Friday, December 17, 2021

Word of the Day -- Flehmen

Okay, here's a word I didn't realize was a word for something you see but never really know what it is or what is going on. Things like that, I really love:

Flehmen -- a mammalian behavior (as of horses or cats) in which the animal inhales with the mouth open and upper lip curled. This is done to expose the nose to a scent.

Flehmen comes from German, in which the word applies to animals and means "to curl the upper lip." The German source of the English word is a verb, and it is used, infrequently, as such, as in "the horse flehmened." More often, the English verb form is a gerund: "the horse's flehmening." Flehmen is sometimes capitalized in English because German nouns are capitalized; however, the English word tends to be lowercase.

source: merriam-webster


 

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