This reminds me of the Medieval dunking ordeal to find out if a woman is a witch. If she drowns and dies, she's innocent. In this case, vomiting poison determines your innocence... but it could STILL kill you in the process. See tanghin.
"In Madagascar, one way of determining guilt is to poison you, and see if you spew."
Today the dialect is highly endangered, with only a few elderly native speakers. It is thought that any remaining speakers live in or around Old Mines, Missouri.
Hardscape refers to hard landscape materials in the built environment structures that are incorporated into a landscape. This can include paved areas, driveways, retaining walls, sleeper walls, stairs, walkways, and any other landscaping made up of hard-wearing materials such as wood, stone, and concrete, as opposed to softscape, the horticultural elements of a landscape.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, the loss of the clerical state (commonly referred to as laicization or laicisation) is the removal of a bishop, priest or deacon from the status of being a member of the clergy.
I'm still unclear on the meaning. Is being happy, dressed in black, and wearing rubber tips on one's fingers the only criteria for being a nickel thrower?
Loogan (sometimes spelled loogin or lugan, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) is no longer used to mean “a minor hoodlum,” though hood, recorded by Kendall, is still used to mean “a petty gangster.”
I found LOOGAN in Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary of 1825 with a definition of “a rogue” and in a couple of prison slang lists online meaning “mentally ill prisoner."
receiver: In portable breech-loading firearms, the steel frame screwed to the breech end of the barrel, which receives the bolt or block, gives means of securing for firing, facilitates loading, and holds the ejector, cut-off, etc.
mustard-seed: A very fine kind of shot used by ornithologists and taxidermists for shooting birds with least injury to the plumage; dust-shot. The name includes No. 10 shot and finer numbers.
Leech houses were used to store the worms—often in special containers of moist earth—and keep them alive and fresh until they were needed by druggists or doctors.
Noun. malternative (plural malternatives) An alcoholic beverage, an alternative to beer, that contains some malt alcohol and may contain other types of alcohol.
Noun. malternative (plural malternatives) An alcoholic beverage, an alternative to beer, that contains some malt alcohol and may contain other types of alcohol.
PR Newswire coined the term “Social Echo” to describe “the powerful reverberation around brands that occurs through the millions of conversations in the social networks and communities where people gather today.”
In PR Newswire’s view, “A brand’s Social Echo has enormous power to shape reputation, influence mass opinion and drive growth. Social Echo has equal – and perhaps even greater – power to stop a brand dead in its tracks.”
They go on to say that…
“Marketers and communicators who understand this are actively engaged in listening to their Social Echo and in finding ways to participate in the conversations that comprise their Social Echo. Importantly, they are also gleaning real-time insights to apply back to their brands in every area – customer care, product development, brand positioning and messaging, innovation and more.
"An obscure hymn-writer, whose verses have been sung in all parts of the world, was Thomas Bilby, parish clerk of St. Mary's Church, Islington, between the years 1842 and 1872. He was the parish schoolmaster also, and thus maintained the traditions of his office handed down from mediæval times. Before the days of School Boards it was not unusual for the clerk to teach the children of the working classes the three R's and religious knowledge, charging a fee of twopence per week for each child. "
(The intimacy coordinator) will intervene in small but important ways, like giving a performer something to cover their private parts, knee pads, mouth spray or flavored lubricant, etc.
Tsundoku (Japanese: 積ん読) is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.
The term originated in the Meiji era (1868–1912) as Japanese slang. It combines elements of tsunde-oku (積んでおく, to pile things up ready for later and leave) and dokusho (読書, reading books). It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. As currently written, the word combines the characters for "pile up" (積) and the character for "read" (読).
Suggesting that two wrongs equal a right. For example, suggesting that a particular CEO can mislead shareholders because some other CEO mislead shareholders even more.
A logical fallacy in which two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.
False equivalence arguments are often used in journalism and in politics, where the minor flaws of one candidate may be compared to major flaws of another.
“ 'Mis-carriage,' in an insidious way, suggests fault for the mother - as if she dropped something, or failed to 'carry.' ”
Using the hashtags #WeNeedANewName and #MoreCommonThanYouHearAbout, Vmiscarriage happens far more frequently than some might think and that, ultimately, changing its name might help conversations about miscarriage flow more freely, as couples will no longer feel like they're being judged for the biological event over which they have little to no control.
'"So many women feel shame about losing a baby even though there is nothing shameful about it. But nevertheless, this often stops them from talking openly about their loss..."
Any suggestions for a new term? Leave suggestion(s) at hashtags above.
"Asian Americans argue that racial considerations have made them a victim of their own academic success. They tend to get better grades and score higher on standardized tests than other races but claim they are frequently rejected as a result of “racial balancing,” which is akin to racial quotas and has been ruled unconstitutional."
In Latvian, your favorite person is your sirds puķīte, a.k.a. “the little flower of your heart.” Another endearment for a loved one is sirsniņa: “little heart” (this is a noun with a feminine ending) or sometimes just sirds.
The person you love most is described in English as “the apple of your eye.” The phrase originates in Old English and means the pupil of the eye, which reflects the image of the one you’re looking at. In Latvian, your favorite person is your sirds puķīte, a.k.a. “the little flower of your heart.” Another endearment for a loved one is sirsniņa: “little heart” (this is a noun with a feminine ending) or sometimes just sirds.
Chocolate bloom refers two types of whitish coating that can appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.
Chocolate bloom refers two types of whitish coating that can appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.
Chocolate bloom refers to two types of whitish coating that appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.
TV trope. The last character left alive to confront the killer. The character is almost ALWAYS female, a virgin, fully clothed, avoids death by sex, doesn't drink, smoke or take drugs.
The term was coined by Carol J. Colver in her 1992 book, Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film.
"I drank two cocktails, three glasses of sherry, a quart of champagne and several ponies of Cointreau. The show seemed to get better and better as it went ...
pony a small drinking glass or the drink contained in it.
"The term psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955. Inspired by the French nineteenth-century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces.
The reimagining of the city proposed by psychogeography has its roots in dadaism and surrealism, art movements which explored ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination. Tristam Hillier’s paintings such as La Route des Alpes 1937 could be described as an early example of the concept.
Psychogeography gained popularity in the 1990s when artists, writers, and filmmakers such as Iain Sinclair and Patrick Keiller began using the idea to create works based on exploring locations by walking."
An elite unit of the Norwegian police that investigates organized crime and missing persons, for example. They have specialized technical and forensic expertise. They are currently investigating the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis, a Dutch cybersecurity expert for Wikileaks. "Arjen Kamphuis is a Digital Self Defence professional. Every day he helps people keep their secrets safe in the digital world. He has seen firsthand how government-funded spying, hacking and security programs fall into the wrong hands and cause more harm than good. He argues that it is time we all start keeping ourselves safe by taking responsibility for our own digital defenses and letting go of the idea that we’re just not smart enough to adapt."
Men's Bread, Fairy Hearts Turkey Pork Sausage, boys walking rein and harness (blue), girls walking rein and harness (pink), pet shampoo (for him, for her).
"In 1966, the late sociologist Robert Bellah presented a now-classic essay, “Civil Religion in America.” The essay is about religion in public life, and how American politicians created a sense of shared national identity around general religious claims. Since then, sociologists and political theorists have argued about how inclusive civil religion really is (Does it include atheists or other minority groups who aren’t Christian? Lots of Americans don’t seem to think so.), but the theory is useful for highlighting how much of American political life takes on a religious tone."
"The ad blocker should not be seen as a selfish technology. It is a socialist cudgel—something that forces otherwise lazy capitalists to find new and inventive ways to make their creations sustainable. Ad blockers are one of the few tools users have to fight against the need to monetize fast and big because it troubles the predictability of readily traceable attention."
"Based on observations of three technology-rich Bay Area middle schools, Rafalow examined whether the skills students develop through digital play are considered cultural capital — skills, habits, and dispositions that that can be traded for success in school and work."
Jenny Edkins (Trauma and memory politics) explores how we remember traumatic events such as wars, famines, genocides and terrorism. She argues that remembrance does not have to be nationalistic but can instead challenge the political systems that produced the violence. Using examples from the World Wars, Vietnam, the Holocaust, Kosovo and September 11th, Edkins analyzes the practices of memory rituals through memorials, museums and remembrance ceremonies. This wide-ranging study embraces literature, history, politics and international relations, in an original contribution to the study of memory.
"Ukraine’s memory politics do not exclude women entirely. In 2016, the UINM chose to focus on women when commemorating the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The title of the institute’s project was “War makes no exceptions. Female history of the Second World War”. The intention to focus on women’s experiences in order to “reveal the criminal nature of war” seems admirable. But the 12 stories of both military and civilian women chosen by the UINM simply replicate a male pantheon rather than challenge the very tradition of glorifying the war through its heroes. The difference is that the male heroes are celebrated every year, whereas the female figures only once in a while, as part of a special project."
Such laws, however, do not have to pass to have a chilling effect. In 2014, I met Kyrgyz LGBTQI organisation Labrys, who said that lesbians and trans men already faced corrective rape, and gay men and trans women were often beaten and sometimes killed. Such attacks have since intensified. Soon after I went back to London, Labrys shut down their Facebook page, and had to sell the house where I first met them after it was subjected to an arson attack in 2015. They resurfaced last year, and in March I returned to Bishkek to meet a new generation of activists who, amidst the confusion and hostility, are fighting to make Kyrgyzstan more open to diversity of gender and sexuality.
At the Pasteur Institute in Paris Mechnikov was engaged in work associated with the establishment of his theory of cellular immunity, which, like many great advances in science, encountered considerable hostility. He published, during this period, several papers and two volumes on the comparative pathology of inflammation (1892), and his treatise entitled L’Immunité dans les Maladies Infectieuses (Immunity in infectious diseases, 1901). In 1908 he was awarded, together with Paul Ehrlich, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Biomedical gerontology, also known as experimental gerontology and life extension, is a sub-discipline of biogerontology that endeavors to slow, prevent, and even reverse aging in both humans and animals. Most "life extensionists" believe the human life span can be increased within the next century, if not sooner. biogerontologists vary in the degree to which they focus on the study of the aging process as a means of mitigating the diseases of aging or extending lifespan, although most agree that extension of lifespan will necessarily flow from reductions in age-related disease and frailty, although some argue that maximum life span cannot be altered or that it is undesirable to try. The area of geroscience is a recently formulated interdisciplinary field that embraces biomedical gerontology as the center of preventing diseases of aging through science emerging at the interface of the biology of aging and age-related disease.
"...so-called sneaker waves sometimes claim lives of the unwary along the coast of the Pacific Northwest.
Tuba Ozkan-Haller, a wave researcher at Oregon State University, recommends that when people go to the beach in Northern California, Oregon and Washington state — which because of the nature of the coastline are susceptible to sneaker waves — they study the wave action and ensure escape routes aren’t blocked by rocks or cliffs."
The term “calendering” refers to any of several processes in which fabric is subjected to great pressure and/or heat, in a type of ironing using large rollers.
For the study and collection of beetles, see coleopterology.
Beetling is the pounding of linen or cotton fabric to give a flat, lustrous effect. The process by which fabrics, etc. are beetled, or beaten with a mallet. Within Ireland, beetling was first introduced by Hamilton Maxwell in 1725. Beetling is part of the finishing of the linen cloth. The hammering tightens the weave and gives the cloth a smooth feel. The process was gradually phased out, in lieu of calendering. A similarity is the compression; however, with calendering, the finish does not remain for the life of the cloth. This distinguishes it from beetling.
Beetling eyebrows are thick and stick out from the face: He glared at me under beetling brows.
"When a dog crouches forward with its elbows on the ground and its rear end in the air, wagging tail and all, that's a play bow. The position is the ultimate sign of playfulness, which is important for a species that often uses playtime as practice for attacking prey.
The play bow first evolved in canids as a form of communication. When a dog sees another dog it wants to play with, it extends its front paws forward and lifts up its behind as a visual invitation to engage in a friendly play session. Dogs will "bow" in the middle of playtime to show that they're having fun and wish to continue, or when a session has paused to signal they want to pick it back up. Play bows can also be a sort of apology: When the roughhousing gets too rough, a bow says, “I’m sorry I hurt you. Can we keep playing?' "
Amnesty International on Thursday accused Nigeria's government of carrying out unlawful arrests and practicing "enforced disappearance" -- detention without trial -- to suppress dissent.
"Countries are increasingly copying the marketing tactics that companies use to raise their profiles, and let people know that they are open for business. Welcome to the world of nation branding.
A strong country brand should encourage tourists, trading partners and investors all at once. But having a snazzy logo, and an advertising budget won't sell a product that people don't want."
The best way to improve a country's image is for it to contribute to the well-being of the world beyond its borders rather than spending money on advertising.
"If you really want to earn a better reputation, the best thing you can do is stop chasing after it."
Among the Ga, the people who are indigenous to Ghana's capital, Accra, a woman is entitled to a live sheep on the delivery of her 10th child. The word for it is "nyongmato".
The first time I heard this word I was watching "To Kill a Mockingbird".
Mayella Ewell in the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962): "I was sittin' on the porch, and he come along. Uh, there's this old chifforobe in the yard, and I-I said, 'You come in here, boy, and bust up this chifforobe, and I'll give you a nickel.'"
On Twitter: "Today I asked my class to come up with a pair of terms that share a denotative meaning but whose connotative meanings differ and one student offered BUTT DIAL and BOOTY CALL."
"Make America Great Again" Americans (from Donald Trump's political slogan). As described on fivethirtyeight.com:
"Right Trolls behave like “bread-and-butter MAGA Americans, only all they do is talk about politics all day long.”
"Left Trolls often adopt the personae of Black Lives Matter activists, typically expressing support for Bernie Sanders and derision for Hillary Clinton, along with “clearly trying to divide the Democratic Party and lower voter turnout."
Sounds like a note brought to school as an excuse for something. "Dear Mrs. Frye: I couldn't finish my homework. We had a grasshopper escapement at home. You do believe me, don't you?'
Shadow banning isn't a new concept; it's frequently used in forums and on other social networks as an alternative to banning someone outright.
Instead of kicking someone off, shadow banning makes a person's post visible only to the user who created it. The idea is to protect others from harmful content while eventually prompting the shadow-banned user to voluntarily leave a forum due to a lack of engagement.
If a user is banned outright, the thinking goes, the person is aware of it and will likely just set up another account and continue the offending behavior.
Shadow banning is typically used to stop bots and trolls and is effective in combating bots where 'bot herders' who maintain these accounts don't necessarily know whether or not their bots are actually being seen by other people.
"Shadow banning: What it is -- and what it isn't", Alfred Ng, cnet.com, 26 July 2018
How does one add 110,098 words to a list? For me, and even if I managed to copy and paste hundreds or thousands of words, I'd still have to insert a semi-colon between those words. Is there a shortcut? An easier method I’m not using?
Here's the tree-free paper alternatives list. I tried before but I couldn't get my link to work, even with single curly braces. Okay, great. It works now.
qms: I'm looking for plant-based milks, so, yes, poppy milk qualifies. When I looked it up, I discovered that poppy milk (aguonų pienas) is a traditional Lithuanian drink or soup, one of the 12-dishes Christmas Eve Supper Kūčios. Usually, it is eaten together with kūčiukai, another traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dish. Thank you.
I will open this list with the understanding that only plant-based milks are added. Thank you.
I've been on a silly quest to sample many of these "milks". Just yesterday, I tried macadamia milk. I doubt if I'll be able to even find any candlenut milk, but is does exist! I'm also particularly interested in trying some black walnut milk. Will it have the unique flavor of black walnuts?
BTW, the dairy industry is trying relentlessly to force manufacturers of these non-dairy products from using the word "milk" when marketing their products. They claim that milk comes from mammals, not plants. The non-dairy milk people insist this is not able semantics, but because their product is affecting the popularity of goat / cow milk.
I thought this was paper made from the feces of an elephant. and not just "big" paper. I've read about paper made from elephant, rhino, and other herbivores.
Scottish. A football fan, esp of Rangers FC or Celtic FC, who exhibits religious bigotry at matches but does not consider him- or herself to be bigoted outside a football context.
I intended to start a list like this one, but after finding your impressive and thorough list, I figured: why bother? Love it. I've added it to my list of favorite lists.
ru: the day you started contributing to wordnik was--and continues to be!-- pure awesomeness. I love the way you think. You should be on a remarkable list yourself: a list of remarkable people! ♥♥♥♥
There are many words for pass in the English-speaking world. In the United States, pass is very common in the West, the word gap is common in the southern Appalachians, notch in parts of New England, and saddle in northern Idaho. Scotland has the Gaelic term bealach (anglicised "balloch"), while Wales has the similar bwlch. In the Lake District of north-west England, the term hause is often used, although the term pass is also common—one distinction is that a pass can refer to a route, as well as the highest part thereof, while a hause is simply the highest part, often flattened somewhat into a high-level plateau.--Wikipedia
In video games, and particularly eSports, commentators are often called shoutcasters; this term is derived from the free plugin for <i>Winamp</i> called <i>SHOUTcast</i>, which enabled users to live-stream audio-only feeds across the Internet.
Mansplaining (a blend of the word man and the informal form splaining of the verb explaining) means "(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner". Lily Rothman of "The Atlantic" defines it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman". Author Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness".
In its original use, mansplaining differed from other forms of condescension in that it is rooted in the sexist assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman. However, it has come to be used more broadly, often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone, regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients: a "man 'splaining" can be delivered to any audience. In 2010 it was named by the New York Times as one of its "Words of the Year".
A widespread phenomenon that "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.
To measure the women’s biological age, the researchers looked at the length of telomeres in their white blood cells. Telomeres are the dangly bits at the end of chromosomes that shorten every time a cell divides. Their length is considered a measure of cellular age.
Between three and five years later, 250 of the women came back so researchers could calculate their risk of developing heart disease in the next decade – known as their Framingham score. This takes account of risk factors such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body weight.
As expected, the team found that women with lower egg counts had higher Framingham scores, but they also had shorter telomeres. Previous studies have suggested that shorter telomeres are linked with heart disease, dementia and cancer, and also with a shorter lifespan. So women with fewer eggs may also be at higher risk of other age-related diseases, although epidemiological studies will be needed to bolster this link."
(The Framingham Risk Score is a gender-specific algorithm used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk of an individual. The Framingham Risk Score was first developed based on data obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, to estimate the 10-year risk of developing coronary heart disease. In order to assess the 10-year cardiovascular disease risk, cerebrovascular events, peripheral artery disease and heart failure were subsequently added as disease outcomes for the 2008 Framingham Risk Score, on top of coronary heart disease.)
(Noun) A private technology company that was formerly valued at $1bn or more (slang, vulg)
Silicon Valley is nothing if not inventive, and that applies to language as much as product development. Three years ago, Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, coined “unicorn” to capture the phenomenon of private technology companies achieving valuations of $1bn and more. She likened these desirable ventures to the mythical horned creature often represented in the shape of a horse.
More recently, in response to the declines in value of some unicorns, Ms Lee has concocted a less mythological variant: the “unicorpse”. It is one of a number of unicorn-related neologisms, including “My Little Pony” (a start-up worth $10m or more), the “Centaur” ($100m start-up) and the impressive “quinquagintacorn” (you work it out*).
--Financial TImes (article available for subscribers only)
The ancient concept of animal guides, particularly prominent in some indigenous, especially Native American, religions and cultures, was adopted in Pagan and Wiccan spirituality in the 1990s. In these contexts, spirit animals are meant literally, referring to spiritual guides or totems that take the form of animals.
Please do not kick or pound me if your pellets don't fall immediately. And don't press my buttons over and over. Be patient and you will receive your due reward.
"Australia's iconic koala has a problem that keeps boomeranging back.
Chlamydia, a type of sexually transmitted disease also found in humans, has hit wild koalas hard, with some wild populations seeing a 100 percent infection rate." --National Geographic, 14 April 2018
Likewise, necropsy is also necropsied. Most users seem to prefer the noun form. "The pathologist decided to forego a necropsy of the dead bilby on the side of the road."
Peter Haff coined the term technosphere (in 2014). He defines the technosphere as “the global, energy consuming techno-social system that is comprised of humans, technological artifacts, and technological systems, together with the links, protocols, and information that bind all these parts together.”
Basically, the technosphere is the vast, sprawling combination of humanity and its technology. Haff argues that in our thousands of years of harnessing technology – including the first technologies like stone tools, wheels and crops – the technology itself has basically begun to act practically independently, creating a new sphere (i.e., like the biosphere or atmosphere or lithosphere), but like nothing the planet has ever seen before.
“I would argue that domesticated animals and plants, as well as humans, are parts of the technosphere,” said Haff. “These are in effect manufactured by the technosphere for its own use on the basis of genetic blueprints appropriated from the biosphere.”
Blackbirding has continued to the present day in developing countries. One example is the kidnapping and coercion at gunpoint of indigenous people in Central America to work as plantation laborers in the region, where they are exposed to heavy pesticide loads and do backbreaking work for very little pay.
Dog meat has been eaten in every major German crisis at least since the time of Frederick the Great, and is commonly referred to as "blockade mutton."
--GERMANY: Dachshunds Are Tenderer, 25 November 1940. Time Magazine.
To a war menu which already included fish-fed poultry, decrepit horses, goats, and numerous zoo animals, Germany last week added those of its dogs which had not been killed by an earlier decree to save food. A new law, effective January 1, 1940, states that dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, badgers and wild hogs have been legalized as meat. After being inspected for trichina, their carcasses will be dressed, stamped and distributed to butchers for rationing to general consumers.
bilby: Have you ever visited Hastings Caves south of Hobart, or Mole Creek Karst National Park west of Launceston? I read somewhere that these sites have colonies of glowworms to see.
The newest addition to the modern dating lexicon. Named after the fictional child phantom, Casper, it’s a friendly alternative to ghosting. Instead of ignoring someone, you’re honest about how you feel, and let them down gently before disappearing from their lives.
"...the idea that the more “aromatic” (i.e. smelly) organic compounds foods share, the better they will taste together."
"...dishes whose ingredients share few compounds in common can also taste delicious; a 2011 analysis of more than 50,000 recipes found that while cuisines from Western Europe and North America tended to use ingredients with shared compounds, ingredients from East Asian recipes tended not to."
--An Illustrated Guide to Matching Foods' Flavor Molecules, Wired, 6 March 2018,
"On July 3, 2006, Amanda gave birth to fraternal twin girls, and the ecstatic parents gave their daughters intertwined names: One would be Millie Marcia Madge Biggs, the other Marcia Millie Madge Biggs."
In Australia, the term "flogger" is sometimes used rather than "pom-pom". Floggers are very large, heavy pom-poms in the team's colors. They sometimes require more than one person to lift them, and they are waved about when a goal is scored.
Floggers are an important part of Australian rules football culture and cheer-squads.
"In an interview with GQ magazine, the "Mummy" star said the alleged incident took place during HFPA luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003. He alleged that former HFPA president, Philip Berk, came to shake his hand when he was leaving the crowded room. "His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around," Fraser said, adding that in that moment he was overcome with panic and fear."I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry," Fraser added."
Information which is available and relevant to a decision or action, but which is undiscovered or ignored, bringing unnecessary risk to the decision or action.
COMMENT: she is nothing!. shes famous for a sex video and having lip injections and butt implants. Its too bad she breaths the same air as everyone else, such a waste. Well the whole clan is, from Bruce Jenner aka "caitlyn" to kylie and kendall Jenner. I know i should just skip over anything about them, but i had to see about her sending her haters stuff. I think its just for attention.
REPLY: There was literally no need to deadname Caitlyn in your little rant. If you don't like the Kardashians then don't click on the articles.
(I did not correct any of the punctuation, etc, even though it was tempting.)
Would someone please define deadname? I'm a bit confused. The Twitter feed is all over the place with examples, but none nail it.
In cluttering, the breakdowns in clarity that accompany a perceived rapid and/or irregular speech rate are often characterized by deletion and/or collapsing of syllables (e.g., "I wanwatevision") and/or omission of word endings (e.g., "Turn the televisoff"). The breakdowns in fluency are often characterized by more typical disfluencies (e.g., revisions, interjections) and/or pauses in places in sentences not expected grammatically, such as "I will go to the/store and buy apples".--http://www.asha.org/
A well-known example of a nurse name (from a surname) is "Chips" (Professor Arthur Chipping from the 1969 film "Good-bye, Mr. Chips".)
Prior to Professor Chipping's marriage, however, and his subsequent personality change, his pupils called him "Ditchy," short for "dull as ditch-water."
Not sure if "Ditchy" is a "nurse name" since it isn't a term of endearment, but it is a nickname of sorts.
Ha, regarding your Great Aunt Lalla. My guess is that numerous "nurse names" found their origins via baby talk or a toddler's (temporary) fluency disorder.
As described in some old texts, a nurse name is a contraction or an affectionate nickname. One example I found was HUBE, a "nurse name" for HUBERT. Other examples weren't shortened versions of one's given name but as terms of endearment, such as LITTLE ANGEL or DEAR ONE.
"English teachers spent the bulk of year 10 teaching and marking coursework essays, and didn’t get on to doing mocks until year 11. I was really pleased when coursework was abolished as I felt it would free up so much more time for teachers to plan and teach, instead of mark and administer coursework. However, it does appear as though a lot of this gained time has now been replaced with equally time-consuming mock marking with mocks being introduced more and more in year 10. Many schools have three assessment points a year. If you were to do two mock papers three times a year in both year 10 and 11, then a teacher who taught one year 10 class and one year 11 class would spend 120 hours of the year marking GCSE mocks. That’s three normal working weeks, or nearly 10% of the contracted 1,265 annual hours of directed time."
What are the definitions for mocks and mock marking in the context above?
The retail store Target is sometimes referred to as TAR-zhay. It's supposed to sound French, and thus high-class. This unofficial name change, initiated by customers, took place around the time Target began using some well-known designer(s) to spiffy up their low-priced wares. The term has been used by The New York Times.
Chaetoderma elegans is a species of glisten worm, a kind of shell-less, worm-like mollusk in the family Chaetodermidae. This species is found in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. --wikipedia
An Icelandic tradition known as jólabókaflóð (Christmas book flood). Books are exchanged as Christmas Eve gifts and the rest of the night is spent reading and eating konfekt (filled chocolates) and sipping jólabland, an orange fizzy ale.
Iceland sells the greatest number of books per capita in the world – and most of them are sold in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The book catalog Bókatíðindi is published each November and lists every published book available during the Christmas season.
"Why them birds, bein' mostly nuts, is so nervous they can't read, nor work, nor do nothin' to ease the bugs that is bitin' their noodles. That's where this strongarm stuff comes in, and the flydicks knows it."
In professional wrestling, a heel is a wrestler who is villainous or a "bad guy", who is booked (scripted) by the promotion to be in the position of being an antagonist. They are typically opposed by their polar opposites called faces (the heroic protagonist or "good guy" characters). In American wrestling, it was common for the faces to be American and the heels to be portrayed as foreign.
In order to gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules, but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as arrogance, cowardice or contempt for the audience. Many heels do both, cheating as well as behaving nastily. No matter the type of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role, as heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face or the other way around or to make the wrestler do something even more despicable to encourage heel heat.
"Armed with theoretical microscopes, quantum physicists keep on magnifying, gazing deeper and deeper into empty space until out of nothing, they suddenly see something. That something is a roiling collection of virtual particles, collectively called quantum foam.... According to quantum physicists, virtual particles exist briefly as fleeting fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime, like bubbles in beer foam." "Is Space Full of Quantum Foam?", LiveScience, 5 August 2017.
In molecular biology, housekeeping genes are typically constitutive genes that are required for the maintenance of basic cellular function and are expressed in all cells of an organism under normal and pathophysiological conditions.
"Soon criminologists started to take killer nurses seriously. In 1995, British forensic chemist Alexander Forrest reviewed about 40 examples of the type and suggested that one or two new cases might be seen each year in the United States. He proposed calling these murders “CASKs,” for carer-associated serial killings, and noted that “the numbers of patients involved are not trivial.” --"The Killer Nurse", Slate, 2017 July 24. source
St Edmund's College Boat Club (SECBC) is the boat club for members of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
SECBC uses the Cambridge '99 RC boathouse for training and storing its boats. The club has two boats, 'Lily' a men's eight and 'Dotty' a women's eight.
Book Book is a rural community in the central east part of the Riverina. It is situated about 12 km (7 mi) north from Kyeamba and 15 km (9 mi) south from Ladysmith.
Book Book exists now only through a set of old tennis courts and the telephone exchange that sits just off the Tumbarumba road.
(Book Book is considered a New South Wales "ghost town")
The Book Book Public School was discontinued on 27 October 1989.
According to a common misconception, century eggs are or were once prepared by soaking eggs in horse urine. The myth may have arisen from the urine-like odor of ammonia and other amines produced by the chemical reaction used to make century eggs. However, this myth is unfounded as horse urine has a pH ranging from 7.5 to 7.9 and therefore would not work for this process.
In Thai and Lao, the common word for century egg translates to "horse urine egg", due to the distinctive urine-like odor of the delicacy. --Wikipedia
Coywolves are not ‘shy wolves’—they are coyote-wolf hybrids (with some dog mixed in) and now number in the millions.
The hybrid, or Canis latrans var, is about 55 pounds heavier than pure coyotes, with longer legs, a larger jaw, smaller ears and a bushier tail. It is part eastern wolf, part wester wolf, western coyote and with some dog (large breeds like Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds), reports The Economist. Coywolves today are on average a quarter wolf and a tenth dog.
The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or violin family instruments) is referred to as a luthier.
n. A snail-shell or a horse-chestnut used in a boys' game, in which the object is to break the snail-shell or horse-chestnut by striking it, with another.
Wow. So easy even boys are able to grasp the rules. Must be an easy game.
Genuphobia (from Latin word genu meaning "knee") is the fear of one's own knees or someone else's knees or the act of kneeling.
The phobia could be the result of a negative experience in a person’s life that was associated with knees. The discomfort at the sight of one's knees could be the result of the person’s parents or themselves wearing exclusively clothing that covered the knees growing up, therefore making the person unfamiliar with the sight of them. It could be the result of a traumatic injury that left a scar on the individual’s knee or on someone that they know.
Some people fear kneeling because it is a form of submission. Symptoms include but are not limited to becoming sick to the stomach, excessive sweating, dry mouth, and anxiety when presented with a situation including knees or kneeling. Sufferers fear the uncomfortable feeling they experience at the sight of knees or they fear the recollection of the injury and the pain associated with it.
I tried listing the name of the actual prize; however, I kept getting a 404 whenever it came time to add a comment.
The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, originally known as the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the Frankfurt Book Fair,1 commonly known as the Diagram Prize for short, is a humorous literary award that is given annually to a book with an unusual title.
Past winners:
--Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
--The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution
--The Joy of Chickens
--Last Chance at Love – Terminal Romances
--How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
--The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
--Developments in Dairy Cow Breeding: New Opportunities to Widen the Use of Straw
The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own actions.
The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993 and followed up by a series of books starting in 2000, authored by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states, "In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival."
Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies; however, the site notes: "Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously." The candidate is disqualified, though, if "innocent bystanders", who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process.
The Darwin Awards books state that an attempt is made to disallow known urban legends from the awards, but some older "winners" have been "grandfathered" to keep their awards. The Darwin Awards site does try to verify all submitted stories, but many similar sites, and the vast number of circulating "Darwin awards" emails, are largely fictional.
The Pigasus Award is the name of an annual tongue-in-cheek award presented by noted skeptic James Randi. The award seeks to expose parapsychological, paranormal or psychic frauds that Randi has noted over the previous year. Randi usually makes his announcements of the awards from the previous year on April 1 (April Fools Day).
The Stella Awards are awards that were given between 2002 and 2007 to people who filed "outrageous and frivolous lawsuits". The awards were named after Stella Liebeck who, in 1992, ordered a cup of McDonald's coffee at a drive thru, put it in between her knees while sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson's stationary car, and attempted to remove the lid in order to add cream and sugar. The coffee, 180 to 190 °F (82 to 88 °C), spilled from the cup, causing third-degree burns to her thighs and genitals; after McDonald's refused to pay for her skin grafts, and rejected several attempts at mediation and settlement, Liebeck sued. The awards were an offshoot of the weekly news column This is True written by Colorado writer Randy Cassingham, which featured "wacky-yet-true" news stories.5 The awards were documented on a website and in a 2005 book, both known as The True Stella Awards. There are also a number of false Stella Awards circulating on the Internet.
In July 2012 Cassingham sent a mail to the True Stella Awards mailing list, announcing that after several abortive attempts to restart the list he came to the conclusion that he had said everything about the subject of frivolous lawsuits that he had intended to say, and so was shutting down the Stella Awards.
The Golden Raspberry Awards often shortened to Razzies and Razzie Awards, is an award in recognition of the worst in film. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film-industry veterans, John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, the annual Razzie Awards ceremony in Los Angeles precedes the corresponding Academy Awards ceremony by one day. The term raspberry in the name is used in its irreverent sense, as in "blowing a raspberry". The awards themselves are in the form of a "golf ball-sized raspberry" which sits atop a Super 8 mm film reel, the whole of which is spray-painted gold.
Literary Review is well known for its annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Each year since 1993, Literary Review has presented the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author who produces the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. The award itself is in the form of a "semi-abstract trophy representing sex in the 1950s", which depicts a naked woman draped over an open book. The award was originally established by Rhoda Koenig, a literary critic, and Auberon Waugh, then the magazine's editor.
The award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".
The Bent Spoon Award is an award given by Australian Skeptics, "presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle". The award is named as allusion to the practice of spoon bending by supposed psychics.
Australian Skeptics facetiously describes the trophy as a piece of gopher wood supposedly from the Noah’s Ark, upon which is affixed a spoon that was rumored to have been used at the Last Supper. The spoon was bent by energies unknown to science and was gold-plated through an Atlantean process.1 Although established in 1982 and first awarded in 1983, only one copy of the trophy exists, as "anyone wishing to acquire the trophy must remove it from our keeping by paranormal means" and no winner has yet overcome this obstacle.
The winner should either be an Australian or have carried out their activities in Australia.
The New Zealand Skeptics have a similar Bent Spoon Award.
The Ig Nobel Prizes are parodies of the Nobel Prizes given out each autumn for 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. They have been awarded since 1991, with the stated aim to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". The awards can be veiled criticism or satire but are also used to point out that even absurd-sounding avenues of research can yield useful knowledge.
The name is a play on the words ignoble ("characterized by baseness, lowness, or meanness") and the Nobel Prize. The pronunciation used during the ceremony is /ˌɪɡnoʊˈbɛl/ig-noh-bel, not like the word "ignoble".
Banana messengers or fruit messengers were agents sent on US railroads to accompany shipments of bananas and other fruit. They were accorded special ticket rates, similar to those for railway employees and clergy, as late as the 1960s. The tickets were not honored on some premium trains. Reportedly, the reduced rate also applied to the return trip (sans bananas).
The name was also used to refer to some cabooses. Described in IC 9650-9956, these were steel underframe drover's cabooses built between 1897 and 1913, and reclassified as banana messengers sometime between 1955 and 1963. The last five were scrapped or sold between 1963 and 1971.
This is not the meaning I expected. I figured it had something to do with a gringo changing into something else, and the dégringoler was the one to facilitate that change.
verb intransitive dégringoler /degʀɛ̃gɔle/
=chuter faire une chute précipitée
to tumble , to fall
verb transitive―
=dévaler descendre très rapidement
to race down
Le voleur dégringole les étages de l'immeuble pour échapper aux policiers.
The thief is racing down the stairs in the building to escape from the police.
The social and political theories of Robert Owen, an early 19th-century British reformer whose emphasis upon cooperative education and living led to the founding of communal experiments, including the ill-fated community of New Harmony, Indiana, purchased from the Rappites. — Owenite , n.
Mollusque has addictive lists. Such a learned fellow, and with a nice sense of humor to boot. I still miss all the camaraderie from the days when Wordnik was Wordie. (I wasn't known as vendingmachine around here during the Wordie days.)
"No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bog oaksceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave—all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time." --Ulysses, James Joyce
Thanks for running with this, ru. Finding out about the classification system was about all I could muster. This list idea would have languished without you.
Abetti is a lunar crater that has been completely submerged by mare lavas. It forms a 'ghost crater' in the surface, showing only a curved rise where the rim is located.
Mexican wrestling is characterized by colorful masks, rapid sequences of holds and maneuvers, as well as "high-flying" maneuvers, some of which have been adopted in the United States. The wearing of masks has developed special significance, and matches are sometimes contested in which the loser must permanently remove his mask, which is a wager with a high degree of weight attached.
..for Virginia-based vineyard consultant Lucie Morton, a world-renowned ampelographer, it’s still crucial to know how to distinguish vines the old-fashioned way: by sight and touch. It took Morton years to learn ampelography, a skill that few viticulturists in today’s high-tech world still work to master. “It’s like speaking a new language: practice makes perfect,” she says. “Ampelography is really hard, and it takes a trained eye. I would compare it to what a sommelier goes through in identifying wines blind. It takes interest, practice, focus. You build on your knowledge, just like you do with wine tasting, layering your experiences.”
Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free.
The term "copyfraud" was coined by Jason Mazzone, a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois. Because copyfraud carries little or no oversight by authorities and few legal consequences, it exists on a massive scale, with millions of works in the public domain falsely labeled as copyrighted. Payments are therefore unnecessarily made by businesses and individuals for licensing fees. Mazzone states that copyfraud stifles valid reproduction of free material, discourages innovation and undermines free speech rights. Other legal scholars have suggested public and private remedies, and a few cases have been brought involving copyfraud.
Most ducks shed their body feathers twice each year. Nearly all drakes lose their bright plumage after mating, and for a few weeks resemble females. This hen-like appearance is called the eclipse plumage. The return to breeding coloration varies in species and individuals of each species.
A quantitative study, published by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and anthropologist Jamshid J. Tehrani in 2016, tried to evaluate the time of emergence for the "Tales of Magic" (ATU 300–ATU 749), based on a phylogenetic model] They found four of them to belong to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stratum of magic tales, namely:
ATU 328 The Boy Steals Ogre's Treasure,
ATU 330 The Smith and the Devil (= KHM 81a),
ATU 402 The Animal Bride (= KHM 63 and 106), and
ATU 554 The Grateful Animals (= The White Snake, KHM 17, and The Queen Bee, KHM 62).
The Aarne–Thompson classification systems are indices used to classify folktales: the Aarne–Thompson Motif-Index (catalogued by alphabetical letters followed by numerals), the Aarne–Thompson Tale Type Index (cataloged by AT or AaTh numbers), and the Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system (developed in 2004 and cataloged by ATU numbers). The indices are used in folkloristics to organize, classify, and analyze folklore narratives and are essential tools for folklorists because, as Alan Dundes explained in 1997 about the first two indices, "the identification of folk narratives through motif and/or tale type numbers has become an international sine qua non among bona fidefolklorists"
"The forewings are ochreous-white, strongly suffused with deep gray. The inner angle, veins, a longitudinal dash in the cell and a series of spots around the termen are all blackish fuscous. The hindwings are pale smoky gray."
"The forewings are ochreous-white, strongly suffused with deep gray. The inner angle, veins, a longitudinal dash in the cell and a series of spots around the termen are all blackish fuscous. The hindwings are pale smoky gray."
"The forewings are ochreous-white, strongly suffused with deep gray. The inner angle, veins, a longitudinal dash in the cell and a series of spots around the termen are all blackish fuscous. The hindwings are pale smoky gray."
ARDS. A disorder of the lung tissue caused by infection, shock, burns, or other insults in which the capillaries become leaky and the air spaces fill with fluid. With ARDS, the lung tissue loses its watertight seal and becomes soggy; it can't absorb gases, even with 100 percent oxygen on a ventilator. Once a patient develops ARDS, it's usually the point of no return.
People who make crossword puzzles are called constructors. All crossword puzzles used to be laid out by hand. Today many crossword puzzle constructors use computer software to assist in the puzzle layout. Crossword puzzles that end up in large newspapers or in syndication are controlled by an editor. Constructors submit their puzzles to a crossword editor and the editor decides which puzzles are selected (and for what day since crosswords raise in difficulty through the week).
A parasite is no doubt altering bilby's dopaminergic neurotransmissions resulting in neuropsychiatric symptoms, including a change in predator vigilance. it's also entirely possible that parasites have affected bilby's sexual arousal pathways when he's exposed to muesli bars soaked in dingo urine.
Big surprise that zombie ants originated from a comment by bilby. I'm guessing there is a specific parasite out there that is manipulating bilby's brain into performing erratic behaviors so he'll get the attention of a bilby-eating predator (the next intended host).
Wildlife tourism—which accounts for 20 to 40 percent of all tourism worldwide—is controversial, and can be harmful to animals. After being accused of promoting such attractions, TripAdvisor halted sales to them in 2016.
Many tourists can’t tell if the places they visit hurt wildlife, according to a 2015 ranking of wildlife attractions around the world. Every year, two to four million tourists pay for experiences that aren’t good for animal welfare or conservation.
According to that ranking, dolphin tourism and shark cage diving, both popular in the Bahamas, have negative impacts on wildlife.
But Bethune hopes that, if the proper changes are made, pig-swimming tourism will continue to thrive.
Hairworms have a perpetual challenge: They infect landlubbing insects like crickets, but the parasites must make their way to an aquatic habitat in order to reproduce.
Researchers at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique figured out how they accomplish this feat. Hairworms produce mind-controlling chemicals that cause their cricket host to move toward light. Because water bodies reflect moonlight, this often sends crickets toward lakes and streams.
The crickets jump in and drown, and the hairworms emerge, ready to find their next victim.
