spillikins (SPIL-i-kinz) - n., the game of jackstraws or pick-up-sticks.



Thanks, WikiMedia!

In which a several long, thin sticks are placed in a loose pile on a flat surface and players take turns trying to remove a stick/jackstraw/spillikin without disturbing any others. Often the spillikins are straight and round, but some sets have ones with bends or flat pieces (I think we still have one with slightly wiggly snakes in the game closet). Exact origin of the name is unclear, but we have a reference from 1734 to a game called spilakees, which is suggestive -- suggestions include coined in English from spill, meaning a slender piece of something + diminutive ending -kin, and alteration of either Dutch or Flemish spelleken, small peg, both ultimately from Latin spīna, thorn.

---L.

coadjutor (koh-uh-JOO-ter, koh-AJ-uh-ter) - n., an assistant; esp. an assistant to an bishop or other ecclesiastic; esp. an assistant bishop with the right of succession.


Most often used in the Anglican Church, but also elsewhere. In the Chalet School books, it's used by Joey Maynard nee Bettany to describe the live-in nurse/nanny (a Tyrolean) who helps raise her ridiculously large family. (I suspect the implication of right of succession was not intended here.) Note that there is a (now even rarer) feminine form, coadjutress, that she could have also used. This is an old one: to Middle English form coadjutour, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin coadjutor, from Latin co(n)-, with + adjūtor, helper, from adjūvāre, to help.

---L.

krummholz (KROOM-hohlts) - n., a forest of stunted trees near the timberline.



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Can be at either subalpine or subarctic tree lines, though given the obvious German nature of the word it probably won't surprise you that it was the former originally. The stunting comes from the icy winds of winter, preventing trees from growing tall without shelter. In German, Krummholz is literally "crooked/bent wood."

---L.

This is not exactly a theme week as the five words on tap this week are not notionally grouped, but they are synchronically grouped in that they were all encountered in Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, specifically post-war volumes set near and above Interlaken, Switzerland. This first one might be a repeat, but if so my google fu can't confirm it:


föhn or foehn (FAYN, FÖN) - n., a warm dry wind blowing down the lee side of mountains.


Originally and often specifically down the north slopes of the Alps. It's caused when moist air on the windward side of the mountains is pushed upward, cooling it and thus causing the moisture to precipitate out, then when it descends on the other side, it undergoes adiabatic warming:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

In many places, foehn winds have local names, such as Santa Anas in southern California and chinooks in the Rocky Mountains. As you might expect, given the spelling, we got the word from German Föhn, where it also means hair drier (!), but the wind sense was originally from Swiss German and/or Middle High German fœnne, from Old High German phonno/phōno, from (possibly via Romansh favuogn/fuogn) Vulgar Latin *faōnius, from Latin favōnius, west wind, (the Roman counterpart of Greek zephyr) which was traditionally supposed to be a mild weather and harbinger of spring -- and in Switzerland foehn are indeed associated with late winter thaws.

---L.