The dot above the lowercase i and j? They’re called tittles.
The pound sign (#) is an Octothorpe.
The little plastic bands on the ends of shoelaces are aglets.
The left over ash in a pipe that also helps you relight it is called dottle
I used to know the name of the little metal band on the end of a pencil that separates it from the eraser, but I forgot. But I doubt this topic will go on very long without someone reminding me.
Same with that little indentation that’s below your nose and above your upper lip.
What are some common, every day things people run across that they may not know the names to…or that had a name in the first place?
I came in here to mention aglets, but I forgot what they were called, as I always do when I want to remember that. Shit. Good work on your part, Idle Thoughts.
And the skin between your nostrils is your columella.
The space between your eyebrows is your ophyron.
The creases on the inside of your wrist is your rasceta.
The skin between your thumb and your palm is your purlicue.
And on a non-bodily note, nittles are the puncuation marks used in place of profanity.
A frenulum also attaches the foreskin to the penis (with equal at the clitoris), the upper and lower lips to the gums, and anyplace else in the body where a movable part is secured to a nonmovable part.
Transparencies for overhead projectors are occasionally known as “foils”. However, this use of the term “foil” is actually an acronym–for “foil over incandescent lamp”. Fun with recursion, eh?
(In the phrase, the word “foil” is referring to the type of material, whereas the acronym “foil” is referring to the object made out of the material.)
When two separate windows in a wall are really close together, so they look almost like one big window with a thin vertical support in the middle–that support is a mullion.
Ophryon (as I found it spelled) wasn’t in Big Red (my hardback Merriam-Webster’s) but both the Oxford English Dictionary online and dictionary.com say it’s the space right above the glabella.
