# Have you heard of this word? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 13, 2025, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988 "2025-04-13T10:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/41 "2025-04-13T22:52:16Z")
> [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > ’m outraged that I can’t play LIGNIN Now that word I do recognize as from plant biology. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/42 "2025-04-13T22:53:18Z")
Never heard of that word, or if I ever did in school I certainly don’t remember it. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/43 "2025-04-13T23:02:13Z")
> [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > I’ll use this test regularly when decidIng what word to guess in Wordle. I’ll also use it when I’m outraged that I can’t play LIGNIN in Spelling Bee. Note that CODON _is_ accepted in Spelling Bee. I probably didn’t encounter that word in HS biology, which I took 1971-72. I may or may not have in College biology, which I took a year or two later. But I read an awful lot of science articles, including every issue of Science News going back about 40 years, so it’s certain I encountered it a long time ago in one of them. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2025, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/44 "2025-04-14T01:57:23Z")
I know “codon” and know what it means, but I don’t remember if I learned it in school or in later reading. The earliest quotation in the OED is Francis Crick writing in _Scientific American_ in October 1962: > A small group of bases that codes one amino acid has recently been named a codon. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/45 "2025-04-14T02:00:59Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Probably this one. Quite possibly so. This looks to have been the cover of a 1980 paperback edition, which would line up with when I think I had read it (1983), and which looks familiar to me: [![](https://secure.coverart.textbookrush.com/large/755/1-9780393950755.jpg) ](https://secure.coverart.textbookrush.com/large/755/1-9780393950755.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/46 "2025-04-15T08:22:02Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Obsolete words do get culled regularly I miss “esssse”, an obsolete Engish word meaning “ashes” - one of very few containg a quadruple “s”. I’ve tried using it in Scrabble but always get called out on it…and it is only in extended, multi-volume dictionaries. Here’s a rare use: a poem, clearly written as a challenge to use the word > **[The word: Esssse](https://elisabethsharpmcketta.com/the-word-esssse/)** > > Maddox is a writer, teacher, and creative force; she writes poems and is also completing a novel that she started as a seventh grader…and only as an adult knows how to finish. I love this idea of f… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/47 "2025-04-15T12:07:03Z")
> [@scudsucker](#): > > I miss “esssse”, an obsolete Engish word meaning “ashes” - one of very few containg a quadruple “s”. So far as I could find, that is a word from Middle English (and it seems to be from a particular dialect, at that), so “obsolete” is underselling it a bit. I’m somewhat surprised it appears in any modern dictionary. It looks like it may have been in the OED2. But a fascinating word. Apparently “ss” represents what we would call an “sh” sound, so _esssse_ = _esh-she_. _Ayenbite of Inwit_, written in Kentish Middle English c .1340 by Dan Michel seems to be the source of the word, but I’m having difficulty finding anything more recent other than contemporary ones exhuming the word. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/48 "2025-04-15T12:10:15Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Apparently “ss” represents what we would call an “sh” sound, so _esssse_ = _esh-she_. Yeah, my mum is an English teacher. I was listening to Chaucer when I was like.. 8 years old? Not that I could read him. But I know how to pronounce the word, and it is similar to modern “ashes” Do not ever play Scrabble with my mother. ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/49 "2025-04-15T12:45:27Z")
I definitely would have known “codon” from high school biology in the '80s, if not before from reading on my own. A personal anecdote: I studied biology in grad school and, although I never met him, [Marshall Nirenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg) was on the faculty of my program: > **Marshall Warren Nirenberg** (April 10, 1927 – January 15, 2010)[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-:0-1) was an American [biochemist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochemist) and [geneticist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneticist).[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-2) He shared a [Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Physiology_or_Medicine) in 1968 with [Har Gobind Khorana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har_Gobind_Khorana) and [Robert W. Holley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Holley) for “breaking the [genetic code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code)” and describing how it operates in [protein synthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_biosynthesis). > … > They produced [RNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA) composed solely of [uracil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uracil), a [nucleotide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleotide) that only occurs in RNA. They then added this synthetic poly-uracil RNA into a cell-free extract of _[Escherichia coli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli)_ which contained the DNA, RNA, [ribosomes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome) and other