bolus (n.): a soft mass of chewed food

That’s right, folks — you don’t swallow your food, you swallow your bolus. This came up last Sunday, when the erudite M.K. Mulkeen hosted a small gathering at his abode for playoff football. Cake was baked and frosted, both chocolately and white-style, and Martin requested a black-and-white piece. When informed the cake had already been cut in a fashion that made a black-and-white piece impossible, did our hero despair? No matter, he bravely ventured, “I’ll just have a black-and-white bolus.”

The thing about the bolus is that it would be a patently silly word if it simply meant, “what you have in your mouth while you’re chewing.” But my understanding, based on Cursory Internet Research (“serving your barely-investigated whims for probably like ten years now; I guess I could look up how long but it seems like a lot of effort”) is that the bolus is a fundamental structure created in the course of digestion, a structure which is maintained from the time of swallowing all the way through the stomach and intestines until defecation, at which point the bolus has fulfilled its purpose and its services are no longer required. You require boluses. Without a bolus, you will die. Take heed.