This week’s obscure English word is gelid. It means extremely cold, as in frosty or icy, and derives from the original Latin gelidus.
Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using this word.
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2021
The obscure word of the week is gelid
Matthew Wright 
Whoa! You finally hit on a word I knew!!
I’ve learned a lot of new and very odd words from you, Matt!!
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I have the complete Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) and am not afraid to use it!
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haha, so I’ve seen!
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Ahhh….. I used this word in a poem a few years ago:
https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/deep/
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It’s a great word. I’ve always thought English never had enough words to describe ‘really cold’.
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Well, not polite ones.
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Wow-a word I’ve never heard of before!
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I have many more like it (I have the original 11-volume Oxford English Dictionary in my bookshelves, compact edition which needs a magnifying glass to read it).
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That’s awesome! What a treasure!
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The best part is that some of that first edition OED was written by J R R Tolkien, as his ‘day job’ before becoming an Oxford don. I believe he got the word ‘walrus’ to work on. Anecdotally, when his publisher later had him on about ‘dwarves’, on the basis that the plural wasn’t spelt that way in the OED, Tolkien retorted by explaining that he’d worked on that very dictionary.
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Interesting!!! Love the bit of history!!! Thanks for sharing with me.
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I did not know the word, but sitting in a heat advisory a the end of the dog days of summer here in the midwestern US I am dreaming of the gelid days of winter.
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Here in NZ we are amidst those gelid days now – the rag end of winter when Antarctica usually blows multiple icy storms across the country and spring has yet to bring any warmth.
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Trade you! I guess we will soon enough. 😊
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