The fluke Euhaplorchis californiensis begins its life in an ocean-dwelling horn snail, where it produces larvae that then seek their next host, a killifish.
Once it finds a fish, the parasite latches on to its gills and makes its way to the brain. But this isn't its final stop.
The fluke needs to get inside the gut of a water bird in order to reproduce. So inside the killifish's brain, the fluke releases chemicals that cause the fish to shimmy, jerk, and jump.
Jenny Shaw, then at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues found that the parasite decreases serotonin and increases dopamine levels in the fish's brain. The switch in this brain chemistry stimulates the fish to swim and behave more aggressively.
These moves attract the attention of birds, which may eat the fish—and the flukes. The flukes mate, and their eggs are released back into the water in the bird's droppings to be eaten by horn snails and start the cycle anew.
As an adult, the lancet liver fluke—a type of flatworm—resides in the livers of grazing mammals such as cows.
Its eggs are excreted in the host's feces, which are then eaten by snails. After the eggs hatch inside the snail, the snail creates protective cysts around the parasites and coughs them up in balls of mucus.
These fluke-laden slime balls are then consumed by ants. When the flukes wiggle their way into an ant's brain, they cause the insect to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and sit motionless, where it's most likely to be eaten by a grazing mammal. That way, the liver fluke can complete its life cycle.
Females of the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra.
When the female jewel wasp is ready to procreate, she finds a cockroach to serve as a living nursery for her young.
First, she injects a toxin into the roach that paralyzes its front legs. Then the wasp strikes again in the roach's head. Frederic Libersat of Ben-Gurion University in Israel and colleagues discovered that the venom targets a specific area of the brain responsible for initiating movement.
Stripped of its ability to move of its own free will, the cockroach can be grabbed by the antenna and guided to a burrow, where the wasp will lay her egg on the victim and entomb them together. (Read more about how zombie roaches lose free will because of wasp venom.)
The wasp larva slowly consumes the cockroach for several days before pupating in its abdomen, emerging as an adult about a month later.
Females of the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra.
After living off its host for a few weeks, the wasp larva injects a chemical into the spider that makes it build a strange, new kind of web, unlike anything it's built before.
But this new web isn't for the spider: It's meant to support the cocoon that the wasp larva will build after finally killing and eating the spider.
Normally a rat or mouse will keep to the shadows, thus avoiding cats. But when they are infected by toxoplasma the parasite completely changes their behavior. An infected mouse is attracted to the smell of cat urine and will move out into the open, displaying reckless behavior. The reason, of course, is the parasite wants the mouse to be eaten by a cat, so it can then infect its new host.
Humans also get infected by toxoplasma, though it is only really serious when a woman is pregnant as toxoplasma can damage the unborn child. But new research suggests that toxoplasma may influence us in more subtle ways.
We know, for example, that people who have antibodies to toxoplasma are more than twice as likely to be involved in a traffic accident. It could be that the parasite is making us, like rodents, behave in a more reckless fashion. Research also suggests it may slow down reaction times, with the intention of making us more vulnerable to large predators. Either way it is a chilling thought that parasites may be influencing how we behave in ways we do not yet begin to understand.
-How Parasites Manipulate Us, BBC News, 19 Feb 2014
When performance of polishing of body is underway, is scent of lemon Pledge® used without flaw? I require utmost effective polish service with expediency and professional manner.
A symbiont living on the outside of a host's body.
"Exobiont growth on these setae might impair odor detection and the ability of the lobsters to evaluate many aspects of their environment. Each annulus of the olfactory organ contains an asymmetric seta that extends nearly perpendicular across the rows of aesthetasc setae."
"Exobiont growth on these setae might impair odor detection and the ability of the lobsters to evaluate many aspects of their environment. Each annulus of the olfactory organ contains an asymmetric seta that extends nearly perpendicular across the rows of aesthetasc setae."
An anti-debate appeal based on genetic fallacy, which attempts to detract from the validity of a statement by attacking the tone rather than the message.
In Bailey Poland's book, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, she suggests that tone policing is frequently aimed at women and derails or silences opponents lower on the "privilege ladder".
In changing their tactics to criticizing how the women spoke instead of what the women said, the men created an environment in which the outcome of a dispute was not decided on the merits of an argument but on whether the men chose to engage with the arguments in good faith.
— Bailey Poland, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, page 46
While anyone can engage in tone policing, it is frequently aimed at women as a way to prevent a woman from making a point in the discussion.
— Bailey Poland, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, page 47
"The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can't be put into words; the most that a writer can do--and this is only rarely achieved--is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page."
A happy number is a number defined by the following process: Starting with any positive integer, replace the number by the sum of the squares of its digits, and repeat the process until the number either equals 1 (where it will stay), or it loops endlessly in a cycle which does not include 1. Those numbers for which this process ends in 1 are happy numbers, while those that do not end in 1 are unhappy numbers (or sad numbers).
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which new information is added to already established facts in the continuity of a fictional work.
A floating timeline (also known as a sliding timescale) is a device used in fiction, particularly in comics and animation, to explain why characters age little or not at all over a period of time — despite real-world markers like notable events, people and technology appearing in the works and correlating with the real world. A floating timeline is a subtle form of retroactive continuity. This is seen most clearly in the case of comic book characters who debuted as teens in the 1940s or the 1960s but who are still relatively young in current comics. Events from the characters' pasts are alluded to, but they are changed from having taken place years ago to having taken place more recently. -Wikipedia
Gasp. I hate truncated, cutesy words like this. From Twitter: Join us for some seasonal bites, bevies and banter. (It doesn't sound so bad in this context, more quaint). See bevy.
"Aloha is a tiny impact crater on the Moon, that lies to the northwest of the Montes Agricola ridge, on the Oceanus Procellarum. It is located near the faintterminus of a ray that crosses the mare from the southeast, originating at the crater Glushko."
"...the wingspan is 10–12 millimetres (0.39–0.47 in). The adults have a bronzy or greenish metallic sheen with no markings. They fly during the day as well as after dark. They are on wing in June and July in western Europe and from May to August in North America."
"God-Building was an idea proposed by some prominent Marxists of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party which proved to be very controversial. It was inspired by Ludwig Feuerbach's 'religion of humanity' and had some precedent in the French Revolution with the 'cult of reason'. The idea consisted of the notion that in place of the abolition of religion, there should be a meta-religious context in which religions were viewed primarily in terms of the psychological and social effect of ritual, myth, and symbolism, and which attempted to harness this force for pro-communist aims, both by creating new ritual and symbolism, as well as re-interpreting existing ritual and symbolism in a socialist context. In contrast to the atheism of Lenin, the God Builders took an official position of agnosticism." --Wikipedia
Fly-on-the-wall is a style of documentary-making used in film and television production. The name derived from the idea that events are seen candidly, as a fly on a wall might see them. In the purest form of fly-on-the-wall documentary-making, the camera crew works as unobtrusively as possible; however, it is also common for participants to be interviewed, often by an off-camera voice.
Breeches, a form of pants, came in a wide variety of styles. The most common form of breech was called the trunk hose. Trunk hose were attached to the bottom of the doublet, a padded overshirt, with points, or small ties, and bagged outward before fastening on the upper leg. They looked almost like a puffy short skirt. Trunk hose were often worn with canions, a loose-fitting hose for the upper leg. An exaggerated form of trunk hose was known as pumpkin breeches. Made with contrasting vertical panels of fabric, these breeches ballooned outward, making it look as if the wearer had a large pumpkin about his waist. Venetians were a form of breeches that reached to the knee; they were padded at the waist and upper thighand grew slimmer as they reached the knee. Pluderhose were baggy all the way from the waist to the knee, and the baggy fabric hung down to hide the fastening at the knee. The longest breeches, known as slops, reached all the way to the calf.
Breeches, a form of pants, came in a wide variety of styles. The most common form of breech was called the trunk hose. Trunk hose were attached to the bottom of the doublet, a padded overshirt, with points, or small ties, and bagged outward before fastening on the upper leg. They looked almost like a puffy short skirt. Trunk hose were often worn with canions, a loose-fitting hose for the upper leg. An exaggerated form of trunk hose was known as pumpkin breeches. Made with contrasting vertical panels of fabric, these breeches ballooned outward, making it look as if the wearer had a large pumpkin about his waist. Venetians were a form of breeches that reached to the knee; they were padded at the waist and upper thigh and grew slimmer as they reached the knee. Pluderhose/pluderhose were baggy all the way from the waist to the knee, and the baggy fabric hung down to hide the fastening at the knee. The longest breeches, known as slops, reached all the way to the calf.
"Aren't the dermal piercings with crystal studs brilliant? Wwhite ink tattoos often look like the body-art method of branding or scarring but this is much more delicate and super feminine!"
"“This pigment is of major importance, since it represents the bright red color desired by purchasers,” reads “Lawrie’s Meat Science,” one of the tentpole books for students and professionals in the meat industry. Some producers have even gone so far as to treat their meat with carbon dioxide gas in order to lock in this red color far past its normal lifespan."
"The data scientist role was thrust into the limelight early this year when it was named 2016's "hottest job," and there's been considerable interest in the position ever since. Just recently, the White House singled data scientists out with a special appeal for help."
An all-male panel of lawmakers in Utah refused to end the state’s sales tax on tampons, voting 8 to 3 against the Hygiene Tax Act.
The committee (again, all men) shot down the proposal because it wanted to keep the tax system predictable and believed that allowing for subjective variations on the tax code would only cause problems, according to reports.
Specifically, state representative Ken Ivory—one of the eight “no” votes—worried that exempting tampons would open the door for all kinds of crazy requests for exemptions, according to CBS News.
"It s expensive to be a woman. Several studies have shown that choosing the shampoo bottle marketed to women (with its pastel colors and floral motif) will cost you more than reaching for the gray bottle of "men's" shampoo, even when both items are essentially the same product. It’s referred to as the “pink tax,” and Boxed, a bulk shipping retailer, just announced a discount to combat it, Entrepreneur magazine reports. If the women’s product you’re buying costs more than the men’s equivalent, Boxed will cut the price on the ladies’ version.
Examples of “pink tax” products in 2014, finding that body washes, razors, shampoos, deodorants, and perfumes all charge different prices for the same products depending on whether they’re marketed to men or women. And in some states, tampons and other feminine hygiene products are legally considered “luxury” items subject to sales tax. (five states have actively made decisions not to tax tampons: Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota andNew Jersey. The rest either don’t have a sales tax or don’t consider tampons a “necessity.”)
“Sardinians are a group that people have considered distinct from other Europeans, and in this regard it would be interesting if they were more widely distributed in the past.”
A remembrance of someone (particularly a historical figure or a celebrity) who died long ago. The remembrance often appears as an article in a publication and includes details about their life and death.
Carter's Little Liver Pills (Carter's Little Pills after 1959) were formulated as a patent medicine by Samuel J. Carter of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1868.
Robert's snow vole (Chionomys roberti) is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is found in Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Turkey.
Krebs's fat mouse (Steatomys krebsii) is a species of rodent in the family Nesomyidae. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.
Bookbinder's soup is a type of soup pioneered in the United States in 1893 when Samuel Bookbinder created Old Original Bookbinder's restaurant in Philadelphia.
Caragea's plague or Caradja's plague (Romanian: Ciuma lui Caragea) was a bubonic plague epidemic that occurred in Wallachia, mainly in Bucharest, in the years 1813 and 1814. It coincided with the rule of the Phanariote Prince John Caradja.
Caragea's plague or Caradja's plague (Romanian: Ciuma lui Caragea) was a bubonic plague epidemic that occurred in Wallachia, mainly in Bucharest, in the years 1813 and 1814. It coincided with the rule of the Phanariote Prince John Caradja.
Curschmann's spirals refers to a microscopic finding in the sputum of asthmatics which are spiral shaped mucus plugs from subepithelial mucous gland ducts or bronchioles. These may occur in several different lung diseases.
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is the basis for the musical Cats.
Père David's rock squirrel (Sciurotamias davidianus), also known as the Chinese rock squirrel, is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae. It is endemic to China, where it is found widely in rocky habitats in the eastern and central parts of the country.
James Oberg explained many UFO sightings on the Internet. Most of them belong to one of three groups:
super-high plumes – rocket or missile plumes, especially lit by Sun on a dark sky;
space dandruff – ice flakes, fragments of insulation, etc. flying alongside a space vehicle, especially seen on backward-facing camera;
twilight shadowing – objects that move from shadow into sunlight in space appear as if coming from behind the clouds or from beyond the edge of the Earth.
James Oberg explained many UFO sightings on the Internet. Most of them belong to one of three groups: super-high plumes – rocket or missile plumes, especially lit by Sun on a dark sky; space dandruff – ice flakes, fragments of insulation, etc. flying alongside a space vehicle, especially seen on backward-facing camera; twilight shadowing – objects that move from shadow into sunlight in space appear as if coming from behind the clouds or from beyond the edge of the Earth.
James Oberg explained many UFO sightings on the Internet. Most of them belong to one of three groups: super-high plumes – rocket or missile plumes, especially lit by Sun on a dark sky; space dandruff – ice flakes, fragments of insulation, etc. flying alongside a space vehicle, especially seen on backward-facing camera; twilight shadowing – objects that move from shadow into sunlight in space appear as if coming from behind the clouds or from beyond the edge of the Earth.
"Every Aussie I've met, along with many commenters on different Gawker sites have humblebragged about how perfect Australia is compared to the US. "I can't believe X happens in America; Australia has/does Y." Is it not possible to comment on an issue on an American site without also mentioning your own country's superiority?"
Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white nationalists have begun using three sets of parentheses encasing a Jewish surname — for instance, (((Fleishman))) — to identify and target Jews for harassment on blogs and major social media sites like Twitter. As one white supremacist tweeted, "It's closed captioning for the Jew-blind."
The origins of the symbol ((())) can be traced to a hardcore, right-wing podcast called The Daily Shoah in 2014. It's known as an "echo" in the anti-Semitic corners of the alt-right — a new, young, amorphous conservative movement that comprises trolls fluent in internet culture, free speech activists warring against political correctness and earnest white nationalists. Some use the symbol to mock Jews; others seek to expose supposed Jewish collusion in controlling media or politics. All use it to put a target on their heads.
To the public, the symbol is not easily searchable on most sites and social networks; search engines strip punctuation from results. This means that trolls committed to uncovering, labeling and harassing Jewish users can do so in relative obscurity: No one can search those threats to find who's sending them.
The symbol comes from right-wing blog the Right Stuff, whose podcast The Daily Shoah featured a segment called "Merchant Minute" that gave Jewish names a cartoonish "echo" sound effect when uttered. The "parenthesis meme," as Right Stuff editors call it, is a visual pun. --tech.mic
"While primary effects of invasive animals are bioturbation, bioerosion, and bioconstruction. For example, invasion of Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis have resulted in higher bioturbation and bioerosion rates."
"A chain used to secure something, especially a part of the dress and personal equipment, as, in the middle ages, the hilt of the sword to the breastplate or other part of the body-armor, or at the present day a watch, brooch, or bracelet."
"Moreover, people often use cards for awhile and then switch or they lose their cards and they need to be physically replaced. According to Federal Reserve data that I summarize in this article, in 2009 16.5% of credit card users discarded their cards and 29% of prepaid card users did so. Customer churn is especially high for prepaid card users, who often use their cards for only a short period or for a specified purpose. Churn is lowest for debit cards, because they are linked to bank accounts."
A "milagro" (miracle; a tiny replica of an arm or eye or animal, which can then be taken to the church and left with a donation). Sometimes made with "aged" bottle caps.
Nichos are made from mixed media and traditionally combine elements from Roman Catholicism, mestizo spirituality, and popular culture.
Nichos are made of objects that can be easily purchased or scavenged in the home or community. The media are characteristically humble for a religious object, especially compared to the typically ornate icons of the Catholic Church. The shadow box itself is easily converted from a cigar box or other mass-produced wooden container, but can also be constructed from any lightweight wood, recycled tin, or glass. The colorful designs on the box and borders are created not only with paint, but also with sequins, glitter, chain, thread or rope, paper mache, and any small bric-a-brac. Other ornaments within nichos include milagro charms, beads, stones, nails, and other manufactured and found objects.
"The story of forensicneuropathologist Bennet I. Omalu brings dramatic focus to one doctor's breakthrough discovery of a progressive neurologic disorder found in victims of brain trauma.
Dr. Omalu called the disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), first discovered through an autopsy he performed on Mike Webster, the NFL's legendary Pittsburgh Steeler's player who died at age 50. Dr. Omalu went on to report and publish findings to identify CTE in eight more NFL players whose patterns of death were similar. Dr. Omalu's findings revolutionized neuroscience[, [sports medicine, the study of brain trauma, and the entire sports industry, even after being ridiculed by many of his professional peers, the NFL, and the industry."
--Spotlight Event, 2015 College of American Pathologists Foundation Awards.
Stanton Friedman considers the general attitude of mainstream academics as arrogant and dismissive or bound to a rigid worldview that disallows any evidence contrary to previously held notions. Denzler states that the fear of ridicule and a loss of status has prevented scientists of pursuing a public interest in UFOs. J. Allen Hynek's also commented, "Ridicule is not part of the scientific method and people should not be taught that it is." Hynek said of the frequent dismissal of UFO reports by astronomers that the critics knew little about the sightings, and should thus not be taken seriously. Peter A. Sturrock suggests that a lack of funding is a major factor in the institutional lack of interest in UFOs.--Wikipedia
@madmouth. It's my fault for baiting ru. One of the entries below really is PERSON WHOSE OX IS GORED, which sounded just offbeat enough to trip ruzuzu's stream of consciousness.
A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling is sometimes called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator and author John Holt in his magazine, "Growing Without Schooling". The term emphasizes the more spontaneous, less structured learning environment where a child's interests drive their pursuit of knowledge. In some cases, a liberal arts education is provided using the trivium and quadrivium as the main models.--Wikipedia
Latinx is the gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. Used by scholars, activists and an increasing number of journalists, Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public. It’s part of a “linguistic revolution“ that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants. In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Latinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid.
“In Spanish, the masculinized version of words is considered gender neutral. But that obviously doesn’t work for some of us because I don’t think it’s appropriate to assign masculinity as gender neutral when it isn’t,” explains queer, non-binary femme writer Jack Qu’emi Gutiérrez in an interview with PRI. “The ‘x,’ in a lot of ways, is a way of rejecting the gendering of words to begin with, especially since Spanish is such a gendered language.”
Latinx is also, as pointed out by writer Gabe Gonzalez, a way to reclaim identity, a form of rebellion against “the language and legacy of European traditions that were imposed on the Americas.”
"Once within the walls of the Ghetto they were alone, and could go about the little streets in perfect security; they were free from the contamination as well as safe from the depredations of Christians, and within their own precincts they were not forced to wear the hated orange-coloured cap or net which Paul the Fourth imposed upon the Jewish men and women. To a great extent, too, such isolation was already in the traditions of the race. A hundred years earlier Venice had created its Ghetto; so had Prague, and other European cities were not long in following. Morally speaking their confinement may have been a humiliation; in sober fact it was an immense advantage; moreover, a special law of 'emphyteusis' made the leases of their homes inalienable, so long as they paid rent, and forbade the raising of the rent under any circumstances, while leaving the tenant absolute freedom to alter and improve his house as he would, together with the right to sublet it, or to sell the lease itself to any other Hebrew; and these leases became very valuable"--Francis Marion Crawford, Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2, Studies from the Chronicles of Rome, 1899.
"A saltern is a word with a number of differing (but interrelated) meanings. In English archaeology, a saltern is an area used for salt making, especially in the East Anglian fenlands."
Modern psychology has a serious God problem. America is a deeply spiritual country. More than half of Americans say religion is “very important” to them, and more than 90 percent profess a belief in a higher power. Yet psychology, as a scientific endeavor, has done almost nothing to understand how spiritual beliefs shape psychological problems, or affect treatment. When a person with deep religious convictions comes in for professional help, they will find, more often than not, a therapist who is not fully prepared to help.--Gareth Cook, Modern Psychology's God Problem.
Relations between psychology and religion have a troubled history. Putting psychology on a scientific footing meant, in part, rejecting the notion that mental illness is a spiritual phenomenon, that madness implied possession by demons or foul spirits. Freud famously diagnosed religion as a psychological problem. To believe, in his view, was to be neurotic.
A problem addressed by means of intuition, such as a recipe (for coconut cake) in which the ingredients and amounts used are unclear.
"HARVARD PROFESSOR Roland Fryer has made a discovery with the potential to transform public education. To understand it, though, it helps to first hear a story about the conundrum of the coconut cake.
Fryer’s grandmother makes an astounding coconut cake, a magical confection of sweetness and air he’s loved since he was a kid growing up in Florida. Fryer wanted to learn to make the cake himself, but every time he pressed for a recipe, she gave him directions like “use a good amount of sugar, a little flour but not too much, and just a bit of baking powder.”--Gareth Cook, Education's Coconut Cake Problem
The use of a laparoscopic power morcellator during a hysterectomy is discouraged because it increases the risk of spreading cancerous tissue within the abdomen and pelvis.
During a hysterectomy with morcellation the surgeon slices the uterine tissue into small pieces and extracts them with a laparoscope through an incision in the abdomen. In women with undetected uterine cancer, the morcellator cuts through cancerous tissue and potentially distributes it outside the uterus.
A vaginal pessary can take a number of different forms, including doughnut-shaped devices; horn-shaped varieties, known as gellhorns; and tube-like insertions with bulbous ends that work as inflatable devices.
The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second "Goldilocks," according to a Yale University researcher.
For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun. In our solar system, for instance, Venus is too close to the sun and Mars is too far, but Earth is just right. That distance is what scientists refer to as the "habitable zone," or the "Goldilocks zone."--Science Daily, August 19, 2016
Dorothy Parker dispensed caustic humor in prose and verse as well as over drinks. Her observations and remarks were very much of their time, but they still induce winces in an era when cutting snark has become practically de rigueur. Over the years many couplets and witticisms have been attributed to Parker, some apocryphally."
"The shoe features canvas, suede and mesh, with the varsity royal blue apparently inspired by Port Phillip Bay and the brown midsole chosen to represent the turdish Yarra River that winds its wiggly way through our magnificent city."
"hefting – also known as heafing in this part of the country, but known as many other things across the UK.
I’m no expert on hefting but the way I understand it to work, from a friend who does know, is that when shepherds want to establish a new flock, they take the sheep up onto the moorland where they want them to graze and they constrain them on that land. This is sometimes done with fencing, but is also done by physical shepherding. The flock gets to know where it can, and can’t, go because of the constraints. Eventually the shepherd removes the constraint, but the sheep don’t drift off. They stay where they have been hefted. They’ve learnt to live within their current constraints.
Once a flock has been established within its heft, the shepherd can add new sheep to the flock and they will take on the heft of the rest of the sheep, as long as too many fresh ideas aren’t introduced. The hefting is passed from generation to generation without the need for the constraints to be put back in place. That’s how strong the constraints are in the minds of the rest of the flock.
We’re not dissimilar to sheep. We pick a way of doing things, or a technology, based on what our tribe is doing. Having chosen a technology, we stay with it, we invest in it, and we live within its constraints. We become comfortable in our place of pasture." --Technology Perspectives.
"This research illustrates the importance of collaboration in the scientific discovery process, and how the study of one disease, in this case cancer, can have a profound impact on the understanding on another." said Dr. Courtneidge, "In the future, we hope to use our mouse model to study the disease in more depth, as well as to determine whether other genes involved in invadopodia formation are also associated with FTHS." See invadopodium.
A volcanic winter is a reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large particularly explosive volcanic eruption. Long-term cooling effects are primarily dependent upon injection of sulfide compounds in aerosol form into the upper atmosphere—the stratosphere—the highest, least active levels of the lower atmosphere where little precipitation occurs, thus requiring a long time to wash the aerosols out of the region. Stratospheric aerosols cool the surface and troposphere by reflecting solar radiation, warm the stratosphere by absorbing terrestrial radiation, and when combined with anthropogenic chlorine in the stratosphere, destroy ozone which moderates the effect of lower stratospheric warming. The variations in atmospheric warming and cooling results in changes in tropospheric and stratospheric circulation. --Robock, Alan (2000). "Volcanic eruptions and climate". Reviews of geophysics 38 (2): 191-219
Most recently, the 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo, a stratovolcano in the, Phillippines, cooled global temperatures for about 2–3 years
"Christian leaders stand on our soil and claim: "gay marriage" has never occurred here. Over 1300 tribes in every region of North America performed millions of same-sex marriages for hundreds of years. Their statements are both hateful and ignorant. Your "homosexual," was our "Two Spirit" people... and we considered them sacred."
A nuisance that befalls many high-achieving women, wherein they chalk up their success to: “…luck, to being in the right place at the right time, to factors other than ability. … They live in fear that eventually some significant person will discover that they are, indeed, intellectual impostors."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk: We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller / We say to girls, “You can have ambition / But not too much / You should aim to be successful / But not too successful / Otherwise you will threaten the man.” It’s true. Women are much more likely to feel this way, because we’re taught to be modest and self-deprecating, to downplay our achievements for fear of looking arrogant or ungrateful, sipping pickle juice while our male counterparts are being praised for being bossed up.
In addition to controlling insect pests, bilbies may play a role in seed dispersal. The semifossorial bilbies may help aerate the soil through their burrowing.
Humans may disperse seeds by many various means and some surprisingly high distances have been repeatedly measured. Examples are: dispersal on human clothes, on shoes, or by cars.
Wind dispersal is one of the more primitive means of dispersal. Wind dispersal can take on one of two primary forms: seeds can float on the breeze or alternatively, they can flutter to the ground. The classic examples of these dispersal mechanisms include dandelions, which have a feathery pappus attached to their seeds and can be dispersed long distances, and maples, which have winged seeds (samara) and flutter to the ground. An important constraint on wind dispersal is the need for abundant seed production to maximise the likelihood of a seed landing in a site suitable for germination. There are also strong evolutionary constraints on this dispersal mechanism. For instance, Cody and Overton (1996) found that species in the Asteraceae on islands tended to have reduced dispersal capabilities (i.e., larger seed mass and smaller pappus) relative to the same species on the mainland. Reliance on wind dispersal is common among many weedy or ruderal species. Unusual mechanisms of wind dispersal include tumbleweeds.
Rodents (such as squirrels) and some birds (such as jays) may also disperse seeds by hoarding the seeds in hidden caches. The seeds in caches are usually well-protected from other seed predators and if left uneaten will grow into new plants. In addition, rodents may also disperse seeds via seed spitting due to the presence of secondary metabolites in ripe fruits.
Secondary dispersal by animals: Seeds may be secondarily dispersed from seeds deposited by primary animal dispersers. For example, dung beetles are known to disperse seeds from clumps of feces in the process of collecting dung to feed their larvae.
A type of seed dispersal that occurs when organisms transfer from one land mass to another by way of a sea crossing. Often this occurs via large mats of floating vegetation, such as are sometimes seen floating down major rivers in the tropics and washing out to sea, occasionally with animals trapped on them.
"Dormancy should not be confused with seed coat dormancy, external dormancy, or hardseededness, which is caused by the presence of a hard seed covering or seed coat that prevents water and oxygen from reaching and activating the embryo. It is a physical barrier to germination, not a true form of dormancy."(Quinliven, 1971; Quinliven and Nichol, 1971).
Apparently, it's referred to an anti-spit mask (yawn) or a spit sock hood. Pretty much the same name. Does anyone have a law enforcement terminology list?
"'Multiple incidents within the juvenile detention facilities have revealed that the NT Government prosecutes policies against Aboriginal children which include spit-hooding, gassing, hand cuffing, shackling and extensive periods of unlawful solitary confinement. Treatment such as this you wouldn’t think possible in any civilised nation. Let there be no doubts as to whom we are talking about here. This is all about Aboriginal children.'
Another example. In Louisville, Kentucky, Butler High School’s dress code prohibits dreadlocks, cornrolls, and twists. Students who violate the grooming policy cannot attend the school.
"Hair styles that are extreme, distracting, or attention getting will not be permitted. No dreadlocks, cornrows, twists, mohawks, and no jewelry will be worn in hair." ""Hair must be a natural color. No two-toned hair or severe contrasts. This includes unnatural colors.”" ""No male may dye, tint, or highlight his hair in any way."
"The styles that were targeted in this policy are the most basic and essential styles for black people all over the world. To ban them is essentially to ban blackness itself."--Shaun King, New York Daily News, July 28, 2016.
A once in a lifetime soul mate dog. There’s an understanding, a bond stronger than most, and a special level of communication. Your heart dog “gets” you and you get him or her right back.--found on The Daily Corgi blog.
Casting white actors in Hollywood productions instead of POC (people of color).
The popular blog Angry Asian Man called the movie “the latest movie in the grand cinematic tradition of the Special White Person”, adding: “You can set a story anywhere in the world, in any era of history, and Hollywood will still somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy.”
In her post, Wu wrote: “Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon. They look like Malala. Ghandi. Mandela. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time. We don’t need salvation. We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories.”
?? Marcus Bachmann is defending his Christian counseling business for offering so-called ex-gay therapy, a controversial practice that's focused attention on the Bachmanns' views on social issues at a time when the Minnesota congresswoman has shown momentum in the Republican presidential race.
A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for their grain seed called pulse, for livestock forage and silage, and as soil-enhancing green manure. Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins, mesquite, carob, soybeans, peanuts, and tamarind.
A legume fruit is a simple dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces (opens along a seam) on two sides. A common name for this type of fruit is a pod, although the term "pod" is also applied to a few other fruit types, such as that of vanilla (a capsule) and of radish (a silique).
It's called "gazumping" in England, the process by which someone selling a piece of property accepts an offer from one buyer, maybe even going so far as to shake hands on it, then quickly — and often surreptitiously — accepts another, higher, offer from a second buyer, leaving the first buyer with his pockets agape and his heart broken.
People with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. People afraid of eating the wrong thing, ever. Unlike patients with anorexia nervosa, the goal of orthorexics is not to be thin but to be "pure, healthy and natural". Mental health experts say that the obsession about which foods are "good" and "bad" means that orthorexics can end up being malnourished and often shun food to the point of emaciation and starvation.
A person who lives on the Park Meadows street of Moray Court recently found a cache of pine cones stored underneath the hood of her cars and elsewhere on the outside of the vehicles.
It was apparently the work of a squirrel preparing for the winter.
"They were everywhere, every pocket," says Mary Cole, the owner of the cars, indicating she had never before experienced something similar.
A neighbor, Aggie Johanson, says the pine cones were "just stuffed in there."
"It's peculiar in the car. We know it has to be the squirrels," Johanson says.
Scholars have identified seven levels of authenticity which they have organized in a hierarchy ranging from literal authorship, meaning written in the author's own hand, to outright forgery:
Literal authorship. A church leader writes a letter in his own hand.
Dictation. A church leader dictates a letter almost word for word to an amanuensis.
Delegated authorship. A church leader describes the basic content of an intended letter to a disciple or to an amanuensis.
Posthumous authorship. A church leader dies, and his disciples finish a letter that he had intended to write, sending it posthumously in his name.
Apprentice authorship. A church leader dies, and disciples who had been authorized to speak for him while he was alive continue to do so by writing letters in his name years or decades after his death.
Honorable pseudepigraphy. A church leader dies, and admirers seek to honor him by writing letters in his name as a tribute to his influence and in a sincere belief that they are responsible bearers of his tradition.
Forgery. A church leader obtains sufficient prominence that, either before or after his death, people seek to exploit his legacy by forging letters in his name, presenting him as a supporter of their own ideas.
Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”
Toms’ has a short haircut because she recently donated hair - for the third time - to a program that makes wigs for child cancer patients.
“I’ve had people call me all sorts of names for having short hair. I’ve had people call me a boy, I’ve had people call me a dyke, I’ve had people call me gay.” Toms said. “I’m grateful that that woman only called me disgusting and didn’t physically attack me … I was a victim of transphobia today as a cisgender female because my hair is short.” -Woman mistaken for transgender harassed in Walmart bathroom, May 16, 2016
"Although their biology is not widely studied, many blister beetles are thought to be kleptoparasites and egg predators of bee, and they often specialize on a small number of host species, using the adults to transport them back to the host nest."
-Cheats and Deceits: how animals and plants exploit and mislead, 2016, p.34
"... hog hunting on conservation areas ruins efforts by department staff to trap and kill entire groups of feral hogs, called sounders. Groups can consist of several dozen animals."
-Missouri Conservationist, March 2016, vol. 77, issue 3, p. 8.
"Count the cogs on the wheels of a fanning-mill, washing-machine, apple-parer, or egg-beater, and determine how the direction or rate of the motion is changed thereby."
A meat analogue, also called a meat alternative, meat substitute, mock meat, faux meat, imitation meat, or (where applicable) vegetarian meat or vegan meat, approximates certain aesthetic qualities (primarily texture, flavor and appearance) and/or chemical characteristics of specific types of meat. Many meat analogues are soy-based (such as tofu and tempeh) and are gluten-based.
A polar bear / grizzly bear hybrid. Canadian wildlife officials have suggested calling the hybrid "nanulak", taken from the Inuit names for polar bear (nanuk) and grizzly bear (aklak).
"Hof in Öræfi has been an ecclesiastical site for almost 700 years and is first mentioned in a cartulary from 1343. Hofskirkja Church was dedicated to Saint Clement. The core of the current church at Hof was built in 1884 and was the last turf church built in the old Icelandic architectural style. Its walls are assembled of rocks and its roof made of stone slabs, covered in turf. The reredos (an altarpiece, or a screen or decoration behind the altar in a church) in Hofskirkja Church was painted by the artist Ólafur Túbals. Hofskirkja Church is one of six churches, in Iceland still standing which are preserved as historical monuments. It is recorded that Páll Pálsson, a carpenter, built the church, but Þorsteinn Gissurarson, a blacksmith from Hof forged the building hardware, the lock, and hinges. The church is maintained by the National Museum but also serves as a parish church."
"The whole of the gut is attached to the body by a suspensory mechanism called the mesentery, which connects the 20m or so of gut loops to the underside of the spinal column within the abdomen over a length of a few centimeters."
Triphala (Hindi: “three fruits”) is an herbal formula consisting of equal parts of three myrobalans, taken without seed: amalaki (Emblica officinalis), bibhitaki (Terminalia bellirica), and haritaki (Terminalia chebula).
"Triphala tea, which is made by steeping a teaspoon of triphala in a cup of boiling water and then straining the resultant fluid through a fine mesh cloth, is one of the best eyewashes and strengtheners of the eyes."
"The three fruit extracts that make it the best colon cleanse are haritaki, bibhitaki and amalaki."
"In Japan the praying-wheel is turned by hand; but in China, according to Hue, it is sometimes carried by water-power, and rises to the dignity of a mill."
A device designed to prevent vehicles from being moved. In its most common form, it consists of a clamp that surrounds a vehicle wheel, designed to prevent removal of both itself and the wheel. In the United States, the device became known as a "Denver boot" after the city of Denver, Colorado was the first in the country to employ them, mostly to force the payment of outstanding parking tickets.
"A "booter" was shot while booting a vehicle, Department of Revenue Director Bea Reyna-Hickey said, directing further inquiries to police."
"A local woman has been sentenced to five days shock time after pleading guilty to theft, resisting arrest and assaulting a law enforcement officer at the Dillards store at Mid Rivers Mall on May 28."
"Hansen who resigned from the police department in July, was sentenced to two years probation and 30 days of shock time in jail."
"His father had inspired him with a horror of jewellery; for once, when he had spent the savings of a month upon a cheap scarf-pin, the elder Armstrong had wrathfully asked him what he meant by sticking that brass-headed nail in his chest, and had thrown the gewgaw into the fire."
The woozle effect, also known as evidence by citation, or a woozle, occurs when frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence misleads individuals, groups and the public into thinking or believing there is evidence, and nonfacts become urban myths and factoids.
The semmelweis reflex or "semmelweis effect" is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.
"There seems to be a general consensus among experienced needleworkers that eyelash yarn is more easily knit than crocheted as it is so hard to find the next stitch in crocheting such fuzzy yarn. Learn to count your stitches on each row as you work with this stuff. Be sure that the next stitch is really the next stitch and not a snag of the lashes. That is easy to mistake."-anonymous web comment
"Pastillage is a mixture of powdered sugar, gelatin, and cornstarch that dries to a porous, rigid form.
With care and patience, it's possible to make very intricate pastillage showpieces, such as detailed flowers, figures, and even delicate architectural details - perfect for victorian trim on gingerbread houses!"
"Staffordshire oatcakes are a local component of the full English breakfast. It is a plate-sized pancake, made with equal parts medium oatmeal and wheatmeal (flour), along with frothing yeast. Once the mixture has risen to produce something like a Yorkshire pudding batter, it is ladled onto a griddle or bakestone, and dried through. Staffordshire oatcakes are commonly paired with bacon, sausages, mushrooms, kidney, baked beans, among others."
"Maybe not in your blueberry muffin world but anyone who spent as much time as this guy in prison picks up a classroom of connections."--Crime Time: a mystery novel, R.E. Derouin, 2013.
"Healthcare workers are a special breed. They are compassionate and called into a career to care for the sick. Most are underpaid for their skills and the services they provide. The National Crime Victimization Survey suggests that each day in the US at least 200 of them are assaulted on the job. The healthcare industry has done a good job keeping this secret. It’s a disgrace that healthcare workers are the most assaulted workers in the country."
Haitian clergy attribute the creation of zombies to sorcery. The Vodun voodoo religion makes a distinction between the corps cadavre (the physical body), the gwo-bon anj (the animating principle) and the ti-bon anj (agency, awareness and memory). When zombifying someone, the Vodun sorcerer (or bokur) extracts the ti-bon anj of the victim and retains it in an earthenware jar (where it is then referred to as zombie astral)
Haitian doctors, on the other hand, consider zombification to be a result of poisoning, and there are reports that sorcerers use a white powder called coupe poudre to zombify their victims. In the early 1980s, Wade Davis, an anthropologist and ethnobotanist who was then working at Harvard University, travelled to Haiti in order to determine the ingredients of the coupe poudre. He interviewed a number of sorcerers and collected 8 samples of the zombie powder from 4 different regions of the country.
Upon analysis of the powders, Davis found that 7 of them shared a number of ingredients, including toxins produced by cane toad (Bufo marinus, left) and an irritant produced by a hyla tree frog (Osteopilus dominicensis). One of the samples also contained trace amounts of tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin produced by various marine organisms, most notably the pufferfish.
--"The ethnobiology of voodoo zombification", ScienceBlog, September 13, 2007.
I am unable to create a page for hinüber gedämmert outright or leave a comment. I thought the first letter (þ) was the culprit in the Icelandic Problem.
Around one o’clock in the morning, he noticed that his father’s breathing was slowing. Over the course of hours, his father had hinüber gedämmert, “faded across.”
“There was no exact time of death, but at some point, he had stopped breathing.”
I'm noticing that many of the links below the EXAMPLES warn me of possible malware if I proceed to the site. Example: ninme (above). Is wordnik warning us (since it directs us to api.wordnik.com for more info)?
"I have no idea what is happening in the world beyond my bedroom, but I can write a really good essay on deontology and natural moral law." -Twitter, April 16, 2016
"Walking through downtown Boston, Lisa sees a SALE sign, hands me her bags, and now I'm sitting in husband purgatory with all the other dudes."-Tony Gentilcore, Twitter, April 17, 2016
The rare Iranian spider-tailed viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) waggles a fake "spider"—actually a fleshy lure with leg-like scales at the tip of its tail—to tempt birds within striking distance.
"Carolina parakeets were probably poisonous—American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs."
"On the hardscrabble lands of the American West, blood is spilled by the most innocent-looking of outlaws—the white-tailed prairie dog.
These social rodents, native to Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana, ruthlessly bite and thrash Wyoming ground squirrels to death, leaving their bloody bodies to rot, a new study says.
The killers' offspring then live longer, healthier lives—probably because their parents bumped off their competition for food.
It’s the first time that a herbivorous mammal has been seen killing competitors without eating them, suggesting that a plant-based diet doesn’t preclude mammals from having a taste for bloodsport." -National Geographic, Michael Greshko, March 22, 2016, "Praire dogs are serial killers that murder their competition".
bilby: Try entering an Icelandic word (with plenty of diacritics) in the SEARCH bar. It will appear on a normal-looking page, but it won't save and you can't leave a comment (and save it) either.
I tried to post the Icelandic words: gluggaveður (n.): window-weather raðljóst: (n.): enough light to find one's way by Wordnik wouldn't add the word directly (I had to add brackets here instead). Also, when I click on gluggaveður, I'm not able to add the definition in the comments.
Knismesis and gargalesis are the scientific terms, coined in 1897 by psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin, used to describe the two types of tickling. Knismesis refers to the light, feather-like type of tickling. This type of tickling generally does not induce laughter and is often accompanied by an itching sensation.
knismesis and gargalesis are the scientific terms, coined in 1897 by psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin, used to describe the two types of tickling. Knismesis refers to the light, feather-like type of tickling. This type of tickling generally does not induce laughter and is often accompanied by an itching sensation.
The California Refund Value (CRV) is the amount paid to consumers when they recycle beverage containers at certified recycling centers. The minimum refund value established for each type of eligible beverage container is 5 cents for each container under 24 ounces and 10 cents for each container 24 ounces or greater.
n. The illegitimate supplying of laboratory animals that are actually kidnapped pets or illegally trapped strays. (Does this include animals advertised online (i.e. FREE KITTENS) that are furtively used to feed one's snakes or other predators?)
The science of measuring the human body in order to ascertain the average dimensions of the human form at different ages, and in different divisions of race, class, etc.
