It derives from the name of Mithridates VI, a 1st century BCE king of the ancient kingdom of Pontus, who was supposedly so fearful of being poisoned (as his father and predecessor Mithridates V had been before him) that, over many years, he deliberately administered ever-increasing amounts of poison and antidotes to himself to gradually build up a natural immunity to them all-a process now known as mithridatism. MITHRIDATEĪ mithridate is a cure-all or universal antidote, or any medicinal preparation with seemingly endless healing or restorative powers. MERRY-NIGHTĪn 18th century English word for a drinking party held in a pub on Christmas Eve. To be in the merlygrubs is an old Yorkshire dialect expression essentially meaning “to be out of sorts,” or “to feel not quite yourself.” According to one explanation, the merlygrubs are “an internal ailment which evidences itself by contortions of the features.” 17. MEGALOPSYCHYĪlso known as megalopsychia, megalopsychy is another name for magnanimity, or a benevolent, high-minded character. The opposite is malacophonous, meaning “soft-voiced.” 15. If you’re megalophonous, then you have a loud voice. As savage as a meat-axe is a 19th century expression meaning “extremely hungry.” 14. MEAT-BAGĪn old slang name for your stomach, also called your meat-safe. You can use mayhem as a verb, meaning “to harm or inflict injury on someone.” The word mayhem itself is a variation of maim and was originally a legal term meaning “to injure someone so as to impair their capacity for self-defense.” 13. If you’re maungy, then you’re in an ill-tempered, peevish mood- the kind of mood when even the things that usually cheer you up just aren’t doing it for you. That’s the medical name for excessive underarm sweating, should you need to know it. To malaxate is to soften something by kneading it. Maieutics (as well as being another word for midwifery) is ultimately the process of “giving birth” to new ideas. The adjective maieutic (“may- yoo-tik”) literally means “obstetric” or “pertaining to childbirth,” but the term was also used by Socrates to describe the philosophical process of opening someone’s mind, to the point at which they become fully conscious of an idea or thought that they had, until then, been entirely unaware of. Magniloquence or magniloquy is lofty, pompous, self-aggrandizing speech, and so if you’re magniloquent or magniloquous, then you’re given to over-speaking, bragging, or talking pompously. Likewise, something that is maculiferous is spotted, scarred, or blemished, and maculation is the act of staining or spotting something. MACULEĪ macule or macula is a tiny blemish or spot. If something or someone is macropodine, then it resembles a kangaroo. The adjective macaronyish, ultimately, means “dandified,” “over-the-top,” or “fancy.” 2. The macaroni wig was a flamboyant hairpiece popular among 18th century gentlemen (which is the macaroni mentioned in "Yankee Doodle"). “The Macaroni Club” was the nickname for a London society whose members were vain, dandyish young men returning from The Grand Tour of Europe. It wasn’t until the late 17th century that macaroni as we know it was first recorded in a 1673 travel guide that described it as “paste made into strings like pack-thread or thongs of whit-leather which if greater they call Macaroni, if lesser Vermicelli.” Either way, by the mid 1700s the popularity of macaroni and other continental dishes among the young, foppish gentlemen of London led to the word macaroni being associated with flamboyant, dandyish, cosmopolitan tastes. The earliest record of the word macaroni in English dates back to 1616 (when it was used in a play by Ben Jonson), although it’s thought that it originally referred to gnocchi, not pasta. Nowadays, in English, M marks the halfway point of the alphabet, and likewise typically features around halfway-down letter frequency lists you can expect M to account for around 2.5 percent of any page of English text, and for around 4 percent of the words in a standard dictionary to be listed under it-including the 40 marvelously magniloquent M-words listed here. Its familiar up-and-down shape is thought to be descended (via the Roman, Greek, Etruscan and the Phoenician alphabets) from a wave-shaped hieroglyph representing the Ancient Egyptian word for “water”-which makes our humble letter M more than 5000 years old. M is one of the earliest traceable letters in our entire alphabet.
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