there seems to be some secret invisible characters in this word? In the url i see "Coccothraustes%20%20%20%20%20 coccothraustes" but searching for just "Coccothraustes coccothraustes" tells me it's not on any list. (And i got excited about having a new one for name-name)
haven't been here for a while, but today grasshopper escapement brought me back. and then i see the last comment (from 2013!) on this list was about another escapement...
Found this horrible sounding type of wine while researching making wine from oranges. But I do enjoy that something could be described as "the opposite of rosé".
"Skin-contact wine, amber wine, or orange wine is a type of wine made from white wine grapes where the grape skins are not removed, and stay in contact with the juice for days or even months."
"This winemaking style is essentially the opposite of rosé production which involves getting red wine grapes quickly off their skins, leaving the wine with a slightly pinkish hue."
Found in a text about the construction of an alphabet for the Taíno language.
"The system expresses these consonant-vowel blends by attaching a 'vowel-knob' to the consonant glyph. The position of the vowel-knob denotes which vowel is being sounded after the consonant (above the glyph for the 'ah' sound, to the right of the glyph for 'eh' sound, below the glyph for the 'ee' sound, to the left of the glyph for the 'oh' sound and at the center of the glyph for the 'oo' sound)."
"The frog galvanoscope is a sensitive electrical instrument used to detect voltage in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It consists of skinned frog's leg with electrical connections to a nerve."
And now I see that gossypiboma already was a popular word here, but maybe we need three synonyms for it so that we can use it many times in a conversation without being repetitive?
Fabric inside the body, looking like a tumour. "Hemostat-associated mass lesions have been variously referred to as textilomas, gossypibomas, gauzomas, or muslinomas" (source)
"Sometimes, the egg veil is described as being as similar to bubble wrap. Each veil the monkfish lays is dotted with about a million eggs." (Pictures here)
Does anyone have a list of things that sound like animals but aren't? (Claw cranes are unfortunately not dangerous birds, but those near-impossible games where you try to catch a toy or something.)
Interesting! In Sweden this would be called a "trea", which translates as (the number) three. Short for "tre rum och kök" meaning "three rooms and a kitchen". We count the living room but not bathrooms.
Vavilovian mimicry (also crop mimicry or weed mimicry) is a form of mimicry in plants where a weed comes to share one or more characteristics with a domesticated plant through generations of artificial selection. It is named after Nikolai Vavilov, a prominent Russian plant geneticist who identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry">Wikipedia</a>)
Poor bony-eared assfish, Wikipedia only has 5 sentences about it, and one of them is "It holds the record for the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of all vertebrates."
I find this very confusing. Lots of animals have their own poxes, but some of the ones we humans get we have named after innocent animals, like chickenpox and Molluscipoxvirus...
Anyone got a list of human geometry? "The danger triangle of the face consists of the area from the corners of the mouth to the bridge of the nose, including the nose and maxilla. Due to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area, it is possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain causing cavernous sinus thrombosis, meningitis or brain abscess." (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face">Wikipedia</a>)
"Scarabiasis is a condition where beetles temporarily infest the digestive tract and the scarabs are identified in the 'fly away' from the anus at the time of the defecation." (Source)
@sidereal: Well, sort of. But all of these are things that requires some sort of human intervention. Not that I consider this list to be any form of recommendation to start ferret legging or hypnotising chickens. (The more "natural" animal related words have their own list)
@vendingmachine: Happy to hear that! I'll try to remember to provide more definitions. And nice to see that the poor dried cat finally found a list to live in.
"Superrational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers." (Douglas Hofstadter, via Wikipedia)
"When the larvae have completed their larval development through six instars, they enter a stage called the 'prepupa' wherein they cease to eat, they empty their guts, their mouth parts change to an appendage that aids climbing, and they seek a dry, sheltered area to pupate. This prepupal migration instinct is used by grub composting bins to self-harvest the mature larvae. These containers have ramps or holes on the sides to allow the prepupae to climb out of the composter and drop into a collection area." (Wikipedia)
From http://what-if.xkcd.com/50/: "Superfluid helium films, like the one rapidly covering you, carry the same types of ordinary sound waves that most materials do. But they also exhibit an additional type of wave, a slow-moving ripple that propogates along thin films of helium. It's only observed in superfluids, and has the mysterious and poetic name 'third sound.'"
