amendment

Expanded rules for birthday contest:

• Marks for interesting linguistic observations
• Marks for words reflecting the quintessence of a foreign language.
  "Rimshot" strikes me as a good example for American English; the connotations well represent American style, the word itself lacks mellifluousness, and specifically contains and R which may be mangled.
• Marks for novel or obscure phrases
  My mother, for example, when torqued by our childhood demonstrations of entropy, would describe the mess as ranging from "asshole to appetite."
• One mark per person for accepting the challenge

A site called "FreeRice" was noted in the comments. Did someone lock up Condoleezza when I wasn't paying attention? Nope. It's all about building your vocabulary and ending hunger, and it's quite addictive. You have been warned.

While waiting to catch the last bus out of Longwood yesterday, I plowed through about 125 words, and learned quite a bit. The FreeRice vocabulary exercise involves a multiple choice quiz. In the table below, "deduced" indicates words for which I guessed correctly based on etymological cues. Without a list of possible synonyms, they would have been stumpers.

stumpers	deduced
cerumen, quintal, rill, pinnace, acicular, cicatrix, degust, thaumaturgy, fusil, claudication, sastruga, puissant, plectrum, gibbet, escutcheon, rostrum, imprecation , venesection, palfrey, espial, erumpent, transude, alary, tinea	caprine, shaitan, hyaloid, serval, trammel, affined, rive, pibroch, cracknel, edentulous, anemophilous, grimalkin, arenaceous, inanition, nabob, tarantism, pyrexia, declivity, manikin, ocellus, legerdemain, filiform, gorgonize

Back to the contest proper. Here's a running tally of entrants and words. Stumpers and other qualifying mots are picked out in red.

entrant	words
Liz (66)	omphaloskepsis (67)
Jenn C (64)	octothorpe (65)
Anne (60)	voussoir (61), xanthein (62), replevin (63)
Elizabeth (52)	truage (53), esne (54), sprang (55), naalbinding, tog (56), thel (57), blackwork (58), redwork (59)
BerlinBat (50)	commissure (51)
Brenda (45)	anisocoria (46), pinna, telangiectasia (47), antalgic (48), hypsodont (49)
Rebecca (39)	double stop (40), melisma (41), organum (42), enharmonic (43), hemiola (44)
I Hate Toast (37)	marshmallow * (38)
Emily (34)	quinquennium (35), armamentarium, He didn't take offense, ... * (36)
Dave (26)	rectopathic (27), geophilous (28), teratology (29), biduous (30), macarism (31), warison (32), effiguration (33)
Dorothy (21)	drite (22), virid, What's the machine? *(23), How's my lover? *(24), oleo *(25)
KRT (19)	symploce (20)
Kim (7)	clathrate, appagiatura (8), acciaccatura (9), ionian (10), dorian (11), phrygian (12), lydian (13), mixolydian (14), aeolian (15), locrian (16), passacaglia (17), arco (18), sacbut
Heather (5)	vug (6)
Julie (3)	fond (n.) (4)
Allison (1)	scutage (2)

* see comments for discourse

Comments

[Dorothy]

Oleo. Not the spread or the acid. I got if from the Mr. (AME) if that helps with figuring it out.

[Rebecca H.]

I love "nabob" because it will always be part of "nattering nabobs of negativity". And cheers to Emily for defining claudication!

Two more: enharmonic and hemiola.

[brenda]

Because cerumen, claudication and transude were all on your "stumpers" list, I thought I'd add a few more medical terms in hopes that I'll stump you with one or two.
Anisocoria
Pinna
Telangiectasia
Antalgic
And, because you're getting older: hypsodont.

[Emily L]

I wrote a grant on claudication! The literal translation from Swedish is "window shopping sickness." (I wrote the grant in Sweden, but in English.)

My favorite West Virginia phrase is "he didn't take offense, he took the whole gate."

[Dorothy]

I just thought of something my mother used to say all the time. "Don't that just rot your socks!" Also there's more parts of Canada dialect specific, "What's the machine?" {MIL} and "How's my lover?" {not referring to the person you are sleeping with or have slept with}

[Dorothy]

Damn there are some very smart people out there including you!

The power of a challenge.