Vocabulary Building

Here are a couple words that could come in handy sometime:

Vinolent. Addicted to wine; intemperate or drunken. According to World Wide Words from whence I got this word, Chaucer uses it in Canterbury Tales: "In woman vinolent is no defence, This knowen lecchours by experience." But lest you think it a dead word, it makes an appearance in the press from time to time.

Strabismus. "The library must discourage, as conducive to strabismus, any crossover tendencies or attempts at the simultaneous reading of several books" (Umberto Eco--who else?--"How to Organize a Public Library"). The word, potentially useful to the bookish sort, is a noun meaning an abnormal alignment of the eyes; the condition of having a squint. The squinting, no doubt, comes from reading too much or, as my husband always complains to me, reading in the dark. But I like reading in dim light where there is no glare from the page and I have yet to develop a squint from it. I know my husband will say that the key word is "yet" and that it is only a matter of time before my "bad habit" will lead me to strabismus, but I contend that the bright light bouncing off the white page makes me squint and gives me a headache. We'll never agree on this, and each of us is just waiting to be able to say someday, "I told you so."