A while ago I wanted a one word alternative to ‘only child’ and discovered monogene. The word isn’t in my dictionary and doesn’t seem to have one clear definition, but being the only begotten child is one alternative. It can also mean unique, special and one of a kind.

Much as I love my brother now, there were times whilst growing up when I’d have preferred to be a monogene. (I can’t give examples as he’s got as much on me as I have on him!)

Monogenesis is in my dictionary. It refers to the theory that all living things developed from a single cell. Apparently it was a bacteria like thingamy*. Monogeny is an alternative term as is monogenetics.

*sorry for the technical jargon!

An alpinist is a climber of high mountains (generally, but not necessarily the Alps). I’m not an alpinist.

I don’t know if there’s a word for climbers of not very high mountains, only when it’s sunny, the path doesn’t look too treacherous and regular stops are permitted, but if there is, I’m one of them.

Specious means either misleadingly attractive or superficially plausible, but actually wrong.

Custard made with salt instead of sugar would add speciosity to your trifle. An example of speciousness is the specious claim that as chocolate is dervived from plants, a family sized bar of Aero counts as one of your five a day. That’s only true if you choose the orange flavoured one (she adds speciously*)

*mint’s a plant, so green centred Aeros are healthy too.

A monticule is a small hill. Sounds rather friendly, doesn’t it? The sort of place you’d walk up to enjoy a picnic involving ginger beer and home made cake. A monticule can also be a mini mound caused by a volcano.

Here’s the view from a hill (quite a big one) I climbed up one summer. Recognise it?

Clue … instead of climbing up, you could just swan about down the bottom.

Umbriferous means providing shade.
The depth of Lydford Gorge would make it a pleasantly shady place to walk in summer, even without the umbriferous canopy of vegetation.