"Matthew Reed, a researcher in anthropometry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, flat out called ANSUR the “best-gathered anthro data in the world.” Not only was the dataset accurate and reliable, in his view, it could save lives.
Imagine body armor that doesn’t completely cover your vital organs, or is too long or too short, making it horribly uncomfortable to wear, so you take it off. Imagine if you found yourself in a nerve gas attack and your mask doesn’t fit properly because it was designed for a different kind of face. (One study found that American-made gas masks fit poorly on “Chinese” faces.)
The differences in body type according to race could be striking. Reed sent me a graphic, based on data from the 1988 iteration of ANSUR, illustrating seated height versus standing height for Caucasian and African American men. Most African Americans had a shorter seated height compared to Caucasians of the same overall stature, meaning longer leg bones and shorter torsos. Asians, meanwhile, skewed slightly in the other direction, with taller sitting heights and longer torsos than both Caucasians and African-Americans.
The army doesn’t use this information to individually fit uniforms and gear, Reed explained, but to plan and manage costs. If the army knows that 15 percent of recruits are African American, when it orders, say, 20,000 bullet-proof vests, it will ensure that 15 percent conform to what it believes is their relatively shorter proportions. “That’s really important for the army,” Reed told me. “If you do that wrong, you end up with stuff that you need to store. And you don’t have enough of what you do need.”
Reed points out that race is also important in civilian contexts. Think about your car. Reed designs crash test dummies. If a car is tested only with “Caucasian” dummies, it may not be as safe for Asians or African Americans. Why? Leg length determines how far back you sit from the steering wheel — a major impact point — and your proximity to the airbag. Seated height also affects what you can see. “We don’t want to build a crash test dummy that’s based only on white guys,” Reed said.
An astragal is commonly used as a seal between a pair of doors. The astragal closes the clearance gap. The vertical member (molding) attaches to a stile on one of a pair of doors (either sliding or swinging) against which the other door strikes, or closes. Exterior astragals are kerfed for weatherstripping. Also, flush head and foot bolt hardware is commonly mortised into the astragal to hold the inactive door in place, when both doors operate, at the top and bottom.
Also known as “meeting stile seals,” the term can refer to the raised half-round overlap where pairs of doors meet, such as is the case with French doors. An astragal is designed to be applied to one or both doors of a pair at their meeting edges (meeting stiles). The astragal closes the clearance gap for the purpose of either providing a weather seal, ensuring privacy, preventing sound from leaking in or out of a room, minimizing the passage of light between the doors, or retarding the passage of smoke or flame during a fire.
Doors are typically the weakest link in any partition that is designed to block sound. This is often due to poor sealing around the perimeter of the door. Astragals, perimeter gasketing, drop seals and door sweeps can all be used to prevent sound from leaking through cracks around the door perimeter.
In cabinet making, an astragal can mean a bar separating panes of glass, either vertically or horizontally. This use is also common with window manufacturers.
"Antiperspirants use aluminum salts to block sweat glands, reducing perspiration and depriving odor-causing bacteria of the nutrients they need to survive. Deodorants use antimicrobial substances to kill off bacteria directly."
The kourotrophos Maffei "A marble, life-sized statue stands in the Museo Guarnacci, an image of a woman with a child and dated to the 4th century BCE. It has an inscription along the right arm. Etruscologists variously index it as CIE 76, CII 349, and ET Vt 3.3 but the general public knows it as the kourotrophos Maffei. The word kourotrophos is a Greek compound word meaning "child nurturer" or simply "nurse".
There are, as usual, wildly different accounts of what this one Etruscan inscription actually says. It's yet another insight into the madness within the field of Etruscology. It's as always unsettling to me how silent and disturbing the process of historical obfuscation is in a supposed age of information. We're drowned and hung by our own intellectual sloth."
WOTD https://www.wordnik.com/word-of-the-day/2016/3/12 includes this sentence among the EXAMPLES: "A necropsy is the term for a post-mortem examination performed on an animal or inanimate object." How can one determine the cause of death for something never alive?
alexz: I've noticed the same thing. I type in the search box a capitalized word followed by a lower case word ( (ie. Norman door) and Wordnik immediately redirects me to a new page with both words in lower case. It doesn't seem to redirect when both words are capitalized after being typed into search. Example: Old Baldy.
The Ishihara test is a color perception test for red-green color deficiencies. It was named after its designer, Dr. Shinobu Ishihara, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who first published his tests in 1917.
Voluntourists come for a week or two for a “project” — a temporary medical clinic, an orphanage visit or a school construction. A few are celebrities supporting their cause du jour, who drop in to meet locals and witness a project that often bears their name. Others come to teach English during high school, college vacations or during a gap year. Others are sun-seeking vacationers who stay at beachside resorts. Many voluntourists are religious — the sort of people who cite passages from the Bible, the Torah or the Quran that encourage followers to help those in need. There are some volunteers who possess specialized, sought-after skills like ophthalmology, but most do not. Sometimes volunteers do more harm than good.
Unsatisfying as it may be, many voluntourists ought to acknowledge the truth that they, as amateurs, often don’t have much to offer. Perhaps they ought to abandon the assumption that they, simply by being privileged enough to travel the world, are somehow qualified to help ease the world’s ills. Easing global poverty is an enormously complex task. To make so much as a dent requires hard, sustained work, and expertise. Even the experts sometimes get it wrong. If smart, dedicated professionals can fail to achieve lasting progress over a period of years, how then is an untrained vacationer supposed to do so in a matter of days?
The tendency for people to favor (promote, include) those who are similar to them. In the business world, this in-group bias is problematic because it reinforces stereotypes and inequality. However, while it is a common tendency, not everyone is allowed to advocate for their own group. Sometimes when women and minorities promote their own group, it garners criticism from others.
In the U.S., there is still a power and status gap between men and women and between whites and nonwhites. High-status groups, mainly white men, are given freedom to deviate from the status quo because their competence is assumed based on their membership in the high-status group. In contrast, when women and nonwhite leaders advocate for other women and nonwhites, it highlights their low-status demographics, activating the stereotype of incompetence, and leads to worse performance ratings. --"Women and minorities are penalized for promoting diversity", Harvard Business Review, March 23, 2016.
"If we love a friend without preferring her before others, the friendship is simple; if we prefer her, then this friendship is a dilection because we choose her from among many others we love, and prefer her."
Crumb rubber is recycled rubber produced from automotive and truck scrap tires. During the recycling process, steel and tire cord (fluff) are removed, leaving tire rubber with a granular consistency.
Vomiting serves an evolutionary purpose for humans by preventing the ingestion of something harmful, and by expelling noxious substances once ingested.
Vomiting excessive amounts of alcohol is an attempt by the body to prevent alcohol poisoning and death. Vomiting may also be caused by other drugs, such as opiates, or from toxins found in some foods and plants. Food allergies, such as lactose intolerance, can cause vomiting.
Even morning sickness, nausea and vomiting common to most pregnant women but no other mammals, has a defensive purpose. Morning sickness discourages pregnant women from eating meat and strong-tasting vegetables, which may contain toxins and microorganisms. If ingested, the fetus might be harmed. After around the 18th week, the fetus becomes less vulnerable.
The turkey vulture will vomit to dispel any disturbing animal. They can propel their vomit up to 10 feet.
The European roller, a much smaller bird found in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, uses vomit in a different way. A baby European roller will vomit a foul-smelling orange liquid onto itself to turn away a predator. The smell also warns the parents to return to the nest.
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine syndrome must be distinguished from other conditions involving the startle reflex or tics.
Tourette syndrome is characterized by multiple physical (motor) tics, and at least one vocal (phonic) tic. There are many overlaps when compared clinically, but the abnormal "jumping" response is always provoked, unlike the involuntary tics in Tourette syndrome.
Latah from Southeast Asia is a disorder where one's startle response is similar to a state of trance with repetitive speech or movements. Miryachit is a disorder found in Siberia that also displays an action similar to "jumping". Neurasthenia is a disorder with a startle response during periods of great fatigue.
Hyperekplexia is an extremely rare autosomal dominant neurological disease. The symptoms start in infancy with hypertonia, an abnormal muscle tension that decreases flexibility, and an exaggerated startle in all ages of life.
A rare lesion consisting in internal resorption of a tooth, initiated by inflammatory hyperplasia of the pulp and hemorrhage, usually not associated with caries; the condition may appear as a pinkish area on the crown and, because the lesion is caused by osteoclasts, is known as an osteoclastoma; if detected early, ‘root canal’ therapy can salvage the tooth, otherwise it requires extraction.
The cause of minimal change disease is not fully known but it is believed to be an immune disorder in which T cells release a cytokine that damages the epithelial foot processes of the glomeruli. This leads to a leakage of albumin by the kidney. Certain events such as a viral infection, an allergic reaction, a bee sting, or an immunization may trigger an attack of MCD.
Minimal change disease is the most common form of the nephrotic syndrome in children aged 2 to 12 years. It is the cause of nephrotic syndrome in about 90% of children younger than 10 years, about 50% to 70% of older children, and 10% to 15% of adults.
Post-void dribbling or post-micturition dribbling is the phenomenon where urine remaining in the urethra after voiding the bladder slowly leaks out after urination. A common and usually benign complaint, it may be a symptom of urethral diverticula, prostatitis and other medical problems.
Men who experience dribbling, especially after prostate cancer surgery, will choose to wear incontinence pads to stay dry. Also known as guards for men, these incontinence pads conform to the male body. Simple ways to prevent dribbling include: strengthening pelvic muscles with Kegel exercises, changing position while urinating, or pressing on the perineum to evacuate the remaining urine from the urethra. Sitting down while urinating is also shown to alleviate complaints: a meta-analysis on the effects of voiding position in elderly males with benign prostate hyperplasia found an improvement of urologic parameters in this position while in healthy males no such influence was found.
A disease characterized by an excessive production of heavy chains that are short and truncated. These heavy chain disease proteins have various deletions which interfere with heavy chains to properly bond with light chains.
Asterixis (also called the flapping tremor, or liver flap) is a tremor of the hand when the wrist is extended, sometimes said to resemble a bird flapping its wings. This motor disorder is characterized by an inability to actively maintain a position, which is demonstrated by jerking movements of the outstretched hands when bent upward at the wrist. The tremor is caused by abnormal function of the diencephalic motor centers in the brain, which regulate the muscles involved in maintaining position. Asterixis is associated with various encephalopathies due especially to faulty metabolism. The term asterixis derives from the Greek a, "not" and stērixis, "fixed position"
Although severe inbreeding depression in humans seems to be highly uncommon and not widely known, there have been several cases of apparent forms of inbreeding depression in human populations. Charles Darwin, through numerous experiments, was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the effects of inbreeding depression. Charles's wife, Emma, was his first cousin. He attempted to study the theory of inbreeding within his own children. Of the ten Darwin children, three died before the age of ten. Of the rest, three had childless long-term marriages. As with animals, this phenomenon tends to occur in isolated, rural populations that are cut off to some degree from other areas of civilization.
A study has provided the evidence for inbreeding depression on cognitive abilities among children, with a high frequency of mental retardation among the offspring having greater values of inbreeding coefficient. The depression on growth parameters (height, weight and body mass index) due to inbreeding among children has revealed the significant increase in underweight cases with increasing inbreeding coefficients.
A notable example is the Vadoma tribe of western Zimbabwe, many of whom carry the trait of having only two toes due to a small gene pool. Another example is Fumarase deficiency, a rare genetic disorder that leads to severe mental retardation. Over half of the known cases are in the isolated and adjoining polygamous Reformed Mormon communities of Hilldale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona.
Craniosynostosis (from cranio, cranium; + syn, together; + ostosis relating to bone) is a condition in which one or more of the fibrous sutures in an infant skull prematurely fuses by turning into bone (ossification), thereby changing the growth pattern of the skull.
A ganglion cyst, or a synovial cyst, also known as Gideon's Disease, a bible cyst, or a bible bump, is a non-neoplastic soft tissue lump that may occur in any joint, but most often occurs on, around, or near joints and tendons in the hands or feet. These cysts are caused by leakage of fluid from the joint into the surrounding tissue.
A pilonidalcyst, also referred to as a pilonidal abscess, pilonidal sinus or sacrococcygealfistula, is a cyst or abscess near or on the natalcleft of the buttocks that often contains hair and skin debris.
Pilonidal cysts are often very painful, and typically occur between the ages of 15 and 35. Although usually found near the coccyx, the condition can also affect the navel, armpit or genital region, though these locations are much rarer.
The condition was widespread in the United States Army during World War II. The condition was termed "jeep seat" or "Jeep riders' disease" because a large portion of people who were being hospitalized for it rode in Jeeps, and prolonged rides in the bumpy vehicles were believed to have caused the condition due to irritation and pressure on the coccyx.
Pilonidal means nest of hair and is derived from the Latin words for hair (pilus) and nest (nidus).
Blueberry muffin baby is the characteristic distributed purpurais occurring as a result of extramedullaryhematopoiesis found in infants. The purpura is often generalized but occurs more often on the trunk, head, and neck. The name is from the superficial similarity to a blueberry muffin.
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast, the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults. Modern research, using virus taken from the bodies of frozen victims, has concluded that the virus kills through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system). The strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.
When the immune system is fighting pathogens, cytokines signal immune cells such as T-cells and macrophages to travel to the site of infection. In addition, cytokines activate those cells, stimulating them to produce more cytokines. Normally, the body keeps this feedback loop in check. However, in some instances, the reaction becomes uncontrolled, and too many immune cells are activated in a single place. The precise reason for this is not entirely understood but may be caused by an exaggerated response when the immune system encounters a new and highly pathogenic invader. Cytokine storms have the potential to do significant damage to body tissues and organs. If a cytokine storm occurs in the lungs, for example, fluids and immune cells such as macrophages may accumulate and eventually block off the airways, potentially resulting in death.-Wikipedia
According to the story, during the 1820’s Missouri statehood debates, the representative Felix Walker began with what he promised to be a “long, dull and irrelevant speech”, and so it was. No matter who cried for him to stop, he continued dealing with issues having to do with his relatively small county rather than the House of Representatives.
Ever since, people who speak of things unrelated to whatever it is that’s going on, are speaking bunkum.
"Prialt or ziconotide is a synthetic compound identical to a toxin in the venom of the Conus magus sea snail. This is remarkable in itself, because natural compounds are almost always chemically modified to make them work better as drugs. In this case, nature perfected the compound on its own.
Prialt is 1,000 times more powerful than morphine, but, unlike morphine, it is not believed to be addictive. The FDA approved its use for chronic, intractable pain such as that suffered by people with cancer, AIDS or certain neurological disorders. It is delivered directly into fluid surrounding the spinal cord by external or implanted pumps.
Prialt may be just the first of many new medicines derived from cone snail venom. There are about 500 different types of cone snails, and each one typically produces about 100 different toxins in its venom. Some instantly shock the snail's prey, as does the sting of an electric eel, scorpion or sea anemone. Others cause paralysis, like the venoms of cobras and Japanese puffer fish.
Scientists are testing the potential of dozens of cone snail toxin to treat epilepsy, cardiovascular disease and other disorders. Eventually, the molecules in sea snail venoms may help to treat Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and depression.
*the toxin (which later was developed into Prialt) was discovered by a teenager named J. Michael McIntosh, just days after graduating from high school.
"The basic task of the fluorescence microscope is to let excitation light radiate the specimen and then sort out the much weaker emitted light from the image. First, the microscope has a filter that only lets through radiation with the specific wavelength that matches your fluorescing material. The radiation collides with the atoms in your specimen and electrons are excited to a higher energy level. When they relax to a lower level, they emit light. To become detectable (visible to the human eye) the fluorescence emitted from the sample is separated from the much brighter excitation light in a second filter. This works because the emitted light is of lower energy and has a longer wavelength than the light that is used for illumination." -George Rice, Fluorescent Microscopy
The act of reflecting on something before it has happened. To decide on what will have happened by the end of the day, week, lesson etc. This is usually followed by an attempt to make the events live up to your preflection.
Useful if you have to submit a report to someone (a weekly reflection for instance).
On preflection, the afternoon went well. Most of my class understood what I was talking about.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) became the most prominent practitioner of sfumato. The face of Mona Lisa uses sfumato, particularly in the shading around the eyes. See detail of face here.
"The question was asked if it were possible to establish communication with the dead, and whether it was wise or advisable to attend séances or to engage in table-turning, spirit-rapping, etc."
"The question was asked if it were possible to establish communication with the dead, and whether it was wise or advisable to attend séances or to engage in table-turning, spirit-rapping, etc."
The part of pharmacognosy focusing on use of crude extracts or semi-pure mixtures originating from nature. Phytotherapy is probably the best known and also the most debated area in pharmacognosy.
"In the 18th and 19th centuries, many people with the resources to do so coped with grief by memorializing loved ones with jewelry.
Usually paid for by the estate of the deceased, mourning rings varied in complexity but were inscribed with the age, date of death and name of the deceased. The ring designs changed with the latest fashions, from the asymmetrical Rococo style to the geometric and symmetrical Republican and Neoclassical styles.
In addition to rings, mourners sometimes created brooches and pendants. Many of these pieces used the hair of the deceased in their design, either glued on, woven in glass compartments or mixed with paint.
By the start of the 20th century, rigorous mourning etiquette had fallen out of fashion, and the growing availability of cheap imitation materials led people to mostly abandon mourning jewelry."
Pasta made from garbanzo beans (chickpeas) instead of wheat. Banza, shorthand for garbanzo pasta, has double the protein and four times the fiber of traditional pasta, and far fewer carbs; it’s also gluten-free.
A pill that consists of a tiny chip powered by stomach acid and that emits a signal that can be detected by your phone or computer, essentially turning one's body into a password.
to lift something (a breast in this context) up wildly(?)
"I may have discovered the reason why adhesive cups that cover the breasts leaving wearers free to show off their skin in backless, strapless or frontless dresses don't go up to an E-cup - it's called gravity.
Gaffer tape, however, is a different entity entirely and strong enough even to hoik mine and Kim's generous bust. But just because it works, doesn't mean to say it looks good."
METH DEAD DON'T GET EATEN "That's what 17 year old Daniel Jeffrey Martin from Desert Vista High School heard from his mom one day while driving near a piece of the desert near his home town of Phoenix, Arizona. "Huh?" he asked. His mom, a forensic scientist (think: CSI), explained to him that when dead bodies are found in the desert by animals like coyotes, bobcats, and wolves, these scavengers will usually eat them—except for the bodies of methamphetamine users (proven by an autopsy)."--Drugs&Health Blog, 28 July 2009
A business in Indiana that has made square donuts since 1967. Apparently, they claim the shape isn't the ONLY difference between their donuts and traditional holey donuts, but what else could the difference be?
Pink money describes the purchasing power of the gay community, often especially with respect to political donations. With the rise of the gay rights movement, pink money has gone from being a fringe or marginalized market to a thriving industry in many parts of the Western world such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Many businesses now specifically cater to gay customers, including nightclubs, shops, restaurants, and even taxicabs; the demand for these services stems from commonly perceived discrimination by traditional businesses.
The term "double duty dollar" was used in the US from the early 1900s through the early 1960s, to express the notion that dollars spent with businesses hiring African Americans -- ‘‘simultaneously purchased a commodity and advanced the race’’. Where that concept applied, retailers who excluded African Americans as employees effectively excluded them as patrons too.
Religious leaders, as well as social activists such as Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, urged their communities to redirect their dollars from suppliers who excluded African Americans to suppliers with more inclusive practices. Though the Swadeshi movement had much broader goals, Mohandas Gandhi also famously urged his countrymen, in the 1920s, to avoid funding their own subjugation by buying things from the British -- things they could produce and trade independently, like cloth and clothing. In the 1940s and 50s, Leon Sullivan applied the broader phrase selective patronage to note consumers' choice of suppliers as a tool a) to influence suppliers toward fairer, more just interactions with African Americans, and b) to build demand for African American suppliers.
The double-duty dollar concept can now be seen as part of a broad spectrum of consumer activism or ethical consumerism strategies.
Pruno, or prison wine, is an alcoholic beverage variously made from apples, oranges, fruit cocktail, candy, ketchup, sugar, milk, and possibly other ingredients, including crumbled bread. Bread supposedly provides the yeast for the pruno to ferment. Pruno originated in (and remains largely confined to) prisons and jails, where it can be produced with the limited selection of equipment and ingredients available to inmates. The concoction can be made using only a plastic bag, hot running water, and a towel or sock to conceal the pulp during fermentation. The end result has been colorfully described as a "bile flavored wine-cooler", although flavor is often not the primary objective. --Wikipedia
Purple paint has the same legal weight as "No Trespassing" signs in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas.
The Purple Paint Statute (RSMO 569.145), provides yet another way for Missouri landowners to protect their property from trespassers. Landowners can still use "No Trespassing" signs; however, the Purple Paint Statute allows landowners to mark trees or posts with purple paint as a warning to would-be trespassers. Just like a "No Trespassing" sign or actual communication to individuals that no trespassing is allowed, the purple paint marks are considered to be adequate notice to the public that no trespassing is allowed on the property.
Missouri's law is similar to one that has been used in Arkansas since 1989. These statutes were enacted to provide landowners with an economical and easy way to keep out unwanted trespassers. The law does not require that property marked with the purple paint also be fenced, thus it is an economical alternative for landowners who do not otherwise need to fence their property. Additionally, it prevents a problem encountered when using "No Trespassing" signs -- purple paint marks can't be taken down, destroyed, or stolen.
Many people across the state are not aware that the statute exists. Regardless, the statute imputes notice to would-be trespassers. All land marked with purple paint in the manner described by the statute is considered to be adequate notice to the public. It fulfills the same function as a "No Trespassing" sign, a fence, or telling someone not to come onto your property.
Cozy mysteries, also referred to simply as "cozies", are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. The term was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
"Woods with an oily content, such as cocobolo, can achieve better gluing strength by wiping the surface of both pieces being glued with acetone first. After the acetone has dried, the piece is glued as normal."
Strong magnets made from neodymium-iron-boron, silver and shiny in color, used in computer hard drives, headphones, hi-fi speakers, toys, jewelry, and even clothes.
But because of their high magnetic field, close contact – within about 3cm (1.1811 inches) – with a neodymiummagnet is enough to destabilize pacemakers or other implanted heart devices.
I've forgotten the word for a folding caddy for knitting, sewing, etc. It's driving me crazy. I have an old one (mid-century) that looks similar to the following example (except with a different fabric design). http://preview.tinyurl.com/z825ckk Help!
Copper nickel. Also known as Devil's copper. devil's copper.
The link for devil's copper sends one to devil only. Wordnik seems to have a problem with apostrophes. This isn't the first time an apostrophe has made an entry go haywire.
Australian English for vomiting. It was coined by, or at least popularised by, Barry Humphries and appeared in his 1965 review A Nice Night’s Entertainment:
"When I swallowed the last prawn,
I had a technicolor yawn and I chundered in the old Pacific Sea."
This acronym is commonly found on the bodies of British prisoners and stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.” Often found on the knuckles, the tattoo symbolizes a willingness to go to prison for your crew or gang.
Some claim that A.C.A.B. also stands for “Always Carry A Bible,” but these are widely believed to be people who regret their tattoo decision.
Made famous by Johnny Depp's character in the movie Crybaby. It is a tattoo of a teardrop below one's eye on either side. Originally placed in prison to signify that the bearer was owned by a fellow prisoner. The teardrop signifies that pain and humiliation one would feel after being "turned out" in prison. The tattoo is placed on the face to further humiliate the victim and mark them in a place where they could not cover the mark.
Traditionally. the tattoo tear signified that the wearer had killed someone. The meaning of the tattoo can vary between ethnicity and region. For example in Australia, a tattoo tear is sometimes forcefully tattooed on an inmate who had sexually assaulted a child.
The tattooed teardrop has also come to mean a fellow family or gang member has died while incarcerated.
"Lignite power plants emit tons of pollutants into the air. The sad thing is that lignite, which is similar to coal, doesn’t even produce that much heat."
Oil sand is said to be the energy source of the future, however harvesting this oil sand is a leading cause of deforestation and is the largest contributor in North America to climate change.
adj. Pertaining to or advocating expressivism, the doctrine that the primary function of moral sentences and sensation sentences (like "I am in pain") is to express an evaluative attitude, rather than stating a fact. I'm trying to think of a sentence that includes Wordnik AND advocates expressivism.
So-called "bunchers" gather free pets until they have enough for a trip to a Class B Dealer who is licensed by the USDA to sell to sell animals from "random sources" for research. The buncher may only get $25 a head for former pets, while a dealer can between $100 - $450 per pet. The Class B dealer probably already has a contract with certain facilities, and will transport them to other areas within a state, even out of state.
* Free animals are taken to "blood" pit-bulls--to train fighting dogs how to kill, and to enjoy it. This can be dogs and cats, of any size. Often, a larger dog's muzzle will be duct-taped shut so that he can't bite back, and the fighting dog will gain confidence in killing a dog larger than he is.
* One "adoptor" took free kittens to his "good home"--as dinner for a pet snake.
* Unspayed or unneutered pure-bred dogs may end up as "breeding stock" in a puppy mill. One woman was certain that if she didn't give away her Dalmatians' AKC registration papers along with the dogs, she could keep them safe from millers. Wrong. Unscrupulous breeders, who use puppies as cash crops like other farmers raise cattle, pigs, or chickens, aren't above forging registration papers, or using those from deceased dogs. Rescuers have learned the hard to way to make sure that all pets they place have been spayed or neutered before going to new homes.
* So-called "collectors" watch the newspapers for Free to Good Home animals. These collectors truly believe they are "rescuing" the animals.
Canton has two water towers, labeled "HOT" (in red) and "COLD" (in blue). The words were painted on as a tourist attraction in 1956 at the suggestion of local real estate agent Mrs. M.D. Fisher. Surprisingly, both tanks hold water at an ambient temperature.
A cuddle party or cuddle puddle is an event designed with the intention of allowing people to experience non-sexual group physical intimacy through cuddling.
Typically carried out by anonymous online users with axes to grind and little to lose, doxxing involves making someone’s private information public. That includes home addresses, phone numbers, financial histories, medical records—anything that can be found in the endless databases available to canny hackers.
Doxxing can be a drive-by prank on most anyone who draws attention. But more often its targets are singled out for humiliation. An example: GamerGate, in which certain active video gamers targeted journalists, mostly women, who had criticized the outright misogyny found in many popular video games. The backlash began with the bilious insults that have become astonishingly common online. But it quickly escalated to “revenge blogs” purporting to reveal those journalists’ past indiscretions, and doxxing attacks.
You found a fan nevertheless, deinonychus. I just wish some of the entries offered an explanation or a definition. Thanks, bilby, for adding my dried cat to the mix. I didn't make the connection soon enough to add it myself.
"Mr. McLynn is as unsparing of the senior commanders in Burma as they were of each other: The "mentally unstable" Wingate is posthumously diagnosed with bipolar disorder; Chennault suffered from "monomania," was "essentially false" and "joined in the Chinese elite's corruption and peculation with avidity"; Chiang is described as having given his second wife a nasty venereal disease on their wedding night. Mountbatten—who was "completely under MacArthur's spell"—is presented as "selfish and vain," "cocksure" and "impetuous." Mountbatten consistently supported potentially disastrous amphibious attacks, we're told, and then "disingenuously tried to take credit" when other people's schemes went well."--Andrew Roberts, "Still Forgotten", Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2011.
In many parts of rural middle America, dinner is the main meal served at or around noon (and is considered the heaviest meal of the day). Supper is a light late afternoon/early evening meal. Breakfast is breakfast, and for farmers, is eaten before the sun comes up.
As for me, I call the three main meals: breakfast, lunch, and supper.
It is the custom in some European cultures to place the dried or desiccated body of a cat inside the walls of a newly built home to ward off evil or as a good luck charm. Although some accounts claim the cats were walled in alive, examination of recovered specimens indicates post-mortem concealment in most cases.--Wikipedia
The importance of product passion is necessary is for product evangelism.
Product evangelism is, as Guy Kawasaki put it years ago, “selling the dream.” It’s helping people to imagine the future, and inspiring them to help create that future.
If you’re a startup founder or CEO, this is a very big part of your job, and you’ll have a hard time assembling a strong team if you don’t get good at this.
If you’re a product manager at a large company, unless you’re good at evangelism there’s a very strong chance that your product will get killed before it sees the light of day, and even if it manages to ship, it will likely go the way of thousands of other large company efforts and wither on the vine.
"She jumped back, instinctively covering her pendulous bralessness with the rolled up paper, no doubt to prevent her boobs from swinging up and taking out an eye."--Jen Sincero
"He has the most confused mind, alembicated, what our ancestors called a diseur de phébus, and he makes the things that he says even more unpleasant by the manner in which he says them."
The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, is said to have joked that the word ‘fish’ could legitimately be spelled ‘ghoti’ by using the ‘gh’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘enough’, the ‘o’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘women’ and the ‘ti’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘action’.
However, linguists have pointed out that the location of the letters in the constructed word is inconsistent with how those letters would be pronounced in those placements, and that the expected pronunciation in English would be "goaty".1 For instance, the letters "gh" cannot be pronounced /f/ at the beginning of a syllable, and the letters "ti" cannot be pronounced /ʃ/ at the end of a syllable.
"Boodle jails" were jails in the United States, predominantly during the nineteenth century, in which a tramp or hobo could make an illicit arrangement with a law enforcement officer to stay in the jail without being an actual prisoner. For example, between 1893 and 1899, the Welsh tramp-poet W. H. Davies took advantage of this corrupt system in order to pass the winter in Michigan, staying in a series of different jails. Here, with his fellow tramps, Davies would enjoy the relative comfort of "card-playing, singing, smoking, reading, relating experiences and occasionally taking exercise or going out for a walk."
@nesdon. I agree. I see the word vagina misused in mainstream print media. PARIS HILTON FLASHES VAGINA. FORGETS TO WEAR UNDERWEAR. I hear it on TV by people who should know the difference. "Learning how to lose vagina fat can be difficult and even frustrating at times but it is not impossible! Take the time to dedicate to your fitness and health and you will begin to see results. Create a healthy diet plan and a regular workout routine and you will be well on your way. Get started today and burn that unwanted vagina fat!" I find it particularly sad when women don't know their own body parts.
Micro-sized plastic is an enduring hazard, as it becomes mixed with plankton, which is then ingurgitated by small fish that are then eaten by larger predators.
Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play games on their cellphones or tune out.
Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I.
Holding stand-up meetings before lunch also speeds things up.
"The report shows that even in those scenarios, people of color still have less access to standard tests, less access to life-extending high-tech procedures and a higher likelihood of undesirable (and avoidable) treatments (such as amputations)."
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist who, in his book on distinction, developed the concept habitus to describe the social origins of taste. It’s a way to see inequalities in our relationships to cultural artifacts and activities and on our bodies. For example, while the ability to purchase a $119 wool suit blazer in size 3-6 months requires economic privilege, easily imagining and desiring to see one’s baby in it also reflects a long held class location and taken-for-granted world of pleasure and pomp. Importantly, Bourdieu notes, taste leads to distinction, by which we rank people according to “highbrow” vs. “lowbrow” or “classy” vs. “trashy.” Social hierarchies, then, are reflected in and essentialized through the development of taste over our lifetimes.--Kristen Barber, December 3, 2015
At first glance, the man bun seems a marker of progressive manhood. The bun, after all, is often associated with women—portrayed in the popular imagination via the stern librarian and graceful ballerina. In my forthcoming book, Styling Masculinity: Gender, Class, and Inequality in the Men’s Grooming Industry, however, I discuss how linguistic modifiers such as manlights (blonde highlights for men’s hair) reveal the gendered norm of a word. Buns are still implicitly feminine; it’s the man bun that is masculine. But in addition to reminding us that men, like women, are embodied subjects invested in the careful cultivation of their appearances, the man bun also reflects the process of cultural appropriation. To better understand this process, we have to consider: Who can pull off the man bun and under what circumstances?
The white western men’s interest in the man bun comes from somewhere, and weaving a narrative about its novelty overlooks its long history among Asian men, its religious significance, and ultimately its ability to make high-status white men appear worldly and exotic. In the west, the man bun trend fetishizes the ethnic other at the same time it can be used to further marginalize and objectify them. And so cultural privilege is involved in experiencing it as a symbol of cutting-edge masculinity.
"...in U.S. culture have rigid and narrow beauty standards for women extended to their vulvas. With the ascendance of cosmetic surgery (and its profits), marketing (and its effectiveness), and the visibility of pornography (and its mainstreaming), there is now cultural pressure on women to have the perfect vulva."--Lisa Wade, Sociological Images, September 20, 2008.
Prior to the current selection of a body farm at this location, objections were raised by local residents and the nearby San Marcos Municipal Airport because of concerns about circling vultures.
The study of fossil and modern pollen grains, spores, and powdered minerals, their identification, and when and where they occur, to ascertain that a body or an object was in a particular geographic location during an approximate time period.
The main forensic application of palynology is to provide associative evidence, i.e. to establish or disprove links among people, places, and objects If one knows the composition of the pollen rain or a given area, then one will know what pollen assemblage should be found in samples collected from that area.
Zoogamous pollen is particularly useful in a forensic analysis because actual contact between the plant and object or person of interest is necessary in order for the pollen to transfer. A relatively large amount of zoogamous pollen in a forensic sample is not likely to be an environmental contaminant, and can be diagnostic of a particular locale.
n. Rogues who carried snuff or dust in their pockets, which they threw into the eyes of any person they intended to rob; and running away, their accomplices (pretending to assist and pity the half-blinded person) took that opportunity of plundering him. -1811 Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue
Tardigrades, also known as "water bears", are highly resilient microscopic animals. They are capable of surviving extremes such as heat, radiation, drought, and the vacuum of space by going into a "tun"—essentially a shrivelled blob—a type of suspended animation (Cryptobiosis) where their metabolism slows to near zero and they simply wait out the harsh conditions until the environment is more favorable.
Minnesota nice is the stereotypical behavior of people born and raised in Minnesota to be courteous, reserved, and mild-mannered. The cultural characteristics of Minnesota nice include a polite friendliness, an aversion to confrontation, a tendency toward understatement, a disinclination to make a fuss or stand out, emotional restraint, and self-deprecation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice
n A person, especially a Native American man, who assumes the sexual identity and is granted the social status of the opposite sex. See berdache: a person with "third gender" identity among Native Americans (a term considered disrespectful by most Native Americans).
Coal Seam Gas (CSG) is natural gas found in coal deposits. The coal and gas are formed from plant matter under pressure over many millions of years. Coal seam gas is used in the same way as any other form of natural gas for cooking and heating as well as in industrial processes and electricity generation.
In USDA soil taxonomy, entisols are defined as soils that do not show any profile development other than an A horizon. An entisol has no diagnostic horizons, and most are basically unaltered from their parent material, which can be unconsolidated sediment or rock. Entisols are the second most abundant soil order (after inceptisols), occupying about 16% of the global ice-free land area.
In Australia, most entisols are known as rudosols or tenosols, while arents are known as anthroposols. In the FAO soil classification, because of the diversity of their properties, suborders of entisols form individual soil orders (e.g. fluvisols, lithosols).
A relish made from beetroot and horseradish; it's the traditional tracklement to boiled tongue and beef.
"Everyone I spoke with, whether British or American, seemed to agree on one thing: Gefilte fish must be eaten with this sharp horseradish-and-vinegar condiment. And like the fish it accompanies, chrain is also easy to make at home and much better than the jarred equivalent." --Aaron Kagan, Forward.com, November 2015
The flag (for the NT) was designed by Robert Ingpen, a prominent artist originally from Drysdale, Victoria. Ingpen used a number of designs suggested by the public as a basis for his final design.
The flag's original design (with a six-pointed Commonwealth Star) was chosen in 1901 from entries in a competition held following Federation, and was first flown in Melbourne on 3 September 1901, the date proclaimed as Australian National Flag Day. A slightly different design was approved by King Edward VII in 1902. The seven-pointed commonwealth star version was introduced by a proclamation dated 23 February 1908. The dimensions were formally gazetted in 1934, and in 1954 the flag became recognised by, and legally defined in, the Flags Act 1953, as the "Australian National Flag".
I haven't found anything about the flag for the Northern Territory yet.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment designed to protect the wearer's body from injury or infection.
The crucifix toad or holy cross frog (Notaden bennettii) is an Australian, fossorial frog. It is one of the few Australian frogs to display aposematism. It is native to western New South Wales, and southwestern Queensland.
When a company removes its name from its logo for a marketing campaign.
Example: Starbucks removed its name from their cups in an attempt to make themselves appear less corporate and more personal. Nike has been called the first company to debrand its logo (1995).
A kind of brush-turkey or mound-bird, Megacephalon maleo, a native of Celebes (Sulawesi*), of a glossy-black and rosy-white color, with a bare neck and head. The maleo is a chicken-sized bird with a blackish back, a pink stomach, yellow facial skin, a red-orange beak and a black helmet or "casque." The maleo is but one of some 50 bird species threatened with extinction, including the caerulean paradise-flycatcher, which was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 1998.
*Thanks, bilby! I appreciate corrections such as this one.
"The Ministry of Justice figures also show reoffending rates among women have grown at four times that of men further fuelling concerns over the impact of the "ladette" culture."
a natural cloud-seeding technique that could reverse the loss of Arctic sea ice and protect the climate while fossil fuels are eliminated as rapidly as possible.
In the UK, it is illegal for people other than registered farriers to call themselves a farrier or to carry out any farriery work. In other countries, such as the United States, farriery is not regulated, no legal certification exists, and qualifications vary.
Historically, the jobs of farrier and blacksmith were practically synonymous. Modern day farriers usually specialize in horseshoeing, focusing their time and effort on the care of the horse's hoof. For this reason, farriers and blacksmiths are considered to be in separate, albeit related, trades.
A stew, typically made from fish. (Malaysia). Derived from Dutch, Smoor, which means food that has been smothered with something, such as tomatoes or onions.
verb (transitive) (Scottish) to smother, suffocate or extinguish.
If you try to add more than one link, you get flagged. That's been my experience at least. We've been getting a lot of intrusive spam, so it makes sense that Wordnik would install an electric fence to fry those dirty, rotten spammers.
A giant blackhead. They are superficial collections of keratin/ skin cells just under the skin surface and because the area is exposed to oxygen (air) the keratin oxidized which turns it black.
"This guy was there to whip up excitement about various events going on, such as welly tossing, and telling us when someone had won a prize in the many little raffles going on."
I think this is Wellington boot tossing. See welly.
n. The ergot of rye (Claviceps purpurea). n. A red wine produced in the neighborhood of the Rhone, not often exported. n. Tinea. n. Measles of the hog. See Trichina, trichinosis. n. Insanity. n. The garfish, Belone belone or B. vulgaris.
"The red color in many foods comes from crushed insects. If you see carmine or cochineal extract in an ingredients list, the product contains a little powdered bug. Aside from being an allergen for a small number of people, it's considered safe." -Daniel Tapper, author of "Food Unwrapped: Lifting the Lid on How Our Food is Really Produced".
n. A kind of package in which pepper and other dry commodities are sometimes exported from the East Indies. The robbin of rice in Malabar weighs about 84 pounds.
I'm not sure how to word my suggestion intelligibly, but here goes: I wish certain words under the DEFINITIONS had links. For example, when using the RANDOM WORD feature, I often seem to land on a form of a word (-ed, -ing) or its plural more often than the root word (?).
Example: vituperates. How nice it would be if there was a link for vituperate so I wouldn't have to type vituperate into the SEARCH function to find out what it means.
n. The saying of one thing when another is meant; specifically, a disordered or morbid mental condition which leads to the saying or writing of one thing when another is meant; physical incapacity to express one's ideas in language conveying a correct impression. When heterophemy becomes a pronounced disease it is known as aphasia. Also heterophemism.
It was 1999 when the body was found, and that's when the debate began as to whether he might have been the first ever man, along with Irvine, to reach the summit of Everest without the aid of oxygen, beating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay who are credited with the achievement in 1953.
They were part of an eight-member team of some of the world's top mountaineers (and a PBS documentary crew), hoping both to find the remains of Mallory and Irvine and to determine if they had reached the summit before dying -- 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first recognized ascent, in 1953.
A name of reproach or ridicule formerly applied by the Scotch to the English.
"David Drummond and the young ladies murmured to one another their disgust that the English pock-pudding should not suppose Scots able to keep their heads with their own hands..."
Wow. I guess the equivalent in the US is bread flour.
"Other than that, I’m talking about how many different strong flours you can get in the UK; which I’m kind of jealous of I usually pack strong flour in my suitcases whenever I visit British friends – strong flour, extra strong flour… We definitely don’t get flour labelled as ’strong flour’ here in France; maybe I’ll have to wait."
(He) hits online harassment and misogyny head-on. He notes that the “trollplex”—his neologism for a cyberplace inhabited by individuals sharing a target for harassment—“appears to be the province of men” with nearly all victims of online harassment being women. Interestingly, he presents data from research conducted in a pre-online environment, which demonstrates that harassment of this kind is hardly new.
"The Mars Society says that the Earth is a rotting, dying, stinking planet and that we must move our civilization to Mars and that Congress must appropriate funds to "terraform" Mars." See also terraformer.
"To pay the bills, they built a two-bedroom cabin and opened a farm stay. County zoning leaders gave Leaping Lamb a conditional use permit after contacting neighbors. In three years, the business has grown by word of mouth and is so busy now the couple hired a maid to clean the cabin."
n. A trend in the American agricultural industry to include entertainment endeavors on the farm. Looking to diversify their sources of income, small farmers are expanding their "agritourism" or "agritainment" operations beyond the traditional pumpkin-picking, hayride and petting zoo.
