25 Things You See Every Day but Don’t Know Their Names

Curiosities
4 years ago

At this point, it’s almost impossible to count the total number of words in English, considering all the loanwords, internet slang, and whatnot. While the Oxford English dictionary settles on 600,000, and Google and Harvard researchers — on one million, we can still find gaps in the language. Yet, that thingy, that we might see or experience but don’t have a word for, likely already has a name.

Bright Side collected a tiny compendium of not-so-widely-known words for things that live alongside us every day.

1. The cardboard sleeves on to-go coffee cups — Zarf

2. The small piece of metal between the pencil and the eraser — Ferrule

3. The chart for an eye test — Snellen chart

4. The long strips on a peeled banana — Phloem bundles

5. The plastic or metal ends of shoelaces — Aglets

6. The vertical groove between the nose and upper lip — Philtrum

7. Little nubs on the surface of a ping pong paddle — Pips

8. #Hashtag or pound symbol — Octothorpe

9. Fork’s prongs — Tines

10. The strips between window frames — Muntins

11. The space between the eyebrows — Glabella

12. The outer part of the pizza’s crust — Cornicione

13. The empty space between the bottle top and the liquid — Ullage

14. The white, crescent part at the root of the nail — Lunula

15. The armhole in clothes — Armscye

16. The swoosh sound of ballgowns or movement of silk — Scroop

17. The space between the thumb and forefingers — Purlicue

18. The symbols used to replace profanity — Grawlix

19. The triangular skin in the corner of the eye — Lacrimal Caruncle

20. A small, wave-like dab of toothpaste — Nurdle

21. Illegible handwriting — Griffonage

22. The side of the hammer not used for hammering — Peen

23. The smell after the rain — Petrichor

24. The space between nostrils — Columella

25. The infinity symbol — Lemniscate

How many new words have you discovered on this list?

Preview photo credit unsplash.com

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Whovians already knew petrichor for Amy Pond, who defined it as “the smell of dust after the rain,” but of course it sounds lovely in her Scottish accent!

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Welcome to the English language, where we have words for everything - even for a dab of toothpaste.

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