Category Words

The name comes from 19th-century jokes about dog meat in sausages. It was in print by 1892, years before the cartoonist TAD Dorgan, who is usually credited with it, drew his first hot dog cartoon in 1906.

Eburnean is a warm off-white, hex #FFFFEE. It comes from the Latin ebur, ivory, the same root as the word ivory itself, which reached English through French.

Sarcoline is a pale peach, hex #FFDDAA. The 1913 Webster’s defines it as flesh-coloured, from the Greek sarx, the same root behind sarcophagus and sarcasm.

Skobeloff is a dark teal, hex #007474. It carries the name of Mikhail Skobelev, the Russian ‘White General’ who rode into battle in a white uniform on a white horse.

For five years an American dictionary defined a word no one had ever used. It got there because an editor misread a note about the letter D.