Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:
EVAGINATE
When the clothes dryer turns the pockets of your pajamas inside out, there is a word for the phenomenon. They have been
evaginated
.
Evaginate
(pronounced uh-VAJ-uh-nate) is a word more commonly used in biology or physiology, meaning to turn a tubular or pouch-shaped organ or structure inside out,
The New Oxford American Dictionary
advises.
The etymology, as you may already have suspected, traces back to the Latin
evaginare
:
e
, "out of,"
vagina
, "sheath."
Example:
In Monopoly, the "Pay poor tax" chance card shows Mr. Monopoly shrugging, with his trouser pockets evaginated.