Bosky

Bosky means wooded or bushy. One multistemmed tree would be slightly bosky, a dozen would be boskier and a whole forest is the boskiest of all.

Where's your favourite bosky place?

Thermotaxis

Thermotaxis is the regulation of heat in warm-blooded animals.

When it's hot, I like to cool down in the sea. Does that make me thermotaxic? I'm not a good swimmer, but in the UK that doesn't matter as the sea is generally so cold that a quick paddle is more than enough to do the job.

A thermotactic reaction is movement in a living organism as a response to temperature. If you watch a litter of puppies or piglets, you'll see that if it's warm they spread out more. When the temperature drops, they snuggle up together.

Rebutter

Rebutter, surprisingly isn't something you do to bread when you consider it's not been spread with a liberal enough amount of dairy goodness. 

It's actually a refutation (a word which probably deserves its own WWof theW post) or 'a defendent's reply to the plaintiff's surrejoinder'.



Sometimes I'm no help at all, am I?

Tidemark

My dictionary gives three definitions for the word tidemark. 

It can be the line on a beach at the high water point, the scummy ring around the bath at the level the water reached, or a line on a person's body revealing they didn't have a bath and just washed the bits they thought would show.

I'd like to suggest a fourth – the patterns left on sand as the tide recedes. Don't you think this tidemark is beautiful?

Hydromania

Hydromania is a craving or passion for water. 

I'm not sure my wish to be on a beach qualifies as hydromania, but I would quite like to be somewhere sunny and sandy, with gentle waves rippling on to the shore and gulls wheeling overhead...

Matins

Matins, which may also be written as martins, is a service of morning Christian prayer. Or it may be a night 'office of prayer', but it can also happen at daybreak or in the evening. There, aren't you glad I cleared that up for you?

Matins (or mattins) is both the singular and the plural, so at least that's simple.

You may recall me moaning about poets getting an extra definition for the word bedew (no reason you should remember, but you might). They're at it again with matins as they can use it to describe birdsong. Only in the morning though.

Bedew

According to my dictionary, to bedew means to cover with dew or sprinkle with drops of water. That part seems fair enough, but it goes on to state that poets can also use the word to mean sprinkle with tears.

Does it seem fair to you that a poet's characters' cheek may be be bedewed with tears but mine may not?

No, I didn't think so. Oh well, sometimes life isn't fair, so I'll confine all my bedewing to that involving unsalted water.

Conflate

To conflate is to blend or fuse together two sets of information – usually texts. When Rosemary J Kind and I worked on our joint book, she conflated her contribution with mine. The resulting conflation is From Story Idea to Reader.

Miaul

To miaul is to cry like a cat, or to mew. I have no idea, other than the spelling, how it differes from miaow. Do you know?

Bagpuss doesn't miaul, he snores.