xeric xerophyte
xanthochroid xylographer
xenomania
haiku M. LaFreniere, all rights reserved
Xandga Shiny font (letter W) by starinkbrush aka ComicVector703
mom’s typewriter font (poem) by Christoph Mueller
24th in the A to Z challenge 2019 (almost done. Yay!)
OMG, I thought this one was about to kill me. Do you know how many x-words I know? Maybe xylophone. I had to pull out the big guns. I have a Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged (from back before Merriam and Webster merged) that I never use because it weighs a ton with more than 2,000 pages of definitions, not to mention the other pages.
The weird thing is that I came out with a haiku (and it is a haiku because xenic and xerophyte are nature words) that fits me personally almost. Well, not the xanthochroid but the rest of it. So here are the defs ( all definitions from Merriam-Webster online dictionary) :
xeric : characterized by, relating to, or requiring only a small amount of moisture (a xeric habitat)
xerophyte : a plant adapted for life and growth with a limited water supply
So as you can see the first line is about me living in Arizona as the Southwestern USA is a very dry climate. We’re a desert.
xanthochroid : having fair skin and light hair (from my huge dictionary. You have to click 3x on related definitions to lead you to one that actually explains it on the online dictionary and who’s going to bother?)
xylographer : the art of making engravings on wood especially for printing. The online dictionary explains it further:
“In fact, the oldest known printed works (from Japan and China in the 8th and 9th centuries) were made by xylography, a printing technique that involves carving text in relief upon a wooden block, which is then inked and applied to paper. This method of wood-block printing appeared in Europe in the 14th century, and eventually inspired Johannes Gutenberg to create individual and reusable pieces of type out of metal. These days, xylography can also describe the technique of engraving wood for purely artistic purposes. English speakers picked up the word from French, where it was formed as a combination of xyl-, meaning “wood,” and -graphie, which denotes writing in a specified manner“.
So I am not a xanthochroid being light brown in winter and dark brown in summer(not so much any more as I don’t hangout at the public swimmng pools like I did as teen) with dark brown hair (reddish highlights in summer). I do have an aunt, my father’s younger sister, who is a xanthochroid. However I’ve been a xylographer as I’ve done a carving on woodblock as a Japanese style art form. We did it in fourth grade art class when my dad was stationed in Tachikawa AFB. Okay, one carving does not make me a xylographer but at least I did it. I took a printing class as an adult but we did our engravings on metal then. Maybe I can find the results of that class. Moving back to Arizona, I’ve lost a few things.
xenomania : an inordinate attachment to foreign things (as customs, institutions, manners, fashions)
I love this word. Now this one I can actually see me using. I could easily be a xenomaniac. I would love to get kimonos if they weren’t so darn expensive. I did try buying a silk one on Ebay for cheap. I did win it at a reasonable price but it was unfinished. The bottom hem was basted in and needs to be finished. Still it was an amazing kimono for basically $10. Problem is without knowing how to put on an obi by myself, I don’t really have a way to wear it. It’s pretty gorgeous though.
Any chance any of those words were useful to you?
This time I used “xeric” as the search term and was surprised I got watches back. I was expecting nothing actually or maybe a desert plant book or two. This is why I love playing with searches. Now when I tried xeric in Google News, I did get a nice set of results on desert gardening. You-tube gave back a lot of videos on the watches so I guess they are pretty popular thought this is the first I’ve heard of them. I like their watch face as it’s an unusual way to tell time but I’m used to checking my phone now for the time (when the battery isn’t dead).
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