Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Word of the day: enrichen

As seen on a great big bag of EZ-Straw Seeding Mulch:

EZ-Straw helps enrichen soil for . . . GREAT RESULTS!
Enrichen caught my eye. The word is missing from the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s Second and Third. Google Books returns a number of instances of the word in print, many of which have to do with airplane fuel: “Lean until the engine runs slightly rough — then enrichen until it runs smooth.” The most recent results in Google’s Ngram Viewer show enrich outnumbering enrichen 3,151:1 (2007) and 3,096:1 (2008). I suspect that the use of enrichen is unlikely to embiggen any time soon.

comments: 4

zzi said...

One of my favorite movie lines. I'm a rich un. Maybe the word is spelled richen.

Michael Leddy said...

I had to look it up, but I think many people will recognize it.

Chris said...

The noun enrichener seems to have caught on in certain technical contexts. And what does an enrichener do? It enrichens. We're only one small step away from enrichenize.

Michael Leddy said...

I see it now — engines. I wonder whether enrichener precedes or follows enrichen.