cellular machinery for protein synthesis. They added [DNase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNase), which breaks apart the DNA, so that no additional proteins would be produced other than that from their synthetic [RNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA). They then added 1 radioactively labeled [amino acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid), the building blocks of proteins, and 19 unlabeled amino acids to the extract, varying the labeled amino acid in each sample. Only in the extract containing the radioactively labeled [phenylalanine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylalanine), was the resulting protein also [radioactive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive). This implied that the [genetic code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code) for phenylalanine on RNA consisted of a repetition of uracil bases. Indeed, as we know now, it is UUU (three uracil bases in a row). This was the first step in deciphering the [codons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codon) of the genetic code and the first demonstration of [messenger RNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA) (see _[Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirenberg_and_Matthaei_experiment)_ ).[[10]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-10)[[11]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-11)[[12]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-12)[[13]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-13)[[14]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-14)[[15]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-15)[[16]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-16) > > In August 1961, at the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow, Nirenberg presented a paper to a small group of scientists, reporting the decoding of the first codon of the genetic code. [Matthew Meselson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Meselson), who was in the audience, spontaneously hugged Nirenberg at the end of the talk and then told [Francis Crick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick) about Nirenberg’s result.[[17]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-NautilusGoldstein-17) Crick invited Nirenberg to repeat his performance the next day in a talk to a much larger audience.[[18]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-18)[[19]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-19) Speaking before the assembled congress of more than a thousand people, Nirenberg electrified the scientific community.[[17]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-NautilusGoldstein-17) He quickly received great scientific attention for these experiments. Within a few years, his research team had performed similar experiments and found that three-base repeats of [adenosine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine) (AAA) produced the amino acid [lysine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysine), and [cytosine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytosine) repeats (CCC) produced [proline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proline). The next breakthrough came when [Philip Leder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Leder), a postdoctoral researcher in Nirenberg’s lab, developed a method for determining the genetic code on pieces of [tRNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRNA) (see _[Nirenberg and Leder experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirenberg_and_Leder_experiment)_). This greatly sped up the assignment of three-base codons to amino acids so that 50 codons were identified in this way. Khorana’s experiments confirmed these results and completed the genetic code translation. > > The period between 1961 and 1962 is often referred to as the “coding race” because of the competition between the labs of Nirenberg at NIH and Nobel laureate [Severo Ochoa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severo_Ochoa) at New York University Medical School, who had a massive staff. Faced with the possibility of helping the first NIH scientist win a Nobel prize, many NIH scientists put aside their own work to help Nirenberg in deciphering the mRNA codons for amino acids. Dr. [DeWitt Stetten, Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeWitt_Stetten,_Jr.), director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, called this period of collaboration “NIH’s finest hour”.[[20]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg#cite_note-20) ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/50 "2025-04-15T15:36:51Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I used to play with a friend (she died a few years ago, I miss her) who insisted on using the official Scrabble dictionary. I found it both limiting and confusing – why on earth is it allowing _this_ word and not _that_ one? And why is it allowing all these odd unusual abbreviations? Does it still include SH and HM? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/51 "2025-04-15T15:58:34Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Does it still include SH and HM I don’t know. She had a copy of it; I don’t. I suppose it’s online, but I don’t feel like looking right now. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/52 "2025-04-15T16:00:13Z")
Understandable. I’ve got one at home, but it’s old. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2025, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/53 "2025-04-16T10:40:00Z")
