Antithixotropism

     Antithixotropism is the new word for the day.  Maybe you're familiar with this multisyllabic mouthful but it's not something I learned about in Social Science  or foreign language classes. (Although it is clearly Greek in parts.)
     The subject came up when we were walking with a friendly English couple. He was a physicist who used to measure bomb craters in Northern Ireland for a living. In those years, he said, he avoided having his picture taken. He also mentioned trips to consult at (cue ominous music) Quantico, Virginia.
      Anyway, with the oozy bogs on my mind, I asked a question referring to a mutual friend, a big, robust guy who probably weighs twice what I do.  On the other hand, this same friend had mentioned the difficulty of finding hiking boots to fit his size 15 feet.  So, I asked, given his body weight, would he sink deeper, (twice as deep?) as I into the muck or would those big boot soles act like broad platforms and hold him up?
     " Antithixotropism!"  the guy with the shadowy past immediately exclaimed. 
      "Whut?" said I, "Spell that!"
      Thixotropism without the "anti"', he explained, is the property of certain viscous materials to become more liquid when stirred or shaken, such as perhaps honey or jelly, and certainly the clay hillsides that collapse onto villages after earthquakes.  With the "anti", he theorized, the opposite property is in play and a heavy, ponderous footfall actually firms up the jelly-like muck.  
      I don't know whether any empirical study has tested this hypothesis of bog-walking, but the North Yorkshire moors are said to have boggy bits, so we can look forward to the opportunity of doing so.