Monday, November 09, 2015

The last word.

Besides being a fairly high scoring play in a game of Scrabble, the word zymurgy also has the distinction of being the final alphabetical entry in a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that I own.  Zymurgy literally is the last word in my dictionary and it can be found on page 1666 (it is, after all, the concise OED containing a mere 240,000 words).  I only discovered this new (to me) word because, having no other particularly pressing engagement at the time, I allowed myself a moment to muse, "I wonder what is the last word in this dictionary."  And what exactly is the definition of zymurgy one might ask? The OED's definition is this: the study or practice of fermentation in brewing, winemaking or distilling.  Did not know that, but now I do.
This Scrabble game has been a dramatization: do not try this at home.

5 comments:

New Hampshire Wineman said...

VG, when I began my blog, I had a 'business' card made, and guess what I had put on that business card? Yup! You guessed it. Don't feel like you have to read the post my card is on, but at the top of that post is, you guessed it, my business card!
You are the only other person I know of that has used the word Zymurgy.
Zymurgy

Thomas said...

I've always been perplexed by the definition of zymurgy. Its etymology includes the Greek word for "leaven" and the English word for "metallurgy". Go figure.

Vinogirl said...

NHW: "Zinfandel Zymurgy" cool.
Is that another blog?

Tomasso: Well, "leaven" makes sense, but "metallurgy" not so much.

New Hampshire Wineman said...

Yes. I mostly use it for miscellaneous photos.

Vinogirl said...

NHW: A ha, like my Flickr gadget on this blog (which I never add to).