"Young phoebes sometimes become entangled in the horsehairs which are used in the lining of their nest."
"He tells of the phoebe-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying to hide it with moss in a similar fashion in the way all phoebe-birds hide their nests when they are built among rocks."
Gherao, meaning "encirclement," is a word originally from Hindi. It denotes a tactic used by labor activists and union leaders in India. Usually, a group of people would surround a politician or a government building until their demands are met, or answers given.
What's wrong with your wife maintaining her own regional vocabulary? I've never understood the smug attitude of people from the East Coast. Sorry for the rant, but I've had personal experiences with people from the East Coast putting down other American regional accents and vocabulary, Believe it or not, people from other areas of the country are quite satisfied with where they live, the words they've grown up using, and don't need to adopt East Coast regionalisms or shake pesky articles. What vocabulary of hers have you adopted unmockingly?
A pin or rod, typically of metal or wood, used on board ship and in mountaineering to secure a rope fastened around it.
Belaying pins were commonly used as improvised weapons on military and civilian ships, as their shape and weight made them a short but formidable club. See also belaying pin.
Filk music is both a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction/fantasy fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has been active since the early 1950s and played primarily since the mid-1970s. The term (originally a typographical error) predates 1955.
The word "filk" has also evolved as a verb, with two common meanings:
1. To participate in a filk song circle, as in, "We were filking last night until three in the morning." 2. To write a filk music parody of an existing song, as in, "I filked 'Hope Eyrie'." When used in this way, "filk" does not imply that all song parodies are considered filk music, nor does it imply that all filk songs are parodies. Setting satirical or parody lyrics to established tunes is not exclusively the province of science fiction fandom. Works of parody music such as those found in MAD Magazine or performed by Weird Al Yankovic have their own long-established traditions and history.
"It was a cider house, with a heavy old-fashioned oaken press at the far end, one long wall lined with duckboard shelving for apples, the other with bunged casks and covered vats of freshly made cider."
"At North Shields, John William Atkinson, 20, a labourer belonging to Newcastle, was charged with breaking and entering on the 28th inst. a refreshment shop on the Grand Parade, Tynemouth, and stealing a quantity of cakes and chocolate, the property of Mr J.H. Graham, and also with breaking and entering on the same date another sweet shop on the Grand Parade, and stealing a silver watch and albert. He was remanded for eight days”.
I added true tubs: bran tub, dolly tub, and twin tub. Three tubs are out of the ordinary: tub gurnard (a fish), tub thumper (a ranting public speaker) and tub chair.
"The vadosity of the river allowed Markus to gurgle frantically for help from drowning without drowning while his mother stood gazing at him in disbelief."
"The word ford, by reason of the vadosity of the river there, being added." --- W. Burton, A commentary on Antoninus his itinerary
"Thesis: In the novel 1984, George Orwell symbolizes the sense of hope and freedom in the future through the red-armed prole women’s voice and appearance."
Thanks, TH. I should have figured out your first comment for myself. I appreciate your unsarcastic reply since it makes one hesitant to ask seemingly dumb questions.
"How to Make Soap from Ashes: Soapmaking in the woods can be almost automatic. Hardwood ashes are some of the best producers of lye. Add a bucket of rain water and some leftover cooking fat and you can easily brew up enough soap to clean everybody and everything." leaching tub, leach-tub, leaching barrel.
I entered bathtub into SEARCH. Nothing showed up among the lists listed (and since it would have most certainly been on an existing tub-y list), I'd guess there isn't one. I look forward to adding to it, if it's an open list.
The usual reason for an anti-boycott is to prevent a company or entity from backing down on the decision that initially caused the boycott.
Some examples of recent anti-boycotts (buycotts] include:
The "Buy Danish" campaign, set up to counter the boycott of Danish goods by the Middle East. The anti-boycotts by supporters of Israe] to oppose Boycott Israel campaigns. When Whole Foods Market was boycotted because the CEO opposed U.S. President Barack Obama's health care reform policies, opponents of health care reform staged nationwide buycotts.
"What struck him most was a recent Prussian invention, the needle-gun, which he saw would be the arm of the future."
--"John Nicholson, The Lion of the Punjaub" Author: R. E. Cholmeley, 1908.
"My Lord, you may rely upon this, that if ever there is a desperate deed to be done in India, John Nicholson is the man to do it." Sir Herbert Edwardes to Lord Canning, March 1857.
The uniform dark gray background that many people report seeing in the absence of light. The term dates back to the nineteenth century but has rarely been used in recent scientific publications. Nowadays the phenomenon is more commonly referred to as "visual noise" or "background adaptation".
Eigengrau is perceived as lighter than a black object in normal lighting conditions because contrast is more important to the visual system than absolute brightness. For example, the night sky looks darker than eigengrau because of the contrast provided by the stars. -Wikipedia
A Stammtisch (German for "regulars' table" is an informal group meeting held on a regular basis, and also the usually large, often round table around which the group meets. A Stammtisch is not a structured meeting, but rather a friendly get-together.
I was FLAGGED AS SPAM the first time I made an attempt at humor by repeating the definition several times. It's nice to know that Wordnik, like John Walsh, is looking for bad guys.
n. Long and tedious talk without much substance; superfluity of words. Long and tedious talk without much substance; superfluity of words, words, words, words.
Kreteks are cigarettes made from a blend of tobacco, cloves, and other flavors. The word "kretek" is an onomatopoetic term for the crackling sound of burning cloves.
Kreteks are by far the most widely smoked form of cigarettes in Indonesia, where about 90% of smokers usually smoke kreteks.
In 2009, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was introduced in the US Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, giving the FDA significantly more regulatory power over tobacco; one of the provisions in the law includes a ban on the use of flavors in tobacco, other than menthol. The ban includes kreteks. As of September 22, 2009, the clove cigarette was no longer legal to sell or distribute in the US, and cigarettes purchased overseas are subject to seizure by U.S. Customs.
n. A painful constriction of the base of the fifth toe, frequently followed by autoamputation, occurring predominantly in black Africans and their descendants.
ruzuzu: Check out The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia definition. You'll enjoy it, as always.
There is quite a different feature of this panel-game, but which more properly belongs to blackmail, in which, through the peep holes in the doors, the face of the man or woman in the adjoining room is studied, waited for on the outside, followed to his or her home, and in a few days threatened with exposure, if the sum demanded is not forthcoming.
n. A thief who steals by the aid of a sliding panel, a secret door, or any similar device; a robber in a panel house. Lackluster definition at panel-house. It's frustrating when words such as panelhouse, panel house, and panel-house all have different meanings or no meaning.
1890s. Thieves who surreptitiously drugged their victims with knockout drops (typically chloral hydrate) then lured or led them into a dark place where they were quickly robbed. Sometimes the victims were killed, other times they were left to sleep off the effects of the drug. Many times, the drug itself killed victims.
"The victim is usually robbed as soon as he is stupefied by the drug. Beyond the crime of robbery grave peril to life is entailed by this reckless use of chloral. The same dose will affect different persons to a varying extent, and what will barely stupefy one may kill another. There is little or no precaution taken in pouring a dose from a phial, and a number of deaths have occurred."
Also known as peter-players. Women often robbed by drugging their victims in this manner.
n. A tall protective hedge or a thorn fence fortifying a camp or village. From Arabic zarība 'cattle pen'. A zariba is used to keep villagers and their domesticated animals safe from wild predators.
Vogon poetry is described as "the third worst poetry in the Universe". The main example used in the story is a short piece composed by Jeltz, which roughly emulates nonsense verse in style (example below). The story relates that listening to it is an experience similar to torture as demonstrated when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are forced to listen to the poetry (and say how much they liked it) prior to being thrown out of an airlock.
Ah freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me, As plurdled gabbleblotchits, On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath blurted out, Its earted jurtles, Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. drowned out by moaning and screaming Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, And living glupules frart and slipulate, Like jowling meated liverslime, Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes, And hooptiously drangle me, With crinkly bindlewurdles, Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don’t.
Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease recently discovered in northeast and central China. SFTS has fatality rates ranging from 12% to as high as 30% in some areas. The major clinical symptoms of SFTS are fever, vomiting, diarrhea, multiple organ failure, thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), leucopenia (low white blood cell count), and elevated liver enzyme levels.
Ha-ha!! slumry: I deleted my first ha-ha and reposted it because it appeared that I was laughing at my own comment (which was actually a repeat of bilby's comment).
And, yes, I spotted your tiny typo... but that's not why I laughed.
swith - swither swither appears in the phrases below (on the page for swith), but not on the page for swither. Go figure. swither hand (right hand), swither half (right side)
Odd differences between the wording of ginger beer: n. a mild beer impregnated with ginger. n. An effervescing beverage made by fermenting ginger, cream-of-tartar, and sugar with yeast and water.
When I click "yarn-tea" on the community page under Recently Listed Words, it sends me to a random, irrelevant page. Not only that, it sends me to a different random word each time. Try it yourself. I get the same weird result when I click the word in alexz's list: glitched definitions.
ry: I zapped nine entries or so. Let me know if I missed any pesky ones hiding in plain sight.
Thanks for letting me know. I understand, from my own experiences here, that it's a little displeasing when a list becomes tainted with well-meaning entries.
"It was a prosaic gift, being a wagon-load of piñon wood for the fire; but the gnarled, oddly twisted sticks were heaped high with pine boughs and long trails of red-fruited kinnikinnick to serve as a Christmas dressing, and somehow the gift gave Clover a peculiar pleasure." -Susan Coolidge, "Clover", 1907.
The hyena and the vulture are the scavengers of the tropical regions. The hyena devours what the vulture leaves, which is the skin and bones of a dead carcass. Its power of jaw is so great, that it breaks the largest bone with facility.”
“In Africa there are four hyenas:— The common spotted hyena, or wolf of the colonists, whose smell is so offensive that dogs leave it with disgust after it is killed; its own fellows will, however, devour it immediately. The striped or ferocious hyena, called the shard-wolf; and another, which the colonists call the bay-wolf, and which I believe to be the one known as the laughing hyena. There is another variety, which is a sort of link between the hyena and the dog, called the venatica. It hunts in packs, and the colonists term it the wild honde. It was first classed by Burchell the traveller. This last is smaller, but much fiercer, than the others.”
-The Mission; or Scenes in Africa by Frederick Marryat, 1845
Comments by vendingmachine
Show previous 200 comments...
vendingmachine commented on the word tanguin
This reminds me of the Medieval dunking ordeal to find out if a woman is a witch. If she drowns and dies, she's innocent. In this case, vomiting poison determines your innocence... but it could STILL kill you in the process. See tanghin.
August 27, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word lunky
Lunky and lanky sound like their meanings.
August 27, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word thankyouverymuch
I like this version because it emphasizes the speed spoken and its informality. I'm not a fan of tysm, for example.
August 27, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word glitch poetry
Glitch poetry is the practice of introducing orthographic anomalies in poems.
https://medium.com/@massimo.franceschet/glitch-poetry-75e2247bfc43
August 27, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word orthosilicic
Good find, alexz.
August 26, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word orthosilicic
A word used only in the following phrase. That's the definition of orthosilicic?
August 25, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word Missouri French
Today the dialect is highly endangered, with only a few elderly native speakers. It is thought that any remaining speakers live in or around Old Mines, Missouri.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_French
August 24, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the list 43
Why is this named 43? Trump is, sadly, the 45th POTUS.
August 24, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word ustilaginales
Which is worse... being parasitic fungi or belonging to the smut family?
August 17, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word tadago-pie
At first glance, I thought I read tadpole pie.
August 17, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word jean dimmock
Hey, what happened to my list (created under a different user identity): https://www.wordnik.com/lists/wordniks-who-proudly-contribute-worthless-stuff--a-lot-of-dumb-comments--and-useless-words-to-the-zeitgeist-page
August 14, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word nikword dot com
A message popped up warning me that I was being directed to the site above for possibly nefarious reasons.
August 14, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word xeriscaping
Grouping plants with similar watering requirements together on a landscape.
August 3, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word hardscaping
Hardscape refers to hard landscape materials in the built environment structures that are incorporated into a landscape. This can include paved areas, driveways, retaining walls, sleeper walls, stairs, walkways, and any other landscaping made up of hard-wearing materials such as wood, stone, and concrete, as opposed to softscape, the horticultural elements of a landscape.
August 3, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word axillary falcon
Axillary Falcon - This bird has also been identified as a black-shouldered kite, Elanus notatus.
June 15, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word laicized
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, the loss of the clerical state (commonly referred to as laicization or laicisation) is the removal of a bishop, priest or deacon from the status of being a member of the clergy.
June 15, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word thought leaders
"Lists like this one arm citizens and thought leaders with the data to “help make important business and life decisions.”
June 12, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word nickel thrower
I'm still unclear on the meaning. Is being happy, dressed in black, and wearing rubber tips on one's fingers the only criteria for being a nickel thrower?
June 11, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word loogan
Loogan (sometimes spelled loogin or lugan, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) is no longer used to mean “a minor hoodlum,” though hood, recorded by Kendall, is still used to mean “a petty gangster.”
I found LOOGAN in Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary of 1825 with a definition of “a rogue” and in a couple of prison slang lists online meaning “mentally ill prisoner."
May 31, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word horseapple
See also osage orange.
May 15, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word horseapple
My regional vocabulary refers to a horseapple as a hedgeapple. A horseapple sounds more interesting.
May 15, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the list firearm-terms
receiver: In portable breech-loading firearms, the steel frame screwed to the breech end of the barrel, which receives the bolt or block, gives means of securing for firing, facilitates loading, and holds the ejector, cut-off, etc.
May 10, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the list firearm-terms
mustard-seed: A very fine kind of shot used by ornithologists and taxidermists for shooting birds with least injury to the plumage; dust-shot. The name includes No. 10 shot and finer numbers.
May 10, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word cowboy shot
I'm content adding to hernesheir's list, if I'm lucky enough to find other words to add. Hernesheir is a creative and masterful listmaker.
May 10, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word cowboy shot
Is there a film/cinematography list? If so, this term is missing from it.
May 9, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word threat actor
Hey back, Tom.
May 9, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word threat actor
Also known a a hacktivist or ecoteur.
.May 7, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word snitty
"He decided to cast her in The Last Picture Show as Jacy, a spoiled, snitty, small town high school heartbreaker."
— Lloyd Shearer, The Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), 16 Jul. 1972
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word lungeous
Ill-tempered; rough and violent.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word purdy
Disagreeably self-important.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word snitty
Disagreeably ill-tempered.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word bottom surgery
A type of gender confirmation surgery in which a person's genitalia are altered to match their gender identity.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word top surgery
A type of gender confirmation surgery in which a person's breasts are removed or augmented to match their gender identity.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word go-cup
A plastic or paper cup used especially for taking a beverage off the premises of a bar, restaurant, etc.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word garbage time
The final moments or minutes of a game in which one side has an insurmountable lead.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word Goldilocks
An area of planetary orbit in which temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold to support life.
May 4, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word owlbino
an albino owl
April 27, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word leech house
Leech houses were used to store the worms—often in special containers of moist earth—and keep them alive and fresh until they were needed by druggists or doctors.
The UK's last-standing leech house: http://mentalfloss.com/article/518390/uks-last-standing-leech-house
March 7, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word red handfish
The rare red handfish from Tasmania doesn't really swim—it just walks slowly along the sea floor.
March 3, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word malternatives
Noun. malternative (plural malternatives) An alcoholic beverage, an alternative to beer, that contains some malt alcohol and may contain other types of alcohol.
February 18, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word malterative
Noun. malternative (plural malternatives) An alcoholic beverage, an alternative to beer, that contains some malt alcohol and may contain other types of alcohol.
February 18, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word social echo
PR Newswire coined the term “Social Echo” to describe “the powerful reverberation around brands that occurs through the millions of conversations in the social networks and communities where people gather today.”
In PR Newswire’s view, “A brand’s Social Echo has enormous power to shape reputation, influence mass opinion and drive growth. Social Echo has equal – and perhaps even greater – power to stop a brand dead in its tracks.”
They go on to say that…
“Marketers and communicators who understand this are actively engaged in listening to their Social Echo and in finding ways to participate in the conversations that comprise their Social Echo. Importantly, they are also gleaning real-time insights to apply back to their brands in every area – customer care, product development, brand positioning and messaging, innovation and more.
Read more at https://www.business2community.com/social-media/how-is-your-social-echo-0453783
January 2, 2019
vendingmachine commented on the word Bilby
"An obscure hymn-writer, whose verses have been sung in all parts of the world, was Thomas Bilby, parish clerk of St. Mary's Church, Islington, between the years 1842 and 1872. He was the parish schoolmaster also, and thus maintained the traditions of his office handed down from mediæval times. Before the days of School Boards it was not unusual for the clerk to teach the children of the working classes the three R's and religious knowledge, charging a fee of twopence per week for each child. "
December 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Bilby
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bilby
December 19, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word dugdug
See nangka (In Guam, Artocarpus communis) and langka (In the Philippine Islands, Artocarpus integrifolia).
December 17, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word milkshake duck
Thanks for the reverso story, sionnach.
November 6, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word milkshake duck
A person or character on social media that appears to be endearing at first, but is found to have an unappealing backstory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkshake_Duck
November 4, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word choreopoem
An interwoven series of poetic monologues set to music.
Coined by Ntozake Shange, author of "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf," 1975.
October 31, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word intimacy coordinator
(The intimacy coordinator) will intervene in small but important ways, like giving a performer something to cover their private parts, knee pads, mouth spray or flavored lubricant, etc.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hbo-hires-intimacy-coordinator-sex-scenes_us_5bd35c64e4b0a8f17ef7690e
October 29, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word gaslight
v. To manipulate someone psychologically such that they question their own sanity.
(I've watched the movie several times so this meaning is, uh, MEANINGFUL!)
October 18, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list occupations-grouped-together-with-chicken-sexer-by-careers-org
Fun list.
October 18, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word letterboxing
n. An outdoor hobby in which participants attempt to locate small boxes hidden in public places.
When was this a thing?! Imagine finding a small box with a little, baby bilby inside.
October 18, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word tsundoku
Tsundoku (Japanese: 積ん読) is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.
The term originated in the Meiji era (1868–1912) as Japanese slang. It combines elements of tsunde-oku (積んでおく, to pile things up ready for later and leave) and dokusho (読書, reading books). It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. As currently written, the word combines the characters for "pile up" (積) and the character for "read" (読).
October 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word whataboutism
Suggesting that two wrongs equal a right. For example, suggesting that a particular CEO can mislead shareholders because some other CEO mislead shareholders even more.
October 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word false equivalence
A logical fallacy in which two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.
False equivalence arguments are often used in journalism and in politics, where the minor flaws of one candidate may be compared to major flaws of another.
October 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word miscarriage
“ 'Mis-carriage,' in an insidious way, suggests fault for the mother - as if she dropped something, or failed to 'carry.' ”
Using the hashtags #WeNeedANewName and #MoreCommonThanYouHearAbout, Vmiscarriage happens far more frequently than some might think and that, ultimately, changing its name might help conversations about miscarriage flow more freely, as couples will no longer feel like they're being judged for the biological event over which they have little to no control.
'"So many women feel shame about losing a baby even though there is nothing shameful about it. But nevertheless, this often stops them from talking openly about their loss..."
Any suggestions for a new term? Leave suggestion(s) at hashtags above.
October 14, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word racial balancing
"Asian Americans argue that racial considerations have made them a victim of their own academic success. They tend to get better grades and score higher on standardized tests than other races but claim they are frequently rejected as a result of “racial balancing,” which is akin to racial quotas and has been ruled unconstitutional."
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvard-asians-affirmative-action-2018-story.html
October 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word hello
╔┓┏╦━━╦┓╔┓╔━━╗
║┗┛║┗━╣┃║┃║ 0 0 ║
║┏┓║┏━╣┗╣┗╣╰╯║
╚┛┗╩━━╩━╩━╩━━╩
October 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word bumbubúi
Icelandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word yndið mítt
Icelandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word elsku dúllan mín
Icelandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word dúlla
Icelandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word krúttið
Icelandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word krútt
Icelandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word ástin
celandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word elskan
celandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sæti
celandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word ástvinur
celandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word kærasta
celandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word kærasti
celandic terms of endearment
Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.
Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.
kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.
kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend
ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)
sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie
elskan (mín) = My love, my darling
ástin (mín) = My love, my darling
krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)
krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey
dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)
elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie
yndið mítt = My sweetie
bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sayang
A term used to express endearment and affection in Indonesian. It can be equated to 'dear’, 'darling’ or 'sweetheart’ when referring to a person.
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sirsniņa
In Latvian, your favorite person is your sirds puķīte, a.k.a. “the little flower of your heart.” Another endearment for a loved one is sirsniņa: “little heart” (this is a noun with a feminine ending) or sometimes just sirds.
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sirds puķīte
The person you love most is described in English as “the apple of your eye.” The phrase originates in Old English and means the pupil of the eye, which reflects the image of the one you’re looking at. In Latvian, your favorite person is your sirds puķīte, a.k.a. “the little flower of your heart.” Another endearment for a loved one is sirsniņa: “little heart” (this is a noun with a feminine ending) or sometimes just sirds.
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sirdsdraugs
In Latvian, your closest friend is your sirdsdraugs or “the friend of your heart.”
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list blooms--2
Bloom syydrome (sp?). Who knew that a little chocolate bloom would inspire our dearest ru with a list. Good job.
October 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sugar bloom
Chocolate bloom refers two types of whitish coating that can appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.
October 9, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word fat bloom
Chocolate bloom refers two types of whitish coating that can appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.
October 9, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word chocolate bloom
Chocolate bloom refers to two types of whitish coating that appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.
October 9, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sizzle reel
A sample of a film's concept or highlights; a prototype.
October 2, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word final girl
TV trope. The last character left alive to confront the killer. The character is almost ALWAYS female, a virgin, fully clothed, avoids death by sex, doesn't drink, smoke or take drugs.
The term was coined by Carol J. Colver in her 1992 book, Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl
September 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word expoodles
Twitter: Autocorrect just changed the word “explodes” to “expoodles”. Saw it do it with my own eyes. Is that even a WORD??
September 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word adynaton
For ruzuzu:
Kad pūcei aste ziedēs ("When an owl's tail blooms")
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word ponies
The Popular Theatre by George Jean Nathan (1918)
"I drank two cocktails, three glasses of sherry, a quart of champagne and several ponies of Cointreau. The show seemed to get better and better as it went ...
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word cointer
British verb (transitive) to bury together
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word twinter
dialectal, British
: a sheep, ox, or horse that has lived through two winters.
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word tripple
chiefly southern Africa
: a gait in which the horse moves both near and both off legs alternately and which somewhat resembles the amble
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word dumbsize
To reduce the staff numbers of a company to such low levels that work can no longer be carried out effectively.
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word psychogeography
"The term psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955. Inspired by the French nineteenth-century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces.
Psychogeography gained popularity in the 1990s when artists, writers, and filmmakers such as Iain Sinclair and Patrick Keiller began using the idea to create works based on exploring locations by walking."
-https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/psychogeography
September 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Kripos
An elite unit of the Norwegian police that investigates organized crime and missing persons, for example. They have specialized technical and forensic expertise. They are currently investigating the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis, a Dutch cybersecurity expert for Wikileaks. "Arjen Kamphuis is a Digital Self Defence professional. Every day he helps people keep their secrets safe in the digital world. He has seen firsthand how government-funded spying, hacking and security programs fall into the wrong hands and cause more harm than good. He argues that it is time we all start keeping ourselves safe by taking responsibility for our own digital defenses and letting go of the idea that we’re just not smart enough to adapt."
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word pointlessly gendered products
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/03/15/new-in-pointlessly-gendered-products/
Men's Bread, Fairy Hearts Turkey Pork Sausage, boys walking rein and harness (blue), girls walking rein and harness (pink), pet shampoo (for him, for her).
Pinterest collection: https://www.pinterest.com/socimages/pointlessly-gendered-products/
lip balm engineered for men, water for men, etc.
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word cultural tropes
cultural tropes (like pointlessly gendered products)
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word civil religion
"In 1966, the late sociologist Robert Bellah presented a now-classic essay, “Civil Religion in America.” The essay is about religion in public life, and how American politicians created a sense of shared national identity around general religious claims. Since then, sociologists and political theorists have argued about how inclusive civil religion really is (Does it include atheists or other minority groups who aren’t Christian? Lots of Americans don’t seem to think so.), but the theory is useful for highlighting how much of American political life takes on a religious tone."
--https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2018/07/
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word selfish technology
"The ad blocker should not be seen as a selfish technology. It is a socialist cudgel—something that forces otherwise lazy capitalists to find new and inventive ways to make their creations sustainable. Ad blockers are one of the few tools users have to fight against the need to monetize fast and big because it troubles the predictability of readily traceable attention."
--https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2015/09/23/full-communism-is-the-ultimate-ad-blocker/
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word cultural capital
"Based on observations of three technology-rich Bay Area middle schools, Rafalow examined whether the skills students develop through digital play are considered cultural capital — skills, habits, and dispositions that that can be traded for success in school and work."
--https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2018/09/12/schools-selective-screening/
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word memory politics
Jenny Edkins (Trauma and memory politics) explores how we remember traumatic events such as wars, famines, genocides and terrorism. She argues that remembrance does not have to be nationalistic but can instead challenge the political systems that produced the violence. Using examples from the World Wars, Vietnam, the Holocaust, Kosovo and September 11th, Edkins analyzes the practices of memory rituals through memorials, museums and remembrance ceremonies. This wide-ranging study embraces literature, history, politics and international relations, in an original contribution to the study of memory.
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word memory politics
"Ukraine’s memory politics do not exclude women entirely. In 2016, the UINM chose to focus on women when commemorating the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The title of the institute’s project was “War makes no exceptions. Female history of the Second World War”. The intention to focus on women’s experiences in order to “reveal the criminal nature of war” seems admirable. But the 12 stories of both military and civilian women chosen by the UINM simply replicate a male pantheon rather than challenge the very tradition of glorifying the war through its heroes. The difference is that the male heroes are celebrated every year, whereas the female figures only once in a while, as part of a special project."
--What place for women in Ukraine's memory politics? https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/olesya-khromeychuk/what-place-for-women-in-ukraine-s-memory-politics
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word corrective rape
Such laws, however, do not have to pass to have a chilling effect. In 2014, I met Kyrgyz LGBTQI organisation Labrys, who said that lesbians and trans men already faced corrective rape, and gay men and trans women were often beaten and sometimes killed. Such attacks have since intensified. Soon after I went back to London, Labrys shut down their Facebook page, and had to sell the house where I first met them after it was subjected to an arson attack in 2015. They resurfaced last year, and in March I returned to Bishkek to meet a new generation of activists who, amidst the confusion and hostility, are fighting to make Kyrgyzstan more open to diversity of gender and sexuality.
--https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/juliet-jacques/fear-and-loathing-in-kyrgyzstan
September 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov
At the Pasteur Institute in Paris Mechnikov was engaged in work associated with the establishment of his theory of cellular immunity, which, like many great advances in science, encountered considerable hostility. He published, during this period, several papers and two volumes on the comparative pathology of inflammation (1892), and his treatise entitled L’Immunité dans les Maladies Infectieuses (Immunity in infectious diseases, 1901). In 1908 he was awarded, together with Paul Ehrlich, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
He coined the word gerontology in 1903.
September 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word gerontology
Gerontology is the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903. The field is distinguished from geriatrics, which is the branch of medicine that specializes in the treatment of existing disease in older adults. Gerontologists include researchers and practitioners in the fields of biology, nursing, medicine, criminology, dentistry, social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, economics, [political science, architecture, geography, pharmacy, public health, housing, and anthropology.
September 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word biogerontology
Biomedical gerontology, also known as experimental gerontology and life extension, is a sub-discipline of biogerontology that endeavors to slow, prevent, and even reverse aging in both humans and animals. Most "life extensionists" believe the human life span can be increased within the next century, if not sooner. biogerontologists vary in the degree to which they focus on the study of the aging process as a means of mitigating the diseases of aging or extending lifespan, although most agree that extension of lifespan will necessarily flow from reductions in age-related disease and frailty, although some argue that maximum life span cannot be altered or that it is undesirable to try. The area of geroscience is a recently formulated interdisciplinary field that embraces biomedical gerontology as the center of preventing diseases of aging through science emerging at the interface of the biology of aging and age-related disease.
September 14, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sneaker waves
"...so-called sneaker waves sometimes claim lives of the unwary along the coast of the Pacific Northwest.
Tuba Ozkan-Haller, a wave researcher at Oregon State University, recommends that when people go to the beach in Northern California, Oregon and Washington state — which because of the nature of the coastline are susceptible to sneaker waves — they study the wave action and ensure escape routes aren’t blocked by rocks or cliffs."
September 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word involuntary suicide
= murder
September 11, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word wet diarrhea president
An odd insult found on Twitter:
"Wow #Uganda under the repulsive and primitive cow #Musevi is like a zoo...chei! Just like #Cameroon under our own piece of wet diarrhea president..."
Isn't diarrhea always wet? Is there such a thing as dry diarrhea?
September 11, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word calendering
The term “calendering” refers to any of several processes in which fabric is subjected to great pressure and/or heat, in a type of ironing using large rollers.
September 5, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word beetling
For the study and collection of beetles, see coleopterology.
Beetling is the pounding of linen or cotton fabric to give a flat, lustrous effect. The process by which fabrics, etc. are beetled, or beaten with a mallet. Within Ireland, beetling was first introduced by Hamilton Maxwell in 1725. Beetling is part of the finishing of the linen cloth. The hammering tightens the weave and gives the cloth a smooth feel. The process was gradually phased out, in lieu of calendering. A similarity is the compression; however, with calendering, the finish does not remain for the life of the cloth. This distinguishes it from beetling.
Beetling eyebrows are thick and stick out from the face: He glared at me under beetling brows.
September 5, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word nomophobia
A fear of being disconnected from social media in general.
September 2, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word mud volcano
Mud volcanoes occur when gases push hot water and dirt from deep in the ground up to the surface. https://twitter.com/ScienceAlert/status/1036068618805682176
September 2, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list the-bees-knees-and-the-cats-pajamas
Make up your own!
1. the bilby's bilirubin
2. the walrus's wallet
3. the kiwi's coinpurse
ABC animals, http://www.skyenimals.com/alph_index.cgi?letter=A
September 1, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word play bow
"When a dog crouches forward with its elbows on the ground and its rear end in the air, wagging tail and all, that's a play bow. The position is the ultimate sign of playfulness, which is important for a species that often uses playtime as practice for attacking prey.
The play bow first evolved in canids as a form of communication. When a dog sees another dog it wants to play with, it extends its front paws forward and lifts up its behind as a visual invitation to engage in a friendly play session. Dogs will "bow" in the middle of playtime to show that they're having fun and wish to continue, or when a session has paused to signal they want to pick it back up. Play bows can also be a sort of apology: When the roughhousing gets too rough, a bow says, “I’m sorry I hurt you. Can we keep playing?' "
Mental Floss, http://mentalfloss.com/article/544112/why-do-dogs-crouch-forward-play-bow
September 1, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word enforced disappearance
Amnesty International on Thursday accused Nigeria's government of carrying out unlawful arrests and practicing "enforced disappearance" -- detention without trial -- to suppress dissent.
August 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word nation branding
"Countries are increasingly copying the marketing tactics that companies use to raise their profiles, and let people know that they are open for business. Welcome to the world of nation branding.
A strong country brand should encourage tourists, trading partners and investors all at once. But having a snazzy logo, and an advertising budget won't sell a product that people don't want."
The best way to improve a country's image is for it to contribute to the well-being of the world beyond its borders rather than spending money on advertising.
"If you really want to earn a better reputation, the best thing you can do is stop chasing after it."
August 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word nyongmato
Among the Ga, the people who are indigenous to Ghana's capital, Accra, a woman is entitled to a live sheep on the delivery of her 10th child. The word for it is "nyongmato".
August 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word chifforobe
The first time I heard this word I was watching "To Kill a Mockingbird".
Mayella Ewell in the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962): "I was sittin' on the porch, and he come along. Uh, there's this old chifforobe in the yard, and I-I said, 'You come in here, boy, and bust up this chifforobe, and I'll give you a nickel.'"
August 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list glitched-definitions
Yes! This is the list I remember using.
August 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Unscented
Thanks!
August 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Unscented
I forgot who had the list of "problem" entries... alexz? madmouth?
August 29, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word butt dial
On Twitter: "Today I asked my class to come up with a pair of terms that share a denotative meaning but whose connotative meanings differ and one student offered BUTT DIAL and BOOTY CALL."
August 27, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word erinaceous
Erin is the perfect name for a pet hedgehog.
August 23, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word erinaceous
Lucky! Such a cute word, too.
August 23, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word fewmet
"I've met a few hunters who studied fewmet."
August 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the user heavenglows144
"pak" means pure in Urdu. Land of the pure.
August 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Englishly
or, even better: Englishish.
August 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word MAGA Americans
"Make America Great Again" Americans (from Donald Trump's political slogan). As described on fivethirtyeight.com:
"Right Trolls behave like “bread-and-butter MAGA Americans, only all they do is talk about politics all day long.”
"Left Trolls often adopt the personae of Black Lives Matter activists, typically expressing support for Bernie Sanders and derision for Hillary Clinton, along with “clearly trying to divide the Democratic Party and lower voter turnout."
August 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word dermaesthetics
A different way to say hair transplantation. I found a doctor's practice listed as Advanced Dermatology and Dermaesthetics.
What is so advanced about a hair transplant?
August 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word grasshopper escapement
Sounds like a note brought to school as an excuse for something. "Dear Mrs. Frye: I couldn't finish my homework. We had a grasshopper escapement at home. You do believe me, don't you?'
July 31, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word shadow banning
Shadow banning isn't a new concept; it's frequently used in forums and on other social networks as an alternative to banning someone outright.
Instead of kicking someone off, shadow banning makes a person's post visible only to the user who created it. The idea is to protect others from harmful content while eventually prompting the shadow-banned user to voluntarily leave a forum due to a lack of engagement.
If a user is banned outright, the thinking goes, the person is aware of it and will likely just set up another account and continue the offending behavior.
Shadow banning is typically used to stop bots and trolls and is effective in combating bots where 'bot herders' who maintain these accounts don't necessarily know whether or not their bots are actually being seen by other people.
"Shadow banning: What it is -- and what it isn't", Alfred Ng, cnet.com, 26 July 2018
Also known as stealth banning, ghost banning or comment banning.
July 27, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word dolmens
dolmens: dolls for men (Stonehenge)
lichened dolmens = dolls for men covered with lichens.
July 27, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list twitterbotlist
How does one add 110,098 words to a list? For me, and even if I managed to copy and paste hundreds or thousands of words, I'd still have to insert a semi-colon between those words. Is there a shortcut? An easier method I’m not using?
July 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word people-first language
People are not defined by their diseases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list paper-and-papermaking
Is hieratica okay?
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word elephant dung
Here's the tree-free paper alternatives list. I tried before but I couldn't get my link to work, even with single curly braces. Okay, great. It works now.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word casse paper
This word is looking for a forever list home about paper.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word paper
I have a list called tree-free paper alternatives.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list non-dairy-beverages
qms: I'm looking for plant-based milks, so, yes, poppy milk qualifies. When I looked it up, I discovered that poppy milk (aguonų pienas) is a traditional Lithuanian drink or soup, one of the 12-dishes Christmas Eve Supper Kūčios. Usually, it is eaten together with kūčiukai, another traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dish. Thank you.
I will open this list with the understanding that only plant-based milks are added. Thank you.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list non-dairy-beverages
I've been on a silly quest to sample many of these "milks". Just yesterday, I tried macadamia milk. I doubt if I'll be able to even find any candlenut milk, but is does exist! I'm also particularly interested in trying some black walnut milk. Will it have the unique flavor of black walnuts?
BTW, the dairy industry is trying relentlessly to force manufacturers of these non-dairy products from using the word "milk" when marketing their products. They claim that milk comes from mammals, not plants. The non-dairy milk people insist this is not able semantics, but because their product is affecting the popularity of goat / cow milk.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word elephant paper
I thought this was paper made from the feces of an elephant. and not just "big" paper. I've read about paper made from elephant, rhino, and other herbivores.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word duck blur
A chaotic commotion of activity, often compared to a hurricane.
July 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word lebensmagnetismus
An invisible natural force possessed by all living and animate beings (humans, animals, fruits, vegetables).
July 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word bling coffee
Trendy overpriced coffee.
July 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word splogs
Spam weblogs that steal content from other sites in order to appear legitimate. Also known as an adfarm.
July 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word fist-law
Good old fist-law, the code of brute force. See also club-law.
July 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word bilby
Among the list of Random Adoptions on Wordnik:
bilby was adopted by Royal Secret Society of Bilbies
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word 12 o'clock flasher
A person who is unwilling or unable to learn how to use all but the most basic functions of the electronic appliances he or she possesses.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word 90-minute bigot
Scottish. A football fan, esp of Rangers FC or Celtic FC, who exhibits religious bigotry at matches but does not consider him- or herself to be bigoted outside a football context.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word zeuglodont
Any of a group of extinct carnivorous whales known as Phocodontia or Zeuglodonta.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word zeroth
Denoting a term in a series that precedes the term otherwise regarded as the first term.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word zex
A tool for cutting roof slate.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word cock-a-leekie soup
Scottish. A soup made from a fowl boiled with leeks.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word scolopendrine
Pertaining to any centipede of the family Scolopendridae, including some large and poisonous species.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word smaragdine
Any green gemstone, such as the emerald.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sourdeline
A type of bagpipe.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word tragelaphine
Of or relating to a tragelaph.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word vincristine
An alkaloid, C46H56N4O10·H2SO4, obtained from the leaves of a periwinkle (Vinca rosea) and used as a drug in the treatment of leukemia.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word vomerine
Pertaining to the thin flat bone forming part of the separation between the nasal passages in mammals.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word zibeline
A soft lustrous wool fabric with mohair, alpaca, or camel's hair.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word zygaenine
pertaining to a family of moths (Zygaenidae) including the foresters, burnet moths, and related moths most of which are bright-colored and day-flying.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word aedine
relating to mosquitoes of the genus Aedes
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list animal-ine
Another great -ine list!
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list animal-ines-cheat-sheet
crotaline: having a rattle or pertaining to a rattlesnake
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list animal-ines-cheat-sheet
I intended to start a list like this one, but after finding your impressive and thorough list, I figured: why bother? Love it. I've added it to my list of favorite lists.
July 7, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word they are now very aware of my situation
Yes, they are aware... but they don't care.
June 28, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word circadian dysrhythmia
Jet lag.
June 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Schwellenangst
Fear of crossing a threshold to embark on something new.
What's with the potential customer in the definition from Wiki?
June 5, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
ru: the day you started contributing to wordnik was--and continues to be!-- pure awesomeness. I love the way you think. You should be on a remarkable list yourself: a list of remarkable people! ♥♥♥♥
June 4, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word pass
There are many words for pass in the English-speaking world. In the United States, pass is very common in the West, the word gap is common in the southern Appalachians, notch in parts of New England, and saddle in northern Idaho. Scotland has the Gaelic term bealach (anglicised "balloch"), while Wales has the similar bwlch. In the Lake District of north-west England, the term hause is often used, although the term pass is also common—one distinction is that a pass can refer to a route, as well as the highest part thereof, while a hause is simply the highest part, often flattened somewhat into a high-level plateau.--Wikipedia
June 1, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word shoutcaster
In video games, and particularly eSports, commentators are often called shoutcasters; this term is derived from the free plugin for <i>Winamp</i> called <i>SHOUTcast</i>, which enabled users to live-stream audio-only feeds across the Internet.
June 1, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word mumpfen
May 31, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word mimpfeln
See also mumpfen, to chew with a full mouth.
May 31, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word kainotophobia
Not to be confused with the fear of changing one's underwear.
May 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word mansplaining
Mansplaining (a blend of the word man and the informal form splaining of the verb explaining) means "(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner". Lily Rothman of "The Atlantic" defines it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman". Author Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness".
In its original use, mansplaining differed from other forms of condescension in that it is rooted in the sexist assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman. However, it has come to be used more broadly, often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone, regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients: a "man 'splaining" can be delivered to any audience. In 2010 it was named by the New York Times as one of its "Words of the Year".
A widespread phenomenon that "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.
May 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Framingham score
To measure the women’s biological age, the researchers looked at the length of telomeres in their white blood cells. Telomeres are the dangly bits at the end of chromosomes that shorten every time a cell divides. Their length is considered a measure of cellular age.
Between three and five years later, 250 of the women came back so researchers could calculate their risk of developing heart disease in the next decade – known as their Framingham score. This takes account of risk factors such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body weight.
As expected, the team found that women with lower egg counts had higher Framingham scores, but they also had shorter telomeres. Previous studies have suggested that shorter telomeres are linked with heart disease, dementia and cancer, and also with a shorter lifespan. So women with fewer eggs may also be at higher risk of other age-related diseases, although epidemiological studies will be needed to bolster this link."
(The Framingham Risk Score is a gender-specific algorithm used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk of an individual. The Framingham Risk Score was first developed based on data obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, to estimate the 10-year risk of developing coronary heart disease. In order to assess the 10-year cardiovascular disease risk, cerebrovascular events, peripheral artery disease and heart failure were subsequently added as disease outcomes for the 2008 Framingham Risk Score, on top of coronary heart disease.)
May 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word purple prose
subtitle: China's president-in-waiting turns to purple prose during populist speech aimed at top and bottom of Communist party
May 11, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word unicorpse
(Noun) A private technology company that was formerly valued at $1bn or more (slang, vulg)
Silicon Valley is nothing if not inventive, and that applies to language as much as product development. Three years ago, Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, coined “unicorn” to capture the phenomenon of private technology companies achieving valuations of $1bn and more. She likened these desirable ventures to the mythical horned creature often represented in the shape of a horse.
