Monday, November 22, 2010

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part L)

A continuation of the series.

longicorn (LON-ji-korn) —

noun: a biological family of beetles with especially long antennae.
Spotted this word at a post titled "Lengthy Unicorns?" on back of the cereal box. The following is a directly from the post. Thanks to Drew and Erin McKean, I could not have stated it better.

I thought this one was worth noting because, as Erin McKean states in Weird and Wonderful Words, the existence of "longicorn" proves that even if a word sounds entirely made up, it can still be real and have a perfectly valid etymology. (The etymology is quite simple: the Latin longus, "long," plus the cornu, "horn.")

Image from here.

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