The Words of the Week - Feb. 6
Dictionary lookups from Punxsutawney, the Vatican, and Hollywood
‘Marmot’
Groundhog Day was this past Monday, a fact which led the entry for marmot to peek out of its burrow and receive a bump in lookups.
The largest ground squirrel in its range, groundhogs like Phil are found throughout the midwestern United States, most of Canada and into southern Alaska. M. monax is the most widespread marmot, while the Vancouver Island marmot (M. vancouverensis) is found only on one island in British Columbia.
—Jacob Clabes, The Northern Kentucky Tribune, 2 Feb. 2026
The word marmot may refer to any of a genus (Marmota) of stout-bodied short-legged chiefly herbivorous burrowing rodents of the squirrel family that have coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very small ears and that hibernate during the winter. Groundhogs (also known as woodchucks), are grizzled thickset marmots (Marmota monax) chiefly of Alaska, Canada, and the northeastern U.S. Marmot comes from the French word for such animals, marmotte.
‘Pettifogging’
The death of comedic actor Catherine O’Hara has led to an increase in lookups for many of the unusual words she deployed memorably in character as Moira Rose in the series Schitt’s Creek, including pettifogging.
Now is certainly not the time for pettifogging. But can we confabulate about the comic brilliance of Catherine O’Hara? These radically arcane words, like so many others, dripped off the gifted comedian’s tongue so silkily as Moira, her singularly eccentric matriarch in “Schitt’s Creek,” that you laughed well before you wondered what the heck they meant.
—
Pettifogging refers to the characteristic action of a pettifogger, defined as someone who quibbles over things of little substance, value, or importance. In its earliest English uses, pettifogger was two separate words: pettie and fogger. Pettie was a variant spelling of petty, a reasonable thing to call someone who is disreputable and small-minded. But why fogger? It may come from Fugger, the name of a successful family of 15th- and 16th-century German merchants and financiers. Germanic variations of fugger were used for the wealthy and avaricious, as well as for hucksters. In English, pettie fogger originally referred to a small-time operator of a shady business, and later specifically to a lawyer, before its use expanded to cover anyone given to quibbling over petty trifles.
“But I don’t think he’s pettifogging; not Mr. Grey. Four hundred pounds down, with fifty pounds for dress, and the same or most the same to all the girls, isn’t pettifogging.”
—
‘Cisgender’
Lookups for the adjective cisgender spiked on Wednesday, possibly due to a widely reported study by Brazilian scientists related to trans women and cisgender women in sports.
Transgender women exhibit strength and fitness similar to cisgender women months after hormone therapy, according to a comprehensive review of studies that challenges claims about trans athletes reaping advantages in women’s sports.
—
We define cisgender as “of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person was identified as having at birth. The first known use of the word in print occurred in the mid-1990s. For more on the word and its history, check out this article.
‘Consecrate’
A news story out of the Vatican spurred a rise in lookups for the verb consecrate.
Pope Leo XIV is facing his first major crisis with traditionalist Catholics: A breakaway group attached to the traditional Latin Mass announced plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent in a threatened revival of schism.
—
We define the relevant sense of consecrate as “to ordain to the office of bishop.” Consecrate, which shares a Latin ancestor with the adjective sacred, has additional meanings including “to make or declare sacred,” “to make inviolable or venerable,” and “to devote to a purpose with or as if with deep solemnity or dedication.”
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Sposh’
Sposh refers to soft slushy mud or snow in some dialects of English. It is thought to be a combination of the words slush and posh, but before you get overly excited about the new factoid with which you plan on boring your in-laws to tears, there are a couple of things you should know. First, posh does not itself come from “port-outward-starboard-home”, or any other acronym. Second, the posh that sposh is based on is a totally different kind than the one meaning “fashionable”; this one is an archaic word, meaning “a slushy mass (as of mud or broken ice).”
