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October 07, 2005

Leptodactylous (lep-tuh-DAK-tuh-luhs) adjective

If you are still stuck to those tired words to describe your sweetie, here is a new one for you. Leptodactylous means having fine, slender digits. No, not, digits on a bathroom scale or on a bank account. Here digit means a toe or a finger.

It all sounds Greek to me: from lepto- (thin) and -dactylous (fingered or toed).

"Hitchock described many examples of strangely-shaped, thin-toed footprints and classified them as leptodactylous footprints." Brendan Hanrahan; Great Day Trips in the Connecticut Valley of the Dinosaurs; Perry Heights Press; 2004.

A clarification about "algorithm" mentioned in jest in yesterday's newsletter: The word algorithm doesn't have anything to do with algo- (pain). It's an eponym, but it has nothing to do with Al Gore, either. Rather, it's a variant of algorism which came from Arabic al (the) + Khwarizmi (the last name of a 9th-century Arabic mathematician). The word algebra is also from Arabic.

This week's theme: words formed using combining forms.

Pronunciation     RealAudio

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http://wordsmith.org/words/leptodactylous.html


Posted by Keya at October 7, 2005 07:08 PM
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