Wordbirds, 32

We’ve commenced our journey backward through Webster’s 3rd. I’m picking a word near the end of each entry for each letter—a word that interests me for some reason or a word I’d not ever known before—and surrounding it with a frayed coat of doggerel.

Words that flew into my life from Webster’s 3rd …

utriculoid adj. [yoo-TRIK-yoo-loid]

resembling a bladder

[hint: this is in anapestic feet: duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-DUH, etc.]

His utriculoid head (most unusual head)

Was the cause for occasional mirth.

And the first who would laugh were the nurses who worked

On his very unusual birth.

But he showed all of them in his subsequent years—

I assure you that this is no bull:

For he learned massive facts (while he drank countless beers)

So that both of his bladders were full.

So he taught first at Harvard, then transferred to Yale

And each year won a different Nobel.

And those bullies from childhood? They learned a sad fact:

It's what's in, not what's out, rings the bell!