More recently, in response to the declines in value of some unicorns, Ms Lee has concocted a less mythological variant: the “unicorpse”. It is one of a number of unicorn-related neologisms, including “My Little Pony” (a start-up worth $10m or more), the “Centaur” ($100m start-up) and the impressive “quinquagintacorn” (you work it out*).
--Financial TImes (article available for subscribers only)
April 29, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word spirit animal
The ancient concept of animal guides, particularly prominent in some indigenous, especially Native American, religions and cultures, was adopted in Pagan and Wiccan spirituality in the 1990s. In these contexts, spirit animals are meant literally, referring to spiritual guides or totems that take the form of animals.
April 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word tzitzit
No pronunciation available.
April 24, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word magnetotail
An odd-looking word.
April 23, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word bilby
Please do not kick or pound me if your pellets don't fall immediately. And don't press my buttons over and over. Be patient and you will receive your due reward.
April 16, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word chlamydia
"Australia's iconic koala has a problem that keeps boomeranging back.
Chlamydia, a type of sexually transmitted disease also found in humans, has hit wild koalas hard, with some wild populations seeing a 100 percent infection rate." --National Geographic, 14 April 2018
April 15, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word autopsied
Likewise, necropsy is also necropsied. Most users seem to prefer the noun form. "The pathologist decided to forego a necropsy of the dead bilby on the side of the road."
April 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word schollard
A corruption, perhaps... but vulgar? Words have feelings, too. Down with word-shaming!
April 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word technosphere
Peter Haff coined the term technosphere (in 2014). He defines the technosphere as “the global, energy consuming techno-social system that is comprised of humans, technological artifacts, and technological systems, together with the links, protocols, and information that bind all these parts together.”
Basically, the technosphere is the vast, sprawling combination of humanity and its technology. Haff argues that in our thousands of years of harnessing technology – including the first technologies like stone tools, wheels and crops – the technology itself has basically begun to act practically independently, creating a new sphere (i.e., like the biosphere or atmosphere or lithosphere), but like nothing the planet has ever seen before.
“I would argue that domesticated animals and plants, as well as humans, are parts of the technosphere,” said Haff. “These are in effect manufactured by the technosphere for its own use on the basis of genetic blueprints appropriated from the biosphere.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2015/oct/20/the-four-horsemen-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction
April 2, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word blackbirding
Blackbirding has continued to the present day in developing countries. One example is the kidnapping and coercion at gunpoint of indigenous people in Central America to work as plantation laborers in the region, where they are exposed to heavy pesticide loads and do backbreaking work for very little pay.
April 1, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word blockade mutton
Dog meat has been eaten in every major German crisis at least since the time of Frederick the Great, and is commonly referred to as "blockade mutton."
--GERMANY: Dachshunds Are Tenderer, 25 November 1940. Time Magazine.
To a war menu which already included fish-fed poultry, decrepit horses, goats, and numerous zoo animals, Germany last week added those of its dogs which had not been killed by an earlier decree to save food. A new law, effective January 1, 1940, states that dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, badgers and wild hogs have been legalized as meat. After being inspected for trichina, their carcasses will be dressed, stamped and distributed to butchers for rationing to general consumers.
March 31, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word glowworms
bilby: Have you ever visited Hastings Caves south of Hobart, or Mole Creek Karst National Park west of Launceston? I read somewhere that these sites have colonies of glowworms to see.
March 30, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word cockalorum
1. A little man with an unduly high opinion of himself. 2. The game leapfrog.
"A cockalorum playing cockalorum."
March 28, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word chittering-bite
See also chittering-crust and chittering-piece.
March 28, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word naunt
Mine aunt?
March 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Caspering
The newest addition to the modern dating lexicon. Named after the fictional child phantom, Casper, it’s a friendly alternative to ghosting. Instead of ignoring someone, you’re honest about how you feel, and let them down gently before disappearing from their lives.
March 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word sidebarring
Repeatedly checking one's phone and/or sending messages to others while on a date. Considered rude.
March 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Marleying
A term that refers to the awkward situation in which an ex-partner gets in touch with their ex out of nowhere, such as at Christmas time.
March 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word shaveducking
A dating term that refers to someone worrying that they're only attracted to a man because of his beard.
March 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word breadcrumbing
A dating term that refers to leading someone on with no intention of getting serious.
March 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word thraward
Splendid, qms! Rocky and Bullwinkle Effect.
March 18, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word flavor pairing
If it will keep your ears from convulsing, see flavour pairing.
*insincere smirk*
March 14, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word flavor pairing
How about incorrect change and a swift kick?
March 14, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word collectanea
I had to resort to the pronunciation feature for this one.
March 14, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word flavor pairing
"...the idea that the more “aromatic” (i.e. smelly) organic compounds foods share, the better they will taste together."
"...dishes whose ingredients share few compounds in common can also taste delicious; a 2011 analysis of more than 50,000 recipes found that while cuisines from Western Europe and North America tended to use ingredients with shared compounds, ingredients from East Asian recipes tended not to."
--An Illustrated Guide to Matching Foods' Flavor Molecules, Wired, 6 March 2018,
https://www.wired.com/story/the-flavor-matrix/
March 13, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word intertwined names
"On July 3, 2006, Amanda gave birth to fraternal twin girls, and the ecstatic parents gave their daughters intertwined names: One would be Millie Marcia Madge Biggs, the other Marcia Millie Madge Biggs."
March 12, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word flogger
In Australia, the term "flogger" is sometimes used rather than "pom-pom". Floggers are very large, heavy pom-poms in the team's colors. They sometimes require more than one person to lift them, and they are waved about when a goal is scored.
Floggers are an important part of Australian rules football culture and cheer-squads.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Richmond_Cheer_Squad_Rd_21_2006_closeup.jpg
March 6, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word chase-flying
"This is the first time I've seen a willet chase-flying insects."
March 5, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word prognathous
See lantern-jawed
March 5, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word dingo kidneys
Those crazy, non-explicit Australians.
March 5, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word ptisan
Any word that starts with pt is already more interesting.
February 28, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word umpolished
Umpolished has been looked up 393 times. Logical assumption: Umpolished has been selected by RANDOM WORD 393 times.
February 27, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word curiologic
How rude!
February 27, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word neckbeard
Hmm. I've only encountered this word used pejoratively.
A scraggly growth of hair on a man's neck and chin, indicative of poor grooming.
"I can picture myself wearing these clothes a week from now, bits of food caught in my overgrown neckbeard and man bun."
February 25, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word taint
"In an interview with GQ magazine, the "Mummy" star said the alleged incident took place during HFPA luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003. He alleged that former HFPA president, Philip Berk, came to shake his hand when he was leaving the crowded room. "His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around," Fraser said, adding that in that moment he was overcome with panic and fear."I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry," Fraser added."
February 23, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word rangle
I prefer to do my rangling and ranging in a regular manner.
February 23, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word knowledge debt
Information which is available and relevant to a decision or action, but which is undiscovered or ignored, bringing unnecessary risk to the decision or action.
February 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Rafferty's rules
Australian and New Zealand slang:
no rules at all
February 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word leg-rope
If a leg-rope doesn't work, try an ear-rope.
February 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word pies
A certain frog makes up a simple word and it never goes away.
February 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word relationshit
Oh, my.
February 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word pies
I found a vintage stamp from India with NINE PIES inked across the stamp. Now I understand what it meant.
pies: A former monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one-twelfth of an anna.
February 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word leg-rope
NZ, Australian
1(in surfing) a rope attached to a surfboard and tied to the surfer's ankle to prevent the board being washed away by the surf.
In order to relocate a pesky, trespassing bilby, a leg-rope expert was hired.
February 20, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word one-horse
Hence Petty
February 17, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word tsutsumu
What exactly is an appropriate manner?
February 17, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the list bits-and-pieces
You're a creative genius, madmouth.
February 2, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word deadname
COMMENT: she is nothing!. shes famous for a sex video and having lip injections and butt implants. Its too bad she breaths the same air as everyone else, such a waste. Well the whole clan is, from Bruce Jenner aka "caitlyn" to kylie and kendall Jenner. I know i should just skip over anything about them, but i had to see about her sending her haters stuff. I think its just for attention.
REPLY: There was literally no need to deadname Caitlyn in your little rant. If you don't like the Kardashians then don't click on the articles.
(I did not correct any of the punctuation, etc, even though it was tempting.)
Would someone please define deadname? I'm a bit confused. The Twitter feed is all over the place with examples, but none nail it.
February 2, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word coffin-ripe
At what point does one become coffin-overripe?
January 27, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word semantic typo
Forgot about this! Thanks for reintroducing it.
January 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word cluttering
In cluttering, the breakdowns in clarity that accompany a perceived rapid and/or irregular speech rate are often characterized by deletion and/or collapsing of syllables (e.g., "I wanwatevision") and/or omission of word endings (e.g., "Turn the televisoff"). The breakdowns in fluency are often characterized by more typical disfluencies (e.g., revisions, interjections) and/or pauses in places in sentences not expected grammatically, such as "I will go to the/store and buy apples".--http://www.asha.org/
January 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word nurse name
A well-known example of a nurse name (from a surname) is "Chips" (Professor Arthur Chipping from the 1969 film "Good-bye, Mr. Chips".)
Prior to Professor Chipping's marriage, however, and his subsequent personality change, his pupils called him "Ditchy," short for "dull as ditch-water."
Not sure if "Ditchy" is a "nurse name" since it isn't a term of endearment, but it is a nickname of sorts.
Ha, regarding your Great Aunt Lalla. My guess is that numerous "nurse names" found their origins via baby talk or a toddler's (temporary) fluency disorder.
See also sobriquet.
January 26, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word nurse name
A nurse name is a hypocorism, a diminutive form of a name. Hypocorisms include pet names or calling names, often a diminutive or augmentative form of a word or a given name when used as a nickname or term of endearment.
January 24, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word mock marking
"English teachers spent the bulk of year 10 teaching and marking coursework essays, and didn’t get on to doing mocks until year 11. I was really pleased when coursework was abolished as I felt it would free up so much more time for teachers to plan and teach, instead of mark and administer coursework. However, it does appear as though a lot of this gained time has now been replaced with equally time-consuming mock marking with mocks being introduced more and more in year 10. Many schools have three assessment points a year. If you were to do two mock papers three times a year in both year 10 and 11, then a teacher who taught one year 10 class and one year 11 class would spend 120 hours of the year marking GCSE mocks. That’s three normal working weeks, or nearly 10% of the contracted 1,265 annual hours of directed time."
What are the definitions for mocks and mock marking in the context above?
January 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Target
The retail store Target is sometimes referred to as TAR-zhay. It's supposed to sound French, and thus high-class. This unofficial name change, initiated by customers, took place around the time Target began using some well-known designer(s) to spiffy up their low-priced wares. The term has been used by The New York Times.
January 22, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word glisten worm
Chaetoderma elegans is a species of glisten worm, a kind of shell-less, worm-like mollusk in the family Chaetodermidae. This species is found in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. --wikipedia
January 21, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Cincinnati oysters
Here's an archived copy of Clapin's Americanisms, 1902:
https://archive.org/stream/cu31924104766328/cu31924104766328_djvu.txt
January 16, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word aporrhipsis
The meaning I found was along the lines of frantically removing one's clothes (such as one's pajamas) during a feverish delirium.
The Coxe meaning sounds like a disgruntled fashionista.
January 14, 2018
vendingmachine commented on the word Christmas book flood
An Icelandic tradition known as jólabókaflóð (Christmas book flood). Books are exchanged as Christmas Eve gifts and the rest of the night is spent reading and eating konfekt (filled chocolates) and sipping jólabland, an orange fizzy ale.
Iceland sells the greatest number of books per capita in the world – and most of them are sold in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The book catalog Bókatíðindi is published each November and lists every published book available during the Christmas season.
December 15, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word sheetcaking
Heal your feelings by eating sheetcake.
December 15, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word sheetcaking
Wordnik is mentioned in this article about sheetcaking.
"Sheetcaking: Seriously?" Chronicle of Higher Education.
"It has made its way into discussions on Wordnik and more than a dozen tweets, though as yet without a definition."
December 14, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word flydick
"Why them birds, bein' mostly nuts, is so nervous they can't read, nor work, nor do nothin' to ease the bugs that is bitin' their noodles. That's where this strongarm stuff comes in, and the flydicks knows it."
--Them Was The Good Old Days, W.L. Purcell, 1922.
November 1, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word purply
... a purple BLEE?
October 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word heel
In professional wrestling, a heel is a wrestler who is villainous or a "bad guy", who is booked (scripted) by the promotion to be in the position of being an antagonist. They are typically opposed by their polar opposites called faces (the heroic protagonist or "good guy" characters). In American wrestling, it was common for the faces to be American and the heels to be portrayed as foreign.
In order to gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules, but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as arrogance, cowardice or contempt for the audience. Many heels do both, cheating as well as behaving nastily. No matter the type of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role, as heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face or the other way around or to make the wrestler do something even more despicable to encourage heel heat.
August 31, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word quantum foam
"Armed with theoretical microscopes, quantum physicists keep on magnifying, gazing deeper and deeper into empty space until out of nothing, they suddenly see something. That something is a roiling collection of virtual particles, collectively called quantum foam.... According to quantum physicists, virtual particles exist briefly as fleeting fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime, like bubbles in beer foam." "Is Space Full of Quantum Foam?", LiveScience, 5 August 2017.
August 7, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word housekeeping gene
In molecular biology, housekeeping genes are typically constitutive genes that are required for the maintenance of basic cellular function and are expressed in all cells of an organism under normal and pathophysiological conditions.
August 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word scientific racism
"The scientific study of hereditary disease in Jewish populations was initially hindered by scientific racism, which is based on racial supremacism."
August 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word CASK
"Soon criminologists started to take killer nurses seriously. In 1995, British forensic chemist Alexander Forrest reviewed about 40 examples of the type and suggested that one or two new cases might be seen each year in the United States. He proposed calling these murders “CASKs,” for carer-associated serial killings, and noted that “the numbers of patients involved are not trivial.” --"The Killer Nurse", Slate, 2017 July 24. source
July 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word squaghetti
Another name for spaghetti squash. I found this word while looking at a recipe for spaghetti squash pizza crust.
July 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word eight
St Edmund's College Boat Club (SECBC) is the boat club for members of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
SECBC uses the Cambridge '99 RC boathouse for training and storing its boats. The club has two boats, 'Lily' a men's eight and 'Dotty' a women's eight.
June 19, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word ruby-topaz
I concur. Check out the hummingbird images!
June 18, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word █████
orange IS the new black, after all.
June 18, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Book Book
Don't forget the free bookmark that comes with your Book Book book.
June 12, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Book Book
Book Book is a rural community in the central east part of the Riverina. It is situated about 12 km (7 mi) north from Kyeamba and 15 km (9 mi) south from Ladysmith.
Book Book exists now only through a set of old tennis courts and the telephone exchange that sits just off the Tumbarumba road.
(Book Book is considered a New South Wales "ghost town")
The Book Book Public School was discontinued on 27 October 1989.
June 12, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list food-that-shall-not-be-named
According to a common misconception, century eggs are or were once prepared by soaking eggs in horse urine. The myth may have arisen from the urine-like odor of ammonia and other amines produced by the chemical reaction used to make century eggs. However, this myth is unfounded as horse urine has a pH ranging from 7.5 to 7.9 and therefore would not work for this process.
In Thai and Lao, the common word for century egg translates to "horse urine egg", due to the distinctive urine-like odor of the delicacy. --Wikipedia
June 7, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word coywolves
Coywolves are not ‘shy wolves’—they are coyote-wolf hybrids (with some dog mixed in) and now number in the millions.
The hybrid, or Canis latrans var, is about 55 pounds heavier than pure coyotes, with longer legs, a larger jaw, smaller ears and a bushier tail. It is part eastern wolf, part wester wolf, western coyote and with some dog (large breeds like Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds), reports The Economist. Coywolves today are on average a quarter wolf and a tenth dog.
June 4, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word luthier
The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or violin family instruments) is referred to as a luthier.
May 25, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word conker
n. A snail-shell or a horse-chestnut used in a boys' game, in which the object is to break the snail-shell or horse-chestnut by striking it, with another.
Wow. So easy even boys are able to grasp the rules. Must be an easy game.
May 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word genuphobia
Genuphobia (from Latin word genu meaning "knee") is the fear of one's own knees or someone else's knees or the act of kneeling.
The phobia could be the result of a negative experience in a person’s life that was associated with knees. The discomfort at the sight of one's knees could be the result of the person’s parents or themselves wearing exclusively clothing that covered the knees growing up, therefore making the person unfamiliar with the sight of them. It could be the result of a traumatic injury that left a scar on the individual’s knee or on someone that they know.
Some people fear kneeling because it is a form of submission. Symptoms include but are not limited to becoming sick to the stomach, excessive sweating, dry mouth, and anxiety when presented with a situation including knees or kneeling. Sufferers fear the uncomfortable feeling they experience at the sight of knees or they fear the recollection of the injury and the pain associated with it.
May 13, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word bilbies
Bilbies are never out of work. Being cute is a full-time job.
May 12, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list silly-silly-words
Many of these words border on "annoying".
May 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Oddest Title of the Year
I tried listing the name of the actual prize; however, I kept getting a 404 whenever it came time to add a comment.
The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, originally known as the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the Frankfurt Book Fair,1 commonly known as the Diagram Prize for short, is a humorous literary award that is given annually to a book with an unusual title.
Past winners:
--Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
--The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution
--The Joy of Chickens
--Last Chance at Love – Terminal Romances
--How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
--The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
--Developments in Dairy Cow Breeding: New Opportunities to Widen the Use of Straw
--Living with Crazy Buttocks
--The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
--Bombproof Your Horse
--Too Naked For the Nazis
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Darwin Awards
The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own actions.
The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993 and followed up by a series of books starting in 2000, authored by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states, "In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival."
Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies; however, the site notes: "Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously." The candidate is disqualified, though, if "innocent bystanders", who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process.
The Darwin Awards books state that an attempt is made to disallow known urban legends from the awards, but some older "winners" have been "grandfathered" to keep their awards. The Darwin Awards site does try to verify all submitted stories, but many similar sites, and the vast number of circulating "Darwin awards" emails, are largely fictional.
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Pigasus Award
The Pigasus Award is the name of an annual tongue-in-cheek award presented by noted skeptic James Randi. The award seeks to expose parapsychological, paranormal or psychic frauds that Randi has noted over the previous year. Randi usually makes his announcements of the awards from the previous year on April 1 (April Fools Day).
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Stella Awards
The Stella Awards are awards that were given between 2002 and 2007 to people who filed "outrageous and frivolous lawsuits". The awards were named after Stella Liebeck who, in 1992, ordered a cup of McDonald's coffee at a drive thru, put it in between her knees while sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson's stationary car, and attempted to remove the lid in order to add cream and sugar. The coffee, 180 to 190 °F (82 to 88 °C), spilled from the cup, causing third-degree burns to her thighs and genitals; after McDonald's refused to pay for her skin grafts, and rejected several attempts at mediation and settlement, Liebeck sued. The awards were an offshoot of the weekly news column This is True written by Colorado writer Randy Cassingham, which featured "wacky-yet-true" news stories.5 The awards were documented on a website and in a 2005 book, both known as The True Stella Awards. There are also a number of false Stella Awards circulating on the Internet.
In July 2012 Cassingham sent a mail to the True Stella Awards mailing list, announcing that after several abortive attempts to restart the list he came to the conclusion that he had said everything about the subject of frivolous lawsuits that he had intended to say, and so was shutting down the Stella Awards.
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Golden Raspberry Awards
The Golden Raspberry Awards often shortened to Razzies and Razzie Awards, is an award in recognition of the worst in film. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film-industry veterans, John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, the annual Razzie Awards ceremony in Los Angeles precedes the corresponding Academy Awards ceremony by one day. The term raspberry in the name is used in its irreverent sense, as in "blowing a raspberry". The awards themselves are in the form of a "golf ball-sized raspberry" which sits atop a Super 8 mm film reel, the whole of which is spray-painted gold.
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Bad Sex in Fiction Award
Literary Review is well known for its annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Each year since 1993, Literary Review has presented the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author who produces the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. The award itself is in the form of a "semi-abstract trophy representing sex in the 1950s", which depicts a naked woman draped over an open book. The award was originally established by Rhoda Koenig, a literary critic, and Auberon Waugh, then the magazine's editor.
The award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Bent Spoon Award
The Bent Spoon Award is an award given by Australian Skeptics, "presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle". The award is named as allusion to the practice of spoon bending by supposed psychics.
Australian Skeptics facetiously describes the trophy as a piece of gopher wood supposedly from the Noah’s Ark, upon which is affixed a spoon that was rumored to have been used at the Last Supper. The spoon was bent by energies unknown to science and was gold-plated through an Atlantean process.1 Although established in 1982 and first awarded in 1983, only one copy of the trophy exists, as "anyone wishing to acquire the trophy must remove it from our keeping by paranormal means" and no winner has yet overcome this obstacle.
The winner should either be an Australian or have carried out their activities in Australia.
The New Zealand Skeptics have a similar Bent Spoon Award.
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Ig Nobel Prizes
The Ig Nobel Prizes are parodies of the Nobel Prizes given out each autumn for 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. They have been awarded since 1991, with the stated aim to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". The awards can be veiled criticism or satire but are also used to point out that even absurd-sounding avenues of research can yield useful knowledge.
May 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word banana messenger
Banana messengers or fruit messengers were agents sent on US railroads to accompany shipments of bananas and other fruit. They were accorded special ticket rates, similar to those for railway employees and clergy, as late as the 1960s. The tickets were not honored on some premium trains. Reportedly, the reduced rate also applied to the return trip (sans bananas).
The name was also used to refer to some cabooses. Described in IC 9650-9956, these were steel underframe drover's cabooses built between 1897 and 1913, and reclassified as banana messengers sometime between 1955 and 1963. The last five were scrapped or sold between 1963 and 1971.
May 5, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word dégringoler
This is not the meaning I expected. I figured it had something to do with a gringo changing into something else, and the dégringoler was the one to facilitate that change.
verb intransitive dégringoler /degʀɛ̃gɔle/
=chuter faire une chute précipitée
to tumble , to fall
verb transitive―
=dévaler descendre très rapidement
to race down
Le voleur dégringole les étages de l'immeuble pour échapper aux policiers.
The thief is racing down the stairs in the building to escape from the police.
May 5, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word potvaliancy
courage or bravery occasioned by drunkenness; Dutch courage. — potvaliant , adj . See also potvalor, potvalency
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Owenism
The social and political theories of Robert Owen, an early 19th-century British reformer whose emphasis upon cooperative education and living led to the founding of communal experiments, including the ill-fated community of New Harmony, Indiana, purchased from the Rappites. — Owenite , n.
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word arctophilist
What about chained bears?
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word tyrosemiophily
The collecting of Camembert cheese labels. Collecting cheese labels, in general, is laclabphily.
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word laclabphily
To specifically collect Camembert cheese labels is tyrosemiophily.
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word errinophily
The collecting of stamps other than postage stamps (green stamps, revenue/tax stamps).
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word brandophily
The collecting of cigar bands. Also known as cigrinophily.
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word argyrothecology
The collecting of money boxes, as those found in churches.
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list and-the-last-first
Mollusque has addictive lists. Such a learned fellow, and with a nice sense of humor to boot. I still miss all the camaraderie from the days when Wordnik was Wordie. (I wasn't known as vendingmachine around here during the Wordie days.)
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word maledictive
"No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bog oak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave—all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time." --Ulysses, James Joyce
May 3, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list aarne-thompson-classification-system-for-folktales
Thanks for running with this, ru. Finding out about the classification system was about all I could muster. This list idea would have languished without you.
May 2, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word lunar crater
Abetti is a lunar crater that has been completely submerged by mare lavas. It forms a 'ghost crater' in the surface, showing only a curved rise where the rim is located.
May 1, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word masks
Mexican wrestling is characterized by colorful masks, rapid sequences of holds and maneuvers, as well as "high-flying" maneuvers, some of which have been adopted in the United States. The wearing of masks has developed special significance, and matches are sometimes contested in which the loser must permanently remove his mask, which is a wager with a high degree of weight attached.
May 1, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word ampelography
..for Virginia-based vineyard consultant Lucie Morton, a world-renowned ampelographer, it’s still crucial to know how to distinguish vines the old-fashioned way: by sight and touch. It took Morton years to learn ampelography, a skill that few viticulturists in today’s high-tech world still work to master. “It’s like speaking a new language: practice makes perfect,” she says. “Ampelography is really hard, and it takes a trained eye. I would compare it to what a sommelier goes through in identifying wines blind. It takes interest, practice, focus. You build on your knowledge, just like you do with wine tasting, layering your experiences.”
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word copyfraud
Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free.
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word copyfraud
The term "copyfraud" was coined by Jason Mazzone, a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois. Because copyfraud carries little or no oversight by authorities and few legal consequences, it exists on a massive scale, with millions of works in the public domain falsely labeled as copyrighted. Payments are therefore unnecessarily made by businesses and individuals for licensing fees. Mazzone states that copyfraud stifles valid reproduction of free material, discourages innovation and undermines free speech rights. Other legal scholars have suggested public and private remedies, and a few cases have been brought involving copyfraud.
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list cryptic
cryptic sexual dimorphism
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word eclipse plumage
Most ducks shed their body feathers twice each year. Nearly all drakes lose their bright plumage after mating, and for a few weeks resemble females. This hen-like appearance is called the eclipse plumage. The return to breeding coloration varies in species and individuals of each species.
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word aarne-thompson-uther classification system
A quantitative study, published by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and anthropologist Jamshid J. Tehrani in 2016, tried to evaluate the time of emergence for the "Tales of Magic" (ATU 300–ATU 749), based on a phylogenetic model] They found four of them to belong to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stratum of magic tales, namely:
ATU 328 The Boy Steals Ogre's Treasure,
ATU 330 The Smith and the Devil (= KHM 81a),
ATU 402 The Animal Bride (= KHM 63 and 106), and
ATU 554 The Grateful Animals (= The White Snake, KHM 17, and The Queen Bee, KHM 62).
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word aarne-thompson-uther classification system
The Aarne–Thompson classification systems are indices used to classify folktales: the Aarne–Thompson Motif-Index (catalogued by alphabetical letters followed by numerals), the Aarne–Thompson Tale Type Index (cataloged by AT or AaTh numbers), and the Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system (developed in 2004 and cataloged by ATU numbers). The indices are used in folkloristics to organize, classify, and analyze folklore narratives and are essential tools for folklorists because, as Alan Dundes explained in 1997 about the first two indices, "the identification of folk narratives through motif and/or tale type numbers has become an international sine qua non among bona fide folklorists"
April 30, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list never-use--word
Not a single word but I never use:
"... at the end of the day ..."
April 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word hidden-treasures
What hidden treasures are waiting to be found in a beard? Food crumbs?
April 21, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word sorn
To obtain food, lodging, etc, from others by taking advantage of their generosity; to impose in order to obtain hospitality; sponge.
April 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word sprong
Spring has sprong. Or is it sprung? Both sound unspringlike.
April 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word wellcurb
A stone border at the top of a well.
April 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word fuscous
"The forewings are ochreous-white, strongly suffused with deep gray. The inner angle, veins, a longitudinal dash in the cell and a series of spots around the termen are all blackish fuscous. The hindwings are pale smoky gray."
April 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word termen
"The forewings are ochreous-white, strongly suffused with deep gray. The inner angle, veins, a longitudinal dash in the cell and a series of spots around the termen are all blackish fuscous. The hindwings are pale smoky gray."
April 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word ochreous
"The forewings are ochreous-white, strongly suffused with deep gray. The inner angle, veins, a longitudinal dash in the cell and a series of spots around the termen are all blackish fuscous. The hindwings are pale smoky gray."
April 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word inmyendo
a suppository or an enema
April 16, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Wapasha II
Wapasha (II) (b.1768–1855) was the name of a Mdewakanton Dakota chief. He sided with the United States in the War of 1812 and the Black Hawk War.
April 16, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the user voa4you
SPAM
April 15, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the user Trp19430
The only idiot here is the one making statements such as yours.
April 15, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word needle vending machine
To provide sterile needles for drug users?
April 14, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list hail-size-descriptors
I create open lists because others invariably enrich those lists. Kindly add graupel, ru.
April 14, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list words-ending-with--gator
@kalayzich. This is an open list. I welcome your additions. What's anal retentive about your suggestions? Thank you.
April 14, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list hail-size-descriptors
.50 Marble, moth ball
.88 Nickel
1.00 Quarter
1.25 Half dollar
1.50 Walnut, ping pong
1.75 Golf ball
2.00 Hen egg
2.50 Tennis ball
2.75 Baseball
3.00 Tea cup
4.00 Softball
4.50 Grapefruit
I'm not sure what hail larger than a grapefruit is called. Maybe hail that size has never been reported.
April 14, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word subacute sclerosing panencephalitis
SSPE. A slow virus infection of the brain caused by a defective form of the measles virus that occurs many years after meales.
April 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word Urechis caupo
A free-living burrowing marine worm that lives in tidal mudflats.
April 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word trichinosis
A disease of muscle caused by a parasitic roundworm and transmitted by eating undercooked pork or bear meat.
April 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word acute respiratory distress syndrome
ARDS. A disorder of the lung tissue caused by infection, shock, burns, or other insults in which the capillaries become leaky and the air spaces fill with fluid. With ARDS, the lung tissue loses its watertight seal and becomes soggy; it can't absorb gases, even with 100 percent oxygen on a ventilator. Once a patient develops ARDS, it's usually the point of no return.
April 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word sparganosis
An invasive infection by a larval tapeworm, often of the eye, contracted by applying a poultice made of raw frog flesh.
April 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word earage
Only dogs? What about other animals... bilbies?
April 2, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word bilby magic
Can't make up stuff like this.
bilby magic.
March 31, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word carillonneur
See also carillonist.
March 28, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the list marbling
I love unusual and niche-y topic lists such as this. Jauks darbs, ruz!
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word brasero
a place where criminals and heretics are burned.
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word diribitory
place where pay is distributed to soldiers
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word lococession
the place where alms are deposited.
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word lavadero
the place for washing gold ore.
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word volery
A place where aircraft are repaired.
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word thutter
That's how I purr. When I'm really purring along, I'll release two urinal cakes for the price of one. Tasty!
March 22, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word constructor
People who make crossword puzzles are called constructors. All crossword puzzles used to be laid out by hand. Today many crossword puzzle constructors use computer software to assist in the puzzle layout. Crossword puzzles that end up in large newspapers or in syndication are controlled by an editor. Constructors submit their puzzles to a crossword editor and the editor decides which puzzles are selected (and for what day since crosswords raise in difficulty through the week).
March 20, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word rise and shine it's time to make the doughnuts
While you're waiting for ruzuzu, may I share a doughnut hole with you?
March 17, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word commensalism
mutualism vs commensalism vs parasitism
March 9, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word blanketflower
a plant of the genus Gaillardia.
March 8, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word mutualism
A parasite is no doubt altering bilby's dopaminergic neurotransmissions resulting in neuropsychiatric symptoms, including a change in predator vigilance. it's also entirely possible that parasites have affected bilby's sexual arousal pathways when he's exposed to muesli bars soaked in dingo urine.
March 7, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word parasitic manipulation
See mutualism. I'm not sure how an ant benefits from parasitic manipulation in the case of ant brain control (caused by a fungus).
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word mutualism
Big surprise that zombie ants originated from a comment by bilby. I'm guessing there is a specific parasite out there that is manipulating bilby's brain into performing erratic behaviors so he'll get the attention of a bilby-eating predator (the next intended host).
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word pig-swimming tourism
Wildlife tourism—which accounts for 20 to 40 percent of all tourism worldwide—is controversial, and can be harmful to animals. After being accused of promoting such attractions, TripAdvisor halted sales to them in 2016.
Many tourists can’t tell if the places they visit hurt wildlife, according to a 2015 ranking of wildlife attractions around the world. Every year, two to four million tourists pay for experiences that aren’t good for animal welfare or conservation.
According to that ranking, dolphin tourism and shark cage diving, both popular in the Bahamas, have negative impacts on wildlife.
But Bethune hopes that, if the proper changes are made, pig-swimming tourism will continue to thrive.
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word suicidal crickets
Hairworms have a perpetual challenge: They infect landlubbing insects like crickets, but the parasites must make their way to an aquatic habitat in order to reproduce.
Researchers at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique figured out how they accomplish this feat. Hairworms produce mind-controlling chemicals that cause their cricket host to move toward light. Because water bodies reflect moonlight, this often sends crickets toward lakes and streams.
The crickets jump in and drown, and the hairworms emerge, ready to find their next victim.
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word fishy dance of death
The fluke Euhaplorchis californiensis begins its life in an ocean-dwelling horn snail, where it produces larvae that then seek their next host, a killifish.
Once it finds a fish, the parasite latches on to its gills and makes its way to the brain. But this isn't its final stop.
The fluke needs to get inside the gut of a water bird in order to reproduce. So inside the killifish's brain, the fluke releases chemicals that cause the fish to shimmy, jerk, and jump.
Jenny Shaw, then at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues found that the parasite decreases serotonin and increases dopamine levels in the fish's brain. The switch in this brain chemistry stimulates the fish to swim and behave more aggressively.
These moves attract the attention of birds, which may eat the fish—and the flukes. The flukes mate, and their eggs are released back into the water in the bird's droppings to be eaten by horn snails and start the cycle anew.
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word mind-controlling slime balls
As an adult, the lancet liver fluke—a type of flatworm—resides in the livers of grazing mammals such as cows.
Its eggs are excreted in the host's feces, which are then eaten by snails. After the eggs hatch inside the snail, the snail creates protective cysts around the parasites and coughs them up in balls of mucus.
These fluke-laden slime balls are then consumed by ants. When the flukes wiggle their way into an ant's brain, they cause the insect to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and sit motionless, where it's most likely to be eaten by a grazing mammal. That way, the liver fluke can complete its life cycle.
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word zombie cockroaches
Females of the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra.
When the female jewel wasp is ready to procreate, she finds a cockroach to serve as a living nursery for her young.
First, she injects a toxin into the roach that paralyzes its front legs. Then the wasp strikes again in the roach's head. Frederic Libersat of Ben-Gurion University in Israel and colleagues discovered that the venom targets a specific area of the brain responsible for initiating movement.
Stripped of its ability to move of its own free will, the cockroach can be grabbed by the antenna and guided to a burrow, where the wasp will lay her egg on the victim and entomb them together. (Read more about how zombie roaches lose free will because of wasp venom.)
The wasp larva slowly consumes the cockroach for several days before pupating in its abdomen, emerging as an adult about a month later.
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word web-slinging wasps
Females of the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra.
After living off its host for a few weeks, the wasp larva injects a chemical into the spider that makes it build a strange, new kind of web, unlike anything it's built before.
But this new web isn't for the spider: It's meant to support the cocoon that the wasp larva will build after finally killing and eating the spider.
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word parasitic manipulation
Normally a rat or mouse will keep to the shadows, thus avoiding cats. But when they are infected by toxoplasma the parasite completely changes their behavior. An infected mouse is attracted to the smell of cat urine and will move out into the open, displaying reckless behavior. The reason, of course, is the parasite wants the mouse to be eaten by a cat, so it can then infect its new host.
Humans also get infected by toxoplasma, though it is only really serious when a woman is pregnant as toxoplasma can damage the unborn child. But new research suggests that toxoplasma may influence us in more subtle ways.
We know, for example, that people who have antibodies to toxoplasma are more than twice as likely to be involved in a traffic accident. It could be that the parasite is making us, like rodents, behave in a more reckless fashion. Research also suggests it may slow down reaction times, with the intention of making us more vulnerable to large predators. Either way it is a chilling thought that parasites may be influencing how we behave in ways we do not yet begin to understand.
-How Parasites Manipulate Us, BBC News, 19 Feb 2014
March 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word attemptress
@bilby. You won me over when you mentioned the dwarf poinsettia leaves.
February 21, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the user hometurphindia
When performance of polishing of body is underway, is scent of lemon Pledge® used without flaw? I require utmost effective polish service with expediency and professional manner.
February 13, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word exobiont
--Lobster olfactory genomics, Integr Comp Biol (2006) 46 (6): 940-947.
--Lobster olfactory genomics, Integr Comp Biol (2006) 46 (6): 940-947.
February 6, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word unikernel
According to twitter, there's the term exokernel as well.
"I will definitely be watching unikernel and exokernel approaches closely in the next years, especially for security."
January 31, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word tone policing
An anti-debate appeal based on genetic fallacy, which attempts to detract from the validity of a statement by attacking the tone rather than the message.
In Bailey Poland's book, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, she suggests that tone policing is frequently aimed at women and derails or silences opponents lower on the "privilege ladder".
In changing their tactics to criticizing how the women spoke instead of what the women said, the men created an environment in which the outcome of a dispute was not decided on the merits of an argument but on whether the men chose to engage with the arguments in good faith.
— Bailey Poland, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, page 46
While anyone can engage in tone policing, it is frequently aimed at women as a way to prevent a woman from making a point in the discussion.
— Bailey Poland, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, page 47
January 31, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word blesseds
Beatified individuals or blesseds according to the Catholic Church.
January 19, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word unword
EVERY year the German Language Society selects a word of the year and an "unword", usually something somebody said but should not have done.
January 10, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word unwordable
Nice example:
"The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can't be put into words; the most that a writer can do--and this is only rarely achieved--is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page."
January 10, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word happy number
A happy number is a number defined by the following process: Starting with any positive integer, replace the number by the sum of the squares of its digits, and repeat the process until the number either equals 1 (where it will stay), or it loops endlessly in a cycle which does not include 1. Those numbers for which this process ends in 1 are happy numbers, while those that do not end in 1 are unhappy numbers (or sad numbers).
January 4, 2017
vendingmachine commented on the word hexahectaheptacontakaidigon
672-sided polygon. For a tutorial about naming polygons see NAMING POLYGONS.
December 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word retroactive continuity
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which new information is added to already established facts in the continuity of a fictional work.
December 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word floating timeline
A floating timeline (also known as a sliding timescale) is a device used in fiction, particularly in comics and animation, to explain why characters age little or not at all over a period of time — despite real-world markers like notable events, people and technology appearing in the works and correlating with the real world. A floating timeline is a subtle form of retroactive continuity. This is seen most clearly in the case of comic book characters who debuted as teens in the 1940s or the 1960s but who are still relatively young in current comics. Events from the characters' pasts are alluded to, but they are changed from having taken place years ago to having taken place more recently. -Wikipedia
December 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word un-Australian
Why would anyone be anti-Australian? That sounds like a very un-Australian thing to be.
December 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bevy
See bevies. Ghastly!
December 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bevies
Gasp. I hate truncated, cutesy words like this. From Twitter: Join us for some seasonal bites, bevies and banter. (It doesn't sound so bad in this context, more quaint).
See bevy.
December 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word kleinhuisie
An outside lavatory / Afrikaans: literally, little house)
December 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word dumpster fire
See also Dumpster Fire.
December 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
pink puffer jacket
December 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word buttman
Apparently, buttman has no churchly duties or super-duper superpowers.
December 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pink puffer
sweet tooth fairy? pink puffer jacket
December 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pink puffer
A person where emphysema is the primary underlying pathology.
December 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word blue bloater
A person with chronic bronchitis who demonstrates evidence of cyanosis and pedal edema.
December 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bloater
A ripe corpse.
December 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mare
"Aloha is a tiny impact crater on the Moon, that lies to the northwest of the Montes Agricola ridge, on the Oceanus Procellarum. It is located near the faint terminus of a ray that crosses the mare from the southeast, originating at the crater Glushko."
December 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pisshead
Ha. Another fine example of the grab bag surprise known as RANDOM WORD.
December 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Trump
What are the odds?! I can't believe this showed up on RANDOM WORD.
November 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word allenarly
How is this word pronounced?
November 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word on wing
"...the wingspan is 10–12 millimetres (0.39–0.47 in). The adults have a bronzy or greenish metallic sheen with no markings. They fly during the day as well as after dark. They are on wing in June and July in western Europe and from May to August in North America."
November 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word god-building
"God-Building was an idea proposed by some prominent Marxists of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party which proved to be very controversial. It was inspired by Ludwig Feuerbach's 'religion of humanity' and had some precedent in the French Revolution with the 'cult of reason'. The idea consisted of the notion that in place of the abolition of religion, there should be a meta-religious context in which religions were viewed primarily in terms of the psychological and social effect of ritual, myth, and symbolism, and which attempted to harness this force for pro-communist aims, both by creating new ritual and symbolism, as well as re-interpreting existing ritual and symbolism in a socialist context. In contrast to the atheism of Lenin, the God Builders took an official position of agnosticism." --Wikipedia
November 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fly-on-the-wall
Fly-on-the-wall is a style of documentary-making used in film and television production. The name derived from the idea that events are seen candidly, as a fly on a wall might see them. In the purest form of fly-on-the-wall documentary-making, the camera crew works as unobtrusively as possible; however, it is also common for participants to be interviewed, often by an off-camera voice.
