Reading the dictionary front to back! Something I’ve always wanted to try. We’re still in the letter F, so let’s move… forward.

Somehow, floozy made it into the dictionary as, “a young woman with loose morals.” Good for her. Also, floozie is an acceptable alternate spelling.

Interesting how flotilla, “a fleet of especially small ships,” is immediately followed by flotsam, “floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo.” It’s like these two tell a story back to back.

Fluke has multiple definitions, such as a type of flatworm or a stroke of luck, but it also means, “the part of an anchor that fastens in the ground,” and “the lobe of a whale’s tale.”

Fly also gets a lot of space devoted to it. It can mean traveling through the air with wings, or in the wind, in an aircraft, or just by generic floating. It can also mean to disappear, or to physically dissipate (!). Then there’s the insect. Get a load of this one: “Any of a large order of insects mostly with one pair of functional wings and another pair that, if present, are reduced to balancing organs and often with larvae without a head, eyes, or legs; especially one (as a housefly) that is large and stout-bodied.” I guess that covers it.

We’ve got a somewhat more modern entry with FOMO. There’s the literal definition, “fear of missing out,” but then the dictionary feels the need to clarify by adding, “fear of not being included in something that others are enjoying.”

Anybody hungry? Food is “material taken into an organism and used for growth, repair, and vital processes as a source of energy, also organic material produced by green plants and used by them as food.” The second definition is a little clearer, as just “nourishment in solid form.”

A fool is a jester, or an ignorant person, or could mean to act aimlessly or to deceive. But the book says a fool can also be a “bellows bag.” I dare someone to work that into a conversation this week.

The words-that-start-with-foo hits keep coming with foot, described as “the end part of a leg below the ankle of a vertebrate animal” or just the bottom of anything. But it’s not defined as twelve inches. Instead, there’s a note to look up weights and measurements in the W section. Whoa, dictionary, easy does it with the spoilers!

No, Star Wars isn’t mentioned under force, but it kind of by including with definitions like “strength or energy, especially of an exceptional degree,” “an influence, as a push or pull, that causes motion or a change of motion,” and “to compel or coerce.” Those sound appropriately Jedi-ish to me.

There are more than twenty definitions of form. Some of the more interesting ones are “a ceremony,” “a bench,” and “a variety.” Then there’s “to take a form” and “to take a definite form” as two separate entries. And again, I have to ask if it’s okay to use a word in that word’s own definition. Feels like cheating.

Next: What a fox!

* * * *

Want more? My ongoing series THE SUBTERKNIGHTS is back on the Kindle store! A man searches for his missing sister in a futuristic city filled with far-out tech, strange creatures, and secret magic. Only $0.99 or free with KU!