#1 Aquabib

DDW February Challenge #1 Aquabib

For this month's challenge of the alphabet, I will be presenting a 'lost word' a day. Lost words, according to The Phrontistery, a website devoted to compilations of English word lists and language resources, are 400 of the rarest words in English. Apparently, they do not appear on the Internet other than at this site. The site's author states that it is the only place you can read these words in their proper context. I'll also check other dictionaries for archaic, bizarre, or unusual words/phrases in English and will let you know where I found the word and what I can discover about its history.

So today's word is the noun 'aquabib,' meaning water-drinker. Instances of its usage dated from 1731-1883. The example sentence from the site is "I was never much of an aquabib, and always preferred harder libations."

Ducks being prime examples of aquabibs, here's one for today. I don't know if the word was ever used as a verb, but the duck in this picture was aquabibing with her partner for a while before she came onto the bank to check me out. Unfortunately I had nothing to feed her, but she didn't seem to mind and was more curious than anything else, hence this aquabib's expression.