November 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pumpkin breeches
Breeches, a form of pants, came in a wide variety of styles. The most common form of breech was called the trunk hose. Trunk hose were attached to the bottom of the doublet, a padded overshirt, with points, or small ties, and bagged outward before fastening on the upper leg. They looked almost like a puffy short skirt. Trunk hose were often worn with canions, a loose-fitting hose for the upper leg. An exaggerated form of trunk hose was known as pumpkin breeches. Made with contrasting vertical panels of fabric, these breeches ballooned outward, making it look as if the wearer had a large pumpkin about his waist. Venetians were a form of breeches that reached to the knee; they were padded at the waist and upper thighand grew slimmer as they reached the knee. Pluderhose were baggy all the way from the waist to the knee, and the baggy fabric hung down to hide the fastening at the knee. The longest breeches, known as slops, reached all the way to the calf.
November 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pluderhose
Breeches, a form of pants, came in a wide variety of styles. The most common form of breech was called the trunk hose. Trunk hose were attached to the bottom of the doublet, a padded overshirt, with points, or small ties, and bagged outward before fastening on the upper leg. They looked almost like a puffy short skirt. Trunk hose were often worn with canions, a loose-fitting hose for the upper leg. An exaggerated form of trunk hose was known as pumpkin breeches. Made with contrasting vertical panels of fabric, these breeches ballooned outward, making it look as if the wearer had a large pumpkin about his waist. Venetians were a form of breeches that reached to the knee; they were padded at the waist and upper thigh and grew slimmer as they reached the knee. Pluderhose/pluderhose were baggy all the way from the waist to the knee, and the baggy fabric hung down to hide the fastening at the knee. The longest breeches, known as slops, reached all the way to the calf.
November 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word white ink tattoo
"Aren't the dermal piercings with crystal studs brilliant? Wwhite ink tattoos often look like the body-art method of branding or scarring but this is much more delicate and super feminine!"
October 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word tentpole
"“This pigment is of major importance, since it represents the bright red color desired by purchasers,” reads “Lawrie’s Meat Science,” one of the tentpole books for students and professionals in the meat industry. Some producers have even gone so far as to treat their meat with carbon dioxide gas in order to lock in this red color far past its normal lifespan."
That blood in your meat Isn't what you think it is
October 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mental hygiene
Mental health in general matters. A lot of people are ignorant about mental hygiene.
October 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word French Riviera
n. An area of the coast in southern France, popular with holiday-makers.
I've never heard of a holiday-maker. I believe I'd say holiday-goers.
October 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word data scientist
"The data scientist role was thrust into the limelight early this year when it was named 2016's "hottest job," and there's been considerable interest in the position ever since. Just recently, the White House singled data scientists out with a special appeal for help."
October 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word tampon tax
An all-male panel of lawmakers in Utah refused to end the state’s sales tax on tampons, voting 8 to 3 against the Hygiene Tax Act.
The committee (again, all men) shot down the proposal because it wanted to keep the tax system predictable and believed that allowing for subjective variations on the tax code would only cause problems, according to reports.
Specifically, state representative Ken Ivory—one of the eight “no” votes—worried that exempting tampons would open the door for all kinds of crazy requests for exemptions, according to CBS News.
October 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pink tax
"It s expensive to be a woman. Several studies have shown that choosing the shampoo bottle marketed to women (with its pastel colors and floral motif) will cost you more than reaching for the gray bottle of "men's" shampoo, even when both items are essentially the same product. It’s referred to as the “pink tax,” and Boxed, a bulk shipping retailer, just announced a discount to combat it, Entrepreneur magazine reports. If the women’s product you’re buying costs more than the men’s equivalent, Boxed will cut the price on the ladies’ version.
October 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word sardinia
@Prolagus.
“Sardinians are a group that people have considered distinct from other Europeans, and in this regard it would be interesting if they were more widely distributed in the past.”
Iceman's DNA reveals health risks and relations.
October 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word retrobituary
A remembrance of someone (particularly a historical figure or a celebrity) who died long ago. The remembrance often appears as an article in a publication and includes details about their life and death.
October 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Swainson's crow
The Swainson's crow (Euploea swainson) is a species of nymphalid butterfly in the Danainae subfamily. It is found in Indonesia and the Philippines.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Carter's little liver pills
Carter's Little Liver Pills (Carter's Little Pills after 1959) were formulated as a patent medicine by Samuel J. Carter of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1868.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Christi's big-eared bat
Christi's big-eared bat (Plecotus christii) is a species of vesper bat in the family Vespertilionidae. It is endemic to Egypt.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Pirlot's big-eared bat
Pirlot's big-eared bat (Micronycteris homezi) is a species of bat endemic to Venezuela.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Robert's snow vole
Robert's snow vole (Chionomys roberti) is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is found in Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Turkey.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Jackson's fat mouse
Jackson's fat mouse (Steatomys jacksoni) is a species of rodent in the family Nesomyidae. It is found in Ghana and Nigeria.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Kreb's fat mouse
Krebs's fat mouse (Steatomys krebsii) is a species of rodent in the family Nesomyidae. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Bookbinder's soup
Bookbinder's soup is a type of soup pioneered in the United States in 1893 when Samuel Bookbinder created Old Original Bookbinder's restaurant in Philadelphia.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list persons-thing
erin- Caradja's plague and Caragea's plague add as Caradja and Caragea. Apparently, the 's messes up the works.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Caradja
Caragea's plague or Caradja's plague (Romanian: Ciuma lui Caragea) was a bubonic plague epidemic that occurred in Wallachia, mainly in Bucharest, in the years 1813 and 1814. It coincided with the rule of the Phanariote Prince John Caradja.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Caragea's plague
Caragea's plague or Caradja's plague (Romanian: Ciuma lui Caragea) was a bubonic plague epidemic that occurred in Wallachia, mainly in Bucharest, in the years 1813 and 1814. It coincided with the rule of the Phanariote Prince John Caradja.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Poinsot's spirals
Poinsot's spirals
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Curschmann's spirals
Curschmann's spirals refers to a microscopic finding in the sputum of asthmatics which are spiral shaped mucus plugs from subepithelial mucous gland ducts or bronchioles. These may occur in several different lung diseases.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Old Possum's book of practical cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is the basis for the musical Cats.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Père David's rock squirrel
Père David's rock squirrel (Sciurotamias davidianus), also known as the Chinese rock squirrel, is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae. It is endemic to China, where it is found widely in rocky habitats in the eastern and central parts of the country.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Döbereiner's lamp
Döbereiner's lamp, also called a "tinderbox" ("Feuerzeug"), is a lighter invented in 1823 by the German chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list persons-thing
Great list, alexz. I love how you think.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word snow-grooming machine
"The Austrian team doctor collided with another skier and was knocked under a snow-grooming machine, which crushed him instantly."
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word twilight shadowing
James Oberg explained many UFO sightings on the Internet. Most of them belong to one of three groups:
super-high plumes – rocket or missile plumes, especially lit by Sun on a dark sky;
space dandruff – ice flakes, fragments of insulation, etc. flying alongside a space vehicle, especially seen on backward-facing camera;
twilight shadowing – objects that move from shadow into sunlight in space appear as if coming from behind the clouds or from beyond the edge of the Earth.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word super-high plumes
James Oberg explained many UFO sightings on the Internet. Most of them belong to one of three groups:
super-high plumes – rocket or missile plumes, especially lit by Sun on a dark sky;
space dandruff – ice flakes, fragments of insulation, etc. flying alongside a space vehicle, especially seen on backward-facing camera;
twilight shadowing – objects that move from shadow into sunlight in space appear as if coming from behind the clouds or from beyond the edge of the Earth.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word space dandruff
James Oberg explained many UFO sightings on the Internet. Most of them belong to one of three groups:
super-high plumes – rocket or missile plumes, especially lit by Sun on a dark sky;
space dandruff – ice flakes, fragments of insulation, etc. flying alongside a space vehicle, especially seen on backward-facing camera;
twilight shadowing – objects that move from shadow into sunlight in space appear as if coming from behind the clouds or from beyond the edge of the Earth.
September 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list grammar-police---find-the-correct-dash-in-this-lineup
How many dashes equals a 50-yard dash? (Look at me, asking a Canadian)
September 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word jaw
From Twitter: "you have a southern jaw". What is a southern jaw?
September 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word orthognathic
orthognathic surgery = jaw surgery (a procedure performed by an oral surgeon.)
September 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word humblebrag
"Every Aussie I've met, along with many commenters on different Gawker sites have humblebragged about how perfect Australia is compared to the US. "I can't believe X happens in America; Australia has/does Y." Is it not possible to comment on an issue on an American site without also mentioning your own country's superiority?"
--FACTually (http://factually.gizmodo.com)
September 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word (((echoes)))
Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white nationalists have begun using three sets of parentheses encasing a Jewish surname — for instance, (((Fleishman))) — to identify and target Jews for harassment on blogs and major social media sites like Twitter. As one white supremacist tweeted, "It's closed captioning for the Jew-blind."
The origins of the symbol ((())) can be traced to a hardcore, right-wing podcast called The Daily Shoah in 2014. It's known as an "echo" in the anti-Semitic corners of the alt-right — a new, young, amorphous conservative movement that comprises trolls fluent in internet culture, free speech activists warring against political correctness and earnest white nationalists. Some use the symbol to mock Jews; others seek to expose supposed Jewish collusion in controlling media or politics. All use it to put a target on their heads.
To the public, the symbol is not easily searchable on most sites and social networks; search engines strip punctuation from results. This means that trolls committed to uncovering, labeling and harassing Jewish users can do so in relative obscurity: No one can search those threats to find who's sending them.
The symbol comes from right-wing blog the Right Stuff, whose podcast The Daily Shoah featured a segment called "Merchant Minute" that gave Jewish names a cartoonish "echo" sound effect when uttered. The "parenthesis meme," as Right Stuff editors call it, is a visual pun.
--tech.mic
September 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word starbugs
Hm! Fakeymcfakeystarbugs.
September 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list words-ending-with--bite
I opened the list. Thanks kalayzich and alexz.
September 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word wordnik
Thank you, wordnik!
Inspired by: thank every word
September 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list canadian-english--1
washroom (Can) vs bathroom/restroom (Amer)
September 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bioturbation
"While primary effects of invasive animals are bioturbation, bioerosion, and bioconstruction. For example, invasion of Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis have resulted in higher bioturbation and bioerosion rates."
September 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word torus
Weaving a torus with villarceau circles.
September 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hilt
The base of the penis
September 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hilt
"A chain used to secure something, especially a part of the dress and personal equipment, as, in the middle ages, the hilt of the sword to the breastplate or other part of the body-armor, or at the present day a watch, brooch, or bracelet."
September 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word melongena
eggplant, hm.
September 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word adminicles
Icy cold and administrative flavored
September 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word chewblet
Tubular nugget sounds tasty.
September 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cosmogonist
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
One who understand not the meaning of above the sentence. How does one treat the universe? Antibiotics? Antidepressants?
Gad Bateway again...OK now.
September 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mercorn
Are you sure this isn't a merkin made from corn silk? Or a mercenary with a callus?
September 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word customer churn
"Moreover, people often use cards for awhile and then switch or they lose their cards and they need to be physically replaced. According to Federal Reserve data that I summarize in this article, in 2009 16.5% of credit card users discarded their cards and 29% of prepaid card users did so. Customer churn is especially high for prepaid card users, who often use their cards for only a short period or for a specified purpose. Churn is lowest for debit cards, because they are linked to bank accounts."
--http://volokh.com/2014/01/21/economics-credit-card-security/
September 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word chavettes
Check out the visuals: the pregnant woman smoking is upsetting.
September 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word memetastic
How many other awful words have been created with -tastic?
September 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word milagro
A "milagro" (miracle; a tiny replica of an arm or eye or animal, which can then be taken to the church and left with a donation). Sometimes made with "aged" bottle caps.
September 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word nicho
Nichos are made from mixed media and traditionally combine elements from Roman Catholicism, mestizo spirituality, and popular culture.
Nichos are made of objects that can be easily purchased or scavenged in the home or community. The media are characteristically humble for a religious object, especially compared to the typically ornate icons of the Catholic Church. The shadow box itself is easily converted from a cigar box or other mass-produced wooden container, but can also be constructed from any lightweight wood, recycled tin, or glass. The colorful designs on the box and borders are created not only with paint, but also with sequins, glitter, chain, thread or rope, paper mache, and any small bric-a-brac. Other ornaments within nichos include milagro charms, beads, stones, nails, and other manufactured and found objects.
See examples of nicho art here.
September 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bathtub madonna
A bathtub Madonna (also known as a lawn shrine, Mary on the half shell[, [bathtub Mary, bathtub Virgin, and bathtub shrine) is a artificial grotto typically framing a Roman Catholic religious figure.
September 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word lararia
plural for lararium.
September 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word vertiginous
adj. Having an aspect of great depth, drawing the eye to look downwards.
September 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word safeword
On Twitter:
My safeword is honorificabilitudinitatibus which is very hard to say through a barbed wire ballgag.
September 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word safeword
Who knew?
September 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word academic ridicule
"The story of forensic neuropathologist Bennet I. Omalu brings dramatic focus to one doctor's breakthrough discovery of a progressive neurologic disorder found in victims of brain trauma.
Dr. Omalu called the disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), first discovered through an autopsy he performed on Mike Webster, the NFL's legendary Pittsburgh Steeler's player who died at age 50. Dr. Omalu went on to report and publish findings to identify CTE in eight more NFL players whose patterns of death were similar. Dr. Omalu's findings revolutionized neuroscience[, [sports medicine, the study of brain trauma, and the entire sports industry, even after being ridiculed by many of his professional peers, the NFL, and the industry."
September 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word academic ridicule
Stanton Friedman considers the general attitude of mainstream academics as arrogant and dismissive or bound to a rigid worldview that disallows any evidence contrary to previously held notions. Denzler states that the fear of ridicule and a loss of status has prevented scientists of pursuing a public interest in UFOs. J. Allen Hynek's also commented, "Ridicule is not part of the scientific method and people should not be taught that it is." Hynek said of the frequent dismissal of UFO reports by astronomers that the critics knew little about the sightings, and should thus not be taken seriously. Peter A. Sturrock suggests that a lack of funding is a major factor in the institutional lack of interest in UFOs.--Wikipedia
September 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list words-to-remember--15
@madmouth. It's my fault for baiting ru. One of the entries below really is PERSON WHOSE OX IS GORED, which sounded just offbeat enough to trip ruzuzu's stream of consciousness.
September 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word unschooling
A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling is sometimes called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator and author John Holt in his magazine, "Growing Without Schooling". The term emphasizes the more spontaneous, less structured learning environment where a child's interests drive their pursuit of knowledge. In some cases, a liberal arts education is provided using the trivium and quadrivium as the main models.--Wikipedia
August 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list words-to-remember--15
@ruzuzu. Knowing you, I would have guessed person whose ox is gored.
August 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bad gateway
Earlier today it was bad gateway this and bad gateway that. Unable to leave a comment. No visuals. I was starting to have wordnik withdrawal.
August 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word latinx
Latinx is the gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. Used by scholars, activists and an increasing number of journalists, Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public. It’s part of a “linguistic revolution“ that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants. In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Latinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid.
“In Spanish, the masculinized version of words is considered gender neutral. But that obviously doesn’t work for some of us because I don’t think it’s appropriate to assign masculinity as gender neutral when it isn’t,” explains queer, non-binary femme writer Jack Qu’emi Gutiérrez in an interview with PRI. “The ‘x,’ in a lot of ways, is a way of rejecting the gendering of words to begin with, especially since Spanish is such a gendered language.”
Latinx is also, as pointed out by writer Gabe Gonzalez, a way to reclaim identity, a form of rebellion against “the language and legacy of European traditions that were imposed on the Americas.”
--Why People Are Using The Term Latinx.
August 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word emphyteusis
"Once within the walls of the Ghetto they were alone, and could go about the little streets in perfect security; they were free from the contamination as well as safe from the depredations of Christians, and within their own precincts they were not forced to wear the hated orange-coloured cap or net which Paul the Fourth imposed upon the Jewish men and women. To a great extent, too, such isolation was already in the traditions of the race. A hundred years earlier Venice had created its Ghetto; so had Prague, and other European cities were not long in following. Morally speaking their confinement may have been a humiliation; in sober fact it was an immense advantage; moreover, a special law of 'emphyteusis' made the leases of their homes inalienable, so long as they paid rent, and forbade the raising of the rent under any circumstances, while leaving the tenant absolute freedom to alter and improve his house as he would, together with the right to sublet it, or to sell the lease itself to any other Hebrew; and these leases became very valuable"--Francis Marion Crawford, Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2, Studies from the Chronicles of Rome, 1899.
August 26, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fenland
"A saltern is a word with a number of differing (but interrelated) meanings. In English archaeology, a saltern is an area used for salt making, especially in the East Anglian fenlands."
August 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word the god problem
Modern psychology has a serious God problem. America is a deeply spiritual country. More than half of Americans say religion is “very important” to them, and more than 90 percent profess a belief in a higher power. Yet psychology, as a scientific endeavor, has done almost nothing to understand how spiritual beliefs shape psychological problems, or affect treatment. When a person with deep religious convictions comes in for professional help, they will find, more often than not, a therapist who is not fully prepared to help.--Gareth Cook, Modern Psychology's God Problem.
Relations between psychology and religion have a troubled history. Putting psychology on a scientific footing meant, in part, rejecting the notion that mental illness is a spiritual phenomenon, that madness implied possession by demons or foul spirits. Freud famously diagnosed religion as a psychological problem. To believe, in his view, was to be neurotic.
August 24, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word coconut cake problem
A problem addressed by means of intuition, such as a recipe (for coconut cake) in which the ingredients and amounts used are unclear.
"HARVARD PROFESSOR Roland Fryer has made a discovery with the potential to transform public education. To understand it, though, it helps to first hear a story about the conundrum of the coconut cake.
Fryer’s grandmother makes an astounding coconut cake, a magical confection of sweetness and air he’s loved since he was a kid growing up in Florida. Fryer wanted to learn to make the cake himself, but every time he pressed for a recipe, she gave him directions like “use a good amount of sugar, a little flour but not too much, and just a bit of baking powder.”--Gareth Cook, Education's Coconut Cake Problem
August 24, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Jandal
Trademark /New Zealand: a type of sandal with a strip of material between the big toe and the other toes and over the foot.
August 24, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word morcellator
The use of a laparoscopic power morcellator during a hysterectomy is discouraged because it increases the risk of spreading cancerous tissue within the abdomen and pelvis.
During a hysterectomy with morcellation the surgeon slices the uterine tissue into small pieces and extracts them with a laparoscope through an incision in the abdomen. In women with undetected uterine cancer, the morcellator cuts through cancerous tissue and potentially distributes it outside the uterus.
August 24, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gellhorn
A vaginal pessary can take a number of different forms, including doughnut-shaped devices; horn-shaped varieties, known as gellhorns; and tube-like insertions with bulbous ends that work as inflatable devices.
August 24, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Goldilocks zone
The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second "Goldilocks," according to a Yale University researcher.
For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun. In our solar system, for instance, Venus is too close to the sun and Mars is too far, but Earth is just right. That distance is what scientists refer to as the "habitable zone," or the "Goldilocks zone."--Science Daily, August 19, 2016
August 24, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word apocryphally
Dorothy Parker dispensed caustic humor in prose and verse as well as over drinks. Her observations and remarks were very much of their time, but they still induce winces in an era when cutting snark has become practically de rigueur. Over the years many couplets and witticisms have been attributed to Parker, some apocryphally."
August 22, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Yarra Yarra River
See Yarra River.
August 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Yarra River
The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, is a perennial river in east-central Victoria, Australia.
August 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word turdish
"The shoe features canvas, suede and mesh, with the varsity royal blue apparently inspired by Port Phillip Bay and the brown midsole chosen to represent the turdish Yarra River that winds its wiggly way through our magnificent city."
August 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word heft
"hefting – also known as heafing in this part of the country, but known as many other things across the UK.
I’m no expert on hefting but the way I understand it to work, from a friend who does know, is that when shepherds want to establish a new flock, they take the sheep up onto the moorland where they want them to graze and they constrain them on that land. This is sometimes done with fencing, but is also done by physical shepherding. The flock gets to know where it can, and can’t, go because of the constraints.
Eventually the shepherd removes the constraint, but the sheep don’t drift off. They stay where they have been hefted. They’ve learnt to live within their current constraints.
Once a flock has been established within its heft, the shepherd can add new sheep to the flock and they will take on the heft of the rest of the sheep, as long as too many fresh ideas aren’t introduced. The hefting is passed from generation to generation without the need for the constraints to be put back in place. That’s how strong the constraints are in the minds of the rest of the flock.
We’re not dissimilar to sheep. We pick a way of doing things, or a technology, based on what our tribe is doing. Having chosen a technology, we stay with it, we invest in it, and we live within its constraints. We become comfortable in our place of pasture." --Technology Perspectives.
August 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word humbucker
What a ghastly word.
August 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word invadopodia
"This research illustrates the importance of collaboration in the scientific discovery process, and how the study of one disease, in this case cancer, can have a profound impact on the understanding on another." said Dr. Courtneidge, "In the future, we hope to use our mouse model to study the disease in more depth, as well as to determine whether other genes involved in invadopodia formation are also associated with FTHS." See invadopodium.
August 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word herpe
rice krispies: the glitter herpe of breakfast cereals. What is glitter herpe?
August 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word duncify
See also stultify.
August 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Obergruppenführer
The highest rank in the SS.
August 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word corportation
Corporations need transportation on occasion, don't they?
August 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word volcanic winter
A volcanic winter is a reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large particularly explosive volcanic eruption. Long-term cooling effects are primarily dependent upon injection of sulfide compounds in aerosol form into the upper atmosphere—the stratosphere—the highest, least active levels of the lower atmosphere where little precipitation occurs, thus requiring a long time to wash the aerosols out of the region. Stratospheric aerosols cool the surface and troposphere by reflecting solar radiation, warm the stratosphere by absorbing terrestrial radiation, and when combined with anthropogenic chlorine in the stratosphere, destroy ozone which moderates the effect of lower stratospheric warming. The variations in atmospheric warming and cooling results in changes in tropospheric and stratospheric circulation.
--Robock, Alan (2000). "Volcanic eruptions and climate". Reviews of geophysics 38 (2): 191-219
August 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word two-spirit people
"Christian leaders stand on our soil and claim: "gay marriage" has never occurred here. Over 1300 tribes in every region of North America performed millions of same-sex marriages for hundreds of years. Their statements are both hateful and ignorant. Your "homosexual," was our "Two Spirit" people... and we considered them sacred."
August 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word impostor syndrome
A nuisance that befalls many high-achieving women, wherein they chalk up their success to:
“…luck, to being in the right place at the right time, to factors other than ability. … They live in fear that eventually some significant person will discover that they are, indeed, intellectual impostors."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk: We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller / We say to girls, “You can have ambition / But not too much / You should aim to be successful / But not too successful / Otherwise you will threaten the man.” It’s true. Women are much more likely to feel this way, because we’re taught to be modest and self-deprecating, to downplay our achievements for fear of looking arrogant or ungrateful, sipping pickle juice while our male counterparts are being praised for being bossed up.
August 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word life-guard
n. Brushes or some other device placed before the forward wheels of a locomotive to sweep small obstructions from the track.
August 6, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cot death
The term cot death is often used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, India, South Africa and New Zealand.
August 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word chokeslam
Yikes.
August 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word caruncle
caruncular, carunculous, carunculate, carunculated.
August 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word semifossorial
In addition to controlling insect pests, bilbies may play a role in seed dispersal. The semifossorial bilbies may help aerate the soil through their burrowing.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word unassisted dispersal
The seed or fruit has no obvious aids for longer-distance transport and merely falls passively from the plant.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word dispersule
Dispersule (or propagule = unit of seed, fruit or spore as it is dispersed)
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bristle contraction
Hygroscopic bristles on the dispersule that promote movement with varying humidity.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anemochory
Humans may disperse seeds by many various means and some surprisingly high distances have been repeatedly measured. Examples are: dispersal on human clothes, on shoes, or by cars.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anemochory
Wind dispersal is one of the more primitive means of dispersal. Wind dispersal can take on one of two primary forms: seeds can float on the breeze or alternatively, they can flutter to the ground. The classic examples of these dispersal mechanisms include dandelions, which have a feathery pappus attached to their seeds and can be dispersed long distances, and maples, which have winged seeds (samara) and flutter to the ground. An important constraint on wind dispersal is the need for abundant seed production to maximise the likelihood of a seed landing in a site suitable for germination. There are also strong evolutionary constraints on this dispersal mechanism. For instance, Cody and Overton (1996) found that species in the Asteraceae on islands tended to have reduced dispersal capabilities (i.e., larger seed mass and smaller pappus) relative to the same species on the mainland. Reliance on wind dispersal is common among many weedy or ruderal species. Unusual mechanisms of wind dispersal include tumbleweeds.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word malacochory
Seed dispersal by molluscs.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word endozoochory
Endozoochory (dispersal by animal ingestion - fish)
Endozoochory (dispersal by animal ingestion - amphibians, reptiles)
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word seed predators
Rodents (such as squirrels) and some birds (such as jays) may also disperse seeds by hoarding the seeds in hidden caches. The seeds in caches are usually well-protected from other seed predators and if left uneaten will grow into new plants. In addition, rodents may also disperse seeds via seed spitting due to the presence of secondary metabolites in ripe fruits.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word secondary zoochory
Secondary dispersal by animals: Seeds may be secondarily dispersed from seeds deposited by primary animal dispersers. For example, dung beetles are known to disperse seeds from clumps of feces in the process of collecting dung to feed their larvae.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word oceanic dispersal
A type of seed dispersal that occurs when organisms transfer from one land mass to another by way of a sea crossing. Often this occurs via large mats of floating vegetation, such as are sometimes seen floating down major rivers in the tropics and washing out to sea, occasionally with animals trapped on them.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word rafting event
See dispersal via a raft is sometimes referred to as a "rafting event."
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hardseededness
"Dormancy should not be confused with seed coat dormancy, external dormancy, or hardseededness, which is caused by the presence of a hard seed covering or seed coat that prevents water and oxygen from reaching and activating the embryo. It is a physical barrier to germination, not a true form of dormancy."(Quinliven, 1971; Quinliven and Nichol, 1971).
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word spit-hooding
Apparently, it's referred to an anti-spit mask (yawn) or a spit sock hood. Pretty much the same name. Does anyone have a law enforcement terminology list?
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word spit-hooding
"'Multiple incidents within the juvenile detention facilities have revealed that the NT Government prosecutes policies against Aboriginal children which include spit-hooding, gassing, hand cuffing, shackling and extensive periods of unlawful solitary confinement. Treatment such as this you wouldn’t think possible in any civilised nation.
Let there be no doubts as to whom we are talking about here.
This is all about Aboriginal children.'
What is spit-hooding? I understand the hooding part, but not spit. Australian detention centre.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word whitewashing
Another example. In Louisville, Kentucky, Butler High School’s dress code prohibits dreadlocks, cornrolls, and twists. Students who violate the grooming policy cannot attend the school.
"Hair styles that are extreme, distracting, or attention getting will not be permitted. No dreadlocks, cornrows, twists, mohawks, and no jewelry will be worn in hair."
""Hair must be a natural color. No two-toned hair or severe contrasts. This includes unnatural colors.”"
""No male may dye, tint, or highlight his hair in any way."
"The styles that were targeted in this policy are the most basic and essential styles for black people all over the world. To ban them is essentially to ban blackness itself."--Shaun King, New York Daily News, July 28, 2016.
cultural whitewashing
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word heart dog
A once in a lifetime soul mate dog. There’s an understanding, a bond stronger than most, and a special level of communication. Your heart dog “gets” you and you get him or her right back.--found on The Daily Corgi blog.
August 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word whitewashing
Casting white actors in Hollywood productions instead of POC (people of color).
The popular blog Angry Asian Man called the movie “the latest movie in the grand cinematic tradition of the Special White Person”, adding: “You can set a story anywhere in the world, in any era of history, and Hollywood will still somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy.”
In her post, Wu wrote: “Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon. They look like Malala. Ghandi. Mandela. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time. We don’t need salvation. We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories.”
The Guardian.
August 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word jegging
Denim/jean leggings
July 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cicisbeism
The practice of dangling about women? How does one dangle?
July 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Tehrangeles
Another city with a large Persian community is Tehranto. (Tehran + Toronto).
July 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word peleton
It's odd when there are plenty of examples but no definition.
July 27, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word lymphangioleiomyomatosis
LAM for short. Rare lung disease that causes spontaneous lung collapse in women.
July 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word ex-gay
?? Marcus Bachmann is defending his Christian counseling business for offering so-called ex-gay therapy, a controversial practice that's focused attention on the Bachmanns' views on social issues at a time when the Minnesota congresswoman has shown momentum in the Republican presidential race.
July 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word furvert
A “furvert” is anyone who is sexually attracted to mascots and such. A furry who is a pervert; somebody who takes a sexual interest in furry media.
July 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word orage
In organ-building, a stop constructed so as to produce a noise in imitation of the sound of a storm.
July 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word smilingness
The state of being smiling. This sounds awkward.
July 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word horner
n. One who works or deals in horn or horns.
Is horn a non-count noun?!
July 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word clickjack
How is information stolen? Since "he" is mentioned, I'm guessing female users aren't as clickjackable.
July 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word amethyst
Interesting etymology. From Greek amethustos, not drunk or intoxicating. The Greeks believed that amethyst prevented intoxication.
July 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pulse
A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for their grain seed called pulse, for livestock forage and silage, and as soil-enhancing green manure. Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins, mesquite, carob, soybeans, peanuts, and tamarind.
A legume fruit is a simple dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces (opens along a seam) on two sides. A common name for this type of fruit is a pod, although the term "pod" is also applied to a few other fruit types, such as that of vanilla (a capsule) and of radish (a silique).
July 6, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word testin
The perfect accompaniment to a glass of colonnade.
June 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word colonnade
Thankfully, not a beverage.
June 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gazumping
It's called "gazumping" in England, the process by which someone selling a piece of property accepts an offer from one buyer, maybe even going so far as to shake hands on it, then quickly — and often surreptitiously — accepts another, higher, offer from a second buyer, leaving the first buyer with his pockets agape and his heart broken.
-from Examples
June 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word quitlines
Smoking cessation, popularly known as "quitlines," are an increasingly common way for smokers to quit.
See quitline.
June 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word khachapuri
No visual :(
June 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word orthorexics
People with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.
People afraid of eating the wrong thing, ever.
Unlike patients with anorexia nervosa, the goal of orthorexics is not to be thin but to be "pure, healthy and natural".
Mental health experts say that the obsession about which foods are "good" and "bad" means that orthorexics can end up being malnourished and often shun food to the point of emaciation and starvation.
June 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word shitpost
Ha. I find it interesting that this word is listed on both Twitter Loves and Twitter Hates. And both lists are by hugovk!
June 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word sustenance
I know precisely which scene you mean, mikepurvis.
June 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word octoroon
History, unfortunately, reminds us of the one-drop rule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
I read this book a couple of years ago. Excellent.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/587123.Who_is_Black_
June 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mayhaps
I like it.
June 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pickpurse
Sounds more interesting than pickpocket.
June 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word purses
purses is a kind of seaweed; purse; however, has (apparently) nothing to do with seaweed--unlesss I missed it in the definitions.
June 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thosse
A glitch, a misspelling, or a nameless fish?
June 6, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word squirrelhood
A person who lives on the Park Meadows street of Moray Court recently found a cache of pine cones stored underneath the hood of her cars and elsewhere on the outside of the vehicles.
It was apparently the work of a squirrel preparing for the winter.
"They were everywhere, every pocket," says Mary Cole, the owner of the cars, indicating she had never before experienced something similar.
A neighbor, Aggie Johanson, says the pine cones were "just stuffed in there."
"It's peculiar in the car. We know it has to be the squirrels," Johanson says.
"Such is life in our little squirrelhood."
June 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word deadly-lively
A deadly-lively party.
June 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pseudepigraphy
Scholars have identified seven levels of authenticity which they have organized in a hierarchy ranging from literal authorship, meaning written in the author's own hand, to outright forgery:
Literal authorship. A church leader writes a letter in his own hand.
Dictation. A church leader dictates a letter almost word for word to an amanuensis.
Delegated authorship. A church leader describes the basic content of an intended letter to a disciple or to an amanuensis.
Posthumous authorship. A church leader dies, and his disciples finish a letter that he had intended to write, sending it posthumously in his name.
Apprentice authorship. A church leader dies, and disciples who had been authorized to speak for him while he was alive continue to do so by writing letters in his name years or decades after his death.
Honorable pseudepigraphy. A church leader dies, and admirers seek to honor him by writing letters in his name as a tribute to his influence and in a sincere belief that they are responsible bearers of his tradition.
Forgery. A church leader obtains sufficient prominence that, either before or after his death, people seek to exploit his legacy by forging letters in his name, presenting him as a supporter of their own ideas.
May 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gleed
The Dutch word for slipped is gleed.
May 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cisgender
Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”
Toms’ has a short haircut because she recently donated hair - for the third time - to a program that makes wigs for child cancer patients.
“I’ve had people call me all sorts of names for having short hair. I’ve had people call me a boy, I’ve had people call me a dyke, I’ve had people call me gay.” Toms said. “I’m grateful that that woman only called me disgusting and didn’t physically attack me … I was a victim of transphobia today as a cisgender female because my hair is short.”
-Woman mistaken for transgender harassed in Walmart bathroom, May 16, 2016
May 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word kleptoparasites
"Although their biology is not widely studied, many blister beetles are thought to be kleptoparasites and egg predators of bee, and they often specialize on a small number of host species, using the adults to transport them back to the host nest."
-Cheats and Deceits: how animals and plants exploit and mislead, 2016, p.34
May 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word sounders
"... hog hunting on conservation areas ruins efforts by department staff to trap and kill entire groups of feral hogs, called sounders. Groups can consist of several dozen animals."
-Missouri Conservationist, March 2016, vol. 77, issue 3, p. 8.
May 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cogs
"Count the cogs on the wheels of a fanning-mill, washing-machine, apple-parer, or egg-beater, and determine how the direction or rate of the motion is changed thereby."
May 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word meat analogue
A meat analogue, also called a meat alternative, meat substitute, mock meat, faux meat, imitation meat, or (where applicable) vegetarian meat or vegan meat, approximates certain aesthetic qualities (primarily texture, flavor and appearance) and/or chemical characteristics of specific types of meat. Many meat analogues are soy-based (such as tofu and tempeh) and are gluten-based.
May 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word flaughter
When you have to cut peat, you have to cut peat.
May 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cicatrix
See keloid scar. Can be hereditary. "The main problem is that cutting a keloid out often leads to an even bigger one forming later in the same place."
May 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word nanulak
A polar bear / grizzly bear hybrid. Canadian wildlife officials have suggested calling the hybrid "nanulak", taken from the Inuit names for polar bear (nanuk) and grizzly bear (aklak).
May 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pizzly
See nanulak.
May 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thrap
See frap
May 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word coprophagia
May 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word turf
"Hof in Öræfi has been an ecclesiastical site for almost 700 years and is first mentioned in a cartulary from 1343. Hofskirkja Church was dedicated to Saint Clement. The core of the current church at Hof was built in 1884 and was the last turf church built in the old Icelandic architectural style. Its walls are assembled of rocks and its roof made of stone slabs, covered in turf. The reredos (an altarpiece, or a screen or decoration behind the altar in a church) in Hofskirkja Church was painted by the artist Ólafur Túbals. Hofskirkja Church is one of six churches, in Iceland still standing which are preserved as historical monuments. It is recorded that Páll Pálsson, a carpenter, built the church, but Þorsteinn Gissurarson, a blacksmith from Hof forged the building hardware, the lock, and hinges. The church is maintained by the National Museum but also serves as a parish church."
May 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thylacines
Bilby: Random search. https://www.flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/14785125205
May 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word weet-weet
"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat* can be thrown is truly astonishing."
*substitute kangaroo-rat with bilby.
May 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word debeard
"The hardest part about cooking mussels is debearding them, which is simply removing the seaweed with which they attach themselves to their colony."
May 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gut loops
"The whole of the gut is attached to the body by a suspensory mechanism called the mesentery, which connects the 20m or so of gut loops to the underside of the spinal column within the abdomen over a length of a few centimeters."
--The Pig Site
May 6, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mountain bumps
• Rock burst of coal rather than rock
• Occurs in coal mines
• Violent expulsion of coal from the ribs, roof and/or face
• Roof and/or floor rock remains intact (sometimes)
• Aka bumps or bursts, mountain bumps, and air blast
May 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word PEO
Prisoner escort officer.
May 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word triphala
Triphala (Hindi: “three fruits”) is an herbal formula consisting of equal parts of three myrobalans, taken without seed: amalaki (Emblica officinalis), bibhitaki (Terminalia bellirica), and haritaki (Terminalia chebula).
May 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word triphala
"Triphala tea, which is made by steeping a teaspoon of triphala in a cup of boiling water and then straining the resultant fluid through a fine mesh cloth, is one of the best eyewashes and strengtheners of the eyes."
May 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word praying-wheel
"In Japan the praying-wheel is turned by hand; but in China, according to Hue, it is sometimes carried by water-power, and rises to the dignity of a mill."
May 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the user hugovk
Thanks for all the great additions today, hugovk.
May 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word booting
Applying a device (a boot) to a vehicle in order to make a vehicle undrivable until unpaid parking fees, etc are paid.
See wheel clamp, wheel boot, parking boot, or Denver boot.
A device designed to prevent vehicles from being moved. In its most common form, it consists of a clamp that surrounds a vehicle wheel, designed to prevent removal of both itself and the wheel.
In the United States, the device became known as a "Denver boot" after the city of Denver, Colorado was the first in the country to employ them, mostly to force the payment of outstanding parking tickets.
"A "booter" was shot while booting a vehicle, Department of Revenue Director Bea Reyna-Hickey said, directing further inquiries to police."
May 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the user Sammiee11
No toilet? Crappy internet connections? That does sound like a memorable skill to Uttarakhand.
May 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hypochondritis
Often used in the same context as malingering.
May 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word shock time
"A local woman has been sentenced to five days shock time after pleading guilty to theft, resisting arrest and assaulting a law enforcement officer at the Dillards store at Mid Rivers Mall on May 28."
"Hansen who resigned from the police department in July, was sentenced to two years probation and 30 days of shock time in jail."
May 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word dandle
We always called it "ridin' horsey".
May 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gingerism
Who doesn't love red hair?
May 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gewgaw
"His father had inspired him with a horror of jewellery; for once, when he had spent the savings of a month upon a cheap scarf-pin, the elder Armstrong had wrathfully asked him what he meant by sticking that brass-headed nail in his chest, and had thrown the gewgaw into the fire."
May 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word woozle effect
The woozle effect, also known as evidence by citation, or a woozle, occurs when frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence misleads individuals, groups and the public into thinking or believing there is evidence, and nonfacts become urban myths and factoids.
May 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word semmelweis reflex
The semmelweis reflex or "semmelweis effect" is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.
May 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word nanga
Which century was this definition written in?
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
n. A small harp having but three or four strings, used by the negroes of Africa; a negro harp.
May 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word stickler
One who stickles.
April 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word eyelash yarn
"There seems to be a general consensus among experienced needleworkers that eyelash yarn is more easily knit than crocheted as it is so hard to find the next stitch in crocheting such fuzzy yarn. Learn to count your stitches on each row as you work with this stuff. Be sure that the next stitch is really the next stitch and not a snag of the lashes. That is easy to mistake."-anonymous web comment
April 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pew-rent
Pay up or else.
April 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word God's asshat
as in "What in the name of God's asshat are you doing here?"
April 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word luciferase
See luciferin.
April 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pastillage
"Pastillage is a mixture of powdered sugar, gelatin, and cornstarch that dries to a porous, rigid form.
With care and patience, it's possible to make very intricate pastillage showpieces, such as detailed flowers, figures, and even delicate architectural details - perfect for victorian trim on gingerbread houses!"
--Gingerbread House Heaven
April 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word frothing
"Staffordshire oatcakes are a local component of the full English breakfast. It is a plate-sized pancake, made with equal parts medium oatmeal and wheatmeal (flour), along with frothing yeast. Once the mixture has risen to produce something like a Yorkshire pudding batter, it is ladled onto a griddle or bakestone, and dried through. Staffordshire oatcakes are commonly paired with bacon, sausages, mushrooms, kidney, baked beans, among others."
April 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word blueberry muffin world
"Maybe not in your blueberry muffin world but anyone who spent as much time as this guy in prison picks up a classroom of connections."--Crime Time: a mystery novel, R.E. Derouin, 2013.
April 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word i like to press button which does nothing
Try to press it the button which does something.
April 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word assaulted
"Healthcare workers are a special breed. They are compassionate and called into a career to care for the sick. Most are underpaid for their skills and the services they provide. The National Crime Victimization Survey suggests that each day in the US at least 200 of them are assaulted on the job. The healthcare industry has done a good job keeping this secret. It’s a disgrace that healthcare workers are the most assaulted workers in the country."
April 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word coupe poudre
Haitian clergy attribute the creation of zombies to sorcery. The Vodun voodoo religion makes a distinction between the corps cadavre (the physical body), the gwo-bon anj (the animating principle) and the ti-bon anj (agency, awareness and memory). When zombifying someone, the Vodun sorcerer (or bokur) extracts the ti-bon anj of the victim and retains it in an earthenware jar (where it is then referred to as zombie astral)
Haitian doctors, on the other hand, consider zombification to be a result of poisoning, and there are reports that sorcerers use a white powder called coupe poudre to zombify their victims. In the early 1980s, Wade Davis, an anthropologist and ethnobotanist who was then working at Harvard University, travelled to Haiti in order to determine the ingredients of the coupe poudre. He interviewed a number of sorcerers and collected 8 samples of the zombie powder from 4 different regions of the country.
