ambergris

I'm reminded of Roseanne from that Futurama episode.

Every time I see this word, I am reminded of the young man in Master and Commander (the film) who follows it up with "... and all the gems of Araby."

"'Our surgeon rather fancied it originated in the whales themselves, but he could not really make it out. The fact that it was waxy and as he said un-animal puzzled him to the end.' ...

"'I have never seen ambergris,' said Mowett. 'What is it like?'

"'A smooth rounded mass of no particular shape,' said Allen. 'Dark mottled or marbled grey when first you take it out, rather waxy and strong smelling, not very heavy: then after a while it grows lighter-coloured and much harder and takes to smelling sweet.'

"'Eggs and ambergris was Charles II's favourite dish,' observed Martin..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 106

Petrified Whale Vomit = name of my next band

Courtesy of the OED:
"Praise is like ambergris; a little whiff of it, by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to his nose, it is a stink and strikes you down." (c1720 POPE in Swift's Wks. (1841) I. 837)

There are a lot of "maybes" and "coulds" in this article.

That was a great article.

From the New York Times, December 18, 2006:

In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed four pounds. There was no receipt in the box.

Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000.

"I called my sister and asked her, 'What the heck did you send me?' " recalled Ms. Ferreira, 67, who has lived here on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. "She said: 'I don't know, but I found it on the beach in Montauk 50 years ago and just kept it around. You're the one who lives by the ocean; ask someone out there what it is.' "

So Ms. Ferreira called the Town of East Hampton's department of natural resources, which dispatched an old salt from Montauk named Walter Galcik.

Mr. Galcik, 80, concluded that the mysterious gift might be ambergris, the storied substance created in the intestines of a sperm whale and spewed into the ocean. Also called "whale's pearl" or "floating gold," ambergris is a rare and often valuable ingredient in fine perfumes.