Glowing wounds caused by Photorhabdus luminescens. "During the US Civil war, the same bacteria sometimes contaminated the wounds of soldiers, giving them an eerie blue shine while also protecting them from infections—they called it the 'angel’s glow'." (Source)
Yay, I found a new one! (Sprattus sprattus) It's been a while since last time (is there a way to tell when a word was listed?), but there are still unlisted species out there waiting...
"Crown shyness is a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps. It is also known as canopy disengagement, canopy shyness, or intercrown spacing. The phenomenon is most prevalent among trees of the same species, but also occurs between trees of different species." (Wikipedia)
"The pyramidal eminence (pyramid) is situated immediately behind the fenestra vestibuli, and in front of the vertical portion of the facial canal; it is hollow, and contains the Stapedius muscle; its summit projects forward toward the fenestra vestibuli, and is pierced by a small aperture which transmits the tendon of the muscle." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidal_eminence)
Not sure if this is specific enough, but I didn't know a better place for it:
In the words of marine biologists Joe Roman and James McCarthy, many whales feed in the deeper tiers of the sea to then return to the surface and release “flocculent fecal plumes” – cetacean clouds that may create what Roman and McCarthy call a “whale pump“.
The quotation mark breaks wordnik a little. I've hade the same problem, but only in the middle of a "word", so I never got to the randomness. (My random words: direct-driven, honouring, perilune. Will someone tell us how to interpret this type of bibliomancy?)
I stumbled over the poetic term "home scar" and then learned about aggressive gardening mollusks! From Wikipedia:
Some species of limpets return to the same spot on the rock known as a "home scar" just before the tide recedes. In such species, the shape of their shell often grows to precisely match the contours of the rock surrounding the scar. This behaviour presumably allows them to form a better seal to the rock and may help protect them from both predation and desiccation.
It is still unclear how limpets find their way back to the same spot each time, but it is thought that they follow pheromones in the mucus left as they move. Other species, notably Lottia gigantea seem to "garden" a patch of algae around their home scar. They are one of the few invertebrates to exhibit territoriality and will aggressively push other organisms out of this patch by ramming with their shell, thereby allowing their patch of algae to grow for their own grazing.
"Professor Terry Frank Pettijohn II, of Coastal Carolina University, is the lead author of a new study which investigates the ‘Chin Area’ (and other facial features such as ‘Eye Width’) of US country Music singers between 1946 and 2010 – and examines possible correlations with an index of economic and social conditions called the General Hard Times Measure (GHTM)." (found here)
"Female garter snakes will emerge from their winter hibernation — technically called 'brumation,' a hibernation-like state that cold-blooded animals go through during chilly months — a few days after males do. When males catch the pheromone scent of a female, they will swarm over her, forming a 'mating ball.'" (Source)
"The cat gap is a period in the fossil record of approximately 25 to 18.5 million years ago in which there are few fossils of cats or cat-like species found in North America." (Wikipedia) hmm... strange visuals for this one...
Reading about the Emei moustache toad on Wikipedia: "Male Leptobrachium boringii exhibit conspicuous keratinized nuptial spines that grow on their upper lip during the breeding season—these are the 'moustache' and 'spines' referred to in its common names."
"Boar taint is the offensive odour or taste that can be evident during the cooking or eating of pork or pork products derived from non-castrated male pigs once they reach puberty." (Wikipedia)
"In order to release the pollen, bumblebees and some species of solitary bees are able to grab onto the flower and move their flight muscles rapidly, causing the flower and anthers to vibrate, dislodging pollen. This resonant vibration is called buzz pollination. The honeybee rarely performs buzz pollination. About 8% of the flowers of the world are primarily pollinated using buzz pollination." (Wikipedia)
"Extra extra</i> or Marginella extra is a species of minute sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk or micromollusk in the family Cystiscidae. Some malacologists place this genus more simply in the family Marginellidae." (Wikipedia)
I hope it continues to be Extra extra, it's a much funnier name.
