We love playing Boggle. Sometimes we stumble upon combinations of letters that sound like they should be words, so we have to look them up in the dictionary, and sometimes they are words, and sometimes, well, they should be!
Here are five from this week's Boggle-ing:
1. FAY
We had a wonderful cousin named Fay. She lived in Amherst, and died not too long ago. We miss Fay--her warm smile, her sense of humor, and her sharp wit. She had an exuberance for living her life that was admirable, and inspiring. She was part of the Reed family; her father was our great-grandfather's brother. Their mother was a Fay. Little did we know there are other fays in this world...
a. fay=(v) to fit or join closely or tightly
b. fay=(n) faith
c. fay=(n) fairy or elf
d. fay=(adj) resembling an elf
Cousin Fay did have an enchanted quality about her, and her name suited her well. Change the 'a' to an 'e', however, and it's a whole different story:
2. FEY
a. fey=(adj) doomed; marked by a foreboding of death or calamity
b. fey=(adj) visionary; marked by an otherworldly air or attitude; crazy, touched
c. fey=(adj) excessively refined, precious; campy
3. FIE
Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
So it turns out that the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk was really quite disgusted by the smell of poor Jack.
fie=an expression of disgust
4. LEA OR LEY
Over the lea we go! We also stumbled opon this word while fishing for words in a game of Boggle.
lea\ley=grassland or pasture
5. SLOE
Whenever you find these four letters linked together on a Boggle board, remember that you can make these words: SOLE, OLE, LOSE, and SLOE, as in Sloe Gin Fizz. My parents always thought that the Sloe was just a misspelling of Slow--some dimwitted, drunken bartender's mistake, perhaps. But no.
sloe=(n) the small black fruit of the blackthorne. Fruit is described as being "globose and astringent."
If you are sloe-eyed, you have either soft dark bluish or purplish black eyes, or slanted eyes.
Sloe gin is a sweet reddish liqueur consisting of grain spirits flavored chiefly with, you guessed it, sloes. It has nothing at all to do with the sudden turn in the overall pace of life when a sloe gin fizz is ingested, alas.
AND, if you happen to have an extra S on the board that you can use, don't forget to write down LOESS: an unstratified usually buff to yellowish brown loamy deposit found in North America, Europe, and Aisa, and believed to be chiefly deposited by the wind. Yeah!
Thanks to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for all those kick-ass definitions!
--LGP and DRP, with some minor tinkering from ESG
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