I don’t remember the word, but I haven’t read that much about DNA and such. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2025, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/54 "2025-04-16T18:00:13Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > It looks like it may have been in the OED2. The online OED lists “esssse” as merely a variant spelling of “ash”. > Forms: singular Old English asce, Old English–Middle English axe, Middle English aske, Middle English esche, esssse, aische, asch, Middle English–1500s ashe, Middle English– ash (northern Middle English–1500s asse; Scottish1500s as, alse, 1500s– ass). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2025, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/55 "2025-04-16T21:19:13Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > _Ayenbite of Inwit_, written in Kentish Middle English c .1340 by Dan Michel seems to be the source of the word, Too bad Leo Bloom isn’t still around to remind us that Joyce punned on the title in _Ulysses_. > “Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.” The original’s full title was The Ayenbite of Inwyt (literally, the “again-biting of inner wit”) or the Remorse (prick) of Conscience. Apparently people who read _Ulysses_ are rolling on the floor at that one. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/56 "2025-04-17T10:06:28Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Apparently people who read _Ulysses_ Once. Never again. What horrible prose. Even Salman Rushdie is better. Or Thomas Pynchon I’ve read most of this list - obtained via google search for hardest books to read. > **[Most Difficult Novels (581 books)](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/827.Most_Difficult_Novels)** > > 581 books based on 2039 votes: Ulysses by James Joyce, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Moby-Dick or, The Whale... Joyce appears more than once. (And in case I appear to be boasting, bare with me, I was in a boarding school for seven years, with a great library but not a lot else for nerdy entertainment. I’ve read everything from amateur teen romance perpretated by my younger sisters 16 yr old friend, to Umberto Eco… you need something to do after you have finished homework but still have an hour of silence before bedtime) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/57 "2025-04-17T13:49:40Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Informal Scrabble games played according to my house rules allow any word that everyone at the table agrees is a word. > > I used to play with a friend (she died a few years ago, I miss her) who insisted on using the official Scrabble dictionary. I found it both limiting and confusing – why on earth is it allowing _this_ word and not _that_ one? And why is it allowing all these odd unusual abbreviations? The Official Scrabble Dictionary doesn’t choose on their own what words to include-- They have a list of a half-dozen or so “real dictionaries” that they refer to, and if a word is found in some threshold number of them, the Scrabble Dictionary includes it, too (plus some extra requirements like no abbreviations and no proper nouns). And you do need to have some standard reference that everyone at the table agrees to, or you’re guaranteed to get hurt feelings when one person knows a word that others at the table don’t. Of note, the official Scrabble rules don’t actually specify what dictionary to use, just that everyone in the game needs to pick one and agree to it. The Official Scrabble Dictionary is only official in the sense that it’s the one used for organized tournaments (though of course, a house game can choose to use it as well). ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/58 "2025-04-17T15:12:57Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > They have a list of a half-dozen or so “real dictionaries” that they refer to, and if a word is found in some threshold number of them, the Scrabble Dictionary includes it, too (plus some extra requirements like no abbreviations and no proper nouns). My understanding for the first edition of the Official Scrabble Dictionary is that they included any valid word found in any of 5 collegiate-sized dictionaries. I think they were all American dictionaries, but am not sure. I do know that Merriam-Webster’s was one and American Heritage was another. Later editions of OSD may have changed their standards of inclusion or added other dictionaries. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/59 "2025-04-17T15:29:20Z")
> [@scudsucker](#): > > bare with me These days I usually keep my clothes on when in company. > [@Chronos](#): > > if a word is found in some threshold number of them, the Scrabble Dictionary includes it, too (plus some extra requirements like no abbreviations and no proper nouns). The version my friend had, anyway, included a batch of abbreviations, and did not include some words quite commonly found in other dictionaries; as well as IIRC including some forms of a word but not including other forms (standard adjectival forms, adverbial forms, that sort of thing.) > [@Chronos](#): > > you do need to have some standard reference that everyone at the table agrees to, or you’re guaranteed to get hurt feelings when one person knows a word that others at the table don’t. Depends who you’re playing with. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988/60 "2025-04-17T15:45:12Z")
If you do not like Joyce’s word games after having given him a chance, you do not like them, what more is there to say? I have no idea what “most difficult novels” is supposed to mean, though. They are abysmal crap? Disturbing? Tedious? Doorstops? Force you to have a dictionary on hand? A lot of good novels on that list. The OED comprehensively includes words and spellings all the way back to Middle English, however if a word appears _only_ there we should not be surprised if it is not accepted in official Scrabble tournaments. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-heard-of-this-word/1016988.md?page=4)