Gelotology

Laughter is a good medicine. Laughter is also interesting for some.

More interesting to them, that they make a career studying humor and laughter.

Gelotology is the study of laughter.Gelos in Greek means laughter and hence the word Gelotology.

Gelotologists study the effect of humor and laughter on the human body. They study psychological treatments relating to humor and laughter like humor therapy , clown therapy , laughter therapy etc.There is well documented and ongoing research in this field of study.

Voila!Found something good?!

All of us chance into something once in a while.Sometimes its awful to have discovered something and sometimes its so good that we actually found it.The word to use when you accidently find something and that something is good and a fortunate discover, you call it serendipity.We use serendipity when we actually find something that we were not expecting at all in the first place.

Ex. There have been many serendipitous discoveries in science.
Here its used as an adjective.It could also be used as an adverb.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity  : Use this link to find a list of serendipitous discoveries made in science.Its really interesting to know how many such discoveries have changed our lives so much.

Anklebiter

Ankle-biter means no cannibal but just a small child. There are many meanings to the word ankle-biter.Predominantly, it would means a toddler.Sometimes it could mean a small dog. It could also be used to imply someone who is not in your comparable position but troubles or irritates you often. In the stock market arena, an ankle biter would mean a company that has a market capitalization of less than 500million dollars.

Ghostwriting

Sounds spooky or eerie.

Ghostwriter is a professional writer who writes for somebody else.

There are many who require some documents , reports , essays or some biography to be written.These people may be pressed for time or they may not be capable of expressing themselves as a professional writer.Hence, they hire ghostwriters.The person may or may not acknowledge the ghostwriter for the work.The ghostwriter is paid but the name of the ghostwriter never appears in the work.Hence the word ghostwriter.

Many professional writers use ghostwriting as a source of income.It is lucrative but the writer must be able to compromise the fact that his name would never appear in the work.

Word using animal names Part II

Other words with animal names are :

When a person is made to walk head held down and his hands held behind (like how cops make the culprits to walk) he is said to frog march.
When a person or group of people eat voraciously they are said to pig out.
When you ruin someone's plan, you are said to cook someone's goose.
A coward is called a chicken.
When a person takes back his word or admits his mistake he is said to be an eating crow.

More to follow later.

Words using animal names

Animals have been a man's best friend,companion, threat,food,inspiration,tool to hunt and what not.With time there have been many words in any language that is derived from animals,describing their qualities or a word of comparison etc.As sly as a fox, as faithful as a dog, drink like a fish are examples of common idioms in English.
There are also words/phrases with animal names;these are the animal names that we are going to see today.


A stubborn person is a pig head.
A stupid person is  a birdbrain.
A person who takes the blame for others mistakes or is a target is called a scapegoat.
 An illegitimate child is called a brush colt.
When a person quits an addiction/habit all at once , he is said to quit like a cold turkey.
A troublesome person is called a black sheep.
An easy target or vulnerable person is called a sitting duck.
Anything easy to do is called a duck soup.

Interesting, is it not?
There are many more such words.I will post them in my next post.

Billet Doux!

A love letter is an age old tradition of writing a personal letter to express affection for your loved one.
Billet Doux is obtained from the French language.It means a love letter!


Ex. of a sentence using billet doux :
She kept the billet-doux in a box on the dresser.