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12/12/07 - Meaning Uncertain

Even Homer nods, and even the Oxford English Dictionary has its weaknesses. In particular, there are words with citations, but no definitions. We came across "smolet" years ago by chance, but now that the OED is online we could simply search for all entries that had "meaning uncertain" to see how common this problem is. All told, we found about fifty words that are in the dictionary, but as yet undefined. We didn't find "caterjunes" on this list, which was the nonsense spelling word from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Apparently, since it was used in a spelling bee, it is possible to spell a non-word incorrectly. Maybe it will show up in a future edition.
ballow
blought
borral-tree
botraille
capoche
coise
columbered
comade
ducker
engowshede
gemilling
glode
hoaming
jeopard
juck
organy
perquillies
pilewhey
quatch
rigled
rosseld
rothly
rothun
royn
scamel
seggon
shilboard
skainsmate
skaitbird
skawte
skayved
skyre
skyrsay
slowde
slyp
smoch
smolet (smolat)
snorl
snowcrie
sothery
souce
strickman
swedyr
terrage
thro
topteler
toptyre
toth
twinse
twizeled
twy
twyeling
twyfyl
volate
wedester

Keywords: art