the sky as we look at today’s word: constellate.‘Constellate’, though related to the word ‘constellation’ does not necessarily relate to astronomy, but means ‘to combine as a cluster’. It comes from the Latin ‘constellatus’ meaning ‘starred’, ‘Constellate can also mean ‘to shine with united radiance, or one general light’. Now isn’t that lovely?The related word ‘stellar’, meaning ‘of, pertaining to, or characteristic of stars’, comes from the Latin ‘stēllāris’, which comes from the Proto-Italic ‘*stērolā’ meaning ‘star’. The word ‘constellation’ is similarly derived, and refers to ‘an arbitrary pattern of stars forming in the sky, especially those identified by astronomers.’ It can also refer to astrology, in terms of where the planets are located at one’s time of birth, as used for determining one’s horoscope. ‘The twelve equal divisions of the zodiacal region into signs or houses, each named for a prominent constellation in the region’ is called the ‘zodiac’, or your star sign. The word ‘zodiac’ comes from Old French ‘zodiaque’, from the Latin ‘zōdiacus’, which in turn is from Ancient Greek ‘zōidiakós’ meaning ‘circle of little animals’. In astronomy, however, ‘zodiac’ means ‘the ecliptic: the belt-like region of the celestial sphere corresponding to the apparent path of the sun over the course of a year.’Let us take, for example, my zodiac! I am an aquarius. Aquarius is the 11th zodiac sign from the Latin ‘aquarius’, a loan translation of the Greek ‘Hydrokhoos’ meaning ‘the water-pourer,’, which is also the old Greek name of the constellation for which the house is named. Aquarians were a group of Chistians who drank water instead of wine at the Lord’s Supper, and the ‘Aquarian Age’ is an astrological epoch thought to have begun in the 20th century embodying the traits of this sign and promoting world peace and human brotherhood. You might recognise this concept from the popular song ‘Age of Aquarius’ from 1967, featured in the hit musical ‘Hair’. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A wonderful welcome to you, language lovers, and thank you for joining me today! Today we explore a kind of person, and we have all met one of these - I’m sure you know the type. Annoying, grating, the kind that makes you want to roll your eyes at the nature of the situations they seem to put themselves into. I trust of course, dear listener, that today’s word does not apply to you! Today’s word is: lickspittle.A lickspittle is described as ‘a fawning subordinate; a suck-up’. The kind of person, say, who might pipe up in class to ask a confusing and unnecessary question about the non-required reading, just to prove to the teacher and the class that they actually bothered to do it. Or perhaps it’s the kind of person who inexplicably carries your bag, brings you coffee, and shines your five dollar Kmart shoes, when you don’t require any of these things to be done at that moment, and certainly not by them. The word ‘lickspittle’ is a compound word, made up of ‘lick’ and ‘spittle’, the latter having the meaning ‘saliva’. ‘Spittle’ is an alteration of dialectal ‘spattle’ which comes from the Old English ‘spātl’, which in turn is related to ‘spǣtan’ which can mean ‘to spit’ or ‘to squirt’. Ew. The word ‘lick’ comes from Old English ‘liccian’, from Proto-West Germanic ‘*likkōn’, and can be compared to Old Irish ‘ligid’, the Latin ‘lingō’ or ‘ligguriō’ meaning ‘to lap or lick up’, and the Ancient Greek ‘leíkhō’. ‘Lick’ has multiple meanings as both a noun and a verb, and can be used to connote a range of things from the literal ‘licking of an ice cream’ to the more musical ‘guitar licks’ all the way to describing something small, like ‘a lick of good luck’. Isn’t language wonderful? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good day to you, or should I say good evening to you, my little literary dreamers. Get your coziest pyjamas on, your bunny slippers, your favourite teddy bear and take a deep breath, as we prepare to take on today’s word: somniphobia.‘Somniphobia’ is the fear of going to bed, or extreme anxiety with the thought of sleeping or falling asleep. It is also known as hypnophobia, clinophobia, sleep anxiety, or sleep dread. It can be related to a fear of the unknown, concern with a ‘lack of control’ whilst sleeping, or worrying that one might not hear a loved one call out in pain or trouble whilst one is asleep. Sleep paralysis and nightmare disorders are two of the causes of somniphobia, although it is linked to many other forms of anxiety and fears. Common symptoms of somniphobia include a feeling of fear when thinking about sleeping, experiencing distress at bedtime, avoiding going to bed altogether, having panic attacks when it’s time to sleep, irritability or mood swings, and having a hard time remembering things. There can also be physical symptoms, including nausea, a tightness in the chest, and sweats, chills or hyperventilation. Children with somniphobia will often cry, become clingy, and ask not to be left alone. The word ‘somniphobia’ comes from the Latin words ‘somnus’ and ‘phobia’. ‘Somnus’ means ‘sleep’ or ‘drowsiness’, and comes from Proto-Italic ‘*swepnos’, meaning ‘to sleep’. It can also take on the figurative meaning ‘death’. Though not quite an antonym, chronophobia is a related fear - the fear of time. Chronophobia is an irrational fear of both time and the passing of time, and can include a fear of watches, clocks and other timepieces. It comes from the Latin word for time - ‘chronos’. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Goooooooooooood daaaaaaaaaaaaay to youuuuuuuuu, listeneeeeeeerrrrrr and thaaaaaank you for joining usssssssss today. You might think I’m speaking rather oddly, or even slowly today, dear listener, and you would be right, as I have been inspired by today’s word: sloth.The ‘sloth’ is a type of mammal noted for their slow movement, who live in the tropical rainforests of Central and South America. They spend most of their lives hanging upside down in trees, and are closely related to anteaters. With a low metabolism, sloths have a low-energy diet of leaves, and though they are terrible on the ground, can hang from trees easily and even swim. They have a shaggy coat with grooved hair, and host green algae which helps them to camouflage, hiding from predatory hawks and cats. The word ‘sloth’ comes from the Middle English ‘slouthe’ or ‘slewthe’ meaning ‘laziness’, from the Old English ‘slǣwþ’, also meaning ‘laziness’ or ‘indolence’, which in turn is from the Proto-Germanic ‘*slaiwiþō’ meaning ‘slowness’ or ‘lateness’. As well as being the word for the aforementioned mammal, ‘sloth’ can also mean ‘laziness; slowness in the mindset; disinclination to action or labour’, or more rarely, is used for the collective noun for bears, as in ‘a sloth of bears came by and attacked the camping ground.’ No official collective noun for a group of sloths is recorded, although some that are used include a ‘slumber’ of sloths, a ‘snuggle’ of sloths, or my personal favourite, a ‘bed’ of sloths. Sloth is also one of the seven deadly sins - a Catholic list of cardinal sins from the 13th century. It is described as the ‘sin of omitting responsibility’ in contrast to the other sins, which are generally speaking immoral in nature. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ciao ciao, my bellas! I hope you’re ready for some pizza and pasta, for today we journey to Italy, to explore the word: cantastoria.‘Cantastoria’ is an Italian word which is a ‘theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be painted, printed or drawn on any sort of material.’ The word comes from the Italian for ‘story-singer’; ‘canta’ meaning ‘to sing’ and ‘history or story’. ‘Cantare’ comes from the Latin ‘canō’ meaning, ‘I sing’, and with the suffix ‘tō’ becomes ‘cantō’ which means ‘I sing’, but can also mean ‘I exchange, or call forth by charms, chant’. ‘Storia’ is from the Old Italian ‘istoria’, which in turn is from the Latin ‘historia’, from Ancient Greek ‘historía’, which means ‘learning through research’. Though the word is Italian, ‘cantastorias’ originated in 6th century India, where religious tales called ‘saubhikas’ were performed by storytellers who travelled from house to house with banners painted with pictures of Gods. ‘Yamapapaka’ was a similar style of storytelling, where performers with vertical cloth scrolls sung stories of the afterlife. Some of these stories continue to be performed by the Chitrakar women of West Bengal today.Heading back to 16th century Italy, prayers would be sung next to illuminated scrolls as ‘cantastorias’, whilst the secular folks created ‘cantambanco’ or ‘singing bench’, where the performer would point to pictures with a stick whilst standing on a bench. Up until the 19th century there were blind men in Spain with a young ‘helper’ who would make their living by displaying illustrations whilst the blind man would sing a story, often about crimes, while his helper pointed at each illustrations. These were known as ‘romances de ciego’ or ‘blind man stories’.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ciao ciao, my bellas! I hope you’re ready for some pizza and pasta, for today we journey to Italy, to explore the word: cantastoria.‘Cantastoria’ is an Italian word which is a ‘theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be painted, printed or drawn on any sort of material.’ The word comes from the Italian for ‘story-singer’; ‘canta’ meaning ‘to sing’ and ‘history or story’. ‘Cantare’ comes from the Latin ‘canō’ meaning, ‘I sing’, and with the suffix ‘tō’ becomes ‘cantō’ which means ‘I sing’, but can also mean ‘I exchange, or call forth by charms, chant’. ‘Storia’ is from the Old Italian ‘istoria’, which in turn is from the Latin ‘historia’, from Ancient Greek ‘historía’, which means ‘learning through research’. Though the word is Italian, ‘cantastorias’ originated in 6th century India, where religious tales called ‘saubhikas’ were performed by storytellers who travelled from house to house with banners painted with pictures of Gods. ‘Yamapapaka’ was a similar style of storytelling, where performers with vertical cloth scrolls sung stories of the afterlife. Some of these stories continue to be performed by the Chitrakar women of West Bengal today.Heading back to 16th century Italy, prayers would be sung next to illuminated scrolls as ‘cantastorias’, whilst the secular folks created ‘cantambanco’ or ‘singing bench’, where the performer would point to pictures with a stick whilst standing on a bench. Up until the 19th century there were blind men in Spain with a young ‘helper’ who would make their living by displaying illustrations whilst the blind man would sing a story, often about crimes, while his helper pointed at each illustrations. These were known as ‘romances de ciego’ or ‘blind man stories’.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A bright and wonderful day to you, my little chickens! Take a trip to the farm with us today, down on the ol’ homestead, as we discuss today’s word: cockalorum.Cockalorum is a word meaning ‘a boastful and self-important person; a strutting little fellow’. For example, one might say, ‘Look at that cockalorum, eating all the cheese as if he had paid for it himself!’. The origin is not confirmed - it likely comes from the English word ‘cock’ meaning ‘rooster’, with -a- and Latin -lorum suffixed as a fanciful elaboration. It could also originate from a Dutch onomatopoeic dialect term ‘kockeloeren’ which is a word for the cry of a rooster, comparable to ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’. Cockalorum can also mean ‘boastful speech or crowing’ or ‘a game similar to leapfrog’. Come and join me for a game of cockalorum this afternoon, won’t you?The word ‘cock’ itself has over eighteen different recorded meanings, including, ‘a male bird, such as a rooster or pigeon’, ‘the circle at the end of a rink in curling’, ‘a boastful tilt of the hat or head’, and of course, ‘vulgar slang for penis’. The word originated from Old English ‘cocc’, from Proto-Germanic ‘kukkaz’, probably of onomatopoeic origin. This is reinforced by the Old French word ‘coc’, also of imitative origin. The associating of the word ‘penis’ is attested since at least the 1610s, with the compound ‘pillicock’ also meaning ‘penis’ confirmed since 1325. ‘Cock’ can also be used as verb, with several different meanings including ‘to prepare a gun or crossbow to be fired’, ‘to turn something upwards or to one side’, ‘to strut or swagger’, and my personal favourite, ‘to turn the eye obliquely and partially close its lid, as an expression of derision or insinuation’. Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Howdy hey there, partner! Get on down and welcome to An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents! Now did that greeting seem a little odd? Perhaps even crazy? Good! That is precisely what I was going for, as I explain today’s word: pandemonium.The most common usage of pandemonium is the definition stating ‘chaos; tumultuous or lawless violence’, or even ‘an outburst; loud, riotous uproar, especially that of a crowd.’ However, the archaic, and slightly more fantastical meaning is ‘a place where all demons live; hell’. The word was coined John Milton in ‘Paradise Lost,’ and comes from the Ancient Greek ‘pan’ meaning ‘all’ and the Late Latin ‘daemonium’ meaning ‘evil spirit’ or demon’. Thus, we have pandemonium, or ‘all of the evil spirits’.The word ‘demon’ itself comes from Middle English, borrowing from Medieval Latin ‘dēmōn’ meaning ‘familiar spirit’, which in turn is from the Ancient Greek ‘daímōn’ meaning ‘dispenser, god, protective spirit’. Interestingly, the word demon can be used to refer to both an evil supernatural spirit, or a neutral supernatural spirit. The word ‘spirit’ can also be used to describe the soul of a person, or a supernatural being, whether good or evil. ‘Spirit’ comes from the Latin ‘spīritus’ meaning ‘breath; spirit’, which in turn is from Proto-Indo-European ‘*(s)peys-’ meaning ‘to blow’. It can be compared to the English words ‘respire’ as in ‘respiratory system’ and ‘inspire’, ‘to fill with an urge to do something’, both of which originate from the Latin spīrō meaning ‘I breathe, blow, respire’. Thus, spirit relates back to being filled with air or life.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good day to you, humble friend, and a kind and calm welcome to today’s journey to An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquests. Straighten that posture, get into position, and get ready to pray, because today’s word is: mantis.Mantises, or ‘praying mantises’ as they are more commonly known, are an order of insects distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks, and may or may not have wings. All mantises have forelegs that are greatly enlarged and adapted for catching and gripping prey, and are known for their upright posture, while remaining stationary with forearms folded, thus looking as if they are praying. They have stereo vision, and locate their prey by sight, feeding typically on live prey within their reach. They can stalk their prey slowly, or remain stationary and wait for their prey to approach them. Some larger mantises eat smaller individuals of their species, and can even eat lizards, frogs, small birds and fish.The word ‘mantis’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘prophet’ or ‘soothsayer’. This in turn comes from the Ancient Greek word ‘maínomai’ which means ‘I am mad, raving’. Make of that what you will. Mantises were considered to have supernatural powers by early civilisations, including Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Assyria. For the Greeks, it had the ability to show lost travelers the way home; in the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead the ‘bird-fly’ is a minor god that leads the souls of the dead to the underworld. Today, they are often kept as pets, and are commonly bred by their owners, as they have a lifespan of about one year in total.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome welcome, kind friends! And thank you for joining me for today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today we are getting a little scientific, and a little philosophical, so strap yourselves in and prepare to think hard as we discuss today’s word: hylozoism.Hylozoism is ‘the doctrine that all matter has life’ or ‘any system that views all matter as alive, either in itself or by participation in the operation of a world soul or some similar principle.’ I told you we were getting deep today! This view dates back as early as 5th and 6th century Greek philosophers, who considered the magnet to be alive because of its attractive powers, or air as divine because of its spontaneous power of movement, or because of its essentiality for life in animals. The word itself comes from the late 17th century, from ‘hylo’ meaning ‘matter’ and the Greek ‘zōē’ meaning ‘life’.Hylozoism is distinguished from the concept of ‘hylopsychism’ or possessing a mind. This is also known as ‘panpsychism’, which is ‘the view that the mind or mind-like feature is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.’ These two concepts become hard to distinguish in practice, however, because ancient hylozoists regarded the ‘spirits’ of plants and materials alive, and thus conscious. ‘Panpsychism’ comes from the Greek ‘pan’ meaning ‘all, everything, whole’, and ‘psyche’ meaning ‘soul, mind’. The use of psyche is sometimes regarded as controversial in this context because it is often synonymous with ‘soul’, which also gives supernatural connotations. More commonly found words to describe psyche include mind, mental properties, mental aspect, and experience.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Wie geht’s Jungs! Or, how’s it going guys? And welcome to another round of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today, we’re going on a trip to the woods, to connect with nature and become one with ourselves, et cetera, et cetera. Join us, for today’s word is: Waldeinsamkeit.Waldeinsamkeit is a German word meaning ‘the feeling of solitude in the woods’. It is made of the German words ‘wald’ meaning ‘forest’ and ‘einsamkeit’ meaning’ loneliness; thus, ‘forest-loneliness’. The word ‘wald’ comes from Middle High German ‘walt’, from Old High German ‘wald’, which is from the Proto-Germanic ‘walþuz’. It can be related to the Dutch ‘woud’, Old English ‘weald’, and the Old Norse ‘vǫllr’. The word ‘einsam’, meaning ‘lonely’, is made up of the German words ‘ein’ meaning ‘one’ and the suffix ‘sam’ which is used to form adjectives from verbs, nouns and other adjectives. For example, ‘slowly’ in German is ‘langsam’ which comes from ‘lang’ meaning long, and literally translates to ‘long-ly’, which honestly, just makes a lot of sense. The suffix ‘sam’ comes from the Old High German samo, meaning ‘the same’, and also ‘sama’ meaning ‘similarly’. It is comparable to the English suffix ‘some’, as in ‘lonesome’.A related word, ‘zweisamkeit’ means ‘togetherness’ or ‘intimacy between two persons, most often romantic’. This word comes from the word ‘einsamkeit’ but replaces ‘ein’ meaning ‘one’ with ‘zwei’ meaning ‘two’. Sort of romantic if you think about it! ‘Twoliness’...maybe we’ll stick to German.