dripple

Pronounced: DRIP-uhl, verb

Notes: I don’t think I’ve run across this — you may know the word

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Yesterday’s word

The word hadal means “found at extreme ocean depth, the abyss (over 20,000 feet or 6.5 km)”

First usage

The word comes from the 1950s

Background / Comments

Our word comes from the word Hades with the -al suffix meaning, basically, “like”. By the way, this has nothing to do with our word, but seeing 20,000 feet in the definition made me think of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I feel a bit foolish admitting this, but for years, I thought that the “20,000 Leagues” referred to how far down the submarine went; I more-or-less recently learned that it refers to how far the submarine traveled without having to surface. The deepest part of the ocean is slightly over 2.5 leagues deep. I hope I’m not the only one who’s misunderstood the title. In our definition, 20,000 feet is about 1.5 leagues. Note that because 20,000 Leagues under the sea was written in French, I used the French distance for a league (2.5 miles). The American distance refers to 3 miles on land and 3 nautical miles at sea (equivalent to 3.452 land miles).