It's time to clean out the

file where I stash words that stump me or amuse me, words I deem worth

sharing.

As one who works with words,

plays with words, dips her hands into the dictionary and watches words

run out between her fingers, I am presumptive enough to believe others

will share my discoveries ­ and refrain from sniggering when I confess

unfamiliarity with a word that everyone else in the English-speaking world

has known from childhood.

So. This week's lexicographic

recipe follows, with an analysis of its ingredients. See if you can tell

which words are old, which are new, and what they mean.

allision

electronica

enculturation

expletive

kith

nutraceutical

stoat

stochastic

terabyte

The online edition of the Merriam-Webster

Collegiate Dictionary updates its list of nearly half a million English

words annually, adding roughly 100 new words. The print edition gets a

rewrite every 10 years.

Not surprisingly, the word

"chad" was the most frequently looked-up word at HtmlResAnchor

www.m-w.com in 2000, but ­ long used by teletype operators

­ is not a new word. The new entries you almost certainly know include

"dot-com," "24/7," "eye candy," "max

out," and "GPS" (global positioning system, a staple among

instruments of navigation.)

Just to be esoteric, I included

four of M-W's newest entries in the list above. "Electronica"

is dance music using synthesizers, electronic percussion, and samples

of recorded music or sound. Can't say I'll need that one.

"Enculturation" seems

to me to be a very useful word, although I was surprised to learn it is

new. It means the process by which an individual learns the traditional

contents of a culture and assimilates its practices and values.

You can probably figure out

"nutraceutical," a fortified food or a dietary supplement, and

"terabyte," a measure of vast computer information storage capacity.

New entries to M-W reflect

the editors' evaluation of their staying power rather than their current

popularity. Dave and I have a nominee. We have forever used the word "stob"

to mean a post or dead tree sticking out of the water or ground, but I

never thought to check up on it until my Word 2000's spell checker flagged

it as incorrect.

To the dictionary. I found

"stoat" and "stochastic" ­ with no "stob"

between them ­ and had to stop long enough to find out what they

mean. "Stoat" turns out to be a mostly British term for an ermine,

especially in its brown color phase. "Stochastic" means conjectural,

or involving chance or probability. Off-hand, I can't think of a sentence

in which it would fit.

Never did find "stob"

in the dictionary. Until it gets there, however, I do not plan to stop

using a word that works so well. When you're trying to steer a boat through

unknown water, a cry of "Stob, right!" works better than "Watch

out for that old fence post, railroad tie, half-submerged rotten pier

or dead branches sticking out of the water over there on your right."

I came across the word "allision"

while checking some maritime terms for a column on barges. The context

made me think someone had failed to correct a typo in "collision."

None of my dictionaries was any help, so I went online and eventually

found a definition in General Maritime Law: "An allision is the impermissible

touching of a [moving vessel] with a stationary or moored object resulting

in damage." In a 1997 report of a Hudson River incident, a court

found that the M/V Spirit of New York "allided with pier, scoreboard,

and building causing in excess of $50,000 in damage and injuring 16 persons.

There's at least one word on

the list that you think you know, but it has another meaning you may not.

An "expletive" is not always best deleted. It is a word that

stands in place of and anticipates a following word or phrase. The example

in my dictionary is the word "there" in "There are many

books on the table." I used the same word at the beginning of this

paragraph, and I believe the word "it" at the top of this column

also fits the bill.

Likewise, the word "kith."

You may know it means "friends," and appears almost exclusively

in company with "kin," to mean all those close to us, related

or not.

But did you know its old English

root word is also the root of "uncouth," and originally meant

"known"? Our kith are people known to us, and those who are

unknown we find to be uncouth.

You master words by using them

in a sentence. Hmmm. Let's have a go at it.

"It may be stochastic

to suppose that the stoat and his kith allided with an enculturation that

favored neutraceuticals and terabytes of electronica."

The expletive is in the construction.

I think.

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