1. A young offspring of a mammal, such as a dog or wolf.      

            2. A child; a youth. An impudent young fellow.

            3. A tooth of a sprocket wheel. Nautical. Any of the ridges on the barrel of a windlass or capstan.   

verb intr. - To give birth to whelps or a whelp. 

verb tr.    - To give birth to (whelps or a whelp). 


 [Middle English, from Old English hwelp.]

             The hurricane hit with 179 M.P.H. winds, clutched at Roman numerals until they disappeared into the dark, shattered the face, ripped off the rusty whelps of the gears and silenced the clock tower forever. -- N

  ***Something less obvious for Sparking, who was missing Maraj:


Hyoid: (HIE-oid) adjective             

            Of or relating to the hyoid bone, a U-shaped bone at the base of the tongue that supports the muscles of the tongue.           

noun     The hyoid bone.  

[New Latin hyoides, the hyoid bone, from Greek huoeides, shaped like the letter upsilon : hu, name of the letter upsilon + -oeides, -oid.]

            The polish wasn't hard quite yet.  Without messing up her manicure, Maraj hung up the phone and knew she looked sophisticated as she did it. Her personal trainer had been talking about something medical.  She couldn't really remember all the details, but it wasn't important.  Besides, Maraj could think of only one way Laurie could have developed a hyodal hernia thingy and that just had to be the result of poor technique. – N

__

Background: 

Along with countless other people the world over, I enjoy my subscription to A. Word. A. Day. that results in a daily email message with interesting, sometimes completely unknown-to-me words, along with pronounciation guide, etymology typical usage and more.

The New York Times hailed AWADmail as: "The most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace."

One day way back when, I decided that for learning, it would be helpful and fun to use the words AWAD sent to me in a sentence or two. Of course I found myself going beyond that and using them in not-so-obvious ways that entertained my friends as well as myself. Sometimes I use words incorrectly on purpose. But if you know the meaning, you get the joke. It is kind of a backward way of doing things, but that's creativity, right?

The first character inspired by AWAD was Maraj (not her real name.) She has quite a few fans. At the encouragement of several persistent friends, I decided it was time to share her and the others with my new friends here at OS, and begin on the first day of 2010. 

I'm offering vocabulary words I received from AWAD and what I wrote to practice using them. Tell me this isn't a much more fun way to work on improving one's vocabulary. Enjoy. Maraj and more will be back – and check out www.wordsmith.org to sign up for the free subscription. They don't know me, but for fun tell them I sent you. Like OS, it can be addictive. -- Natalie