Uncommon words and Meanings

I remember when I was a kid, Coles (or perhaps Woolworths?) had a promotion where they sold volume 1 of F&W for 9c, volume 2 for $2, and the other volumes for $9. Volumes 3 and 4 came with two halves of a dictionary. They were released weekly, and even in total it was still a pretty good deal. This was before the era of the CD-ROM. I was only ever able to convince my mum to buy one volume. I still have it.
I remember we had the full F&W set, including dictionary (or dictionaries?). I can't quite remember how all the latter volumes were obtained, because I think I remember Mum and Dad being a bit hesitant to get volumes beyond the first few.

Was quite handy once I knew how to read and use them, but around the same time, Microsoft Bookshelf and Encarta were available on CD-ROM.

I remember having taken those two F&W dictionaries to school in Year 4. Everyone else in the class had a copy of the Macquarie junior dictionary, which was naturally much easier to use than my F&W one. I remember one day our teacher decided to have a contest: she called out a random word, then from a closed dictionary, you had to look it up as fast as possible. I struggled in the first two rounds, but somehow managed to make it to the final three, and then win it, much to the amazement of the class.

The entire encyclopedia set now resides at my Dad's childhood home in the Philippines. It was brought there for my cousins' use when they only had a single desktop computer to share between them (and nearly no connection to Internet). It's probably just sitting there proudly now that my cousins have mostly finished school and reliable 4G/5G network is now available in the village.
 
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Apricity From the Latin aprīcitās, noun of quality from aprīcus (“warmed by the sun”).

Another word I like is hurkle durkling which I’m doing right now


"Hurkle-durkle" is a Scottish term meaning to lie in bed or lounge about when one should be up and about. It's essentially the practice of lingering in bed, perhaps after your alarm has gone off, instead of getting straight out of bed
 

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