Word I Just Read That I Didn't Know:
Struthious, meaning "ostrich-like" or related to ostriches, depending on the circumstances. As usual, I advise against using such words — if you haven't heard of it, or other educated people you know haven't heard of it, chances are your future readers and listeners will not have heard of it — but it's good to know in case you run across it.
Amusing that when one clicks on EV's link to that dictionary website, they come upon an ad for the egg of a struthious (must use it twice more today lesst I lose it) offered through eBay. (EV didn't say what he was reading when he was brought a cropper by "struthious." [only once more will do it] Could he be working his way through the dictionary in words he did not know and he is almost through the "s"'s? Hmmm, what might trip him up between "s" and the last of the "z"'s?)
"Such words," meaning words that Eugene Volokh just read that he doesn't know; or words related to ostriches?
Also, if the resemblance to an ostrich may be inexact or inaccurate (as with the whole head-in-the-sand metaphor), one can forsake the technical term and evoke a gut feeling of ostrich-resemblance with struthiness.
Those who read "How Appealing" carefully may recall that Howard, it happens, had occasion to use the apparently synonymous struthian in his 20Q interview with Selya.
I can think of a context when it's perfectly appropriate to use words that you have no expectation your readers will know. In a blog post, it could certainly be fun to include a word like this with a link to something defining it. The link takes care of the ignorance problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich_algorithm
But the BEST dino name is still "Irritator." Although it won't help you guess recondite vocab.
One day, I had to make a call and was directed by a staff member to use a phone in the ALJ's office. While dialing the number, I looked down at his desk and saw there a yellow legal pad with an alphabetized list of singular vocabulary words, which he had written out by hand, I presumed so that he might study them, add them to his repertoire, and look for opportunities to incorporate them in his opinions. I do remember he was working on "q" words and among them was "quiddity," and I wondered when that it would show up in one of his opinions. (Can't say whether his opinions were shaped to fit around the word or they just substituted for more familiar ones.)
A love of words, like Judge Selya's?, an admirable effort at self-improvement?, an attempt at faux erudition?, simple silliness? I am grateful to this jurist for "Serbonian bog," which was new to me. (Maybe he was working from the end of the alphabet to the start of it.) That one I think has real potential, more than "struthious" I expect, though they're all arrows in ones quiver, right?
I was reviewing a case in which the petitioner's expert asserted that there had been a "recondite" encephalopathy. I was reasonably confident about the "encephalopathy" part, that being neurologist talk for brain dysfunction, usually global, without regard to the particular etiology, if any could be identified. I wasn't sure about the "recondite" part though. And after I looked the word up, I was truly perplexed. This hired gun, who like I was relying entirely upon medical records with no actual experience of the child, was saying that this sort of medical condition would be "difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend." I could see no evidence in the records of any sort to support "encephalopathy," and their expert just pronounced it a "recondite encephalopathy" without citing anything at all to support that medical assertion. What was I to do, say that I couldn't see it and confirm that I was someone of at best ordinary understanding or knowledge, the professional inferior of this expert who had the capacity to perceive what a lesser mortal like myself didn't even suspect?
I closed the dictionary, pondered the implications for a moment or two, then pronounced it crap like so many of the expert reports offered in connection with compensation claims. But I did come away with "recondite," and I still have it, though recondite stuff may be going past me all the time, and I wouldn't know because I am oblivious to the recondite?!
Wikipedia has a whole list of adjectives relating to different animals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Adjectives
Yup, struthious is there.
Recondite illness or disability? This sounds like some sort of dare: "I just DARE you to say that you don't see this problem." Good for you for playing chicken with being chicken. (To keep the avian thing going.)
Regarding large, flightless birds, here's a story from my native town (A fact that I've never before admitted on VC. But I'm not a *native-born* Hoosier. Shh. Don't tell.) The job in the sub-head may or may not exist. But whether it does or does not, I bet it is nevertheless the *best job in the world*!
http://www.nbc5.com/news/3940898/detail.html
I never thought of that question. But animals seem to have a proclivity for that sort of thing.
Snake--serpentine
Turtle--chelonian
Horse--equine
Pig--porcine
Ape--simian
Huh. The Latin/Greek is often retained for the adj. Cool.
And yes, I did see myself as like the kid who called it as he saw it, while others around him couldn't bring themselves to say that the emperor was buck naked. But then I thought that others might have been sure of the meaning of "recondite" and not needed to consult a dictionary, or not knowing the word's meaning and not caring simply pronounced the "recondite encephalopathy"* claim unmitigated BS without even a split second pause. I did ask some very smart colleagues for their thoughts about the notion of a "recondite" encephalopathy, but they just looked at me uncomprehendingly and I dropped it. I am encouraged to know that you Hoosier, with your most impressive mind, can appreciate the dilemma I found myself in and think I handled it correctly.
*to be sure there are times when an etiologic diagnosis can't be made, but there either is a physiological (or anatomic) derangement or there isn't, of profoundly severe all the way down to relatively mild or subtle, but when you can't point to abnormal findings, "recondite" doesn't do it.
Yep. Him or Michael Jackson. Here in Indiana, we call them the "Big Three".
And I am completely with you on your handling of that "recondite" situation. It sounds like he was trying to slide something by you, and hoping you wouldn't say "Now wait a minute . . ."
(I like words "recondite," which live up to their definitions. "Recondite" is certainly "not well known" as a word. And I once read an article in which the author spoke of Nabokov's "hypertrophied vocabulary." Now, in what sort of active vocabulary would you expect to find the word "hypertrophied"? But I don't think the author was trying to be funny.)
(I would have liked to tag these dictionary excerpts with blockquotes but the comment.pl is rejecting me as having an unclosed tag. The preview looks fine to me.)
[Origin: 1175–1225; ME ostrice, ostriche < OF ostrusce (cf. F autruche) < VL *avistrūthius, for L avis bird + LL strūthiō < LGk strouthíōn; see struthious]
and
[Origin: 1765–75; < LL strūthi(ō) ostrich (< LGk strouthíōn, deriv. of Gk strouthós sparrow, bird; cf. strouthòs ho mégas ostrich, lit., the big bird) + -ous]
Don't most contributors to these comments have flat, unkeeled sterna? (On the internet, nobody knows if you are a large, flightless bird.)