I won't lie to you - when I first saw this word and glanced at its definition, I thought about skipping it. "No, that's not going to be useful," I thought to myself. Then I glanced at the definition again, glanced better, and I completely changed my mind. This word could be incredibly useful! Here, watch!
Today's word is "chelonian". Pronounced kih-LOW-nee-in. The first part of the definition:
1. belonging or pertaining to the order Chelonia,
The second part of the definition:
...comprising the turtles.
When I glanced the first time, I only caught the beginning and it didn't make any sense because I'm not a zoologist. Then I read through and found that I and we have a new way of calling something slow. A Google search for "glacial pace" yields 362,000 results. A Google search for "chelonian pace" yields 65 results. That's going to get bigger as soon as I publish this, but the total is so small that you'd notice it get bigger as soon as I publish this.
Of course, you could use "chelonian" to refer to things other than speed. Like neck, apparently. A turtley neck. But speed is what came to my mind first so that's what I'll feature in the following attempted example sentence:
Of all the things that drove us insane about Miguel Batista, his deliberate, chelonian tempo on the mound might have been the worst.
Miguel Batista is still pitching, by the way, and it looks like he'll make the Mets. He is 41 years old and since 2008 has 190 walks and 211 strikeouts. Plus 19 hit batters to almost even the ratio. I didn't have anything against Miguel Batista personally but man am I ever glad that he's gone.