They don't love you like I love you

[venta]

I just learned a new word! I think that this happens infrequently, but I'm sure that several times recently I've run into a word I don't know, had to look it up, and thought "gosh, that doesn't happen much".

Maybe I'll try and keep track here.

Anyway, today's word is "choropleth". While I'm sure any passing Greek scholar will assure me it's obvious (my money's on Verlaine...), I needed a dictionary.

Apparently, it is: a map which uses differences in shading, colouring, or the placing of symbols within predefined areas to indicate the average values of a particular quantity in those areas.

Given the sound of the word "choropleth", I find the definition disappointingly unCthuloid.

Comments

[zotz]

I was in the States back in the nineties, staying a few days with an ex-flatmate's family. There was a word in a newspaper article I didn't know, so assuming it was probably a common US word I asked Alan, but he didn't either so he asked his wife Sharon - like him an English graduate - and she was stumped also.

Annoyingly one of my friends back here has since casually used it in conversation. Smartarse.

Copacetic: pleasant, appropriate, in good order.

[venta]

Ooh, yes, that was another recent example for me, too. A colleague used it at me over IM, at which point I spent some time trying to work out what it was a typo for.

[damerell]

China Mieville's books kept throwing up new words to me.

[zotz]

A friend used to work on the OED. She said the single largest source of new words was the Independent on Sunday.