“To scrump” is to steal fruit, although it generally is used to mean to steal apples.There appears to be some disagreement over whether the apples have to come from an orchard or garden as opposed to any other apple tree.

More on this word here and here.

Someone who is undecided or wavering. The verb form is “to swither.”  Comes from Scotland (topical!) and is in much more common use there. Almost onomatopoeic, or maybe just close to “slithering.”

More on this word from The Bottle Imp: http://bit.ly/1qYp9JZcan

Not necessarily on topic, but “The Bottle Imp” is a great name for a publication.

“Mentee,” used to mean someone who receives mentoring, is a horrible word. Please don’t use it. It makes no sense. You can’t “ment” a person. No one is “mented.”

It is also pretentious. I know how weird it is for me to accuse something of pretension given what I am about to say, but it makes the speaker or writer look like something even worse than a pedant, which is an ignorant pedant. The use of “-or” or “-er” to mean “one who does something” comes from Latin. And using “-er” to mean “from a place,” as in “New Yorker” is a Germanic construction. But “mentor” comes from Greek, which is neither Latinate nor Germanic. And “mentor” is not even a verb in Greek; it’s a proper noun. Mentor was a guy in the Odyssey. If you really insist on using “mentor” as a verb (and I’m not entirely opposed to that) then it would probably be better to refer to “mentorers and mentorees.” Please don’t do that either, as they are both ugly.

In place of “mentee” use protégé, student, disciple, acolyte, padawan, grasshopper, or anything else really, as appropriate. I’m not saying we should have extradjudicial executions, but if we did, then anyone caught using the word “mentee” should be summarily executed.

A Janus word is a word that means both a thing (or an action) and its precise opposite.  The name is a reference to Janus, a Roman god with two faces.  If you didn’t catch that reference without it being explained, you probably aren’t very interested in this blog.

Some examples:

• Sanction
• Seed
• Weather

here are some other examples and longer discussions:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/49834/14-words-are-their-own-opposites

http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/Januswordterm.htm