This month, rather than a single word, we want to introduce you to an entire group of words (some of which might be helpful in Scrabble, since they make use of the letter Z!), starting with the word for which this post is titled: zebroid.

If you were forced to guess the meaning of the word zebroid, what would you guess? An asteroid inhabited by zebras? Something that is zebra-like?

The second guess is (not surprisingly) the closer guess. A zebroid is an animal which is the offspring of a zebra with any other equine animal.

What can a zebra be crossed with? Well, they have been successfully crossed with horses, donkeys, and ponies. The crossing is more likely to be successful if the sire is a zebra and the mare is the other species, but female zebras have been successfully bred with the male of other equine species.

Not surprisingly, like the mule, most zebroids are infertile. Also, zebroids are prone to dwarfism. They are occasionally bred for riding and work, but like their zebra parent, zebroids can be very temperamental and aggressive. Zebroids are also bred for showing in circuses and carnivals.

Okay, now for the fun part...depending on what species the zebra is bred with, and depending on which parent is the sire, zebroids have many different names. You might want to jot these down and see if you can get away with using them in Scrabble sometime...

zorse, zedonk, zebra mule, zonkey, zebmule, zebrinny, zebrule, zebra hinny, donkra, horbra, hebra, donkret, zony, zetland, zebronkey, zebonkey, zebrula, zebrass, and zebadonk.

We took a short break from the blog for the summer, but we're back this month with a post to help students celebrate their return to school. This month's word is especially for students (and teachers) who love obscure mathematical terminology. The word is quaquadrate, and it comes from a 1701 text by Samuel Jeake, titled A Compleat Body of Arithmetick, in Four Books.

The word quaquadrate is explained by Mr. Jeake as "a fquare of fquares, fquaredly fquared."

Whoops! I'm sorry - typography was a bit different back in 1701. That should have read: "a square of squares, squarely squared."

Does that clear things up for you? No?

Well, a simpler explanation is that it's a sixteenth power.

For example, the number 65,536 is 2¹⁶, and therefore it is a quaquadrate.

Just as you could say 2² is "two squared," and 2³ is "two cubed," you could say 2¹⁶ is "two quaquadrated."

Of course, I'm not sure why you would want to do this. Saying "two squared" is significantly shorter than saying "two to the second," but there's no savings in saying "two quaquadrated"; it has has exactly as many syllables as "two to the sixteenth." 

Besides, "two to the sixteenth" rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than "two quaquadrated."

But if you want to impress your math geek friends, then by all means try to work this word, along with its companion words (biquadrated, triquadrated, and quinquadrated) into your everyday conversations.

I'm sure they'll be impressed.

Last month there was an accident in front of our home. Someone apparently fell asleep at the wheel, and drifted across the center line, into the path of an 18-wheeler.

No one was hurt, but the car was demolished, and the 18-wheeler became a 16-wheeler. It was quite a sight to see. And everyone wanted to see it! There was an awful lot of rubbernecking going on!

Rubbernecking is a fun word that simply means that you are twisting your neck around (as though it were made of rubber) in order to see something interesting. Rubbernecking is a word that is most often used to describe what happens as cars drive by accident scenes. And it's generally frowned upon; rubbernecking can make bad accidents even worse.

But of course, it can be used in other situations; perhaps you can think of some?

And no, contrary to what you might have supposed, rubbernecking is not what happens when Gumby and his girlfriend are making out.

What makes the word "quixotic" so interesting? Well, the fact that it contains both a "Q" and an "X," of course. According to one English language word list I checked, there are only 26 words in the English language which contain both of those letters, and of those 26, nine of them are variations on "quixotic" (quixotically, quixotry, quixotism, etc).

Okay, so that's not really what's interesting about the word. The word is directly derived from the name of a character in what is perhaps the most famous piece of Spanish literature. Do you know who it is? Do you need a hint?

A novel by Cervantes. That contains windmills.

Yes, that's right. Don Quixote. Don Quixote was a somewhat crazy individual who read too many stories of the age of chivalry, and decided to go out into the world righting wrongs, fighting evil, and delivering justice wherever needed. The famous expression "tilting at windmills" is a reference to Don Quixote attacking some windmills because he believed them to be giants.

He was hopelessly hopeful, absurdly optimistic, and impractically idealistic.

And that's the definition of the word "quixotic." To be quixotic is to be exceedingly idealistic, unrealistic, and impractical.

Oh, and just so you don't stumble over the pronunciation, even though Quixote is pronounced kay-HO-tay, "quixotic" is not pronounced kay-HO-tic. It's kwix-OT-ic.

Do you have a friend with logomania? People with logomania can be very difficult to deal with in social situations. Conversation with them can be awkward, uncomfortable, and downright frustrating.

What is logomania? Let's break it up into its components.

logo: comes from the Greek word "logos" which means "word." 
mania: this word has a medical definition, but in simple, non-medical terms, it can be defined as "overactivity."

Thus, logomania is "overactive words." 

Most dictionaries define it as excessive speech, or compulsive talkativeness. Some even go so far as to describe logomania as pathological overtalkativeness.

When you are talking with someone who has logomania, you will find yourself looking at your watch, thinking, "I need to get going soon," but even when you tell the person that you need to go, they can't keep themselves from continuing the conversation. It can get really awkward when you have to get in your car, close the door, and slowly roll the window up while they're still talking to you!

Years ago I had a teacher who introduced me to logomania's synonym, logorrhea.

You can probably guess where this word is going. The suffix orrhea is a medical term which means "flow or discharge." Like diarrhea.

The teacher who taught me this vocabulary word had his own definition for the word: "Logorrhea is diarrhea of words and constipation of ideas."