Here we are..
20. ZA
ZA is now accepted as slang for pizza and appears in the Official Tournament and Club Word List, the final authority for acceptable words in the U.S. and Canada.
19. MUZJIK
Muzjiks are Russian peasants -- or so they were called under the tzar (another handy word to know).
18. AERIE
An aerie is an eagle's nest located on a cliff or some other high location.
17. CAZIQUES
When Spanish explorers first reached the West Indies, they found tribes of Indians who described their chiefs using this word. The conquistadors applied the word, which can also be spelled "caciques," to all native chiefs. It also refers to a tropical bird similar to an oriole.
16. FAQIR
Faqirs were originally monks in the Sufi sect of Islam, who took vows of poverty. (The word came from the Arabic for "poor man.") The term is now used to refer to any Muslim or Hindu holy man.
15. JOUSTED
Once upon a time, when knights jousted, they had great fun trying to knock each other off their horses with lances.
14. QUIXOTRY
It means a visionary scheme, action or thought and is derived from the fictional character Don Quixote, whose visions led him to joust with windmills.
13. JUKEBOX
Long before the iPod playlist, there was the coin-operated phonograph. Jukeboxes brought popular music to the world for decades and grew into colorful, bubbling neon shrines to pop and rock. The word comes from a Gullah term meaning wicked; it originally referred to a juke house, a brothel.
12. ZAX
This word evolved from "sax," a single-edge sword of ancient Scandinavia, and came to describe a tool for cutting and punching nail holes in roofing slates. It also refers to the craftsman who uses the tool.
11. QUEUE
George Washington had one. So does your printer. "Queue" can refer to either a braid of hair hanging down a person's back, or a line of people, print jobs or anything else. It comes from the Latin word coda, which means tail.
10. CHUTZPAH
The writer Leo Rosten said chutzpah was when a man murders his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. The word reaches us from Hebrew through Yiddish. It can mean either extreme self-confidence or shameless impudence.
9. XI
Xi is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet, falling between nu and omicron. In English, it's pronounced something like "sigh."
8. SYZYGY
There's no way to pronounce this word, which describes an alignment of three heavenly bodies, without sounding like you've had too much to drink. But it's a cool and impressive word to keep in mind for Scrabble.
7. WAGYU
This Japanese breed of cattle provides gourmets with Kobe beef, which sells for $100 a pound and up. The lucky beeves are given a ration of beer and a massage every day.
6. YO
"Yo, my man!" This exclamation is used to get somebody's attention. Sounds contemporary, but surprisingly, "yo" goes back to the Late Middle English of 1400. Soldiers in World War II used it to mean "present" in a roll call. Sylvester Stallone, in the Rocky movies, used it a lot, too. "Yo, Adrian!"
5. ZYMURGY
This is the branch of chemistry that deals with fermentation, as in winemaking or the brewing of beer. You might refer to your next kegger as an experiment in zymurgy.
4. BEZIQUE
Bezique was Winston Churchill's favorite card game. It's a high-scoring, trick-taking and melding contest that employs a deck of 64 cards. Its more popular offspring is Pinochle.
3. FLAPJACK
In America, this is another word for pancake. Cowboys washed them down with bad coffee for breakfast. But in Britain, a flapjack is a chewy sweet made from oats.
2. QANAT
A qanat is a tunnel used in arid regions for irrigation. It was invented in Iran, then called Persia, about 2,500 years ago and is still used today. It taps into underground water and uses the slope of the land to bring that water to where it's needed without pumping.
1. AA
Solidified lava comes in two forms. Aa is rough like cinders. Pahoehoe, formed from hotter lava, is smooth. Both words are Hawaiian.
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