oasis of competence   (geekin, random re me)

i'm a communication effectiveness freak. one of my pet peeves (when reading things intended to be informative and/or instructional) is when people use big words when diminutive ones will suffice. so it follows that i'm constantly looking up words. i also like finding random words that mean funny or appropriate things (like omphaloskepsis or sesquipedalian). so today i wanted to find funny or appropriate words ending in 'tic' (don't ask)

i started off at Merriam Webster's site. my first search was for *tic, fully expecting it to return the definition of 'tic', but the wildcard actually worked! it returned 400/3k results, but it worked. so i tried a*tic: 400/457 results—closer still. so i tried a[t-z]*tic, and that (correctly interpolating the character range) worked too!! anyway, at $30/year, the price for the premium service was right for me. i still feel all tingly.