"Mud-puddling, or simply puddling, is behaviour most conspicuous in butterflies, but occurs in other animals as well, mainly insects; they seek out certain moist substances such as rotting plant matter, mud and carrion and they suck up the fluid. Where the conditions are suitable conspicuous insects such as butterflies commonly form aggregations on wet soil, dung or carrion." (Wikipedia)
"From the late 1860s until the 1970s, several American cities had ugly laws making it illegal for persons with "unsightly or disgusting" disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called unsightly beggar ordinances." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law">Wikipedia)
"Insects in the order Hymenoptera can be trained to perform a variety of tasks. The sensitivity of the olfactory senses of bees and wasps in particular have been shown to rival the abilities of sniffer dogs, though they can only be trained to detect a single scent each. Sniffer bees and sniffer wasps have been trained to detect substances such as explosive materials or illegal drugs, as well as some human and plant diseases." (Wikipedia)
Damn, I just saw "Dugong dugong" and headed straight for this list, but it turns out that it's actually Dugong dugon. Oh well, at least I got to see some pretty pictures of fetal dugong skeletons...
"Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 (SuHV-1), which is also called pseudorabies virus (PRV) and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch." (Wikipedia)
Wait, how did I manage to get an empty space in the beginning this word? I thought Wordnik was smarter than this. Now I'll never find these comments again...
I think it could be pretending to be adorable, but you are actually not. Like something from a horror movie, attracting its prey with big puppy eyes, and then BAM! the stinger/slime/fangs comes out.
"Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 (SuHV-1), which is also called pseudorabies virus (PRV) and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch." (Wikipedia)
Aha! I was just a bit ahead of my time. Thank's for pointing this out, I had completely forgotten about traumatic insemination and was surprised to see it mentioned on my profile...
"At some point during its early days, P.pacificus pauses its growth and becomes a dauer—an especially tough larva that’s adapted to survive through harsh conditions."
"groups of P.pacificus can merge to form a single waving 'dauer tower', composed of up to a thousand individuals."
"Such teamwork! Such togetherness! Such low odds of ever appearing on a motivational poster!"
"Slime flux is a bacterial disease of certain trees, primarily elm, cottonwood, poplar, boxelder, ash, aspen, fruitless mulberry, and oak. A wound to the bark, caused by pruning, insects, poor branch angles or natural cracks and splits, causes sap to ooze from the wound. Bacteria may infect this sap causing it to darken and stain the bark, eventually taking on a foamy appearance and unpleasant odor. This slimy ooze becomes toxic to the bark and eats into the tree. Additionally, the fermented sap attracts insects like flies, ants, worms, and maggots, which further weaken the tree." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_flux)
I was reading about bee diseases (here) and found this: "Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV), is a virus that cause an infectious disease of the adult honey bees. Previously known with different names in different countries such as 'little blacks' (UK), 'hairless black syndrome' (US), 'mal nero' (Italy), 'Schwarzsucht' (Germany) and 'mal noire' (France) (Ribière et al., 2008)." The "prevously" made me a bit sad, since all of these names fit better at my list of sick animals (that often also would be great band names) but I guess I'm just going to list them all anyway...
There, almost hairless bracketed. (I get an image of a poor guinea pig losing its hair but trying to make the most of what's left, maybe trying a combover?) Are there any lists of naked or almost naked animals?
edit: I got so frustrated by trying to edit my original post that I slipped and deleted it. Fortunately, it wasn't very important.
Thanks markusloke! (It's an open list so feel free to add words, but it's nice to get a comment so I'll notice it.) Now I wonder if kentrogon will also fit on my sounding-like-a-superhero list, there's something about words ending i -on...
