As is my wont, when I go merrily searching along, I frequently point in a collection of letters that resemble a word and see what happens. Quite commonly, I end up with a vulgar entry in the Urban Dictionary (and there sure are a lot of those). Less commonly, I accidentally happen upon an actual word in the English language, which given that I didn't know if the random combination of letters I searched was actually a word, tends to be rather obscure.
Most recently, I typed in "spoid". And while I did get something in the Urban Dictionary ("short for spaz-oid or someone who wigs out", which isn't that vulgar), there were also many entries for Web sites selling pipettes or eyedroppers.
So it seems that spoid is another word for a pipette or an eyedropper, but I can't find anything authoritative that actually says so!
Here's an example.
The URL for that link is actually mcmaster.com/spoids/ But if you go to the page, the word "spoid" does not appear anywhere on that page. AliBaba has "spoid glass dropper". There's a Google patent for "A spoid", which says it's for a "new concept eyedropper". Another page lists "Spoid Glass Bottle", and shows several of them by that name (such as shown below), which are basically eyedropper bottles.
So if a spoid is an eyedropper or a pipette, why can't I find a definition that says so? I mean, this would be important for Scrabble!
If you go to the Free Dictionary, "spoid" isn't there, but "jaspoid" -- resembling jasper, is. And it appears in a lot of other words for something that resembles something.
So ... I've spent more time than I should have on this conundrum. I don't have a lot of readers, but if you can find it in YOUR dictionary, tell me.
1 comment:
I have seen spoid used commonly in Korea, while teaching English. I would stick to pipette or dropper though. I don't know where the Asians got the word spoid from. I would be interested to know its origins.
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