Week of Grossness—Day 1: Five Cool Words I Learned from the Gross Body Science Series

By Carol Hinz
Editorial Director, Millbrook Press

I’d like to officially kick off our Week of Grossness here on the Lerner Publishing Group Blog. This week, I’ll be sharing some behind-the-scenes info about our new Gross Body Science series and CrustandSpray generally celebrating all things gross.

Working on this series taught me the following five words, none of which my spell-check seems to recognize. Follow the links to listen to pronunciations!

borborygmi: growling and rumbling sounds your stomach makes as you digest food

caruncle: the red, fleshy bump of skin in the inner corner of the eyes. No connection to your uncle’s car.

Crust24-25cerumen glands: the glands that make earwax, a.k.a. cerumen

chyme: mashed-up food that has already been digested by the stomach

sternutation: sneeze

Of course, the real key with new vocabulary words is to use them each in a sentence. As in: Did you hear those borborygmi? I must be a real chyme-producing factory! Of course, if your cerumen glands are overactive, you won’t hear anything, except possibly a very loud sternutation. If a sternutation is so strong it makes your eyes water, you’ll have to wipe your caruncles with a tissue!

What gross sentences can you make with these words?

4 thoughts on “Week of Grossness—Day 1: Five Cool Words I Learned from the Gross Body Science Series”

  2. Carol Hinz

    Great question, Sharon! My handy dictionary defines borborygmi as “intestinal rumbling caused by moving gas.” So unless there's moving gas when your stomach is rumbling from hunger, I'd say it's not borborygmi. But of course, I'm an editor–not a medical professional. This series does prompt the funniest questions!

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