Methinks I’ve just been hosed in a game of Facebook Scrabble… errm, sorry, LEXULOUS.
I’m all for winning word games using words that sound a bit unlikely, or are a bit on the bizarre side. You can typically tell these ones because you get an exchange which includes the phrase “it’s a type of”, e.g. ADZE (good word to know if you’re stuck with a Z and not many other letters).
Person 1: Adze? What the hell is an adze?
Person 2: It’s a type of ancient Egyptian woodworking tool, used for hollowing out wood.
Person 1: I hate you.
But at least it’s real. Now, I don’t claim to be fully conversant with the entire English language (for that, after all, is the language of Scrabble tile-based word-forming games), but I’ve never heard the word “Coomy”. Neither, judging by the Google results for “define coomy”, has anybody else. Well, Urban Dictionary seems to have a stake in the ground for it, but then that’s hardly a reliable source of information (Urban Dictionary is a sort of slightly less rude implementation of Roger’s Profanisaurus, of the sort where you can add your own definitions and – as Lord Science did a couple of years ago – try to bullshit people into believing that to “go silverback” is a commonly used expression).
What’s got me flummoxed is that the Facebook implementation of Scrabble word-forming game I refer to has a built-in dictionary check in this mode: whereby if you play in Challenge mode you can put down whatever you like so long as you can back it up when the other person says “Oi, what do you think you’re playing at?”, in Regular mode it crosschecks against a dictionary to make sure you’re not making things up (despite how valid the word “toolage” appears, for example). The system also provides a dictionary lookup, however in the case of “coomy” the reference dictionary comes up with a “word does not exist” page.
I would conjecture that “coomy” is nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse to get a ‘Y’ over a Triple Word Score.
I’ll hasten to admit that I’ve thrown “Radix”, “Urinemia” and “Ortolan” into the odd game, but they’re all real words. They don’t come up in conversation that often, but then I guess Ortolan isn’t something they serve in the Oxford Arms of a saturday afternoon. (If you don’t know what ortolan is – and there’s more than likely no reason why you should – it’s an illegal French dish where you take a specially bred bird which you force-feed & fatten up, drown in Armangac, roast whole including bones, then holding by the beak you eat the entire thing with a towel draped over your head to capture the aroma to enhance the flavour… the flavour is said to include any blood in your mouth as a result of cutting your mouth on the bones. Unsurprisingly, Jeremy Clarkson’s had one.)
Anyway, the point is: “Coomy”. Just say no.