Upon analysis of the powders, Davis found that 7 of them shared a number of ingredients, including toxins produced by cane toad (Bufo marinus, left) and an irritant produced by a hyla tree frog (Osteopilus dominicensis). One of the samples also contained trace amounts of tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin produced by various marine organisms, most notably the pufferfish.
April 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word faded across
I am unable to create a page for hinüber gedämmert outright or leave a comment. I thought the first letter (þ) was the culprit in the Icelandic Problem.
April 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word faded across
Around one o’clock in the morning, he noticed that his father’s breathing was slowing. Over the course of hours, his father had hinüber gedämmert, “faded across.”
“There was no exact time of death, but at some point, he had stopped breathing.”
April 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fattism
Thanks, Erin. I think I've reached my quota for questions, concerns, and Icelandic shenanigans for the week.
April 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fattism
I'm noticing that many of the links below the EXAMPLES warn me of possible malware if I proceed to the site. Example: ninme (above). Is wordnik warning us (since it directs us to api.wordnik.com for more info)?
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fattism
Horrible word.
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word deontology
"I have no idea what is happening in the world beyond my bedroom, but I can write a really good essay on deontology and natural moral law." -Twitter, April 16, 2016
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word husband purgatory
"Walking through downtown Boston, Lisa sees a SALE sign, hands me her bags, and now I'm sitting in husband purgatory with all the other dudes."-Tony Gentilcore, Twitter, April 17, 2016
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word warty pig
Fewer than 250 adult Bawean warty pigs are alive today—meaning they're likely an endangered species, a new study says.
Rare video here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160406-warty-pigs-animals-science-endangered-species/
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word viper
The rare Iranian spider-tailed viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) waggles a fake "spider"—actually a fleshy lure with leg-like scales at the tip of its tail—to tempt birds within striking distance.
See video here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBbbagXifRu/
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cockleburs
"Carolina parakeets were probably poisonous—American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs."
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hardscrabble
"On the hardscrabble lands of the American West, blood is spilled by the most innocent-looking of outlaws—the white-tailed prairie dog.
These social rodents, native to Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana, ruthlessly bite and thrash Wyoming ground squirrels to death, leaving their bloody bodies to rot, a new study says.
The killers' offspring then live longer, healthier lives—probably because their parents bumped off their competition for food.
It’s the first time that a herbivorous mammal has been seen killing competitors without eating them, suggesting that a plant-based diet doesn’t preclude mammals from having a taste for bloodsport."
-National Geographic, Michael Greshko, March 22, 2016, "Praire dogs are serial killers that murder their competition".
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Icelandic Problem
Tried to post this for alexz: (ू•ᴗ•ू❁). File under the Icelandic Problem.
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Icelandic Problem
Unable to post this Icelandic word: Þúsundþjalasmiður One skilled with a rasp.
April 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Icelandic Problem
Reminds me of "The Pelican Briefs" or "The Italian Job". Check out the VISUALS. Protesters demanding a resolution to the Icelandic Problem.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fouet
See fouat, houseleek, hen and chicks.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fouat
Where I live, we call these hen and chicks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_and_chicks
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fouat
(Scottish) a succulent pink-flowered plant Also called: houseleek.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word (つ ツ )つ
Oh well, alexz... on with the butter!
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word the raisin at the end of the sausage
Rúsínan í pylsuendanum. Icelandic idiom meaning that something is already great (like the icing on a cake or a cherry on top.)
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word on with the butter
Áfram með smjörið. Icelandic idiom meaning "Keep doing what you’re doing, forge ahead, keep on keepin' on, get to work, keep moving."
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word erinmckean
bilby: Try entering an Icelandic word (with plenty of diacritics) in the SEARCH bar. It will appear on a normal-looking page, but it won't save and you can't leave a comment (and save it) either.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word ta'arof
"It's like extreme Southern hospitality."
http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-tarof-20150706-story.html
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word grief bacon
Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Derived from the German word kummerspeck.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word erinmckean
I tried to post the Icelandic words:
gluggaveður (n.): window-weather
raðljóst: (n.): enough light to find one's way by
Wordnik wouldn't add the word directly (I had to add brackets here instead). Also, when I click on gluggaveður, I'm not able to add the definition in the comments.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word knismesis
Knismesis and gargalesis are the scientific terms, coined in 1897 by psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin, used to describe the two types of tickling. Knismesis refers to the light, feather-like type of tickling. This type of tickling generally does not induce laughter and is often accompanied by an itching sensation.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gargalesis
knismesis and gargalesis are the scientific terms, coined in 1897 by psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin, used to describe the two types of tickling. Knismesis refers to the light, feather-like type of tickling. This type of tickling generally does not induce laughter and is often accompanied by an itching sensation.
April 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word CRV
The California Refund Value (CRV) is the amount paid to consumers when they recycle beverage containers at certified recycling centers. The minimum refund value established for each type of eligible beverage container is 5 cents for each container under 24 ounces and 10 cents for each container 24 ounces or greater.
April 14, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bunching
n. The illegitimate supplying of laboratory animals that are actually kidnapped pets or illegally trapped strays. (Does this include animals advertised online (i.e. FREE KITTENS) that are furtively used to feed one's snakes or other predators?)
n. In sugar-beet growing, same as blocking.
April 14, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word burrowers
Any long-eared burrowers around here?
April 14, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anthropometry
See also http://mreed.umtri.umich.edu/mreed/downloads.html#ansur
April 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anthropometry
The science of measuring the human body in order to ascertain the average dimensions of the human form at different ages, and in different divisions of race, class, etc.
"Matthew Reed, a researcher in anthropometry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, flat out called ANSUR the “best-gathered anthro data in the world.” Not only was the dataset accurate and reliable, in his view, it could save lives.
Imagine body armor that doesn’t completely cover your vital organs, or is too long or too short, making it horribly uncomfortable to wear, so you take it off. Imagine if you found yourself in a nerve gas attack and your mask doesn’t fit properly because it was designed for a different kind of face. (One study found that American-made gas masks fit poorly on “Chinese” faces.)
The differences in body type according to race could be striking. Reed sent me a graphic, based on data from the 1988 iteration of ANSUR, illustrating seated height versus standing height for Caucasian and African American men. Most African Americans had a shorter seated height compared to Caucasians of the same overall stature, meaning longer leg bones and shorter torsos. Asians, meanwhile, skewed slightly in the other direction, with taller sitting heights and longer torsos than both Caucasians and African-Americans.
The army doesn’t use this information to individually fit uniforms and gear, Reed explained, but to plan and manage costs. If the army knows that 15 percent of recruits are African American, when it orders, say, 20,000 bullet-proof vests, it will ensure that 15 percent conform to what it believes is their relatively shorter proportions. “That’s really important for the army,” Reed told me. “If you do that wrong, you end up with stuff that you need to store. And you don’t have enough of what you do need.”
Reed points out that race is also important in civilian contexts. Think about your car. Reed designs crash test dummies. If a car is tested only with “Caucasian” dummies, it may not be as safe for Asians or African Americans. Why? Leg length determines how far back you sit from the steering wheel — a major impact point — and your proximity to the airbag. Seated height also affects what you can see. “We don’t want to build a crash test dummy that’s based only on white guys,” Reed said.
April 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word guerrilla knitting
yarn bombing, yarnbombing, yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting or graffiti knitting is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fiber rather than paint or chalk.
April 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list australian-films
Thanks for the additions, plethora. I opened this list, btw.
April 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word vacuna
The goddess of rural leisure? I need some examples.
April 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word astragal
An astragal is commonly used as a seal between a pair of doors. The astragal closes the clearance gap. The vertical member (molding) attaches to a stile on one of a pair of doors (either sliding or swinging) against which the other door strikes, or closes. Exterior astragals are kerfed for weatherstripping. Also, flush head and foot bolt hardware is commonly mortised into the astragal to hold the inactive door in place, when both doors operate, at the top and bottom.
Also known as “meeting stile seals,” the term can refer to the raised half-round overlap where pairs of doors meet, such as is the case with French doors. An astragal is designed to be applied to one or both doors of a pair at their meeting edges (meeting stiles). The astragal closes the clearance gap for the purpose of either providing a weather seal, ensuring privacy, preventing sound from leaking in or out of a room, minimizing the passage of light between the doors, or retarding the passage of smoke or flame during a fire.
Doors are typically the weakest link in any partition that is designed to block sound. This is often due to poor sealing around the perimeter of the door. Astragals, perimeter gasketing, drop seals and door sweeps can all be used to prevent sound from leaking through cracks around the door perimeter.
In cabinet making, an astragal can mean a bar separating panes of glass, either vertically or horizontally. This use is also common with window manufacturers.
See also astragalus.
April 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word campaign chest
Of or designating furniture characteristically having metal strips on the corners and handles on the sides: a campaign chest.
April 6, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word missing sock monkey
Nice sweet tooth fairy, ru!
April 4, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word deodorant
"Antiperspirants use aluminum salts to block sweat glands, reducing perspiration and depriving odor-causing bacteria of the nutrients they need to survive. Deodorants use antimicrobial substances to kill off bacteria directly."
March 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word kourotrophos
The kourotrophos Maffei
"A marble, life-sized statue stands in the Museo Guarnacci, an image of a woman with a child and dated to the 4th century BCE. It has an inscription along the right arm. Etruscologists variously index it as CIE 76, CII 349, and ET Vt 3.3 but the general public knows it as the kourotrophos Maffei. The word kourotrophos is a Greek compound word meaning "child nurturer" or simply "nurse".
There are, as usual, wildly different accounts of what this one Etruscan inscription actually says. It's yet another insight into the madness within the field of Etruscology. It's as always unsettling to me how silent and disturbing the process of historical obfuscation is in a supposed age of information. We're drowned and hung by our own intellectual sloth."
March 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thawy
Dumb word.
March 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word frogapplause's mandle collection
That is a sad wallpaper!!
March 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word necropsy
WOTD https://www.wordnik.com/word-of-the-day/2016/3/12 includes this sentence among the EXAMPLES:
"A necropsy is the term for a post-mortem examination performed on an animal or inanimate object."
How can one determine the cause of death for something never alive?
March 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word norman door
alexz: I've noticed the same thing. I type in the search box a capitalized word followed by a lower case word ( (ie. Norman door) and Wordnik immediately redirects me to a new page with both words in lower case. It doesn't seem to redirect when both words are capitalized after being typed into search. Example: Old Baldy.
March 30, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Ishihara test
The Ishihara test is a color perception test for red-green color deficiencies. It was named after its designer, Dr. Shinobu Ishihara, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who first published his tests in 1917.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishihara_test
March 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word voluntourist
Voluntourists come for a week or two for a “project” — a temporary medical clinic, an orphanage visit or a school construction. A few are celebrities supporting their cause du jour, who drop in to meet locals and witness a project that often bears their name. Others come to teach English during high school, college vacations or during a gap year. Others are sun-seeking vacationers who stay at beachside resorts. Many voluntourists are religious — the sort of people who cite passages from the Bible, the Torah or the Quran that encourage followers to help those in need. There are some volunteers who possess specialized, sought-after skills like ophthalmology, but most do not. Sometimes volunteers do more harm than good.
Unsatisfying as it may be, many voluntourists ought to acknowledge the truth that they, as amateurs, often don’t have much to offer. Perhaps they ought to abandon the assumption that they, simply by being privileged enough to travel the world, are somehow qualified to help ease the world’s ills. Easing global poverty is an enormously complex task. To make so much as a dent requires hard, sustained work, and expertise. Even the experts sometimes get it wrong. If smart, dedicated professionals can fail to achieve lasting progress over a period of years, how then is an untrained vacationer supposed to do so in a matter of days?
March 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word purse-pride
See also purse-proud.
March 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word in-group bias
The tendency for people to favor (promote, include) those who are similar to them. In the business world, this in-group bias is problematic because it reinforces stereotypes and inequality. However, while it is a common tendency, not everyone is allowed to advocate for their own group. Sometimes when women and minorities promote their own group, it garners criticism from others.
In the U.S., there is still a power and status gap between men and women and between whites and nonwhites. High-status groups, mainly white men, are given freedom to deviate from the status quo because their competence is assumed based on their membership in the high-status group. In contrast, when women and nonwhite leaders advocate for other women and nonwhites, it highlights their low-status demographics, activating the stereotype of incompetence, and leads to worse performance ratings.
--"Women and minorities are penalized for promoting diversity", Harvard Business Review, March 23, 2016.
March 27, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list eye-dialect
See also inverse eye dialect.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=133
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list eye-dialect
See stabboard.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list americanism--1
Loo is not an Americanism.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word dilection
"If we love a friend without preferring her before others, the friendship is simple; if we prefer her, then this friendship is a dilection because we choose her from among many others we love, and prefer her."
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word crumb rubber
Crumb rubber is recycled rubber produced from automotive and truck scrap tires. During the recycling process, steel and tire cord (fluff) are removed, leaving tire rubber with a granular consistency.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word defensive vomiting
Vomiting serves an evolutionary purpose for humans by preventing the ingestion of something harmful, and by expelling noxious substances once ingested.
Vomiting excessive amounts of alcohol is an attempt by the body to prevent alcohol poisoning and death. Vomiting may also be caused by other drugs, such as opiates, or from toxins found in some foods and plants. Food allergies, such as lactose intolerance, can cause vomiting.
Even morning sickness, nausea and vomiting common to most pregnant women but no other mammals, has a defensive purpose. Morning sickness discourages pregnant women from eating meat and strong-tasting vegetables, which may contain toxins and microorganisms. If ingested, the fetus might be harmed. After around the 18th week, the fetus becomes less vulnerable.
The turkey vulture will vomit to dispel any disturbing animal. They can propel their vomit up to 10 feet.
The European roller, a much smaller bird found in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, uses vomit in a different way. A baby European roller will vomit a foul-smelling orange liquid onto itself to turn away a predator. The smell also warns the parents to return to the nest.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word miryachit
See miryachit.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Latah
See latah.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word jumping frenchmen of maine
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine syndrome must be distinguished from other conditions involving the startle reflex or tics.
Tourette syndrome is characterized by multiple physical (motor) tics, and at least one vocal (phonic) tic. There are many overlaps when compared clinically, but the abnormal "jumping" response is always provoked, unlike the involuntary tics in Tourette syndrome.
Latah from Southeast Asia is a disorder where one's startle response is similar to a state of trance with repetitive speech or movements. Miryachit is a disorder found in Siberia that also displays an action similar to "jumping". Neurasthenia is a disorder with a startle response during periods of great fatigue.
Hyperekplexia is an extremely rare autosomal dominant neurological disease. The symptoms start in infancy with hypertonia, an abnormal muscle tension that decreases flexibility, and an exaggerated startle in all ages of life.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pink tooth of mummery
A rare lesion consisting in internal resorption of a tooth, initiated by inflammatory hyperplasia of the pulp and hemorrhage, usually not associated with caries; the condition may appear as a pinkish area on the crown and, because the lesion is caused by osteoclasts, is known as an osteoclastoma; if detected early, ‘root canal’ therapy can salvage the tooth, otherwise it requires extraction.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word minimal change disease
The cause of minimal change disease is not fully known but it is believed to be an immune disorder in which T cells release a cytokine that damages the epithelial foot processes of the glomeruli. This leads to a leakage of albumin by the kidney. Certain events such as a viral infection, an allergic reaction, a bee sting, or an immunization may trigger an attack of MCD.
Minimal change disease is the most common form of the nephrotic syndrome in children aged 2 to 12 years. It is the cause of nephrotic syndrome in about 90% of children younger than 10 years, about 50% to 70% of older children, and 10% to 15% of adults.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word post-void dribbling
Post-void dribbling or post-micturition dribbling is the phenomenon where urine remaining in the urethra after voiding the bladder slowly leaks out after urination. A common and usually benign complaint, it may be a symptom of urethral diverticula, prostatitis and other medical problems.
Men who experience dribbling, especially after prostate cancer surgery, will choose to wear incontinence pads to stay dry. Also known as guards for men, these incontinence pads conform to the male body. Simple ways to prevent dribbling include: strengthening pelvic muscles with Kegel exercises, changing position while urinating, or pressing on the perineum to evacuate the remaining urine from the urethra. Sitting down while urinating is also shown to alleviate complaints: a meta-analysis on the effects of voiding position in elderly males with benign prostate hyperplasia found an improvement of urologic parameters in this position while in healthy males no such influence was found.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word heavy chain disease
A disease characterized by an excessive production of heavy chains that are short and truncated. These heavy chain disease proteins have various deletions which interfere with heavy chains to properly bond with light chains.
Patients with Franklin disease gamma chain disease usually have a history of progressive weakness, fatigue, intermittent fever, night sweats and weight loss and may present with lymphadenopathy, splenomegaly or hepatomegaly.
Patients usually have a rapid downhill course and die of infection if left untreated or misdiagnosed.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word asterixis
See liver flap.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word liver flap
Asterixis (also called the flapping tremor, or liver flap) is a tremor of the hand when the wrist is extended, sometimes said to resemble a bird flapping its wings. This motor disorder is characterized by an inability to actively maintain a position, which is demonstrated by jerking movements of the outstretched hands when bent upward at the wrist. The tremor is caused by abnormal function of the diencephalic motor centers in the brain, which regulate the muscles involved in maintaining position. Asterixis is associated with various encephalopathies due especially to faulty metabolism. The term asterixis derives from the Greek a, "not" and stērixis, "fixed position"
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word inbreeding depression
Although severe inbreeding depression in humans seems to be highly uncommon and not widely known, there have been several cases of apparent forms of inbreeding depression in human populations. Charles Darwin, through numerous experiments, was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the effects of inbreeding depression. Charles's wife, Emma, was his first cousin. He attempted to study the theory of inbreeding within his own children. Of the ten Darwin children, three died before the age of ten. Of the rest, three had childless long-term marriages. As with animals, this phenomenon tends to occur in isolated, rural populations that are cut off to some degree from other areas of civilization.
A study has provided the evidence for inbreeding depression on cognitive abilities among children, with a high frequency of mental retardation among the offspring having greater values of inbreeding coefficient. The depression on growth parameters (height, weight and body mass index) due to inbreeding among children has revealed the significant increase in underweight cases with increasing inbreeding coefficients.
A notable example is the Vadoma tribe of western Zimbabwe, many of whom carry the trait of having only two toes due to a small gene pool. Another example is Fumarase deficiency, a rare genetic disorder that leads to severe mental retardation. Over half of the known cases are in the isolated and adjoining polygamous Reformed Mormon communities of Hilldale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word kleeblattschädel
Craniosynostosis (from cranio, cranium; + syn, together; + ostosis relating to bone) is a condition in which one or more of the fibrous sutures in an infant skull prematurely fuses by turning into bone (ossification), thereby changing the growth pattern of the skull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniosynostosis
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bible cyst
A ganglion cyst, or a synovial cyst, also known as Gideon's Disease, a bible cyst, or a bible bump, is a non-neoplastic soft tissue lump that may occur in any joint, but most often occurs on, around, or near joints and tendons in the hands or feet. These cysts are caused by leakage of fluid from the joint into the surrounding tissue.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word jeep seat
A pilonidal cyst, also referred to as a pilonidal abscess, pilonidal sinus or sacrococcygeal fistula, is a cyst or abscess near or on the natal cleft of the buttocks that often contains hair and skin debris.
Pilonidal cysts are often very painful, and typically occur between the ages of 15 and 35. Although usually found near the coccyx, the condition can also affect the navel, armpit or genital region, though these locations are much rarer.
The condition was widespread in the United States Army during World War II. The condition was termed "jeep seat" or "Jeep riders' disease" because a large portion of people who were being hospitalized for it rode in Jeeps, and prolonged rides in the bumpy vehicles were believed to have caused the condition due to irritation and pressure on the coccyx.
Pilonidal means nest of hair and is derived from the Latin words for hair (pilus) and nest (nidus).
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word blueberry muffin baby
Blueberry muffin baby is the characteristic distributed purpurais occurring as a result of extramedullary hematopoiesis found in infants. The purpura is often generalized but occurs more often on the trunk, head, and neck. The name is from the superficial similarity to a blueberry muffin.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word psychological pillow
Does this pillow contain memory foam?
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list zoonoses
Ha. Perhaps I should have used the singular zoonosis, but I liked the look of the plural zoonoses.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list americanism--1
bathroom (in speech), rest room (posted). Canadians say washroom. I don't know what Brits or Australians call their public facilities.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hot minute
See also New York minute.
March 23, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cytokine storm
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast, the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults. Modern research, using virus taken from the bodies of frozen victims, has concluded that the virus kills through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system). The strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.
March 22, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cytokine storm
When the immune system is fighting pathogens, cytokines signal immune cells such as T-cells and macrophages to travel to the site of infection. In addition, cytokines activate those cells, stimulating them to produce more cytokines. Normally, the body keeps this feedback loop in check. However, in some instances, the reaction becomes uncontrolled, and too many immune cells are activated in a single place. The precise reason for this is not entirely understood but may be caused by an exaggerated response when the immune system encounters a new and highly pathogenic invader. Cytokine storms have the potential to do significant damage to body tissues and organs. If a cytokine storm occurs in the lungs, for example, fluids and immune cells such as macrophages may accumulate and eventually block off the airways, potentially resulting in death.-Wikipedia
March 22, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bunkum
According to the story, during the 1820’s Missouri statehood debates, the representative Felix Walker began with what he promised to be a “long, dull and irrelevant speech”, and so it was. No matter who cried for him to stop, he continued dealing with issues having to do with his relatively small county rather than the House of Representatives.
Ever since, people who speak of things unrelated to whatever it is that’s going on, are speaking bunkum.
March 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word stiricide
The action of icicles falling from a roof and crashing on the ground.
March 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gate
n. The waste piece of metal cast in the opening; a sprue or sullage piece.
March 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pit heap
MaryW: Your excellent accumulated spoil belongs on this list:
https://www.wordnik.com/lists/unwanted-matter
Love your many contributions!
March 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Prialt
To find out more about the fascinating history of Prialt and its developers, read
here.
March 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Prialt
"Prialt or ziconotide is a synthetic compound identical to a toxin in the venom of the Conus magus sea snail. This is remarkable in itself, because natural compounds are almost always chemically modified to make them work better as drugs. In this case, nature perfected the compound on its own.
Prialt is 1,000 times more powerful than morphine, but, unlike morphine, it is not believed to be addictive. The FDA approved its use for chronic, intractable pain such as that suffered by people with cancer, AIDS or certain neurological disorders. It is delivered directly into fluid surrounding the spinal cord by external or implanted pumps.
Prialt may be just the first of many new medicines derived from cone snail venom. There are about 500 different types of cone snails, and each one typically produces about 100 different toxins in its venom. Some instantly shock the snail's prey, as does the sting of an electric eel, scorpion or sea anemone. Others cause paralysis, like the venoms of cobras and Japanese puffer fish.
Scientists are testing the potential of dozens of cone snail toxin to treat epilepsy, cardiovascular disease and other disorders. Eventually, the molecules in sea snail venoms may help to treat Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and depression.
*the toxin (which later was developed into Prialt) was discovered by a teenager named J. Michael McIntosh, just days after graduating from high school.
March 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fly-book
Would you like to come up to my place and see my etchings, er fly-book?
March 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fly-book
No library should be without one.
March 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word fluorescing
"The basic task of the fluorescence microscope is to let excitation light radiate the specimen and then sort out the much weaker emitted light from the image. First, the microscope has a filter that only lets through radiation with the specific wavelength that matches your fluorescing material. The radiation collides with the atoms in your specimen and electrons are excited to a higher energy level. When they relax to a lower level, they emit light. To become detectable (visible to the human eye) the fluorescence emitted from the sample is separated from the much brighter excitation light in a second filter. This works because the emitted light is of lower energy and has a longer wavelength than the light that is used for illumination." -George Rice, Fluorescent Microscopy
March 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bobuck
A favorite book in my home library:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/j3h6jb2
March 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word preflection
The act of reflecting on something before it has happened. To decide on what will have happened by the end of the day, week, lesson etc. This is usually followed by an attempt to make the events live up to your preflection.
Useful if you have to submit a report to someone (a weekly reflection for instance).
On preflection, the afternoon went well. Most of my class understood what I was talking about.
-Urban Dictionary
March 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word woollybutt grass
Once upon a time
There was a woollybutt tree
The prettiest woollybutt tree
That you ever did see.
And the woollybutt tree was in the ground
And the woollybutt grass grew all around, all around,
And the woollybutt grass grew all around.
March 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word woollybutt grass
Woollybutt grass (Eragrostis eriopoda) is one of many plant species found in the Western Australian rangelands.
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word sfumato
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) became the most prominent practitioner of sfumato. The face of Mona Lisa uses sfumato, particularly in the shading around the eyes.
See detail of face here.
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word nyctitropism
See Charles Darwin's Book: Power of Movement in Plants.
Chapter 7. Modified circumnutation: nyctitropic or sleep movements of leaves
http://www.readbookonline.net/read/62913/111548/
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word table-tipping
"The question was asked if it were possible to establish communication with the dead, and whether it was wise or advisable to attend séances or to engage in table-turning, spirit-rapping, etc."
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word table-moving
"The question was asked if it were possible to establish communication with the dead, and whether it was wise or advisable to attend séances or to engage in table-turning, spirit-rapping, etc."
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word table-turning
See table-moving, table-tipping, spirit-rapping.
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word table-moving
See table-tipping, spirit-rapping.
March 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pepito
From Examples: "The pepito - an assemblage of short ribs, black beans, caramelized onions and pickled jalapeños."
See also gold nugget.
March 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word gold nugget
See pepito.
March 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bywater
I would have never guessed that this word has something to do with the color of a diamond.
March 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bird dog
I like using this word as a verb.
March 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mil-dot
Alexz is female. Thank you for not shooting her, bilby. I love her as well. Alexz adds great words and comments. And, of course, emoticons!
March 5, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word snakepox
Love it, MaryW. See orf.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Old Baldy
Mt. San Antonio, also known as Mt. Baldy, or Old Baldy, the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, and Los Angeles County.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Old Baldy
ruzuzu on top of Old Baldy. (Lynch, NE)
http://preview.tinyurl.com/jfgtj38
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word phytotherapy
The part of pharmacognosy focusing on use of crude extracts or semi-pure mixtures originating from nature. Phytotherapy is probably the best known and also the most debated area in pharmacognosy.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word zoopharmacognosy
The process by which animals self-medicate, by selecting and using plants, soils, and insects to treat and prevent disease.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word seismonasty
See thigmonasty.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thigmonasty
Also known as seismonasty.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word nyctinasty
Compare with thigmonasty.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word peetweet
I was certain that this had something to do with peeing while tweeting.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Wordnik
I'm still mourning Wordie.
February 29, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mourning jewelry
"In the 18th and 19th centuries, many people with the resources to do so coped with grief by memorializing loved ones with jewelry.
Usually paid for by the estate of the deceased, mourning rings varied in complexity but were inscribed with the age, date of death and name of the deceased. The ring designs changed with the latest fashions, from the asymmetrical Rococo style to the geometric and symmetrical Republican and Neoclassical styles.
In addition to rings, mourners sometimes created brooches and pendants. Many of these pieces used the hair of the deceased in their design, either glued on, woven in glass compartments or mixed with paint.
By the start of the 20th century, rigorous mourning etiquette had fallen out of fashion, and the growing availability of cheap imitation materials led people to mostly abandon mourning jewelry."
See examples here: http://mashable.com/2015/12/13/mourning-jewelry/?utm_cid=lf-toc#RO1uHss0Zkq9
February 28, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word wyre piddle
There's no shame in adult piddlewear. I can make you a cap for lesser known piddlers. (More prestigious piddlers are out of my skill set.)
February 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word banza
Pasta made from garbanzo beans (chickpeas) instead of wheat. Banza, shorthand for garbanzo pasta, has double the protein and four times the fiber of traditional pasta, and far fewer carbs; it’s also gluten-free.
February 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word artificial pancreas
detects dropping sugar levels and shuts off regular insulin delivery for type 1 diabetics, just like a real pancreas.
February 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word edible password pill
A pill that consists of a tiny chip powered by stomach acid and that emits a signal that can be detected by your phone or computer, essentially turning one's body into a password.
February 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cronut
made of croissant-style pastry that’s fried like a doughnut, filled with cream and topped with glaze.
February 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word alcoholic coffee
a coffee-based beverage that’s about 80 proof, like tequila and vodka.
February 21, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word wordo
Sometimes it's a typo that the user made that slips by spellcheck.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word assfish
How dare "they" call the assfish bony-eared.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hoik
to lift something (a breast in this context) up wildly(?)
"I may have discovered the reason why adhesive cups that cover the breasts leaving wearers free to show off their skin in backless, strapless or frontless dresses don't go up to an E-cup - it's called gravity.
Gaffer tape, however, is a different entity entirely and strong enough even to hoik mine and Kim's generous bust. But just because it works, doesn't mean to say it looks good."
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word meth
METH DEAD DON'T GET EATEN
"That's what 17 year old Daniel Jeffrey Martin from Desert Vista High School heard from his mom one day while driving near a piece of the desert near his home town of Phoenix, Arizona. "Huh?" he asked. His mom, a forensic scientist (think: CSI), explained to him that when dead bodies are found in the desert by animals like coyotes, bobcats, and wolves, these scavengers will usually eat them—except for the bodies of methamphetamine users (proven by an autopsy)."--Drugs&Health Blog, 28 July 2009
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word square donut
A business in Indiana that has made square donuts since 1967. Apparently, they claim the shape isn't the ONLY difference between their donuts and traditional holey donuts, but what else could the difference be?
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word selective patronage
See double-duty dollar.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pink money
Know in the UK as the pink pound. See also Dorothy dollar.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pink money
Pink money describes the purchasing power of the gay community, often especially with respect to political donations. With the rise of the gay rights movement, pink money has gone from being a fringe or marginalized market to a thriving industry in many parts of the Western world such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Many businesses now specifically cater to gay customers, including nightclubs, shops, restaurants, and even taxicabs; the demand for these services stems from commonly perceived discrimination by traditional businesses.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word double-duty dollar
The term "double duty dollar" was used in the US from the early 1900s through the early 1960s, to express the notion that dollars spent with businesses hiring African Americans -- ‘‘simultaneously purchased a commodity and advanced the race’’. Where that concept applied, retailers who excluded African Americans as employees effectively excluded them as patrons too.
Religious leaders, as well as social activists such as Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, urged their communities to redirect their dollars from suppliers who excluded African Americans to suppliers with more inclusive practices. Though the Swadeshi movement had much broader goals, Mohandas Gandhi also famously urged his countrymen, in the 1920s, to avoid funding their own subjugation by buying things from the British -- things they could produce and trade independently, like cloth and clothing. In the 1940s and 50s, Leon Sullivan applied the broader phrase selective patronage to note consumers' choice of suppliers as a tool a) to influence suppliers toward fairer, more just interactions with African Americans, and b) to build demand for African American suppliers.
The double-duty dollar concept can now be seen as part of a broad spectrum of consumer activism or ethical consumerism strategies.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word trespassing
Does Nebraska have any purple paint statutes?
In some states, purple paint means NO HUNTING. In other states, different colors of paint are used for NO TRESPASSING and NO HUNTING.
February 20, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word prison wine
See pruno.
February 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pruno
Pruno, or prison wine, is an alcoholic beverage variously made from apples, oranges, fruit cocktail, candy, ketchup, sugar, milk, and possibly other ingredients, including crumbled bread. Bread supposedly provides the yeast for the pruno to ferment. Pruno originated in (and remains largely confined to) prisons and jails, where it can be produced with the limited selection of equipment and ingredients available to inmates. The concoction can be made using only a plastic bag, hot running water, and a towel or sock to conceal the pulp during fermentation. The end result has been colorfully described as a "bile flavored wine-cooler", although flavor is often not the primary objective. --Wikipedia
February 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word trespassing
Purple paint has the same legal weight as "No Trespassing" signs in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas.
The Purple Paint Statute (RSMO 569.145), provides yet another way for Missouri landowners to protect their property from trespassers. Landowners can still use "No Trespassing" signs; however, the Purple Paint Statute allows landowners to mark trees or posts with purple paint as a warning to would-be trespassers. Just like a "No Trespassing" sign or actual communication to individuals that no trespassing is allowed, the purple paint marks are considered to be adequate notice to the public that no trespassing is allowed on the property.
Missouri's law is similar to one that has been used in Arkansas since 1989. These statutes were enacted to provide landowners with an economical and easy way to keep out unwanted trespassers. The law does not require that property marked with the purple paint also be fenced, thus it is an economical alternative for landowners who do not otherwise need to fence their property. Additionally, it prevents a problem encountered when using "No Trespassing" signs -- purple paint marks can't be taken down, destroyed, or stolen.
Many people across the state are not aware that the statute exists. Regardless, the statute imputes notice to would-be trespassers. All land marked with purple paint in the manner described by the statute is considered to be adequate notice to the public. It fulfills the same function as a "No Trespassing" sign, a fence, or telling someone not to come onto your property.
February 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cozy mystery
Cozy mysteries, also referred to simply as "cozies", are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. The term was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
February 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cocobolo
"Woods with an oily content, such as cocobolo, can achieve better gluing strength by wiping the surface of both pieces being glued with acetone first. After the acetone has dried, the piece is glued as normal."
February 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word boating
Is there a list of punishments?
A punishment of capital offenders, by laying them on the back in a covered boat, where they are left to perish.
February 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word neodymiummagnet
Strong magnets made from neodymium-iron-boron, silver and shiny in color, used in computer hard drives, headphones, hi-fi speakers, toys, jewelry, and even clothes.
But because of their high magnetic field, close contact – within about 3cm (1.1811 inches) – with a neodymiummagnet is enough to destabilize pacemakers or other implanted heart devices.
February 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pakeha
bilby: Have you forgotten that my ancestors were cap makers of lesser known clergy?
February 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word موتي
Moti. As in Ornella Muti, an Italian actress.
February 16, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pakeha
Here's a list of ethnic slurs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
See also on the same page:
Fighting words
Graphic pejoratives in written Chinese
Hate speech
List of anti-cultural, anti-national, and anti-ethnic terms
List of disability-related terms with negative connotations
List of ethnic group names used as insults
List of ethnic slurs by ethnicity
List of regional nicknames
List of religious slurs
List of terms used for Germans
Term of disparagement
February 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word inchpin
I came across this word as someone's surname. Fascinating find.
February 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mulm
My new favorite word.
February 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list a-glossary-of-filth
mulm-The sludge that collects at the bottom of an aquarium, consisting of fish excrement, decaying plant matter, and other assorted dreck.
February 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anti-gay
A poor attempt at sarcasm on my part, yarb.
The five worst states for LGBT Americans (according to Rolling Stone):
1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. Texas
4. Louisiana
5. Michigan
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-5-worst-states-for-lgbt-people-20141124
February 15, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word knitting caddy
I've forgotten the word for a folding caddy for knitting, sewing, etc. It's driving me crazy.
I have an old one (mid-century) that looks similar to the following example (except with a different fabric design). http://preview.tinyurl.com/z825ckk Help!
February 14, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anti-gay
#bilbylivesmattertoo
February 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anti-gay
What exactly are gay ideas? Is the idea for a new mousetrap somehow abhorrent
because someone who is gay thought of it?
February 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word kupfernickel
Copper nickel. Also known as Devil's copper. devil's copper.
February 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word lilac-blue
First lavender-pink, now lilac-blue. (Random word searches are creepy sometimes).
February 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word labradoodle
Interesting story about the labradoodle.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/nov/13/inventors-idea-regret
February 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word technicolor yawn
Australian English for vomiting. It was coined by, or at least popularised by, Barry Humphries and appeared in his 1965 review A Nice Night’s Entertainment:
"When I swallowed the last prawn,
I had a technicolor yawn and I chundered in the old Pacific Sea."
February 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word A.C.A.B.
This acronym is commonly found on the bodies of British prisoners and stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.” Often found on the knuckles, the tattoo symbolizes a willingness to go to prison for your crew or gang.
Some claim that A.C.A.B. also stands for “Always Carry A Bible,” but these are widely believed to be people who regret their tattoo decision.
February 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word teardrop tattoo
Made famous by Johnny Depp's character in the movie Crybaby. It is a tattoo of a teardrop below one's eye on either side. Originally placed in prison to signify that the bearer was owned by a fellow prisoner. The teardrop signifies that pain and humiliation one would feel after being "turned out" in prison. The tattoo is placed on the face to further humiliate the victim and mark them in a place where they could not cover the mark.
Traditionally. the tattoo tear signified that the wearer had killed someone. The meaning of the tattoo can vary between ethnicity and region. For example in Australia, a tattoo tear is sometimes forcefully tattooed on an inmate who had sexually assaulted a child.
The tattooed teardrop has also come to mean a fellow family or gang member has died while incarcerated.
February 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word anti-cancer
"Scientists estimate that 70% of anti-cancer plants come from rainforests.'
February 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word lignite
"Lignite power plants emit tons of pollutants into the air. The sad thing is that lignite, which is similar to coal, doesn’t even produce that much heat."
February 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word oil sand
Oil sand is said to be the energy source of the future, however harvesting this oil sand is a leading cause of deforestation and is the largest contributor in North America to climate change.
February 8, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word expressivist
adj. Pertaining to or advocating expressivism, the doctrine that the primary function of moral sentences and sensation sentences (like "I am in pain") is to express an evaluative attitude, rather than stating a fact.
I'm trying to think of a sentence that includes Wordnik AND advocates expressivism.
February 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word scalp lock
n. A long lock or tuft of hair left on the scalp by the North American Indians, as an implied challenge to an enemy to take it if he can.
February 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word calico
കോഴിക്കോട് (calico in Malayalam)
February 2, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Hug an Australian Day
Apparently, this is a copyrighted holiday (??) celebrated on April 26th.
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word lightning bug
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
- Letter to George Bainton from Mark Twain, 10/15/1888
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word furphy
Australian English has a rich collection of idioms.
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thoft
(Northern England, dialect) a bench in a boat upon which a rower sits.
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word kudzu bug
"Ms. Bennett's three-bedroom house in Hoschton, Ga., is now pictured in scholarly articles as ground zero for kudzu bug research."
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word history-sheeter
Another random search find.
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word monopolar
The pole dancer had a monopolar act.
February 1, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word buncher
So-called "bunchers" gather free pets until they have enough for a trip to a Class B Dealer who is licensed by the USDA to sell to sell animals from "random sources" for research. The buncher may only get $25 a head for former pets, while a dealer can between $100 - $450 per pet. The Class B dealer probably already has a contract with certain facilities, and will transport them to other areas within a state, even out of state.
* Free animals are taken to "blood" pit-bulls--to train fighting dogs how to kill, and to enjoy it. This can be dogs and cats, of any size. Often, a larger dog's muzzle will be duct-taped shut so that he can't bite back, and the fighting dog will gain confidence in killing a dog larger than he is.
* One "adoptor" took free kittens to his "good home"--as dinner for a pet snake.
* Unspayed or unneutered pure-bred dogs may end up as "breeding stock" in a puppy mill. One woman was certain that if she didn't give away her Dalmatians' AKC registration papers along with the dogs, she could keep them safe from millers. Wrong. Unscrupulous breeders, who use puppies as cash crops like other farmers raise cattle, pigs, or chickens, aren't above forging registration papers, or using those from deceased dogs. Rescuers have learned the hard to way to make sure that all pets they place have been spayed or neutered before going to new homes.
* So-called "collectors" watch the newspapers for Free to Good Home animals. These collectors truly believe they are "rescuing" the animals.
January 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word buncher
n. An illegitimate supplier of laboratory animals who obtains the animals by kidnapping pets or illegally trapping strays.
January 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Pratt, Kansas
See photo of hot cold water towers here: http://www.sctelcom.net/site/?q=content/pratt-ks. See also VISUALS.
January 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Canton, Kansas
Canton has two water towers, labeled "HOT" (in red) and "COLD" (in blue). The words were painted on as a tourist attraction in 1956 at the suggestion of local real estate agent Mrs. M.D. Fisher. Surprisingly, both tanks hold water at an ambient temperature.
January 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word mulierose
What's wrong with being excessively fond of women?
January 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word wodges of wonga
Lots of money.
January 31, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word personal
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: pertaining to a person or self-conscious being...
Name a self-conscious being that isn't a person.
January 26, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word harelip service
Huh?!
January 26, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word obituary
One of the most interesting obituaries I've ever read.
http://www.starksfuneral.com/obituary?o=602-64k77t92uk
January 26, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word firedog
See also andiron and dog iron.
January 26, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word trivet
Trivets were also used (once upon a time) to hold irons that had to be heated on a cookstove.
January 26, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word raspings
the shavings of ivory, hartshorn, metals, or other hard substances.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word recrement
See scoria.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word pestitarian
a person whose dietary restrictions are annoying to others.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word flatsigned
(adjective) : autographed but not personalized
Collectors often prefer flatsigned books over those that are signed and have personalized inscriptions.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bewareful
careful + aware
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word afterclap
to continue to clap after everyone else has stopped.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cuddle puddle
See cuddle party.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word cuddle party
A cuddle party or cuddle puddle is an event designed with the intention of allowing people to experience non-sexual group physical intimacy through cuddling.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word thirdhand
Another example of why I love you, b.
January 25, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word doxxing
Typically carried out by anonymous online users with axes to grind and little to lose, doxxing involves making someone’s private information public. That includes home addresses, phone numbers, financial histories, medical records—anything that can be found in the endless databases available to canny hackers.
Doxxing can be a drive-by prank on most anyone who draws attention. But more often its targets are singled out for humiliation. An example: GamerGate, in which certain active video gamers targeted journalists, mostly women, who had criticized the outright misogyny found in many popular video games. The backlash began with the bilious insults that have become astonishingly common online. But it quickly escalated to “revenge blogs” purporting to reveal those journalists’ past indiscretions, and doxxing attacks.