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A good day to you, fellow literary lover, and welcome to today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. We are going to get a little existential here today, so strap yourselves in and prepare for today’s word: onism.‘Onism’ is a rather complex, created word meaning ‘the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, ‘you are here’.’ That definition, taken from our friends at The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, is a rather poetic definition of the word. If we look at the structure, we find that ‘onsim’ is a portmanteau of ‘monism’ and ‘onanism’. ‘Monsim’ is a theory or doctrine that denies the existence of a distinction or duality in a particular sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world; in other words, the belief that only one supreme being, or God, exists. It comes from modern Latin ‘monismus’, which in turn is from the Greek ‘monos’ meaning ‘single’. ‘Onanism’, on the other hand, has a rather succinct meaning: masturbation. It comes from the early 18th century, from French ‘onanisme’ or modern Latin onanismus’, which comes from the name Onan, of the bible verse Genesis 38:9, who practised coitus interruptus.One could suppose, then, that the joining of these two words forms the belief in being or using one body permanently. Another definition for onism is that sudden dreadful realization that you are you, and only you, and stuck in your body and you're not omniscient and the universe is filled with other people just like that but you still can't live their lives and they can't live yours. I told you it was going to get heavy.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why hello there, sumptuous syntax suitors, and welcome to another jolly episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. I must advise you, kind listener, to not use today’s word in polite society, and I hope that indeed you shan’t have any use for it, as today’s word is: foppotee.Foppotee is a word from the 1600s meaning ‘simpleton’. A common example is ‘What a pitiful foppotee he was, always oblivious to our jeers!’ The word has fallen out of popularity, and its origins are unknown, however I personally deem it worthy enough to be brought back, wouldn’t you? (In well acquainted society, of course.) The word ‘simpleton’ can be defined as ‘a person lacking common sense’ and comes from ‘simple’ and ‘ton’, as in a surname. It is also attributed to an abbreviation ‘simple Tony’ or ‘Anthony’ according to the Grose 1811 Dictionary. The word ‘simple’ comes from Middle English ‘symple’, from Old French ‘simple’, which is in turn from the Latin ‘simplex’. ‘Simplex’, has the literal meaning ‘onefold’, as opposed to the Latin ‘duplex’ meaning ‘double’ or literally ‘twofold’. The word ‘simplex’ comes from ‘semel’ meaning ‘the same’ and ‘plicō’ meaning ‘I fold’. I hope I took that far enough back for you. You’re welcome.The word ‘simple’, ironically enough, is not simple in terms of its definitions; in fact it has several different definitions including: ‘Uncomplicated; taken by itself, with nothing added’; ‘Without ornamentation; plain’; ‘Free from duplicity; guileless, innocent, straightforward’; ‘Undistinguished in social condition; of no special rank’; and of course, the relevant definition to today’s word, ‘Feeble-minded; foolish’. In mathematics, ‘simple’ refers to ‘having no normal subgroup’, and in chemistry, ‘consisting of one single substance, uncompounded’. Another definition refers to steam engines, where simple means ‘Using steam only once in its cylinders, in contrast to a compound engine, where steam is used more than once in high-pressure and low-pressure cylinders.’Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A blessed day, word whisperers, and welcome to another installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today, praise be, we look at a word that you might say is ‘holier than thou’, for today’s word is: hagiomania.Hagiomania is the obsession with saints and sainthood. ‘Hagio’ means ‘saint’, from the Ancient Greek ‘hágios’ meaning ‘holy or saintly’, paired of course with the familiar ‘mania’ meaning ‘compulsion or obsession’. The word ‘saint’ itself means ‘a person whom a church or another religious group has officially recognised as especially holy or godly; one eminent for piety and virtue’, or can simply mean ‘one of the blessed in heaven’. Some famous saints you might recognise (or obsess over, you hagiomaniac) include Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland whom many celebrate on March 17; Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, known for his love of animals; Saint Nicholas, patron of the Russian Orthodox Church, known widely in secular terms as Santa Claus; and, of course, Mary, the Blessed Virgin, considered the greatest saint as the mother of Jesus.According to ‘The Athenaeum: A Magazine of Literary and Miscellaneous Information’ of 1807, ’One regular symptom of hagiomania (if the word may be allowed) is the desire of martyrdom. Luisa began to experience it about the age of seventeen. Frequent meditations upon the sufferings of Christ led to this; her favourite day-dream was to imagine that she was enduring torments for the sake of the Catholic faith…’ Sooooo...hopefully that clears that up for you.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A most pleasant day to you today, my word worms! Welcome to another joyous episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Now to examine today’s word, we need to first get something out of the way. ‘Serendipity’ is the seminal classic 2001 film starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack, which follows the romance between a New Yorker and a British woman as they let fate determine if they are meant to be together. Years later, they hope that destiny reunites them. Today, however, we are not talking about that ‘Serendipity’, dear listener, but I can confirm for you, that today’s word is: serendipity.‘Serendipity’ is a word meaning ‘the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way’. The first recorded use in the English language comes from Horace Walpole in 1754, who wrote to his friend, also named Horace, go figure, to explain an unexpected discovery he made about a lost painting by Giorgio Vasari that references a Persian fairy tale, ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’. According to Walpole, the prices were ‘always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.’ ‘Serendip’ is an old name for Sri Lanka, also known as ‘Sarandib’ by Arab traders. It’s derived from the Sanskrit ‘Siṃhaladvīpaḥ’.One might also refer to a serendipitous invention; that is, one that is caused by chance rather than intent. Examples of serendipitous inventions include the Post-It, silly putty, velcro, and the popsicle. Now I ask you, how could we ever survive a piping hot summer without the popsicle? Thank goodness for serendipity!Serendipity’s antonym is ‘zemblanity’, which means’ making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design’, or, put simply, ‘an unpleasant surprise’. William Boyd coined this term in the late twentieth century, deriving the term from Novaya Zemlya a cold, barren land with many features opposite to the lush Sri Lanka that serendipity takes its name from.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A hearty good day to you, fellow examiners of English, and welcome to another installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today’s episode is for the chefs out there, particularly those who like to prepare a traditional meal, but with a bit of a twist. Today’s word is: spatchcock.If you happen to have seen season 5 episode 8 of the seminal classic animated television series Bob’s Burgers, you might be familiar with this word, as it is something our titular character tries in his Thanksgiving efforts. ‘Spatchcock’ is a chicken or game bird that is split open and grilled. If one is ‘spatchcocking’, they are placing the chicken or bird face down, cutting away the backbone and discarding it, and then flattening the bird by pressing down on it. You can also purchase a bird that has been pre-spatchocked by the butcher. Spatchcocking is popular because of the overall shorter cooking time, and the quality of taste.The word ‘spatchcock’ is likely derived from the word ‘spitchcock’, which means to split an eel along the back and broil it. Similar, no? Sptichcock is probably a corruption of the words ‘split’ and ‘cook’, which makes sense in the context of both spitchcocking and spatchcocking. The word ‘cook’ comes from the Old English cōc meaning ‘a cook’, from the Latin ‘cocus’, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European ‘*pekʷ-’ meaning ‘to cook; become ripe’. We could also look here at the word ‘cock’, which means ‘male bird’ - and though in spatchcocking one would more likely be cooking a female bird rather than a male, this could point to the origins of the word. An alternative meaning for ‘spatchcock’ is ‘a rushed effort’ or ‘to prepare in haste’, probably derived from the act of spatchocking itself.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A happy, happy day to you, wholesome listener, and a warm welcome to this episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today’s word brings back fond memories for me, of a speech I once gave with a friend in primary school. My dear friend could not pronounce today’s word, and I, the mighty seven year old that I was, took it upon myself to correct her each time. It seems that my love of words began at a young age, dear listener. I digress. Today’s word, pronounceable or unpronounceable as it may be is: genre.Genre is a word meaning ‘a kind; a stylistic category or sort, especially of literature or other artworks.’ Genre could relate to music, movies, art, literature and more, and examples of different genres include horror, romance, rock and roll, comedy, jazz, sculpture and go on and on and on. They could be as plain as ‘fiction’ or as specific as ‘1920s zombie parody haikus’. Sky’s the limit, really.The word genre is borrowed from the French word ‘genre’ meaning ‘kind’, which comes from the Latin ‘genus’ or ‘generem’, from the Ancient Greek ’génos’. The Latin ‘genus’ has several meanings, including ‘birth or origin’, ‘kind, type or class’, ‘species of animal, plant or race’, and ‘set or group’. So, just as ‘genus’ describes the species or type of animal, ‘genre’ describes the area or type of book, art, music and so on.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A wonderful day to you, lovely listener, and a warm welcome to this installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloqents. Buh boom, buh boom - can you hear that, dear friends? If you can, today’s word might just apply to you, because today’s word is: rubatosis.Rubatosis is word meaning ‘the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.’ The definition you just heard comes from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, and was posted in 2012. The word is supposedly from ‘rubato’ meaning ‘a tempo in which strict timing is relaxed, the music being played near, but not on, the beat’ and ‘sis’ which refers to ‘forming nouns of action or process’. The word ‘rubato’ comes from the Italian word for ‘robbed or stolen’, and gives to the aforementioned meaning ‘since the time is "borrowed"’. Indeed, the word rubato is mentioned in music where the musician should play ‘near, but not on, the beat’.Another great Italian term used in music to refer to tempo is ‘a piacere’ which instructs the musician to play ‘at their own discretion with regard to tempo and rhythm; literally ‘at pleasure’. The word ‘piacere’ is Italian for ‘to be pleasing to’ or ‘to be fond of’, and as such was adapted to relate to the musical tempo of the performer’s choosing. There is also‘ma non troppo’ which means ‘not too much’. It is used to indicate that the basic tempo should be reigned in to a degree; for example, adagio ma non troppo to means ‘slow, but not too slow’. In Italian, ‘troppo’ means ‘too much’. Interestingly, in Australian colloquial language, ‘going troppo’ refers to someone being crazy, or going too far.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

G’day mates! Good on ya for joinin us for another bonza ep of An Assemblage of Granidose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Dear listener, I promise that that is as colloquially a greeting as you will ever receive - and it is warranted, for today, we are headed down under to the wild and wonderous Australia for today’s word: wombat.Cheery listener, if you have never seen a wombat, I implore you to stop what you are doing and get to googling (please park your vehicle as necessary before proceeding, thank you). The wombat is a short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupial that is native to Australia. Wombats dig extensive burrow systems with their rodent-like front teeth and powerful claws. One distinctive adaptation of wombats is their backward pouch, the advantage of which is that when digging, the wombat does not gather soil in its pouch over its young. Although mainly crepuscular and nocturnal, wombats may also venture out to feed on cool or overcast days. They are not commonly seen, but leave ample evidence of their passage treating fences as minor inconveniences to be gone through or under, and leaving distinctive cubic feces. Also, they are very cute. Again, please google.The word wombat comes from the Dhurag language, which referred to them as wambad, wambaj, or wambag. This language is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Yuin–Kuric group that was traditionally spoken in the region of Sydney, New South Wales. The Darug population was greatly and tragically diminished with the onset of colonisation. During the 1990s and the new millennium some descendants of the Darug clans in Western Sydney have been making considerable efforts to revive Dharug as a spoken language, and some modern Dharug speakers have given speeches in the Dharug language, with younger members of the community visiting schools and giving demonstrations of spoken Dharug. It is so important to preserve and capture the history of language for all communities and dialects.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dia duit, or hello to you, wonderful listeners, and welcome to another episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. For those of you are unsure, that there greeting came from the Gaelic language, which just so happens to be the origin of today’s word: whiskey.Whiskey! I’m going to guess most of you are familiar with this word, but for those that aren’t, whiskey is a liquor distilled from the fermented mash of grain, such as rye, corn, or barley. It is a drink that is enjoyed globally, and can be drunk straight, on ice or mixed with other liquors or beverages.The word itself is borrowed from the Irish ‘uisce beatha’, from the Scottish Gaelic ‘uisge-beatha’ which literally means ‘water of life’, which in turn is from the from Proto-Celtic ‘udenskyos biwotos’ which means ‘water life’. Still with me? It can further be traced back to the Latin ‘aqua vitae’ once again meaning ‘water life’. This phrase was often used to describe alcoholic beverages - that is, water that is alive. You get the idea.Whiskey is produced all over the world, and is often distinguished by where it was brewed. Some famous brands of whiskey include Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey, Fireball Cinnamon Whisky, Jim Beam Bourbon Whiskey, Jameson Irish Whiskey, and Maker’s Mark Bourbon Whisky. You can see just from the names that many of these companies choose to identify their brewing origin in the name. Bourbon whiskey in particular is a type of American bourbon, usually made out of corn. Irish whiskey, on the other hand, must be distilled on the island of Ireland from a mash of malted cereals. Scotch whisky is malt whisky or grain whisky made in Scotland, and all Scotch whisky must be aged in oak barrels for at least three years. The more you know!Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Howdy hi hello to you, my heroic heartbreakers! Thank you for joining me for another installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandilouquents! If you have a particularly witty friend, a habit of watching comedy specials, or you really enjoy this podcast, today’s word might serve as useful to you, for today’s word is: sottisier.Sottisier is ‘a collection of jokes or stupid comments’. You might say, for example, ‘Enough with that sottisier, Timothy, you must go upstairs and finish your homework!’ It comes from the French word ‘sottise’ meaning ‘stupidity or foolishness’, which in turn comes from the Middle French ‘sot’ meaning ‘imbecile or fool’. If we progress back even further, ‘sot’ comes from the Old French ‘soz’, from Medieval Latin ‘sottus’ meaning ‘foolish’, which is of uncertain origin possibly a Semitic borrowing from Aramaic or Hebrew words meaning trangresor, rebel or drunkard. You can see where this is going.Some other wonderful French phrases include ‘Ah, la veche!’ meaning ‘oh, my cow!’ which, as an expression of surprise or excitement would be equivalent to ‘oh my God!’, ‘devenir chêvre’ literally meaning ‘to become a goat’, or in other words, ‘to be driven mad’, and ‘tombre dans les pommes’ which literally means ‘to fall in the apples’, or to fall asleep straight away. A personal favourite of mine is ‘Être sur son 31’ which means ‘to be on their 31’ - an expression meaning to put on beautiful or elegant clothes. Movie stars attending the Cannes Film Festival are often said to be ‘on their 31’. You might equate it to one being ‘dressed to the nines’.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good day to you all, bodacious bookworms! Welcome to this episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today we are examining what is referred to as a ‘made up word’, and I know what you might be thinking, ‘well, aren’t all words made up?’ and though in a way you are correct, cheery listener, some words have evolved from many centuries over time, and passed through several languages before becoming the established word we know today. Other words are simply made up, created in modern space out of almost nowhere. Today’s word is an example of such a word; today’s word is: vellichor.Vellichor is ‘the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time’. As previously mentioned, this word is invented, or created, rather than having evolved through time and language. Vellichor is notably found in ‘The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows’, by John Koenig,which is an ongoing online collection of invented words, each representing an attempt to find a word to fit a concept for which our vocabulary is currently lacking. You could say, ‘Goodness me, this store just fills me with vellichor, how about you?’ The word seems to begin appearing on Twitter somewhere in 2013.Other words that feature on The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows include ‘lillo’, a friendship that can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly, as if no time had passed since you last saw each other, ‘scabulous’, proud of a scar on your body, which is an autograph signed to you by a world grateful for your continued willingness to play with her, even when you don’t feel like it and ‘opia’, the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome linguistophiles! Today I have a tale to tell you about the word “Allodoxaphobia”. Allodoxaphobia is an extremely rare phobia; that is, the phobia of the opinions of other people.The phobia is believed to be associated with previous encounters wherein the person affected has not been able to properly express themselves, or has been mocked for their opinion. It is most obvious in social situations when the Allodoxaphobic refuses to involve themselves in discussions or shows a fear of confrontation.The origin of the word comes from the Greek ‘allo’ (or állos meaning ‘different’), ‘dox’ (dóxa meaning ‘opinion’ or ‘way’) and phobia (meaning ‘fear’, obviously).Doxa is an interesting example of a Greek linguistic root. It gives us such modern words as ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodoxy’ and comes from the Ancient Greek verb ‘dokein’ meaning ‘to appear’, ‘to seem", "to think" and "to accept". In a more general sense ‘doxa’ is a common belief or popular opinion and in classical rhetoric, ‘doxa’ is often contrasted with ‘episteme’, which means ‘knowledge’. Therefore these two words demonstrate for us the difference between belief and knowledge.The really interesting thing is that between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC ‘doxa’ picked up a new meaning. when the Septuagint, that is a Greek version of the Bible, translated the Hebrew word for "glory" (kavod) as doxa. This translation went on to be proliferated by the early church.The effects of this new meaning of doxa as "glory" are made evident by the ubiquitous use of the word throughout the New Testament and in the worship services of the Greek Orthodox Church. So you see what has happened here? Doxa went on a little linguistic journey in meaning from ‘belief’ to ‘glory’ all the way around and back to ‘belief’.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings Word-Friends! I have a treat for you today, one of the most famous animals of all time, indeed, so famous that it’s name is synonymous with the concept of death and indeed, total extinction. My friends, I present to you the Dodo.The dodo’s scientific name is Raphus cucullatus and was a flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius. Now that, my friends is an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Taxonomically the dodo is related to the pigeon, and since the 1600’s unfortunately no longer exists on planet earth as anything other than a pleasantly goofy, avian, memory.The origin of the word ‘dodo’ is a little bit controversial. The name may be related to the Dutch word ‘dodaars’, a water bird known in English as the Little Grebe or Dabchick. Little Grebes resemble the dodo in feathers and in the fact that they are also clumsy walkers. The Dutch are known to have initially called the bird the ‘walgvogel’, literally meaning ‘ghastly bird’, in reference to the way it tasted. But adding to the mystery of where the dodo's name came from is the fact that ‘dodo’ had been part of the English language since at least 1628, and the Dutch are not thought to have reached Mauritius to discover this marvelously awkward bird before 1638.According to The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, ‘dodo’ comes from Portuguese doudo (or more commonly ‘doido’) meaning ‘fool, simpleton, silly, stupid’, or, as an adjective, meaning ‘crazy.’Yet another possibility, as author David Quammen noted in his book The Song of the Dodo, is "that 'dodo' was an onomatopoeic approximation of the bird's own call, a two-note pigeony sound like 'doo-doo'."So while the origin of the word ‘dodo’ is lost in the mists of time it has none-the-less given us a wonderful metaphor for a person or organisation which is very old or has very old-fashioned views or is not willing to change and adapt. And if you want to sound very precocious and wish to use an adjective instead of a noun, you might say that such a person is ‘didine’.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings all of you verbiage affectionados! The word we are examining today is a very pleasant word. Both to hear, and to say, and, by definition to experience for oneself. Or perhaps, it would paradoxically be more correct to say - suffer for oneself. Today we are talking about ‘habromania’, the simple definition of which is “a form of delusional insanity in which the imaginings assume a cheerful or joyous character”.Now, this is a very old word that is not often used today but, to my knowledge doesn’t have an adequate replacement. So, without further ado let us proceed with the easiest of ‘habromania’s’ two root words to track, ‘mania’.‘Mania’ can be used to describe a passion in the zeitgeist, what we might now refer to as a fad. Such as in the sentence, “Du Bellay did not actually introduce the sonnet into French poetry, but he acclimatized it; and when the fashion of sonneteering became a mania he was one of the first to ridicule its excesses.”However, the form we are interested in is the ‘mania’ that has been used since around the 1500s as the second element in compounds expressing particular types of madness; such as ‘nymphomania’, ‘kleptomania’, ‘megalomania’, and our good friend ‘habromania’.In the modern form the word ‘mania’ means "mental derangement characterized by excitement and delusion,". This stems from the Late Latin ‘mania’ meaning "insanity, madness," itself from the Greek ‘mania’ "madness, frenzy; enthusiasm, inspired frenzy; mad passion, fury,".And now the more difficult part, ‘habro’. The closest to a meaning of this root I can find is the modern meaning of the word in the field of Zoology; that of ‘graceful’. And that is it. Simply, ‘graceful’.If we want to get creative we might want to then define ‘habromania’ as being a ‘graceful insanity’, which when compared to things such as ‘megalomania’ might not be as untrue as on first inspection.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings word-fiends! Today we tackle one of the famous impossible to translate words! A word famous for having no English counterpart, who’s very essence is beyond the tongue of an Englishman. We are talking about the word ‘gigil’ that originates from the Filipino language in the Philippines.The Constitution of the Philippines states that the nation has two official languages, both English and Filipino. However Tagalog deserves a mention and this tongue is the basis of the Filipino language.Most simply ‘gigil’ is used to describe a feeling that is most familiar to perfumed and lipsticked aunts and great-aunts the world over, and indeed, to anyone who frequents those bright corners of the internet where collections of kitten videos are stowed. ‘Gigil’ is the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute. But, upon closer examination we find that this simple definition has a darker side.A more thorough definition of this word would be, “A gnashing or gritting of the teeth, along with a trembling or quivering of the body and tight gripping of the hands, in response to suppressing an overwhelming emotion, such as eagerness, pleasure, thrill, anger, or fondness.”Let us examine this lovely little example of a sentence, “Hindi ko mapigil ang gigil ko sa kanya”. In English this can mean “I cannot resist being angry at him” OR mean the exact opposite, “I cannot resist being fond of him”. In this situation, as with many parts of the Filipino language, the translation depends on the context.There are some 120 to 187 languages and dialects in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. Almost all are Malayo-Polynesian languages. A number of Spanish-influenced creole varieties generally called Chavacano are also spoken in certain communities.There are ways to be more clear though. When a Filipina sees a cute baby, she feels a barely controllable desire to pinch the baby’s cheeks and has a hard time controlling herself. What she’s experiencing is called ‘panggigigil’.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings you wonderful logophiles! Today once more we are delving into that all-too trusty and all-too deep well of insults! I am sure we are all aware of at least one character, either real or fictional, that just does not seem to have the will or the constitution to stand up for what they want. That will let others dance all over them, as they serve their master. Some toxic-masculine types might call these types ‘betas’, others might refer to them as ‘whipped’, but today we shall all refer to them simply by our featured word ‘meacock’.‘Meacock’ is an old word, one that has mostly fallen from common usage. But, that does not mean that we cannot bring it back! Definition-wise ‘meacock’ means simply a coward or an effeminate person. Digging a little deeper we can expand that definition to an uxorious, effeminate, or spiritless man or a meek man who dotes on his wife, or is henpecked.When it comes to the origins of this funny-little-man insult, we are left to speculate. THe best guess is that it is a portmanteau of ‘meek’ and‎ ‘peacock’, or from a mixture of ‘meek’ and the diminutive suffix ‘-cock’. There are many fun insults that use this same suffix, but our personal favourite is ‘niddicock’ which simply means literally, “a foolish person” or figuratively, “a noodle’.Before we leave you let us grace you with this rather wonderful example of ‘meacock’ in context as well as a number of other fun insults. This passage is from the Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, “He will not, trust me, have to deal in my person with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, nor with a silly witless Argus, for all his hundred spectacles, nor yet with the cowardly meacock Acrisius, the simple goose-cap Lycus of Thebes, the doting blockhead Agenor, the phlegmatic pea-goose.”Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings fellow bookworms! Today we explore a topic close to all of our hearts, language. And not just any language, today we are talking about obscene language. More specifically we are talking about the people who enjoy such language in intimate settings. We are talking about ‘narratophilia’Narratophilia is a sexual fetish, in which the telling of dirty and obscene words or stories to a partner is sexually arousing. The term is also used for arousal by means of listening to obscene words and stories.Now, when we refer to obscene language we are sure that is conjures a very vivid image in most of your minds. However the word ‘obscene’ is interesting in and of itself, so before we continue on let us clarify what it means precisely in this context.An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ‘obscaena’ (offstage) a cognate of the Ancient Greek root ‘skene’, because some potentially offensive content, such as murder or sex, was depicted offstage in classical drama. In modernity, the word can now be used to indicate a strong moral repugnance, in expressions such as "obscene profits" or "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to graphic depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity. Which brings us back to our focus ‘narratophilia’.The origins of the word again has two basic roots, ‘narrate’ and ‘philia’. So let us first focus on the more interesting of the two ‘narrato’ or ‘narrator’. In modern English a narrator is one who narrates or tells stories. In literature the narrator is the person or the "voice" whose viewpoint is used in telling a story. And finally, in media a narrator is the person providing the voice-over in a text or documentary. Much like I am doing for you all now.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello again linguisticians! Let us all pause for a moment to consider the wondrous shape of the word we shall be exploring today, Wobbegong. Isn’t it just delightful?The Wobbegong refers to any of a number of species of Australian shark, a carpet shark specifically. The name can refer to any of eight species of bottom-dwelling carpet sharks in the Orectolobidae family, distinguished by their small vegetation-like flaps of skin around their mouth.Wobbegongs are generally not considered dangerous to humans, but have been known to have attacked swimmers, snorkellers and divers who inadvertently came too close to them. The Australian Shark Attack File contains more than 50 records of unprovoked attacks by wobbegongs, and the International Shark Attack File 28 records none of them fatal.Wobbegongs are very flexible and can easily bite a hand holding onto their tail. They have many small but sharp teeth and their bite can be severe, even through a wetsuit; having once bitten, they have been known to hang on and can be very difficult to remove.More upsettingly, while there are a few records of Wobbegongs attacking unprovoked, there are many more instances of unprovoked attacks on wobbegongs: in Australia, the flesh of wobbegongs and other shark species is called flake and it is often the "fish" component of fish and chips. An, in fact, Wobbegong skin is also used to make leather.Now the word Wobbegong is believed to come from an Australian Aboriginal language, meaning "shaggy beard", referring to the growths around the mouth of the shark of the western Pacific. First recorded in 1850–55. And while credit is given to an Australian Aboriginal language, nobody seems quite sure which one.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings Gammarians! Today we are examining the hilarious, sometimes pleasurable and every-so-often deadly, bodily function: sneezing. Now, the word ‘sneeze’ can wait until another day. Today we are talking about the cause of sneezing - ‘sternutators’. This noun can refer to any substance that causes sneezing, coughing, and tears.This word descends from the Latin sternūtātōrius, from sternuō (“sneeze”). The root ‘sternutation’, also Latin, is a descendant of the verb sternuere, meaning "to sneeze."One of the earliest known English uses occurred in a 16th-century edition of a book on midwifery, in a passage about infants suffering from frequent "sternutation and sneesynge." The term has long been used in serious medical contexts, but also on occasion for humorous effect. In 1850, for example, author Grace Greenwood observed that U.S. senators from opposing political parties would often come together to share snuff: "And all three forget their sectional differences in a delightful concert of sternutation. No business is too grave, no speaker too eloquent, to be 'sneezed at.'"In modernity, sternutators have taken on a more sinister aspect in regards to their use as a weapon. Particularly referring to chemical substances that cause sneezing and coughing and crying, for example; "police used a sternutatory to subdue the mob". A Sternutator now most commonly refers to an agent that causes sneezing, especially one used in chemical warfare that causes irritation to the nose and eyes, pain in the chest, and nausea.But to end on a slightly brighter note, let us consider the effect of sneezing on the local wildlife with a quote from "Dick Cheveley" by W. H. G. Kingston, “At the first sternutation the rats jumped up and looked about them, evidently considerably alarmed.”Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello linguisticarians! Today we focus on the most Finnish form of measurement we could find, ‘poronkusema’. In as far as a definition it means a distance of about 5 to 7 kilometres, the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a ‘comfort break’. ‘Poronkusema’ literally means ‘reindeer’s urine’.Finland is the land of a thousand lakes and the midnight sun. Its dense forests, fertile mires and pristine lakes, and traditional lifestyles, have shaped the linguistic landscape of the Finnish language throughout the years, from surname conventions to everyday expressions. One instance of this ever-present connection with nature is this obsolete unit of measurement used by the Sami people to describe the distance a reindeer can travel without having to stop to urinate. It is a compound of two Finnish roots ‘poron’ meaning ‘reindeer's’ and‎ ‘kusema’ meaning ‘peed by’. At best it is an informal traditional measure of distance, and thusly is not well defined.Another interesting example of this sort of Finnish colloquialism is ‘peninkulma’, which refers to the distance a barking dog can be heard in still air.Traced back to the Proto-Finnic languages, ‘poron’ for ‘reindeer’, shares a root with the Latin root ‘pecus’ for ‘cow’, Now, in early times, cattle were viewed as a trading commodity, and property was often valued in terms of cattle. Therefore it is not difficult to trace this same root down another path to ‘Pecunia’ meaning ‘money’ has also given us impecunious, a word meaning "having little or no money," and ‘peculate’, a synonym for "embezzle." In ‘pecus’ you might also recognize the word peculiar, which originally meant "exclusively one's own" or "distinctive" before acquiring its current meaning of "strange."Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello again word-wonderers! In this episode we explore the darker and more ominous side of language, as we examine the word ‘minacious’. ‘Minacious’ is used to describe something that is menacing or threatening.An example in context is “The shuttle traders asked the government to legalize and regulate their vanishing trade and thus to save them from avaricious and minacious customs officials.”First recorded in the 1650s, ‘minacious’ stems from the Latin ‘minaci-’, itself a stem of ‘minax’ "threatening, or menacing", from minari "to threaten;" While it is not a very commonly used word it can still be used as an adverb in ‘minaciously’ or as a noun ‘minacity’.The same is the root for the more common synonym ‘menace’ which is a declaration of hostile intent’ also ‘a threat or act of threatening’. The Latin ‘minaciæ’ or "threatening things," from minax (genitive minacis) "threatening," from minari "threaten; jut, project," as something overhanging, jutting out, over your head, threatening to fall.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Salutations, rambunctious readers! It’s time for another round of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Put away the spray and wipe, the mop and the broom, because today’s word is: ablutophobia.Ablutophobia is a word for the persistent fear of cleaning, washing or bathing. It occurs most frequently in children and women than men, but is not a very common phobia. The word comes from the Latin ‘abluere’ where ‘ab’ means ‘away’ and ‘luere’ meanings ‘wash’, paired of course with our well known Greek ‘phobos’ meaning ‘fear’. You might recognise the phrase ‘morning ablutions’ referring to one’s morning routine, usually consisting of brushing your teeth, showering, washing your face, and other general grooming tasks. Indeed, the word ‘ablute’ means ‘to wash oneself’.In chemistry, ablution originally referred to the purifying of oils and other substances by emulsification with hot water. Now more generally, it means ‘a thorough cleansing of a precipitate or other non-dissolved substance’.Ablution can also refer to ritual purification, and occurs in Christian, Jewish and Islamic practices, among others. In Judaism, ritual washing takes two main forms. ‘Tevilah’ is a full body immersion in a mikveh, and ‘netilat yadayim’ is the washing of the hands with a cup.The Islamic practice, known as ‘Wuḍūʾ’ is the Islamic procedure for wiping parts of the body and involves washing the hands, mouth, nostrils, arms, head and feet with water. There is also ‘ghusl’, the Arabic term referring to the full-body ritual purification mandatory before the performance of various rituals and prayers, and ‘tayammum’, the act of dry ritual purification using a purified sand or dust, which may be performed in place of ritual washing if no clean water is readily available or if one is suffering from moisture-induced skin inflammation or scaling.