Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Welcome to the final installment of my weekly series, Vocab 128, in which I sit down with pen and paper and write 128 words beginning with the same letter, in more or less the order that I think of them, before scanning the page and posting it here. The result is a flex of my vocabulary muscles, an exposure of my handwriting to the world, and perhaps an insight into the psychology of my word associations.

Generally, I avoid words that are merely alternate forms of other words, and when I think of such a word I generally default to the appropriate noun form. Proper nouns I exclude as a rule (but at the end of the day, what even is a proper noun? No one really knows).

I gave up way too quickly in thinking of words on my own, as indicated by the asterisk after “zither,” but it least I finished this series with the dignity of 128 distinct words. And before you ask, yes, I have counted compound words as distinct words all along. My mysterious and arbitrary criteria preclude the inclusion of both “zeal” and “zealot,” but do not preclude the inclusion of both “zebra” and “zebrafish,” nor of any number of words beginning with the Greek prefix “zoo-.”

Speaking of “zoo-,” what a rich vein of vocabulary to hit right at the end! I don’t even remember what some of these mean, but I am delighted to add such words as “zoolatry” to my repertoire.

I included “zergling” because it’s my party and I can do what I want, but if you ask me, the concept of a zergling does have some currency within the culture beyond its mere usage in the Starcraft games, certainly more so than related words like “hydralisk” and “nydus worm.” I don’t know if you know what a zergling is, but I’ll bet you’re more likely to know that one than those other two.

This week’s definition from American Heritage Dictionary:

zy·de·co (zīdĭ-kō′)

n.

Popular music of southern Louisiana that combines French dance melodies, elements of Caribbean music, and the blues, played by small groups featuring the guitar, the accordion, and a washboard.

[From Louisiana French Creole zarico, beans, zydeco, from French les haricots, the string beans (perhaps as in les haricots (sont pas salés), the string beans (aren’t salty), a common phrase in Creole song lyrics suggesting hard times in which people cannot afford salt pork to cook with their beans) : les, pl. of le, the + haricots, pl. of haricot, string bean; see HARICOT¹.]