Word to the Wise: Excrescence

An "excrescence" (ik-SKRESS-unts) is something – especially something abnormal – growing out from something else. The word is from the Latin for "to grow out."

Example (as used by Stephen Budiansky in U.S. News & World Report): "It wasn’t just predictable curmudgeons like Dr. Johnson who thought the Scottish hills ugly; if anybody had something to say about mountains at all, it was sure to be an insult. (The Alps : ‘monstrous excrescences of nature,’ in the words of one wholly typical 18th-century observer.)"