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Howdy hi there, my sunshiney scholars! Thank you for joining me for another chapter of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. On today’s episode we’re heading down under to Australia, but forget your koalas and kangaroos; today’s word is: platypus.The platypus, sometimes referred to as the duck-billed platypus is a semiaquatic egg-laying mammal native to easter Australia, including the island Tasmania. The platypus is the sole living representative of its family and genus, though a number of related species appear in the fossil record.Platypus - The platypus, sometimes referred to as the duck-billed platypus, is a semiaquatic egg-laying mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. The platypus is the sole living representative of its family and genus, though a number of related species appear in the fossil record. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes - the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. It is also one of the few species of venomous mammals, as the male platypus has a spur on the hind foot that delivers a venom capable of causing severe pain to humans. A truly unique creature, no?The word ‘platypus’ comes from the Ancient Greek ‘platúpous’ meaning ‘flat-footed’. This Greek evolved into the New Latin word ‘Platypus’, which was originally a genus name already in use for a type of beetle, and subsequently adopted for the Australian mammal. ‘Platypussary’ is the word for a place where playtpuses (yes, not platypi) are nurtured.The platypuses scientific name is ‘Ornithorhynchus anatinus’, which is derived from the Greek ‘ornithorhynkhos’, literally meaning ‘bird snout’ in Greek, and ‘anatinus’, which means ‘duck-like’ in Latin. There are also casually referred to as the duckbill, duckmole, and watermole.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Good day to you, kind linguists, and welcome to another round of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Now - some of you may identify with today’s word, and others will not. But I ask you to strap yourselves in, and join with me as we examine today’s word: misogamy.‘Misogamy’, simply put, is the hatred of marriage. It’s a word from the 1650s, from the Modern Latin ‘misogamia’, which in turn is from the Greek ‘misogamos’ meaning ‘hating marriage’. If we delve further into the Greek etymology, we see that ‘misos’ means ‘hate’ and ‘gamos’ meaning ‘marriage’. You might recognise the words ‘polygamy’ or ‘monogamy’ which mean ‘the practice or custom of having more than one wife or husband at the same time’ and ‘the practice of marrying or state of being married to one person at a time’ respectively. Fascinatingly, the usage for ‘misogamy’ peaked in 1989, with a steep fall from 1997 to 1998. I honestly couldn’t tell you why, honest listener, nor do we have the time to unpack the popularity and use of words in the late 1900s, so we’ll just go with it.The idea of misogamy was important in the Christian church during the medieval period as a prerequisite for the celibacy required to occupy the highest positions in the church. It was developed in the philosophy of the Greek Philosopher Theophrastus, the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school, who became the ‘canonical authority on philosophic misogamy throughout the Middle Ages’.There is a quote from the prolific English writer Fergus Hume’s work, ‘The Harlequin Opal, Volume 1’ that reads, ‘Philip, the cynic, enjoyed it greatly, thereby proving that a considerable portion of his misogamy was humbug.’ I think that pretty much sums it up.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

E kuʻu hoaloha! And welcome to today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents! Today we are headed to beautiful, tropical Hawaii, so get out your best swimsuits and your surfboard, because today’s word is: Pana Po’o.Pana Po’o is a word that means ‘to scratch your head in order to help you remember something you’ve forgotten’. For example, you might have misplaced your hairbrush, and as you are searching for it, you might ‘pana po’o’, or scratch your head as you try to remember where it is. It reminds me of when you are playing the popular computer game ‘The Sims’, and you ask your sim to do something, but as they begin to complete the action, you cancel it, and they are confused about why they walked into the room in the first place. That would be an excellent moment to pana po’o.Another great Hawaiin phrase is ‘Kūlia i ka nu’u’ which means ‘strive to reach the highest’ or ‘to do your best’. It implies a value in both achievement and excellence, and could be used to describe the feeling you get after an excellent study session, or the motivation to try a little harder to get something done.‘Wiki’ is the Hawaiin word for fast. At Honolulu Airport, you will see the Wiki Wiki bus that quickly (or not so quickly, as I’ve heard) transports you between the main and the inter-island terminals.Probably one of most famous Hawaiin words is ‘ohana’, the word for ‘family’ made popular by the animated Disney film ‘Lilo and Stitch’. However what you may not know is that the word ‘ohana’ means more than just family - it extends from blood-relatives to ‘adopted’ or ‘chosen’ family and carries with it an implication of respect and cooperation.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Seid gegrüßt, delightful and dedicated listerns, and welcome to another round of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Once again we are headed to the land of bratwurst and hamburgers, as we examine today’s rather pointed word: backpfeifengesicht.Backpfeifengesicht is a word meaning ‘a face badly in need of a fist’, or ‘a face that is slappable’. Pretty self explanatory, I should think. It is from the German ‘backpfeife’ meaning ‘slap in the face’ and ‘geischt’ meaning ‘face’; therefore ‘slap in the face-face’. Could we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that the Germans have an entire word for ‘slap in the face’? Priorities, am I right? In fact, the German punk bank, Die Ärzte, named one of their songs ‘Backpfeifengesicht’ since the lyrics mention a person who apparently has a stupid look on their face that frustrates the singer.‘Backpfeife’ in particular is made up of ‘Backe’ which means ‘cheek’ and ‘pfeifen’ which means ‘to whistle’, so literally ‘cheek whistle’, referring to the sound that is made when someone is slapped on the cheek.Similarly, the word ‘ohrfeige’ means ‘box on the ear or cuff on the ear’, or a figurative ‘slap in the face’, where ‘ohr’ means ‘ear’ and ‘feige’ means ‘fig’. The two are related, as ‘pfeife’ normally means ‘pipe’ or ‘flute’, but in this case it comes from ‘Ohrfeige’ - ‘ear fig’, which is close to the ear, which in turn relates to slap on the face. Are you with me still, joyous listener?If we shift countries for a moment, the phrase ‘tête à claques’ is French for ‘pain in the neck’ or ‘blighter’, and can also be described as ‘someone so annoying that they might deserve to be slapped’. It’s also a French-language humour website created in 2006, if that happens to be your thing.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello hello, my little monsters, and welcome to today’s spooky edition of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. You might be asking yourself, now why is today’s episode a spooky one, isn’t it just a regular Friday? It may be so, cheerey listener, but I ask you to proceed with caution, for today’s word is: teratophilia.Teratophillia is the sexual attraction to monsters, including fictional and mythical creatures, or ‘monstrous people’. The word comes from the Greek ‘téras’, meaning monster, and ‘philia’, meaning love. Rather than view the condition as a kink, defenders of teratophilia believe it allows people to see beauty outside of societal standards.The trope of women falling in love with monsters has been around for a long time; examples can be found in ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, ‘Dracula’, ‘Twilight’, and the audience are not repulsed, because they fall in love with the monster too. Here lies the basis for teratophilia, that all creatures with a heart and mind deserve love, and so we might fall in love with them too. In fact, there is hardly a single human culture that finds itself indifferent to monsters; human culture either responds to monsters with fear or feeds on them joyously.Similarly, ‘teratism’ is the love or worship of the monstrous, though in biology, it refers to ‘a monstrosity, a malformed animal or human, especially in the fetal stage’. Though this may sound harsh coming from the aforementioned ‘teratophillia’, this is how the word has evolved scientifically. Again, the word ‘teratogen’ is another biological word that means ‘a drug or other substance capable of interfering with the development of a fetus, causing birth defects.’ Teratogens include certain drugs, such as thalidomide, infections, such as German measles, and ionizing radiation. A little bit different from falling in love with a werewolf, no?Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kia ora, lovely linguists, and welcome to today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. We’re headed to beautiful New Zealand to explore the islands for today’s word: kakapo.The kakapo, also known as the ‘owl parrot’ is a species of large, flightless, ground-dwelling parrot, native to New Zealand. With a face like an owl, the posture of a penguin and a walk like a duck, the tame and gentle kakapo is regarded as one of the strangest and rarest birds in the world.The kakapo is a nocturnal, burrowing parrot that has green and brown barred plumage and well-developed wings. A combination of traits make it unique among its kind; it is the world’s only flightless parrot, the heaviest parrot, herbivorous, visibly sexually dimorphic in body size, and also possibly one of the world’s longest living birds. Sadly, the kakapo is critically endangered. The total known adult population is 142 living individuals, all of which are named.The word ‘kakapo’ is Maori, and comes from ‘kākā’ meaning ‘parrot’, and ‘pō’ meaning ‘night’. The kakapo is associated with a rich tradition of Māori folklore and beliefs. The bird's irregular breeding cycle was understood to be associated with heavy fruiting, which led Māori to credit the bird with the ability to tell the future. They used to substantiate this claim with reported observations of these birds dropping the berries into secluded pools of water to preserve them as a food supply for the summer ahead and in legend this became the origin of the Māori practice of immersing food in water for the same purpose.Māori would use kakapo skins with the feathers still attached or individually weave in 11,000 kakapo feathers with flax fibre to create cloaks and capes. They were highly valued, and the few still in existence today are considered ‘taonga’ or ‘treasures’. Indeed, the old Māori adage ‘you have a kākāpō cape and you still complain of the cold’ was used to describe someone who is never satisfied.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A blessed day, and a warm welcome to you, humble listener. Thank you for joining me for today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. I shall ask you not to go all ‘holier than thou’ as we discuss today’s word: cathedral.Cathedral is a word from the 1580s meaning ‘church of a bishop’, from the phrase ‘cathedral church’. It can be partially translated from the late Latin phrase ‘ecclesia cathedralis’ meaning ‘church of a bishop’s seat’, which in turn comes from the Latin ‘cathedra’, meaning ‘an easy chair, principally used by ladies’, which again can be traced to the Greek ‘kathedra’, meaning ‘seat or bench’. Are you still with me, faithful follower?It was born an adjective, and attempts to force further adjectivisation onto it. The seventeenth century yielded ‘cathedraical’, ‘cathedratic’ and ‘cathedratical’. Nowadays, cathedral can be more simply defined as ‘a big church building, central place for some area’ or ‘the principal church of an archbishop's or bishop's archdiocese which contains an episcopal throne’. The term ‘cathedral’ actually carries no implication as to the size or ornateness of the building. Nevertheless, most cathedrals are particularly impressive edifices.Churches with the function of ‘cathedral’ are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and some Lutheran and Methodist churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul, Spain and North Africa in the fourth century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the twelfth century.The Catholic church also uses the terms ‘pro-cathedral’, a parish or other church used temporarily as a cathedral, usually while the cathedral is under construction or repair, ‘co-cathedral’, a second cathedral in a diocese that has two sees, and ‘proto-cathedral’, the former cathedral of a transferred see. The cathedral church of a metropolitan bishop is called a metropolitan cathedral.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hallo, mein schatz, and willkommen to another Deutsch installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents! That’s right, my klein strudels, we are off to Germany for today’s word: Fremdschämen.Fremdschämen, is an informal German word meaning ‘to feel ashamed about something someone else has done; to be embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed himself, and doesn’t notice’. In other words, it’s embarrassment on behalf of another person. An example of Fremdschämen would be when your best friend’s mother struts it out in public in her new mini skirt, but doesn’t realise she has the back tucked into her underwear. Awkward.Fremdschämen comes from the words ‘fremd’, meaning ‘strange’ and ‘schamen’ meaning ‘to be ashamed or embarrassed’. Therefore: to be ashamed or embarrassed for something strange to me. Others relate it to the English word ‘cringeworthy’. There is also a Finnish word, Myötähäpeä, that means ‘secondhand embarrassment’.It is also often compared to the rather famous German word ‘Schadenfreude’, which means ‘taking joy in somebody else’s pain or misfortune’, though Schadenfreude certainly implies a slightly more vindictive tone. A shorter English translation is ‘malicious pleasure’, so it’s the enjoyment of someone’s embarrassment, rather than feeling the shame yourself.Schadenfreude comes from the words ‘schaden’, meaning ‘harm’ and ‘freude’ meaning ‘joy’, so the literal translation would be ‘harm-joy’. You might recognise it from the Tony Award winning musical ‘Avenue Q’, which has an entire song devoted to the word. This may have led to the word’s increased popularity from the early 2000s onwards.If we take it back a little further, Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ used ‘epikhairekakia’ as part of a triad of terms, in which epikhairekakia stands as the opposite of phthonos, and nemesis occupies the mean. Nemesis is ‘a painful response to another's undeserved good fortune’, while phthonos is a painful response to any good fortune, deserved or not. The epikhairekakos person takes pleasure in another's ill fortune.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is going on, fellow words worms? Welcome to today’s installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents! Now before we begin, I need you to understand something, listeners. Today’s word is not penguin. Though today’s word bears an audible resemblance, we are not discussing the cute, flightless birds. Listen closely, for today’s word is: pinguid.Pinguid is a word from the 1630s that means ‘resembling fat, oily or greasy, or unctuous’. Hopefully one is not using this word to refer to someone personally. It comes from the Latin ‘pinguis’ which means ‘fat, juicy’, or figuratively, it can mean ‘dull, gross, heavy or comfortable’. For example, you might say ‘My goodness, what a pinguid steak they’ve served me!’ but you could also say, ‘Oh my, this bed setting is awfully pinguid.’ In ‘Sylva, Volume 1’, John Evelyn wrote, ‘They thrive (as we said) in the most sterile places, yet will grow in better, but not in over-rich, and pinguid.’It comes from the stem of ‘pinguere’ which has many definitions including:fat, plump;Thick or dense;dull, insipid, not pungent - when relating to taste;oily, rich, full-bodied - when relating wine;fertile or rich - when relating to land andheavy, dull, stupid, obtuse - in relation to the mind, figuratively.It can also mean figuratively bold or strong, or quiet, comfortable or easy. Pinguere as a word is really quite versatile!Pinguid’s antonym is ‘exīlis’ which is a Latin word meaning ‘small, thin or slender’. It can also mean ‘lank, meagre, feeble or inadequate’. The word ‘exile’ meaning ‘to bar someone from their native country’ is a descendant of this word.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why hello there, letter loving listeners! And thank you for joining me on today’s portion of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today I’m asking you to shut the bathroom door, put away your compacts and avoid shiny surfaces, because today’s word is: sepctrophobia.Spectrophobia is the abnormal and persistent fear of mirrors, sometimes related to the fear of ghosts or the undead. Generally, an individual that has been diagnosed with spectrophobia has been previously traumatised in an event where they believe they have seen or heard apparitions or ghosts, either in reality or by horror films, TV shows or nightmares. It could also result from a trauma involving mirrors, or a superstitious fear of being watched through a mirror. Sufferers of spectrophobia can fear the breaking of a mirror bringing extreme bad luck, which is a common superstition. They can also fear the thought of something frightening jumping out of the mirror, or seeing something disturbing inside of the mirror next to their own reflection when looking directly at it.The word spectrophobia is derived from the Latin ‘spectrum’ meaning an appearance, form, image of a thing; an apparition or spectre. There is also ‘catoptrophobia’, which again refers to the fear of mirrors, ‘eisoptrophobia’, the fear of one’s own reflection, and ‘phasmophobia’, the fear of ghosts. The latter two are distinct from spectrophobia, and represent slightly different fears in terms of a diagnosis. Eisoptrophobia comes from the Greek ‘eis’ which means ‘into’ and ‘optikos’ meaning ’vision, image or sight’. Phasmophobia comes from the Greek word ‘phasmo’ meaning ‘apparition or phantom’. All scary stuff, if you ask me.Isn’t language wonderful?Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C WeberSubscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, or your podcatcher of choice.Find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTERBecome a Patron of That’s Not Canon Productions at Patreon!Email us at Grandiloquentspodcast@gmail.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.