oviduct - common?

[birdy]

(like how many times have I missed "acre"?).

Spoiler alert! I was just doing today's standard and what was the last word I got!

I hadn't even looked at the game when I wrote that!  It must come up often - I think I miss it most times.  I'm not too good at "acme" either.

[Alan W]

There are some words that I think belong in our common words, because most people would probably have encountered them, even though they are far from everyday words. But is oviduct such a word? I think ovine, which was in the same puzzle, belongs in that category. But ovine was played by 104 people, while oviduct was found by only 15, although this might be partly due to the fact that ovine comes up in our puzzles more often, so some players might know it only from Chi.

But oviduct seems to be used quite infrequently in print, and then often in specialist titles, like Smallholder and Horsetalk. I don't know of any way to assess the frequency of use of words in TV nature documentaries, though an article in the Atlantic mentions that episode 6 of David Attenborough's classic Life on Earth series covered "a Nectophrynoides  toad, which raises her tadpole inside her body on flakes of oviduct tissue, and gives birth to the froglet by squeezing it out with her lungs."

On the whole I feel that oviduct falls a little below the threshold of visibility. It will be treated as a rare word in future.

[mkenuk]

Thanks, Alan. To me oviduct is a good example of what I would call a 'text-book word'.
Students will learn it (and many others like it) before an important test and then promptly forget it.
 
Later, unless they enter a career related to medicine, or perhaps veterinary science, they'll probably only ever meet the word again in crosswords, scrabble or other word-games.

The various adjectives ending with -ine and describing common mammals - feline, canine, bovine, equine etc - are (imho) much more common and much more likely to turn up in novels and everyday reading.

One interesting one is murine. Although the creature that it relates to is very common indeed, I can't remember ever seeing it in a Chi game.
Is it classed as common?

[Alan W]

No, Mike, murine is rare.

[yelnats]

One interesting one is murine. Although the creature that it relates to is very common indeed,

I had only heard of 'murine' as eye drops. Proves you are never too old to learn something new.

[birdy]

I only knew the ear wax remover trade name, and never would have connected it with the genus name Mus (which I did know).  A handy new word!  Now to use it three times and it will be mine.  Might be hard to work it into conversation though...