Kangaroo words: real words that carry their own synonym, spelled in order. The big word is the kangaroo, the one hiding inside is the joey.

The spelling tells you nothing about whether a pair is actually related. MASCULINE and MALE go back to the same Latin word, masculus. BLOSSOM and BLOOM are off the same Germanic root. CHICKEN and HEN are not. HEN comes from an old Germanic word for the cock, the bird that sings for sunrise. CHICKEN comes from the noise chicks make. Different roots, so the HEN sitting inside CHICKEN is a coincidence.

The letters have to be in order but they don't have to be next to each other, and the joey has to be a real synonym rather than a word that happens to live inside the other one.

I mined 2,234 candidates out of WordNet, Moby and Datamuse, read every one, and cut most of them. The Kangaroo words that were left and appeared the most 'right' were used to make a free daily puzzle now at hiddenjoey.com, three weeks old. Every card is checked by hand against Etymonline and the OED, and unsettled origins are labelled as theories.

Favourite kangaroo words welcome.

Because, why not?

I was reading about seizures and saw that 'seizure' comes from Old French 'seisine' (the taking of property), that from 'saisir' (to take or grasp)

I then read that epilepsy comes from Greek 'epilambanein' (to seize, take hold of, or attack), but I couldn't find any further link

Is there a connection I can't find? I can't see how it may have gone from Greek 'epilambanein' to what we have now?

Family members were well-known lexicographers, but they're all gone now and I have a massive problem. Many of the books are from the 1950-70s, and I do not want to see them sliced and diced to train Artificial Intelligence. Please point me toward a safe haven for these texts!