A really short entry for word of the week this time round. Its not a really old world, nor a mysterious word but its a word that made me grin a lot yesterday when I came across it in the dictionary. I'm not sure why I found it amusing exactly, although I expect there's something of a 'nudge nudge, wink wink' double entendre in there that caught my attention. So, without any more ado. This week's word is:
cucumiform
which originates from the Latin cucumis + form and is an adjective meaning - to have the shape of a cucumber.
That's it, that's all there is to it, but I just love the fact that there's a word which means that!
To make this a tiny bit longer for us all, I'll just explain that the word cucumber (first seen around 1440s) and before that cucumer without the b, can be traced back through Old French cocombre, to the Latin cucumis, which was used for cucumbers or for a similar looking sea plant.
The word form also originates in Latin and means shape, sort or type.
Sources:
Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, 2010
Chambers Concise Dictionary, 1989
Von
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