These wounds they will not heal

[venta]

The things you learn.

hjalfi just described (with good reason) my hand as looking "like an invisible spider was sucking the ichor out of it". He pronounced ichor "i-core", where I've always understood it to rhyme with liquor.

Fortunately, we have the internet. I suck at reading IPA, but dictionary.com's definition of ichor provides recordings (Hjalfi was right). Rather charmingly, it also offers the following "related words": festering, purulence, pus, sanies, suppuration. Oooh, putting the ick in ichor.

Sanies ? That sounds like an American high-school nickname the weirdos apply to everyone else. But no, sanies has three syllables and means "a thin, often greenish, serous fluid that is discharged from ulcers, wounds, etc."

But then we had to look up serous, which quite logically turns out to mean "like a serum".

So I've learned two new words, even if they are only useful in digusting circumstances, and how to pronounce one properly. Today has not been wasted.

In case you're worried, the cramp in my hand that was scrunching up one muscle and causing it to look as if an invisible spider was sucking the ichor out of it has now gone away.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Something lodged in the back of my brain tells me that the impy pronounciation is the correct one for something without piety. Which always struck me as silly.

[(Anonymous)]

That's because as one aware of how brownies and others have hidden long cherished posessions, before, during, and after moving, you know that imps lack piety (as well as consideration for others, or even good manners).