Words You Never Heard

  It’s summertime, and you know what that means: attack of the mosquitoes!   Other names for the mosquito are gallinipper, katynipper, gabber napper and galliwopper. A quote from the 1906 book The Parson’s Boys asserts that gallinippers are so-called “because at each ‘nip’ they took a gallon!”  Mitsy is a deceptively cute shortening of mosquito that might be heard in Ohio! Mossie , another abbreviation,  is primarily Australian slang for this annoying insect.  If you’re in Virginia and hear someone complaining about cousins, they might have annoying relatives—or they might just be talking about mosquitoes.  Why do they call mosquitos cousins? “Because they are so many and they stick so close,” In Florida you might hear a mosquito referred to as a swamp angel and in Illinois, mosquitos are sometimes called drill bugs.   But whatever you call them, all this begs the question,  “Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitos?"