Dictionary fun

Some favorites from the Chambers Dictionary

• Barbie doll: a glamorous teenage doll with separately purchasable clothing and accessories appropriate to fantasy versions of an exciting modern lifestyle
• eclair: a cake, long in shape but short in duration, with cream filling and usu chocolate icing
• mangabey: the white-eyelid monkey, any species of the mainly West African genus Cercocebus, esp. the sooty mangabey. [From a district in Madagascar, where, however, they are not found]
• middle-aged: between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner
• sesquipedalian: (adj) tending to use long words
• umbra (2nd definition): an uninvited guest who comes with an invited guest
• trichotillomania n : an irresistible urge to pull out your own hair
• sea-serpent: a mythical sea-creature in the form of a serpent, often heard about but rarely seen; frequently described by imaginative sailors, credulous landlubbers and common liars

Miscellany

• The longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary is "floccinaucinihilipilification," which means "the act of estimating as worthless."
• Ben Bergen's definition of chicken breasts