"The speech banana is a region in which all the phonemes of the world's languages fall on an audiogram. An audiogram is a graphical representation of a person's hearing acuity at a range of frequencies and loudness levels, and it is generally charted with frequency level (in Hertz on the x-axis and decibel level (dB) on the y-axis. When the sounds of speech or phonemes of all known human languages are plotted on an audiogram, they cluster in a banana-shaped region known as the speech banana." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_banana">Wikipedia)
"The ferrets are occasionally put inside the contestants' shirts in addition to their trousers. An attempt to introduce a female version of the sport—ferret busting, in which female contestants introduced ferrets down their blouses—proved unsuccessful." (Wikipedia)
"Ruin value (German: Ruinenwert) is the concept that a building be designed such that if it eventually collapsed, it would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins that would last far longer without any maintenance at all. The idea was pioneered by German architect Albert Speer while planning for the 1936 Summer Olympics and published as "The Theory of Ruin Value" (Die Ruinenwerttheorie), although he was not its original inventor." (Wikipedia)
"The buccal fat pad (also called Bichat’s fat pad, after Marie François Xavier Bichat, and the buccal pad of fat), is one of several encapsulated fat masses in the cheek. It is a deep fat pad located on either side of the face between the buccinator muscle and several more superficial muscles (including the masseter, the zygomaticus major, and the zygomaticus minor). The inferior portion of the buccal fat pad is contained within the buccal space. It should not be confused with the malar fat pad, which is directly below the skin of the cheek. It should also not be confused with jowl fat pads. It is implicated in the formation of hollow cheeks and the nasolabial fold, but not in the formation of jowls." (Wikipedia)
"Despite its name, the Mormon cricket is actually a shieldbacked katydid, not a cricket. They take their name from Mormon settlers in Utah, who encountered them while pushing westward, and for the prominent role they play in the miracle of the gulls." (Wikipedia)
"It has been observed to consist of up to four distinct units which can be arranged in different patterns to communicate information about threats from predators and coordination of group movement. Recent study of the call shows that the number of dees indicates the level of threat from nearby predators. In an analysis of over 5,000 alarm calls from chickadees, it was found that alarm calls triggered by small, dangerous raptors had a shorter interval between chick and dee and tended to have extra dees, usually averaging four instead of two. In one case, a warning call about a pygmy owl – a prime threat to chickadees – contained 23 dees" (Wikipedia)
"Holothuria mexicana, also known as the Donkey Dung sea cucumber is commonly found in the Caribbean. It is a commercially important aspidochirote (sediment feeding) sea cucumber that can reach a total length of 50 cm (20 in)." (Wikipedia)
Ooh, thanks for the wienermobile! "Drivers of the Wienermobiles are known as Hotdoggers and often hand out toy whistles shaped as replicas of the Wienermobile, known as Wienerwhistles."
I was just heading here to say something about what that definition would make matricide, but I was too late! At least I was rewarded by finding a list of "familial killing terms" on Wikipedia.
Here I am, thinking that I found something new and amazing, only to find that it's been discussed here five years ago! Anyway, here's a beautiful picture of it.
"Cryptic choice allows females to preferentially choose sperm. Females are thus able to mate multiple times and allocate sperm to their eggs according to paternal phenotype, or according to other characteristics. In some cases, such as in the yellow dung fly, certain male traits will affect the fitness of eggs laid in particular environmental conditions. Females can choose sperm based on male quality as a function of its interaction with the environment. In other species, such as the fly Dryomyza anilis, females preferentially choose sperm from one storage location over another. Males of this species have developed behaviors, such as abdominal tapping, to increase their number of sperm stored in the favored storage site." (Wikipedia)
"Scathophaga stercoraria, commonly known as the yellow dung fly or the golden dung fly, is one of the most familiar and abundant flies in many parts of the northern hemisphere. As its common name suggests, it is often found on the feces of large mammals, such as horses, cows, sheep, deer, and wild boar, where it goes to breed." (Wikipedia)
"Myrmeconema neotropicum is a new genus and species of parasitic tetradonematidnematode that apparently induces fruit mimicry in the tropical ant Cephalotes atratus. Infected ants develop bright red gasters, tend to be more sluggish, and walk with their gasters in a conspicuous elevated position. These changes likely cause frugivorous birds to confuse the infected ants for berries and eat them. Parasite eggs passed in the bird's feces are subsequently collected by foraging Cephalotes atratus and are fed to their larvae, thus completing the life cycle of Myrmeconema neotropicum." (Wikipedia)
"In mathematics, a pair of pants is a simple two-dimensional surface resembling a pair of pants: topologically, it is a sphere with three holes in it. Pairs of pants admit hyperbolic metrics, and their isometry class is determined by the lengths of the boundary curves (the cuff lengths), or dually the distances between the boundaries (the seam lengths)." (Wikipedia)
Ooh, nice meta list, I need to check the others out! And I bet I could find quite a few words that should be used in speculative or science fiction.
(I was wondering if it was metalist, meta list or meta-list, but metalist seems to be someone who works with metals, and the internet is full of lists and all things meta, and then I gave up searching...)
