Trolls are, unfortunately, ubiquitous on the Internet. Trolls go back to the days of UseNet, but they are still alive and well today in discussion forums and blog post comment threads. The troll is someone who engages in misbehavior online in order to elicit reactions, often, in hopes of angering/hurting/upsetting the unwary or naive user. Typically trolls will deliberately insult other posters and community members, post inflammatory text, or appear obtuse in order to elicit annoyed responses, all in hopes of gaining attention. Trolls engage in trolling. To an Internet troll, any attention is rewarding.

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It's that time of year when we see words like "witch," and "hag" a lot more. Hag is an interesting word, in a number of respects. First, it's always applied to women; second, it's almost always pejorative.

The primary meanings are (according to the AHD):

1. An old woman considered ugly or frightful.
2. 1. A witch; a sorceress.
   2. Obsolete A female demon.

The underlying connotations of hag are typically both female, and old, with, often, an implication of hideousness, wickeness, and supernatural qualities.

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If you mention to anyone, at all, that you're going to visit Scotland, you're bound to be warned about Scotland's national dish; haggis. Haggis is, according to the AHD "A Scottish dish consisting of a mixture of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings and boiled in the stomach of the slaughtered animal." The closest thing I can compare with haggis to in terms of standard American dishes is stuffing, made with giblets. My introduction to haggis consisted of my Scottish host handing my a glass of single malt, and telling me to down it, and then telling me that it was invented as compensation for haggis . . .

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Technically, the word anabasis is a noun, and means (according to the AHD):

1. An advance; an expedition.
2. A large-scale military advance, specifically the Greek mercenary expedition across Asia Minor in 401 B.C. led by Cyrus the Younger of Persia, as described by Xenophon (who was there) and later wrote a book about it, and the the "ten thousand" who followed Cyrus. It was unsuccessful, and the Greeks, led by Xenophon, retreated to the Black Sea.

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You sometimes see bloggers using the journalism term lede, as in the title of this New York Times blog The Lede. The lede (pronounced to rhyme with greed) refers to the opening lines of an article, the lines that set the topic and capture the readers' interest. The same word is also spelled lead. There's an old journalism aphorism "don't bury the lede."

It really is the word lead, as in the verb "to lead"; OED identifies the noun lead, n.2, derived from the verb "to lead," and meaning 1f:

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It's blueberry season in Washington, though it's now over in Maine. But the abundance of blueberries got me thinking about peach cobblermy mom's blueberry buckle recipe. It's a very good recipe, but what got me thinking was the name. What, pray tell, is a buckle? Fruit buckles are very much associated in my mind with New England, but my quick check of southern recipe collections suggest that that's not the case historically, though the southern recipes for buckles feature apples and plums rather than blueberries.

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Sanguine isn't really an unusual word. SangriaWe see and hear it used fairly often, but it's sometimes a bit disconcerting to line up the way it's usually used, with the dictionary definition. Most of the time, we hear people using sanguine to mean cheerful or happy; sometimes in the inverse, as "I'm not sanguine about my chances at winning the lottery." The part that's disconcerting is that we also use sanguine to mean "bloody." The AHD definition includes both meanings:

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We almost always hear these two words together as a phrase. It's typically © Michael Engelenused in the context of the beach and the sea, as well: "The flotsam and jetsam of the sea dotted the tide line." According to the AHD flotsam:

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We often see juggernaut used in product names, like Pyramid Brewery's Juggernaut Red Ale, but we don't really think about the implications behind the word. The definition from the AHD is:

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The AHD notes that venison is:

1. The flesh of a deer used as food.

2. Archaic The flesh of a game animal used as food.

Etymologically speaking, venison entered Modern English by way of Middle English veneson, from Old French venetio, from Latin venatio, venation-, hunting, from venatus, past participle of venari, to hunt.

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