I've been loving Word Idol, being run by Raynor Ganan. It's a series of blog posts written by different people, each one taking as its inspiration an "archaic or provincial word beginning with 'f' that entered the English language sometime after 1300 and left it sometime before 1850".
The most recent addition to this excellent competition is a definition of the Middle English word 'ferly', meaning 'wonderfully strange':
Let’s talk bear. Pandas are wonderful (durr) but even my nephew knows about them and he is a nitwit. Ursus thibetanus gedrosianus exists only as fossilized crud in a dusty vault—it’s strange for sure, but about as interesting as as the skin on my butterscotch pudding. Garden variety brown bears? They are neither wonderful nor strange; they are ordinary. But what of the missing fourth quadrant: bears that are both strange AND wonderful? Bears like werebears and carebears and ursa major—how could they be described? Fabulous and marvelous don’t convey unfamiliarity. Uncanny, peculiar, and curious don’t quite convey wonder. If only there was a single word that could fill this void. [SPOLIER ALERT: it’s ferly]
The post is even accompanied by a diagram illustrating the 'ferly quadrant':
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