What is it about words that is (for wordy-nerds like me) so fascinating? I'm not sure.
I just know that I love to learn new ones, try to use those new ones in appropriate places-in other words not be a Mrs Malaprop-and to find out where they came from and how the uses and meanings might have changed over the years.
So this week I'm writing about animal families and the 'collateral adjectives' which apply.
This won't, of course, be a complete list (check your favourite search engine), just the ones that appeal most to me.
It's all about me...
Simian: apes.
And here we strike the oddities, the collateral adjectives that have suffixes not ending in 'ine'.
There's camelid to which alpacas, camels (and dromedaries) belong; formic which describes ants (you will remember that one because of formic acid) and anisopteran which refers to dragonflies.
I'd never have guessed.
Asinine refers, very rudely, to donkeys; noctillionine to bats (love that connection to night) and ursine is used to describe bears, bear-like features or habits.
Ursa Major is the constellation known as The Bear.
Bovine is more closely aligned to 'beef' than it is to 'cattle' but bovine means having the qualities of cattle-as ovine does to sheep.
Porcine-yes, you guessed it-is to do with things piggy.
And if you're a lepidopterist you collect butterflies (lepidopteran).
Would you believe that a cassowary would be described as ratite? No, neither would I.
Puss-cats are felines, dogs are canines, foxes are vulpine and wolves are lupine.
Fish are piscine; crows, choughs and ravens are corvines.
Lions are leonine, tigers are tigrine, and leopards are pardine-yet they too are feline.
But would you believe that a deer is an elaphine, or a dove a columbine? Such evocative names! Now it's getting complicated.
And wrens, apparently, are troglodytine.
Poor little things, they don't live in caves.
Snakes have a whole list of collateral adjectives all to themselves-good thing too: anguine, elapine, serpentine, viperine, ophidian, elapid.
Other creatures I don't like are cockroaches: blattid (which is onomatopaeic to the result when I find one); toads: ranine or batrachian; wasps: vespine and sharks: selachian.
Not that I have any objection to any of these creatures when they stay in their habitat and don't venture into mine.
As someone said of sharks once: 'I don't invite them into my house so I don't swim in their dining room.
' Goats are caprine (capricious, Capricorn), a hare is leverine (its young a leveret), and a horse equine.
The ibis, those rats of the sky-you know the ones who inhabit all the refuse tips and steal food from outdoor tables-are threskiornithine; they deserve a moniker like that.
Kangaroos are macropodine and a magpie is garruline.
Perfect! Minks are musteline and mongooses herpestine.
That's excellent, they don't like snakes either.
So we come to the end.
My favourite-one of my most favourite words-is phocine.
It refers to seals.