"Flowerhorn cichlids are ornamental aquarium fish noted for their vivid colors and the distinctively shaped heads for which they are named. Their head protuberance, or kok, is formally termed a 'nuchal hump.'" (Wikipedia)
"Pseudo-melanism, also called abundism, is another variant of pigmentation, characterized by dark spots or enlarged stripes, which cover a large part of the body of the animal making it appear melanistic. A deficiency in or total absence of melanin pigments is called amelanism." (Wikipedia)
"At any given moment, there could be heard a 'latrinophone' (which is a toilet seat strung with catgut), a 'crashophone' (bags of metal balls dropped into a metal washtub, in order to make the sound of breaking glass)" (From this article about Spike Jones)
"Two main types of reproduction occur in frogs, prolonged breeding and explosive breeding. In the former, adopted by the majority of species, adult frogs at certain times of year assemble at a pond, lake or stream to breed. Many frogs return to the bodies of water in which they developed as larvae. This often results in annual migrations involving thousands of individuals. In explosive breeders, mature adult frogs arrive at breeding sites in response to certain trigger factors such as rainfall occurring in an arid area. In these frogs, mating and spawning take place promptly and the speed of larval growth is rapid in order to make use of the ephemeral pools before they dry up." (Wikipedia)
"A species of frog has been found to operate a 'functional necrophilia strategy' whereby males extract eggs from dead females and then fertilise them.
The tiny central Amazonian frog -- the Rhinella proboscidea -- is a species that engages in 'explosive breeding', that is, a frantic competition for mates that takes place when large groups of animals gather for a few days. In this case, that means several hundred males congregate in small streamside ponds or headwaters for two or three days. When this happens, there is a brutal struggle to procreate, where many males become exhausted from fighting other males for receptive females. Meanwhile the females can sometimes get unintentionally crushed to death or drowned." (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/20/frog-necrophilia)
"In his later years, Grainger developed an aversion to English words with Latin roots—so the word 'museum' was, in this system, to be replaced with the term 'Hoard House'. He hoped this was what all museums would henceforth be called. I agree. The Guggenheim Hoard House, the Hoard House of Modern Art—let’s be honest about what these places are."
From David Byrne's Journal about Percy Grainger, where there's also a list of "Blue-Eyed English", wich is "the English language purged of all Latinisms", and might deserve a list of its own.
"Multiocular O (ꙮ) is the most rare and exotic glyph variant of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the phrase «серафими многоꙮчитїи» ('many-eyed seraphim')." (Wikipedia)
But... does that mean that someone somewhere is looking up all the other words even more often than every few minutes? Someone who really wants to know everything about infertility? A Fonkbot?
"Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the family Osteoglossidae, also known as bonytongues. In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongate body is covered by large, heavy scales, with a mosaic pattern of canals. The dorsal and the anal fins have soft rays and are long based, while the pectoral and ventral fins are small. The name 'bonytongues' is derived from a toothed bone on the floor of the mouth, the 'tongue', equipped with teeth that bite against teeth on the roof of the mouth. The arowana is a facultative air breather and can obtain oxygen from air by sucking it into the swim bladder, which is lined with capillaries like lung tissue." (
"In computability theory, a busy beaver is a Turing machine that attains the maximum number of steps performed or number of nonblank symbols finally on the tape among all Turing machines in a certain class. The Turing machines in this class must meet certain design specifications and are required to eventually halt after being started with a blank tape.
A busy beaver function quantifies these upper limits on a given measure, and is a noncomputable function. In fact, a busy beaver function can be shown to grow faster asymptotically than does any computable function. The concept was first introduced by Tibor Radó as the 'busy beaver game' in his 1962 paper, 'On Non-Computable Functions'."
(From Wikipedia, and there a lot more on big numbers (the biggest even)
The title or the words? I guess it's easier to be fond of Swedish detectives if they're a bit exotic and not in your face everywhere all the time... (I might be exaggerating a bit here.)
"A beating heart cadaver is a human body that though dead in all medical and legal definitions is attached to a medical ventilator and retains cardio-pulmonary functions. This will keep the organs of the dead body, including the heart, functioning and alive for a few days. As a result, the period of time in which the organs may be used for transplantation is extended." (Wikipedia)
"A hard, highly polishable composition, made of fine sawdust from hard wood (as rosewood) mixed with blood, and pressed." (GNU Webster's 1913, on bois-durci but the hyphenated spelling seems less common)
Phyllobates lugubris. I can't really tell why this is more lovely than other poison dart frogs, but at least the lovely hatchetfish has a companion now. (Not ready to create a list for them just yet...)