January 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word hoodmold
A protective drip? I'm guessing this doesn't include a protective postnasal drip, too.
January 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list things-to-do-with-animals
You found a fan nevertheless, deinonychus. I just wish some of the entries offered an explanation or a definition. Thanks, bilby, for adding my dried cat to the mix. I didn't make the connection soon enough to add it myself.
January 19, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word avidity
"Mr. McLynn is as unsparing of the senior commanders in Burma as they were of each other: The "mentally unstable" Wingate is posthumously diagnosed with bipolar disorder; Chennault suffered from "monomania," was "essentially false" and "joined in the Chinese elite's corruption and peculation with avidity"; Chiang is described as having given his second wife a nasty venereal disease on their wedding night. Mountbatten—who was "completely under MacArthur's spell"—is presented as "selfish and vain," "cocksure" and "impetuous." Mountbatten consistently supported potentially disastrous amphibious attacks, we're told, and then "disingenuously tried to take credit" when other people's schemes went well."--Andrew Roberts, "Still Forgotten", Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2011.
January 18, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the list things-to-do-with-animals
This list is more intriguing than disturbing.
January 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word philibeg
Why is the kilt little? Economics? Stature? A form of punishment?
January 17, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word evening meal
In many parts of rural middle America, dinner is the main meal served at or around noon (and is considered the heaviest meal of the day). Supper is a light late afternoon/early evening meal. Breakfast is breakfast, and for farmers, is eaten before the sun comes up.
As for me, I call the three main meals: breakfast, lunch, and supper.
January 14, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word dried cat
It is the custom in some European cultures to place the dried or desiccated body of a cat inside the walls of a newly built home to ward off evil or as a good luck charm. Although some accounts claim the cats were walled in alive, examination of recovered specimens indicates post-mortem concealment in most cases.--Wikipedia
January 13, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word lukewarmly
Hi, my name is Luke Warmly.
January 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word candleshine
"In the candleshine, her pubis was faintly outlined, like a map of a phantom peninsula."
January 12, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word 우유
milk in Korean.
January 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word truther
A conspiracy theorist. See also trufer.
January 11, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word product evangelist
The importance of product passion is necessary is for product evangelism.
Product evangelism is, as Guy Kawasaki put it years ago, “selling the dream.” It’s helping people to imagine the future, and inspiring them to help create that future.
If you’re a startup founder or CEO, this is a very big part of your job, and you’ll have a hard time assembling a strong team if you don’t get good at this.
If you’re a product manager at a large company, unless you’re good at evangelism there’s a very strong chance that your product will get killed before it sees the light of day, and even if it manages to ship, it will likely go the way of thousands of other large company efforts and wither on the vine.
January 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word bralessness
"She jumped back, instinctively covering her pendulous bralessness with the rolled up paper, no doubt to prevent her boobs from swinging up and taking out an eye."--Jen Sincero
January 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word grimalkin
Never heard this word used.
January 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word vagina
I really hate it when people insist on sticking their fingers in my coin return slot looking for a freebie.
January 10, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word alembicated
"He has the most confused mind, alembicated, what our ancestors called a diseur de phébus, and he makes the things that he says even more unpleasant by the manner in which he says them."
January 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word sheeps
Is not!
January 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word oh snap
An expression meaning that one has been surprised by what has just occurred. It is similar to saying "wow" or "holy crap".
January 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word couronné
I found some lovely couronné pastries online. Shaped like crowns, of course.
January 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Mooselini
Thanks for adding Mooselini to your growing glitch list, alexz.
According to Urban Dictionary:
Mooselini is a petty dictator from a sparsely populated state (or province) with a large moose population.
January 7, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word Mooselini
Is this an accurate definition or a glitched one?
January 6, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word ghoti
The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, is said to have joked that the word ‘fish’ could legitimately be spelled ‘ghoti’ by using the ‘gh’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘enough’, the ‘o’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘women’ and the ‘ti’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘action’.
However, linguists have pointed out that the location of the letters in the constructed word is inconsistent with how those letters would be pronounced in those placements, and that the expected pronunciation in English would be "goaty".1 For instance, the letters "gh" cannot be pronounced /f/ at the beginning of a syllable, and the letters "ti" cannot be pronounced /ʃ/ at the end of a syllable.
January 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word te¡ko
Huh?
January 3, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word boodle jail
"Boodle jails" were jails in the United States, predominantly during the nineteenth century, in which a tramp or hobo could make an illicit arrangement with a law enforcement officer to stay in the jail without being an actual prisoner. For example, between 1893 and 1899, the Welsh tramp-poet W. H. Davies took advantage of this corrupt system in order to pass the winter in Michigan, staying in a series of different jails. Here, with his fellow tramps, Davies would enjoy the relative comfort of "card-playing, singing, smoking, reading, relating experiences and occasionally taking exercise or going out for a walk."
December 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list oddly-specific-words--1
Lovely list, crsini.
December 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word vagina
@nesdon. I agree. I see the word vagina misused in mainstream print media. PARIS HILTON FLASHES VAGINA. FORGETS TO WEAR UNDERWEAR. I hear it on TV by people who should know the difference. "Learning how to lose vagina fat can be difficult and even frustrating at times but it is not impossible! Take the time to dedicate to your fitness and health and you will begin to see results. Create a healthy diet plan and a regular workout routine and you will be well on your way. Get started today and burn that unwanted vagina fat!" I find it particularly sad when women don't know their own body parts.
December 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word music-master
Why not "a teacher of music"? See master. Several definitions use "one", not necessarily male.
December 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word sniffing position
Great find, ru.
December 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ound
oundy adjective -dier or -diest (obsolete) wavy or curly.
December 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ound
Nice word. Not listed by anyone either.
n. A wave.
n. Work waving up and down; a kind of lace.
December 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word realia
pronunciation?
December 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word micro-sized plastic
Micro-sized plastic is an enduring hazard, as it becomes mixed with plankton, which is then ingurgitated by small fish that are then eaten by larger predators.
December 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word stand-up meeting
Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play games on their cellphones or tune out.
Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I.
Holding stand-up meetings before lunch also speeds things up.
December 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word microaggression
Last night I heard Dr. Drew Pinksy mention microaggressions on his show.
December 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word microaggression
https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/14/emory-students-want-professors-evaluated
December 14, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word end-use rebound theory
The theory which hypothesizes that people who own efficient appliances would use them more and thereby consume more energy.
December 14, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word rumal
"The rumal or 'handkerchief,' always employed for throttling victims, was really a loin-cloth or turban, in which a loop was made with a slip-knot."
December 13, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list defunct-professions
lace-mender
December 13, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word reddidit
Red did it.
December 13, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word people of color
"The report shows that even in those scenarios, people of color still have less access to standard tests, less access to life-extending high-tech procedures and a higher likelihood of undesirable (and avoidable) treatments (such as amputations)."
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word futuristic
futuristic technology can do without bludgeoning us with technical details.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tuple
A simple generic data structure that holds an ordered set of items of heterogeneous types. Morgan's Law of Attribution: One tuple is sufficient.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kete
A "kete" is a bag woven from the long leaves of the New Zealand flax plant Phormium tenax.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word harakeke
Phormium tenax tarere. Weaving flax leaves used for kete or baskets. Maori.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (b.1930 – d. 2002) was a sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher, and renowned public intellectual.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word habitus
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist who, in his book on distinction, developed the concept habitus to describe the social origins of taste. It’s a way to see inequalities in our relationships to cultural artifacts and activities and on our bodies. For example, while the ability to purchase a $119 wool suit blazer in size 3-6 months requires economic privilege, easily imagining and desiring to see one’s baby in it also reflects a long held class location and taken-for-granted world of pleasure and pomp. Importantly, Bourdieu notes, taste leads to distinction, by which we rank people according to “highbrow” vs. “lowbrow” or “classy” vs. “trashy.” Social hierarchies, then, are reflected in and essentialized through the development of taste over our lifetimes.--Kristen Barber, December 3, 2015
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word manlights
Blonde highlights for men’s hair. See man bun.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word man bun
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kara
A steel ring that is worn primarily on the right hand by right-handed Sikhs.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kachera
Boxer shorts or long underwear worn by Sikh men and women.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kangha
This is a small comb (usually made of wood), which is kept just behind the knot of hair (joora) on the head.
See https://www.wordnik.com/lists/the-five-ks-of-sikh-identity
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kesh
The keeping of uncut hair is a mark of Sikh identity.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word labiaplasty
"...in U.S. culture have rigid and narrow beauty standards for women extended to their vulvas. With the ascendance of cosmetic surgery (and its profits), marketing (and its effectiveness), and the visibility of pornography (and its mainstreaming), there is now cultural pressure on women to have the perfect vulva."--Lisa Wade, Sociological Images, September 20, 2008.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word San Marcos, Texas
Prior to the current selection of a body farm at this location, objections were raised by local residents and the nearby San Marcos Municipal Airport because of concerns about circling vultures.
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word porch pirate
I thwarted a porch pirate today. (A neighbor's).
December 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word forensic palynology
The study of fossil and modern pollen grains, spores, and powdered minerals, their identification, and when and where they occur, to ascertain that a body or an object was in a particular geographic location during an approximate time period.
December 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tigritude
A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.
-Wole Soyinka
December 4, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word blet
Wild persimmons can only be eaten after a hard frost. My parents have several wild persimmon trees. The fruit is small but tasty when bletted.
December 4, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word scrin
n. In mining, a small vein or string of ore; a crack filled with ore branching from a larger vein.
December 3, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word amuser
n. Rogues who carried snuff or dust in their pockets, which they threw into the eyes of any person they intended to rob; and running away, their accomplices (pretending to assist and pity the half-blinded person) took that opportunity of plundering him. -1811 Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue
December 3, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word food religionist
See also food religion.
December 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list mandles-candles-for-men
http://www.gocomics.com/the-daily-drawing/2015/11/16?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialmarketing&utm_campaign=social
November 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word bibble
Which is more uncouth... to bibble or to tipple?
November 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word 5
The definitions are infinite!
November 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Wordnik Zeitgeist
Is this Wordnik's full name?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordnik
November 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tun
See tardigrades.
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tardigrades
Tardigrades, also known as "water bears", are highly resilient microscopic animals. They are capable of surviving extremes such as heat, radiation, drought, and the vacuum of space by going into a "tun"—essentially a shrivelled blob—a type of suspended animation (Cryptobiosis) where their metabolism slows to near zero and they simply wait out the harsh conditions until the environment is more favorable.
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list scales
Hm. I forgot about this list. Need help adding to it.
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Minnesota nice
Minnesota nice is the stereotypical behavior of people born and raised in Minnesota to be courteous, reserved, and mild-mannered. The cultural characteristics of Minnesota nice include a polite friendliness, an aversion to confrontation, a tendency toward understatement, a disinclination to make a fuss or stand out, emotional restraint, and self-deprecation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word given the gooner
to being given the gooner once meant getting the sack or getting the boot.
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word bailed
...hooped and covered, as a wagon.
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word 5
adj. being one less than six
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word two-spirit
n A person, especially a Native American man, who assumes the sexual identity and is granted the social status of the opposite sex. See berdache: a person with "third gender" identity among Native Americans (a term considered disrespectful by most Native Americans).
November 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word coal seam gas
Coal Seam Gas (CSG) is natural gas found in coal deposits. The coal and gas are formed from plant matter under pressure over many millions of years. Coal seam gas is used in the same way as any other form of natural gas for cooking and heating as well as in industrial processes and electricity generation.
November 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list self-driving-cars
Do the cars have to have a name? There are several movies and a few novels that feature autonomous cars without a name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car.
November 18, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word twisted church tower
twisted church tower.
November 18, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word entisol
In USDA soil taxonomy, entisols are defined as soils that do not show any profile development other than an A horizon. An entisol has no diagnostic horizons, and most are basically unaltered from their parent material, which can be unconsolidated sediment or rock. Entisols are the second most abundant soil order (after inceptisols), occupying about 16% of the global ice-free land area.
In Australia, most entisols are known as rudosols or tenosols, while arents are known as anthroposols. In the FAO soil classification, because of the diversity of their properties, suborders of entisols form individual soil orders (e.g. fluvisols, lithosols).
--wikipedia. See also aquents, fluvents, orthents, psamments.
November 18, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word chrain
A relish made from beetroot and horseradish; it's the traditional tracklement to boiled tongue and beef.
November 16, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tilery
Get thee to a tilery!
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word wordnikworthy
Words worthy of a comment on Wordnik.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word figging
Both definitions are wordnikworthy.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list placename-flags-adopted-via-a-contest-or-competition
Found it.
The flag (for the NT) was designed by Robert Ingpen, a prominent artist originally from Drysdale, Victoria. Ingpen used a number of designs suggested by the public as a basis for his final design.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list placename-flags-adopted-via-a-contest-or-competition
The flag's original design (with a six-pointed Commonwealth Star) was chosen in 1901 from entries in a competition held following Federation, and was first flown in Melbourne on 3 September 1901, the date proclaimed as Australian National Flag Day. A slightly different design was approved by King Edward VII in 1902. The seven-pointed commonwealth star version was introduced by a proclamation dated 23 February 1908. The dimensions were formally gazetted in 1934, and in 1954 the flag became recognised by, and legally defined in, the Flags Act 1953, as the "Australian National Flag".
I haven't found anything about the flag for the Northern Territory yet.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list types-of-hoes
Yes! Clever as always, you.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list chainsaw-safety-clothing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainsaw_safety_clothing#/media/File:Chainsaw_helmet.jpg
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word the Black Country
Flag of the Black Country, England:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Black_Country
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word the Hispanic People
Flag of the Hispanic People:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Hispanic_People
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word personal protective equipment
Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment designed to protect the wearer's body from injury or infection.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word limiter
I like this definition:
n. A friar licensed to beg, collect convent-dues, preach, or perform other duties within certain limits, or in a certain district.
One needs a license to beg?!
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word orzotto
Dish similar to risotto but made with pearl barley.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word cryovolcano
Pluto's mountains could be slush-spewing cryovolcanoes.
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word refel
How he refelled me, and how I replied.
- Shakespeare
November 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crapweasels
Holy crapweasels!
November 10, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crucifix toad
The crucifix toad or holy cross frog (Notaden bennettii) is an Australian, fossorial frog. It is one of the few Australian frogs to display aposematism. It is native to western New South Wales, and southwestern Queensland.
November 10, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word debranding
When a company removes its name from its logo for a marketing campaign.
Example: Starbucks removed its name from their cups in an attempt to make themselves appear less corporate and more personal. Nike has been called the first company to debrand its logo (1995).
November 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word sardonic
Isn't this what happens when one consumes bilby meat?
November 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word détenus
ry: Add your words with glitched definitions here: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/glitched-definitions
November 9, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ungum
see degum, deglutinate.
November 5, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Mary Sue
n. A fictional character, usually female, whose implausible talents and likeableness weaken the story.
Hmm. Apparently, male characters never weaken a story.
November 5, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word legal fleecing
worse than illegal fleecing.
November 5, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word rain
When it rains, it pours. Love the 50 nouns for rain.
What is it called when two raindrops fall in tandem on the ears of a bilby?
(This is not a riddle. I don't have an answer for my question.)
October 26, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word mythopoeia
"Choosing between subversion + fairy tale adaptations or Arthurian mythopoeia and identity narratives is like choosing a favorite child." -Twitter
October 25, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word hillbilly lilies
hillbilby lies!
October 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word appendiculate
Gotta love it.
adj. Describes a mushroom that has partial veil remnants hanging along the cap margin.
October 16, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word bat flip
(baseball). A bat flip is when the batter tosses the bat aside following a home run as a form of celebration.
video of bat flip.
October 16, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word mom boobs
Praise mothers everywhere and their beautiful bodies.
October 16, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word maleo
Thanks, bilby. Much appreciated. Truly.
October 13, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word buppie
I abhor words like this one.
October 12, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word maleo
A kind of brush-turkey or mound-bird, Megacephalon maleo, a native of Celebes (Sulawesi*), of a glossy-black and rosy-white color, with a bare neck and head. The maleo is a chicken-sized bird with a blackish back, a pink stomach, yellow facial skin, a red-orange beak and a black helmet or "casque." The maleo is but one of some 50 bird species threatened with extinction, including the caerulean paradise-flycatcher, which was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 1998.
October 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word toasting-iron
Not nice!
"...if you worry me again, major, I shall stick my toasting-iron into your body."
October 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word gutty
Sprinkled with drops?
October 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word gahmen
??
government.
Fast-talking Singaporeans drop the second syllable. (Wiktionary)
October 7, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ladette
"The Ministry of Justice figures also show reoffending rates among women have grown at four times that of men further fuelling concerns over the impact of the "ladette" culture."
October 7, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word marine cloud brightening
a natural cloud-seeding technique that could reverse the loss of Arctic sea ice and protect the climate while fossil fuels are eliminated as rapidly as possible.
October 7, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list v-ending-words
civ (of civilian, of civil).
August 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word farriery
In the UK, it is illegal for people other than registered farriers to call themselves a farrier or to carry out any farriery work. In other countries, such as the United States, farriery is not regulated, no legal certification exists, and qualifications vary.
Historically, the jobs of farrier and blacksmith were practically synonymous. Modern day farriers usually specialize in horseshoeing, focusing their time and effort on the care of the horse's hoof. For this reason, farriers and blacksmiths are considered to be in separate, albeit related, trades.
August 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word semur
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semur_(Indonesian_stew)">Indonesian stew</a>.
August 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word smoor
A stew, typically made from fish. (Malaysia). Derived from Dutch, Smoor, which means food that has been smothered with something, such as tomatoes or onions.
verb (transitive) (Scottish) to smother, suffocate or extinguish.
August 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crossing
I've known bilby even BEFORE Wordnik. This is the way we kid each other. It's all good.
August 15, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crossing
To get to his helipad (bilbypad), of course.
August 14, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word dinocyst
Hmm. I assumed this word had something to do with dinosaurs. A dinosaur with a cyst.
August 14, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crossing
Do bilbies hop? I'm not sure how they move from place to place.
August 14, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list there-is-no-place-like-nebraska
If you try to add more than one link, you get flagged. That's been my experience at least. We've been getting a lot of intrusive spam, so it makes sense that Wordnik would install an electric fence to fry those dirty, rotten spammers.
August 14, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word demigod
Thanks for the specifics, Century Dictionary.
August 13, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crossing
Beware: bilbies crossing.
August 13, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word dilated pore of winer
A giant blackhead. They are superficial collections of keratin/ skin cells just under the skin surface and because the area is exposed to oxygen (air) the keratin oxidized which turns it black.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj8-XpiBpno
August 12, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word cheese-room
What a disappointment. No cheese in the cheese room.
August 12, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word TankHughes
Why am I curious? No special reason. Interesting story about adopting the name Tank.
August 12, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word TankHughes
http://tankhughes.com/?p=1469
Good one. TH. Tell me more about your cartoons. Also, where did your moniker Tank Hughes come from?
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word extirpate
Genus: Puma
Cougar Puma concolor (extirpated).
Also used to label fauna that has disappeared from a particular area. In this case, cougars.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list charity-events
Haha!!
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list there-is-no-place-like-nebraska
I keep getting FLAGGED AS SPAM. Sheesh.
State soft drink=Kool-aid, state insect: honeybee, state fossil=mammoth, state beverage=milk
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list there-is-no-place-like-nebraska
Lists of everything Nebraska.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list all-that-hoo-ha
bilbyhoo, bilbychoo, bilbybugabaloo.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list not-quite-the-real-thang
slug, plug nickel, washer (coinlike objects placed in vending machines (!), for example.)
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word welly tossing
"This guy was there to whip up excitement about various events going on, such as welly tossing, and telling us when someone had won a prize in the many little raffles going on."
I think this is Wellington boot tossing. See welly.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list not-quite-the-real-thang
baloney
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word saint
n. The ergot of rye (Claviceps purpurea).
n. A red wine produced in the neighborhood of the Rhone, not often exported.
n. Tinea.
n. Measles of the hog. See Trichina, trichinosis.
n. Insanity.
n. The garfish, Belone belone or B. vulgaris.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word girls with swirls
Nice dresses! See here.
Odd Flickr VISUALS provided below as well.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word carmine
"The red color in many foods comes from crushed insects. If you see carmine or cochineal extract in an ingredients list, the product contains a little powdered bug. Aside from being an allergen for a small number of people, it's considered safe." -Daniel Tapper, author of "Food Unwrapped: Lifting the Lid on How Our Food is Really Produced".
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word cochineal extract
See carmine.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word robbin
n. A kind of package in which pepper and other dry commodities are sometimes exported from the East Indies. The robbin of rice in Malabar weighs about 84 pounds.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word erinmckean
I'm not sure how to word my suggestion intelligibly, but here goes: I wish certain words under the DEFINITIONS had links. For example, when using the RANDOM WORD feature, I often seem to land on a form of a word (-ed, -ing) or its plural more often than the root word (?).
Example: vituperates. How nice it would be if there was a link for vituperate so I wouldn't have to type vituperate into the SEARCH function to find out what it means.
Dumb suggestion? Cumbersome?
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word hormone hostage house
"This week I am the only smiter in my hormone hostage house." -Twitter
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word heterography
Hm. What is the relationship between heterography and disspelling? See sprots for discussion history.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word heterophemy
n. The saying of one thing when another is meant; specifically, a disordered or morbid mental condition which leads to the saying or writing of one thing when another is meant; physical incapacity to express one's ideas in language conveying a correct impression. When heterophemy becomes a pronounced disease it is known as aphasia. Also heterophemism.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word religious abuse
The use of spiritual authority to manipulate, harm, or use another person for personal gain.
-definition from "Recovering from Religious Abuse," Jack Watts, Simon & Schuster, 2011. Source: here.
August 11, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Tenzing Norgay
It was 1999 when the body was found, and that's when the debate began as to whether he might have been the first ever man, along with Irvine, to reach the summit of Everest without the aid of oxygen, beating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay who are credited with the achievement in 1953.
They were part of an eight-member team of some of the world's top mountaineers (and a PBS documentary crew), hoping both to find the remains of Mallory and Irvine and to determine if they had reached the summit before dying -- 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first recognized ascent, in 1953.
August 10, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word pock-pudding
A name of reproach or ridicule formerly applied by the Scotch to the English.
"David Drummond and the young ladies murmured to one another their disgust that the English pock-pudding should not suppose Scots able to keep their heads with their own hands..."
August 10, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ranchette
I can't imagine anyone referring to their ranch as a ranchette. It sounds just as demeaning as the suffix -ette added to many "female" words.
August 10, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word vegan leather
"Faux real: vegan leather skirt."
August 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list online-laughs
ho ho ho
August 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word strong flour
August 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word assmonkeys
Do assmonkeys have wings?
August 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word intelligenitals
intelligential intelligenitals.
August 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word teh alsome
It's STILL teh alsome. It will always be teh alsome around here.
August 8, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word wearable technology
mobile communication devices including those that extend into fitness.
--Connected living and trends in wearable technology.
August 7, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word communicatia
See wearable technology, which includes more than just communication devices but gadgets that extend into fitness.
--Connected living and trends in wearable technology.
August 7, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word lexicogenesis
See also neologize.
August 7, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word trollplex
(He) hits online harassment and misogyny head-on. He notes that the “trollplex”—his neologism for a cyberplace inhabited by individuals sharing a target for harassment—“appears to be the province of men” with nearly all victims of online harassment being women. Interestingly, he presents data from research conducted in a pre-online environment, which demonstrates that harassment of this kind is hardly new.
August 6, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word blipvert
An advertisement that compress 30 seconds of information into a single second.
August 4, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word terraform
"The Mars Society says that the Earth is a rotting, dying, stinking planet and that we must move our civilization to Mars and that Congress must appropriate funds to "terraform" Mars." See also terraformer.
August 4, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word farm stay
"To pay the bills, they built a two-bedroom cabin and opened a farm stay. County zoning leaders gave Leaping Lamb a conditional use permit after contacting neighbors. In three years, the business has grown by word of mouth and is so busy now the couple hired a maid to clean the cabin."
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word agritainment
Agritainment offers fun on the farm, with a side of conflict.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word agritainment
n. A trend in the American agricultural industry to include entertainment endeavors on the farm.
Looking to diversify their sources of income, small farmers are expanding their "agritourism" or "agritainment" operations beyond the traditional pumpkin-picking, hayride and petting zoo.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word phoebe
"Young phoebes sometimes become entangled in the horsehairs which are used in the lining of their nest."
"He tells of the phoebe-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying to hide it with moss in a similar fashion in the way all phoebe-birds hide their nests when they are built among rocks."
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word fen
See swale.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word swale
n. A valley or low place; a tract of low, and usually wet, land; a moor; a fen.
v. To melt and waste away; to singe. See sweal.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word gherao
Gherao, meaning "encirclement," is a word originally from Hindi. It denotes a tactic used by labor activists and union leaders in India. Usually, a group of people would surround a politician or a government building until their demands are met, or answers given.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word coffret
An Italian gift box coffret circa 1400.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word porringer
See also posset-cup, posset-pot.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word queat
English: coupling
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word cuiquam
English: anyone
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word soldo
n. An Italian coin, formerly one-twentieth of a lira. Plural: soldi.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word cantalever
n. A bracket to support a balcony, a cornice, or the like.
n. A projecting beam, truss, or bridge unsupported at the outer end; one which overhangs.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word cartouch
A cantalever, console, corbel, or modillion, which has the form of a scroll of paper. See also cartouche.
August 2, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word down cellar
What's wrong with your wife maintaining her own regional vocabulary? I've never understood the smug attitude of people from the East Coast. Sorry for the rant, but I've had personal experiences with people from the East Coast putting down other American regional accents and vocabulary, Believe it or not, people from other areas of the country are quite satisfied with where they live, the words they've grown up using, and don't need to adopt East Coast regionalisms or shake pesky articles. What vocabulary of hers have you adopted unmockingly?
August 1, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word uthappam
Which spelling do you prefer, bilby?
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word uthappam
See also uttapam.
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word waggiest
I'll say waggiest, but I refuse to say most waggy.
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word eight
slumry only loves eight words. This saddens me.
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word belaying-pin
A pin or rod, typically of metal or wood, used on board ship and in mountaineering to secure a rope fastened around it.
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word filk music
Filk music is both a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction/fantasy fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has been active since the early 1950s and played primarily since the mid-1970s. The term (originally a typographical error) predates 1955.
The word "filk" has also evolved as a verb, with two common meanings:
1. To participate in a filk song circle, as in, "We were filking last night until three in the morning."
2. To write a filk music parody of an existing song, as in, "I filked 'Hope Eyrie'." When used in this way, "filk" does not imply that all song parodies are considered filk music, nor does it imply that all filk songs are parodies. Setting satirical or parody lyrics to established tunes is not exclusively the province of science fiction fandom. Works of parody music such as those found in MAD Magazine or performed by Weird Al Yankovic have their own long-established traditions and history.
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word filker
See filk music.
July 31, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word duckboard
"It was a cider house, with a heavy old-fashioned oaken press at the far end, one long wall lined with duckboard shelving for apples, the other with bunged casks and covered vats of freshly made cider."
This context has nothing to do with mud.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word albert
"At North Shields, John William Atkinson, 20, a labourer belonging to Newcastle, was charged with breaking and entering on the 28th inst. a refreshment shop on the Grand Parade, Tynemouth, and stealing a quantity of cakes and chocolate, the property of Mr J.H. Graham, and also with breaking and entering on the same date another sweet shop on the Grand Parade, and stealing a silver watch and albert. He was remanded for eight days”.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tub chair
Lime Tree Tub Chair. Looks easy to sit in. Pretty, too.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tub chair
A usually low-backed easy chair with arms even with the back or sloping up to it in a continuous curve.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Otia
An industrial city in SW Japan, on NE Kyushu. Population: 437,699 (2002 est)
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word apertis otia portis
Apertis otia portis — Open the gates for laziness.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list tubs
I added true tubs: bran tub, dolly tub, and twin tub. Three tubs are out of the ordinary: tub gurnard (a fish), tub thumper (a ranting public speaker) and tub chair.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tub thumper
A noisy, violent, or ranting public speaker.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word tub gurnard
A type of gurnard coastal fish with pectoral fins used for crawling along the seabed
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word twin-tub
A type of washing machine that has two revolving drums, one for washing and the other for spin-drying.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word dolly tub
(mining) an apparatus for agitating and washing ore in a vessel
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word bran tub
(in Britain) a tub containing bran in which small wrapped gifts are hidden, used at parties, fairs, etc
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list tubs
I liked how you included variations: bath-tub, bathtub.
July 30, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word leading spaces
Where is the glitched definition, alexz?
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list glitched-definitions
The first glitched definition I found was girlretro, ru, which alexz added to her list. I've been adding words regularly.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word mid-valley
See alexz's glitched definitions: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/glitched-definitions
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word red-armed
Thanks, slumry.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word epanorthosis
The immediate rephrasing of something said in order to correct it or to make it stronger. Usually indicated by: no, nay, rather, I mean.
Example: I've warned you a thousand, no, a million times.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word vadosity
see fordable.
"The vadosity of the river allowed Markus to gurgle frantically for help from drowning without drowning while his mother stood gazing at him in disbelief."
"The word ford, by reason of the vadosity of the river there, being added." --- W. Burton, A commentary on Antoninus his itinerary
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word red-armed
"Thesis: In the novel 1984, George Orwell symbolizes the sense of hope and freedom in the future through the red-armed prole women’s voice and appearance."
I can't find a definition for red-armed.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word clatfart
n. gossip, the person or the content.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list tubs
Clotheslines all year long (even in winter) are my thing, too. I love your word freeze drying in this context. I love you, ru.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word harsh brown potato
Ha-ha. Thanks, TH.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/apocata/3551242672/
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list overlapping-open-compounds
You're a cartoonist! Cool! I really enjoyed this one: http://tankhughes.com/?p=1674
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list prime7-adds-and-shows
Did it splatter on the TV via the fan?
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list overlapping-open-compounds
Thanks, TH. I should have figured out your first comment for myself. I appreciate your unsarcastic reply since it makes one hesitant to ask seemingly dumb questions.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word leach tub
"How to Make Soap from Ashes: Soapmaking in the woods can be almost automatic. Hardwood ashes are some of the best producers of lye. Add a bucket of rain water and some leftover cooking fat and you can easily brew up enough soap to clean everybody and everything."
leaching tub, leach-tub, leaching barrel.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word powdering-tub
I entered bathtub into SEARCH. Nothing showed up among the lists listed (and since it would have most certainly been on an existing tub-y list), I'd guess there isn't one. I look forward to adding to it, if it's an open list.
July 29, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list overlapping-open-compounds
Yes! Excellent idea, slumry. Is it possible to know when a list was created or last updated? It might be an abandoned list.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word buycott
The usual reason for an anti-boycott is to prevent a company or entity from backing down on the decision that initially caused the boycott.
Some examples of recent anti-boycotts (buycotts] include:
The "Buy Danish" campaign, set up to counter the boycott of Danish goods by the Middle East.
The anti-boycotts by supporters of Israe] to oppose Boycott Israel campaigns.
When Whole Foods Market was boycotted because the CEO opposed U.S. President Barack Obama's health care reform policies, opponents of health care reform staged nationwide buycotts.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word needle-gun
"What struck him most was a recent Prussian invention, the needle-gun, which he saw would be the arm of the future."
there is a desperate deed to be done in India,
John Nicholson is the man to do it."
Sir Herbert Edwardes to Lord Canning,
March 1857.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word neuk
He "jokingly" threatened to "neuk" (beat) them with a sjambok he said.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word background adaptation
See eigengrau.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word visual noise
See eigengrau.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word eigengrau
The uniform dark gray background that many people report seeing in the absence of light. The term dates back to the nineteenth century but has rarely been used in recent scientific publications. Nowadays the phenomenon is more commonly referred to as "visual noise" or "background adaptation".
Eigengrau is perceived as lighter than a black object in normal lighting conditions because contrast is more important to the visual system than absolute brightness. For example, the night sky looks darker than eigengrau because of the contrast provided by the stars. -Wikipedia
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word stammtisch
A Stammtisch (German for "regulars' table" is an informal group meeting held on a regular basis, and also the usually large, often round table around which the group meets. A Stammtisch is not a structured meeting, but rather a friendly get-together.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word speedflying
I misread this and thought I saw "...but involves a smaller wig."
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word seek-sorrow
n. One who contrives to give himself vexation; a self-tormentor.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word technically beautiful
What a horrible slogan. At least they didn't come up with something about Ottawa being the city with the highest number of cheaters per capita.
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2015/07/23/ashley-madison-leak-shows-ottawa-has-m
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word mumper
n. A beggar; a begging impostor.
Why would anyone impersonate a beggar?
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word goat
To paraphrase Charlie Brown, he's either gonna be the hero or the goat.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word mockado
mock velvet
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word macrology
I was FLAGGED AS SPAM the first time I made an attempt at humor by repeating the definition several times. It's nice to know that Wordnik, like John Walsh, is looking for bad guys.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word macrology
n. Long and tedious talk without much substance; superfluity of words. Long and tedious talk without much substance; superfluity of words, words, words, words.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kreteks
Kreteks are cigarettes made from a blend of tobacco, cloves, and other flavors. The word "kretek" is an onomatopoetic term for the crackling sound of burning cloves.
Kreteks are by far the most widely smoked form of cigarettes in Indonesia, where about 90% of smokers usually smoke kreteks.
In 2009, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was introduced in the US Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, giving the FDA significantly more regulatory power over tobacco; one of the provisions in the law includes a ban on the use of flavors in tobacco, other than menthol. The ban includes kreteks. As of September 22, 2009, the clove cigarette was no longer legal to sell or distribute in the US, and cigarettes purchased overseas are subject to seizure by U.S. Customs.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word lived crappily ever after
alternative ending.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word powdering-tub
Good research, alexz!
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word factioneer
n. One who aggressively pushes a cause.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word branch
n. One of the sides of a horseshoe.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word powdering-tub
n. A tub or vessel in which meat is corned or salted.
n. A heated tub in which an infected lecher was cured by sweating.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word fitnah
n. antagonism towards early Muslims
n. any threat to the health of an Islamic state
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word vogon poetry
Yes, those images are worth a thousand vogon words.
July 28, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ainhum
n. A painful constriction of the base of the fifth toe, frequently followed by autoamputation, occurring predominantly in black Africans and their descendants.
ruzuzu: Check out The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia definition. You'll enjoy it, as always.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list vogon-anagram-poetry
alexz: is this what you were looking for?
utty gabbleblotchits bilby got chub tattles
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word panel house
You opened a can of panel worms, ruzuzu! See panel-thief, panel-game.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word panel-game
See panel house, panel-thief.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word panel-thief
n. A thief who steals by the aid of a sliding panel, a secret door, or any similar device; a robber in a panel house. Lackluster definition at panel-house. It's frustrating when words such as panelhouse, panel house, and panel-house all have different meanings or no meaning.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word bodging
A traditional wood-turning craft, using green (unseasoned) wood to make chair legs and other cylindrical parts of chairs.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word peter-men
https://www.flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/14758879576
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word matrimony vine
See boxthorn.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word peter-players
See peter-men.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word peter-men
1890s. Thieves who surreptitiously drugged their victims with knockout drops (typically chloral hydrate) then lured or led them into a dark place where they were quickly robbed. Sometimes the victims were killed, other times they were left to sleep off the effects of the drug. Many times, the drug itself killed victims.
"The victim is usually robbed as soon as he is stupefied by the drug. Beyond the crime of robbery grave peril to life is entailed by this reckless use of chloral. The same dose will affect different persons to a varying extent, and what will barely stupefy one may kill another. There is little or no precaution taken in pouring a dose from a phial, and a number of deaths have occurred."
Also known as peter-players. Women often robbed by drugging their victims in this manner.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word zariba
n. A tall protective hedge or a thorn fence fortifying a camp or village. From Arabic zarība 'cattle pen'. A zariba is used to keep villagers and their domesticated animals safe from wild predators.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word vogon poetry
Vogon poetry is described as "the third worst poetry in the Universe". The main example used in the story is a short piece composed by Jeltz, which roughly emulates nonsense verse in style (example below). The story relates that listening to it is an experience similar to torture as demonstrated when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are forced to listen to the poetry (and say how much they liked it) prior to being thrown out of an airlock.
Ah freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,
That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles,
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. drowned out by moaning and screaming
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
And living glupules frart and slipulate,
Like jowling meated liverslime,
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don’t.
July 27, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ringle
To ring; fit with a ring, as the snout of a hog.
July 26, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word estaminet
n. a small (and usually shabby) café selling wine, beer, and coffee and where smoking is allowed.
"We spent the rest of that Saturday afternoon over a bottle of absinthe in the little estaminet in the cobbled alley off the boulevard du Temple."
-Oscar Wilde
July 26, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word SFTS
Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease recently discovered in northeast and central China. SFTS has fatality rates ranging from 12% to as high as 30% in some areas. The major clinical symptoms of SFTS are fever, vomiting, diarrhea, multiple organ failure, thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), leucopenia (low white blood cell count), and elevated liver enzyme levels.
July 26, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word seroprevalence
n. The rate of seropositivity in a population; the proportion of a population whose blood serum tests positive for a given pathogen, especially HIV.
"SFTSV seroprevalence in the human population is unknown, and the natural reservoir hosts of SFTSV have not been determined."-@_SFTS_Virus
July 26, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word jussi
Who wouldn't want a jussi dress?
July 25, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word wandering Jew
Ha-ha!! slumry: I deleted my first ha-ha and reposted it because it appeared that I was laughing at my own comment (which was actually a repeat of bilby's comment).
And, yes, I spotted your tiny typo... but that's not why I laughed.
July 24, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ghoom
To search for big game by wandering alone after dark in a haunt of the animal.
(I expected a photo of Teddy Roosevelt among the Flickr visuals).
July 24, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word swith
swith - swither
swither appears in the phrases below (on the page for swith), but not on the page for swither. Go figure.
swither hand (right hand), swither half (right side)
July 24, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word wandering Jew
I like the words "a declared weed".
July 24, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word varan
1. a varanoid lizard; a monitor.
2. a thick Indian soup made with yellow split peas (toor daal) / or lentils (daal) and various spices.
July 23, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word pistic
adj. Having faith; trusting. An epithet of nard: as, pistic nard.
July 23, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word ginger beer
Odd differences between the wording of ginger beer:
n. a mild beer impregnated with ginger.
n. An effervescing beverage made by fermenting ginger, cream-of-tartar, and sugar with yeast and water.
July 23, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word fremedly
From Middle English fremedly, equivalent to fremed, fremd + -ly.
Adverb
fremedly (comparative more fremedly, superlative most fremedly)
As a fremd or stranger.
Why isn't the adverb spelled fremdly? Why the extra e?
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word crimsoned
"I haven't crimsoned.
Come and look!" So says the dew
On an oak branch
—Dasoku
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word proustite
At first glance, this word looks like another (more familiar) word.
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word chin-music
chatterbox = chin musician
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list glitched-definitions
When I click "yarn-tea" on the community page under Recently Listed Words, it sends me to a random, irrelevant page. Not only that, it sends me to a different random word each time. Try it yourself. I get the same weird result when I click the word in alexz's list: glitched definitions.
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list disspellings
Thanks for creating this list, alexz. I'm honored that the word sprots inspired even more words. This is my new go-to list for future disspellings.
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the list phraseologue---x-the-y
ry: I zapped nine entries or so. Let me know if I missed any pesky ones hiding in plain sight.
Thanks for letting me know. I understand, from my own experiences here, that it's a little displeasing when a list becomes tainted with well-meaning entries.
July 22, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word kinnikinnick
Just checking to see if mollusque added this word to his Monovocalics list.
July 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word red-fruited
"It was a prosaic gift, being a wagon-load of piñon wood for the fire; but the gnarled, oddly twisted sticks were heaped high with pine boughs and long trails of red-fruited kinnikinnick to serve as a Christmas dressing, and somehow the gift gave Clover a peculiar pleasure."
-Susan Coolidge, "Clover", 1907.
July 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word bouts-rimés
n.pl. Words that rhyme, proposed as the ends of verses, to be filled out by the ingenuity of the person to whom they are offered.
Huh??
July 21, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word subtopia
"...cash handouts will never be enough to breathe life back into the limp subtopia ringing the nation's capitals."
July 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word musky-scented
"Also, Erin has stated on the record that she and her musky-scented dance partner, Maks, do not like-like each other."
-Deadspin
July 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word dayroom
Slang: Boring, lame, no fun.
July 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word muck-heap
According to the definition for muck, I thought this might also include a compost pile/heap.
July 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word Crimble
Christmas??
July 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word purpose
All-accident flour.
July 20, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word venatica
See also vinatico.
July 19, 2015
vendingmachine commented on the word venatica
The hyena and the vulture are the scavengers of the tropical regions. The hyena devours what the vulture leaves, which is the skin and bones of a dead carcass. Its power of jaw is so great, that it breaks the largest bone with facility.”
“In Africa there are four hyenas:— The common spotted hyena, or wolf of the colonists, whose smell is so offensive that dogs leave it with disgust after it is killed; its own fellows will, however, devour it immediately. The striped or ferocious hyena, called the shard-wolf; and another, which the colonists call the bay-wolf, and which I believe to be the one known as the laughing hyena. There is another variety, which is a sort of link between the hyena and the dog, called the venatica. It hunts in packs, and the colonists term it the wild honde. It was first classed by Burchell the traveller. This last is smaller, but much fiercer, than the others.”
July 18, 2015
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