‘Vox’ is allowed in Scrabble (and it’s worth the effort)
From November 2009:
While playing Scrabble, my opponent played “vox,” which I challenged as not being a word in itself but a part of the phrase “vox populi.”
When we looked it up in a dictionary, the latter proved to be the case along with “vox angelica” and “vox humana.”
My opponent nevertheless claimed the play was legitimate because the word was in the dictionary.
Who’s correct here?
You’re not playing Scrabble with your mother, are you? I wouldn’t if I were you. She’ll do that whole, “Oh, I’m so old,” thing or she’ll do that thing while you’re deciding what word to play when she tap-tap-taps a tile on the table and then plays about two seconds after you before you’ve even had time to draw new tiles.
Anyway, “vox” is not really just a part of a phrase but rather a stand-alone Latin word meaning “voice.” Vox populi — voice of the people — and so and so forth.
And I am sorry to tell you that “vox” is listed in my copy of the “Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Third Edition” (and worth 13 points) right there close to “vug,” which is a small cavity in a rock. If there are a lot of vugs, the rock is said to be vuggy.
Therefore, ergo and ipso facto, you were wrong.
There was a huge great white owl in my backyard last night around 6. What was it?
There is such a thing as a snowy owl that is nice and white and that lives way up north and only seldom ventures farther south than North Dakota or thereabouts.
So, there are two possibilities here. You may have seen a barn owl, which sometimes has a whitish underside. The other is that you have seen a white great horned owl, something that is not unheard of.
You can see a picture of such an owl here: https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/news-events/the-buzz/whitegreat-horned-owl.