Vernix caseosa

When I got home from tonight's rehearsal, I chatted to mum in the kitchen for a while before sitting down at the dining room table. (Although our kitchen and 'dining room' aren't actually seperate rooms.) On the table I found our huge Webster's dictionary, opened to 'exc-'. I asked mum why. She said she had looked up the word 'excel', wondering if it was actually spelt differently to the name of the software!

Anyway, I asked her for a word to look up, so she said 'divination', then 'verification'. The 'ver-' pages were fascinating! There were so many long, complicated 'verm-' and 'vern-' words!

My favourite was vernix casesosa (OK, so it's two words, although it is sometimes just called 'vernix'). The definition was something along the lines of 'the unctuous substance covering the skin of a fetus'. (I then had to look up unctuous, another very cool word. It means oily or greasy.) So vernix caseosa is the white stuff brand new babies have all over them. It's basically made out of their skin oil (called 'sebum') and extra cells that have come off the skin of the fetus, and it comes from the baby's 'sebaceous glands'. It is said to have hydrating and antibacterial qualities. Humans are the only land mammal whose babies have a coveing of vernix caseosa.

Something else I found really amusing was that vernix means 'varnish' (which is funny in itself because it's weird to think of babies being born with a coat of varnish!) and caseosa means 'cheese' (because the substance has a cheesy sort of texture). So this technical medical term 'vernix caseosa' actually means 'varnish cheese', which really sounds quite ridiculous, wouldn't you agree?

Dictionaries are wonderful, inspiring things!