As you wish, bilby (although now there's a complete Fonk absence, but I bet it's just a trick). I must say that the trending words list is the thing I understand the least around here. Does anyone know anything about what sort of algorithm it might be using?
Am I imagining things now? I was sure that there was four(!) fonks in the trending list just now, but when I reloaded the page it went down to a more reasonable one Fonk level...
"The cooing dove murmur is a cardiac murmur with a musical quality (high pitched - hence the name) and is associated with acute mitral valveregurgitation, preceded by a rupture of the chordae tendinea (the fibrous 'strings' that connect the papillary muscle to the cusps of the valves). It is a systolic murmur which is best heard over the left second, third and fourth intercostal spaces." (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooing_dove_murmur#Cooing_dove_murmur">Wikipedia) Part of me wants to list this on the-sound-of-birds, but I guess I won't...
"Cœur en sabot, (French for 'Boot shaped heart'), is a radiological sign seen most commonly in patients with Tetralogy of Fallot, a cyanotic congenital heart disease." (Wikipedia)
"The Lynch motor is a flat (pancake) axial gap permanent magnet brushed DC motor invented by Cedric Lynch." (Wikipedia) That sentence doesn't make much sense to me, but I like the word anyway.
I keep seeing this word as if it was in Swedish. Not that it makes sense, but muskelunge (Wikipedia says that's an alternate way of spelling it, but it doesn't matter, I see it in muskellunge as well) would mean muscle-kid, or perhaps muscle-offspring. So now my brain is trying to make images of what that would look like...
"The Oh-My-God particle was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (most likely a proton) detected on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3×10^20 eV (50 J)—in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)." (Wikipedia)
Eew? More like ooh to me! (I like all the ones listed at animal-identity-crisis, but the ones with three different animals are the best... I hope to one day find one made out of four animals.)
"In graphonomics, sloppiness space is a term introduced by Goldberg and Richardson to describe the shape space of all graph (handwriting) around an idealized allograph. Sloppiness space can be so large that optical character recognition becomes very difficult due to overlap with shapes for non-intended characters." (Wikipedia)
"The Swoon Hypothesis refers to a number of theories that aim to explain the resurrection of Jesus, proposing that Jesus did not die on the cross, but merely fell unconscious ('swooned'), and was later revived in the tomb in the same mortal body." (Wikipedia)
Speaking of Australia... This article is about "earrings made out of koala feces sold by the True Blue Roo Poo Company, an Australian business that specializes in making products out of animal poop." But I can't find their web page, so maybe they are out of business? (But I don't see how that could be possible.)
An unusually efficient spammer too, I had to cut my way through a wall of spam to ger here... And who knows what's buried so deep in spam that it's lost forever? (As far as I see, there is no way of seeing older stuff than what's visible on the first page, is that right?)
"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's dirty-word filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring cunt." (Wikipedia)
"In experimental physics, a wetting layer is an initial layer of atoms that is epitaxially grown on a surface upon which self-assembled quantum dots or thin films are created." (Wikipedia)
"A quantum dot is a portion of matter (e.g., semiconductor) whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. Consequently, such materials have electronic properties intermediate between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules." (Wikipedia)
It looks like I wanted to fit too much into that poor comment. But I like the idea that the internet is big enough to offer everyone extremely specialized entertainment...
Ooh, cellular vampirism! (If people run out of ideas to make bad vampire movies from, this could inspire them to make one filmed entirely in microscope...)
From Wikipedia: "A classic example of myzocytosis is the feeding method of the infamous predatory ciliate, Didinium, where it is often depicted devouring a hapless Paramecium. The suctorian ciliates feed exclusively through myzocytosis, sucking out the cytoplasm of prey via superficially drinking straw-like pseudopodia."
(And Suctoria sounds to me like a name cruel children would invent from combining suck and Victoria. Here are some pretty animated gifs of them.)
Yes, where will it all end? But we must be brave, and continue to move on, further and further, towards the limit. (The human limit, that is, I guess it should be fairly simple to make some sort of computer script to do this... hmm... It could easily become an entire book... hmm...)
