#atozchallenge Ideas ~ Hard Letters to Fill: X and Z Word List
If you get stuck finding A to Z Challenge topics for the letters X and Z, these may help. They come from my 1920′s Hordern’s Home Dictionary and some words are out of common use. These words are great short story prompts. Q words came out in yesterday’s post.
X Words
- Xanthein: yellow colouring in flowers which is water soluble.
- Xantippe: an angry woman.
- Xiphias: a sword shaped comet, resembling a sword.
- Xylograph: a wood engraving, or impression from a wood block.
- Xylopyrography: producing pictures on wood by charring with a hot iron; poker painting.
- Xyster: a surgeon’s instrument for scraping bones (sorry, but you are always scraping the bottom of the barrel for X words as there are so few…)
Z words
- Zanella: a twilled fabric which was once used for covering umbrellas. (Remember, this is a 1920s dictionary.)
- Zareba: an enclosure against enemies or wild animals.
- Zax: an instrument for cutting slate.
- Zeitgeist: the spirit of the time.
- Zeugma: the connection of two nouns with an adjective or verb, suitable to only one of them.
- Zingaro: a gypsy (zingari is the plural)
- Zoanthopy: a psychological disorder in which someone believes they are one of the “lower” animals. (Lower may mean less intelligent.)
- Zoetrope: an optical instrument representing pictures as if alive. (Perhaps the early silent films were Zoetropes. Does anyone know?)
- Zonulet: a little zone.
- Zoograft: tissue from a lower animal, grafted onto a human being. (Use of pig valves in heart surgery would be a zoograft.)
- Zoolatry: animal worship (successfully achieved by cats in Egyptian times and they are still trying to bring this fad back…)
- Zounds: expressing anger or wonder.
Filed under: What's On Tagged: A to Z challenge
