Sunday, January 22, 2012

Cool Words - Viscid

I was digging through my old "word of the day" e-mails from dictionary.com and found this cool word from a recent e-mail - VISCID.  It means "sticky," and it's a common medical and technical term for something that's sticky.  Viscid oil is bad, viscid rot is a kind of decay found in fruit like cranberries, viscid mucous can be a medical disorder, etc.  It's related to viscous and viscosity, and words like that.  But it sounds cool - there's at least one rock band and one marketing company that use the word as a name.  I like words like this - they have a texture that . . . sticks.  (Sorry.)  

When you google this word, eventually you get to this headline from a research article:

"Do Viscid Secretions Have a Role in Nasal Polyp Formation?"

To me, this sounds a lot like, 
"Do boogers come from sticky snot?"

Ah, the power of jargon.

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