Weird words: Struthonian

(stru'thonian)
Tending to hide one's head in the sand.

This is a modern weird word, used a few times after the late Arthur
Koestler invented it in 1963, but now almost unknown. His aim, in
an article in Encounter magazine, was to describe those pundits who
prefer honest self-deception to ignoble truths.

You may recall that there is an animal famed for its in-sand head-
burying, so you won't be surprised to learn that "struthonian" is
from Latin "struthio", an ostrich. Related to it is the standard -
albeit technical - English "struthious", of or like an ostrich.

An ancient, rare and defunct name for the ostrich, by the way, was
"struthiocamel", from the Latin "struthiocamelus". The Romans took
it wrongly from Greek "strouthokamelos", literally "sparrow camel"
or, more loosely, "camel-bird" (the scientific name of the ostrich
to this day is Struthio camelus). It's difficult to imagine a cross
between a sparrow and a camel, but the Greeks managed it. In later
Latin it became "avis struthio", the struthio bird.