That’s one of my favorite phrases in the English language. Why? It means you’re most likely looking at the definition of a really cool adjective, and as a writer and certified word nerd I live for really cool adjectives.

A quick perusal of my Cool Words list shows 13 instances of this phenomenal phrase, including:

• Brumal: of or relating to winter
• Chthonic: of or relating to the underworld
• Palustrine: of or relating to marshes or fen; marshy
• Venatic: of or relating to hunting

I mean, come on.

You can try this with basically any word related to nature, medicine, or other topics of interest during the Scientific Revolution, when many of these words were first coined or derived from Latin/Greek.

Why write “snake-like” when you could say anguine? Or “skin-like” when cutaneous is sitting right there? And arenaceous sounds a lot cooler than “sandy”.

Most of the adjectives on my list I’ve found in the wild while reading something, but it can also work in the reverse. While writing the post about our window prism, I initially thought to describe the rainbow light as lightning-shaped but then wondered if there was a dedicated adjective for that. I searched “of or relating to lightning” and boom: fulminous (“of, relating to, or resembling thunder and lightning”) or fulgurous (“characteristic of or resembling lightning”). I didn’t end up using them but damned if I didn’t add fulgurous to the Cool Words list.