Sure, go ahead and add them if you like. I think the best animals are the ones where I can imagine som sort of cyborg monster (like, the knife-footed frog is a frog with actual knives for feet) but other violent animals are also welcome.
At the risk of being spammy... I've made an advent calendar this year, with little stop motion animations for every day until Christmas. It's almost completely wordless, but if you like toys and decorations being sacreligious and/or silly you can see it here.
I grew up with multiple advent calendars myself. In Sweden there is a calendar that is related to a daily television show that most swedish children probably watch every day...
"One technical problem was that buried objects—especially during winter—can get very cold, and it was possible the mine would not have worked after some days underground, due to the electronics being too cold to operate properly. Various methods to get around this were studied, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets. One particularly remarkable proposal suggested that live chickens should be included in the mechanism. The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. The body heat given off by the chickens would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep all the relevant components at a working temperature. This proposal was sufficiently outlandish that it was taken as an April Fool's Day joke when the Blue Peacock file was declassified on April 1, 2004. Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, replied to the media that, 'It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes.'" (Wikipedia)
It sounds like a bad translation of some strange anime, but...
"The Raspberry Bud Dagger Moth, Raspberry Bud Moth or Peach Sword Stripe Night Moth (Acronicta increta) is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is distributed throughout the south of Canada and the United States down to Florida and Texas. The status of this species is disputed. Some authors regard Acronicta increta a synonym of Acronicta inclara." (Wikipedia)
So, today I stumbled over this cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata) and the jack-knifefish (Equetus lanceolatus), and I get the feeling that there is a list out there, waiting for me...
edit: I made a list of weaponized-animals, but now I feel that the finch doesn't really fit in... hmm...
"Caudal luring is the use of tail movements employed by a predator to attract prey animals. It is a form of mimicry classified formally as aggressive mimicry, but perhaps better described by the term feeding mimicry. The behavior is employed by a number of snake species and allegedly by two lizards, though other interpretations (e.g., distraction) seem more plausible for the lizards. Caudal luring also occurs in a shark, the tasselled wobbegong, Eucrossorinus dasypogon." (Wikipedia)
It sounds like a monster, but seems to be a real animal...
"The Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede (Desmoxytes purpurosea) is a spiny and toxicmillipede named for its vivid pink color. First discovered in 2007 in the Hup Pa Tard limestone cavern in Thailand, within the Greater Mekong, the adult millipede is approximately 3 cm long and lives in the open on leaf litter. The millipedes have glands that produce hydrogen cyanide to protect them from predators, a fact advertised by their aposematic color. Because they produce cyanide, they smell like almonds." (Wikipedia)
"Forcipules are a unique feature found only in centipedes and in no other arthropods. The forcipules are modifications of the first pair of legs, forming a pincer-like appendage always found just behind the head. Forcipules are not true mouthparts, although they are used in the capture of prey items, injecting venom and holding onto captured prey. Venom glands run through a tube almost to the tip of each forcipule." (Wikipedia)
Is there a way to remove a tag? (This is a description of the sound of a white stork, not a shoebill, I wouldn't want to spread lies like this by accident. (I prefer my lies to be planned.))
"Matt Visser has described a way of visualising wormhole geometry:
- take a 'normal' region of space
- 'surgically remove' spherical volumes from two regions ('spacetime surgery')
- associate the two spherical bleeding edges, so that a line attempting to enter one 'missing' spherical volume encounters one bounding surface and then continues outward from the other."
I like the sound of pornologic! (Even though it's unnecessary when you have -graphic. Maybe you can use some sort of pseudoetymology to claim that pornography is just one (extreme) form of calligraphy...)
About vulgar, If they mean "adj. Of or associated with the great masses of people; common." there might problems... (that get worse as Wordnik gets more users...)
I appreciated (and read!) the terms as well. But I'm a bit confused about not being able to
"Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any text, graphics, images, software, music, audio, video, information or other material that: ... (iv) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive".
Surely "vulgar" and "pornographic" lists or words can't be banned? Is there a legal interpretation of these words that I'm not aware of?
Good idea! Just watching two episodes made me feel the need for this kind of list (but so far I have managed to put the words in my existing lists...).
"Sacculina larvae are dioecious. The male larvae are often smaller than those of the females. The life cycle begins with the female cyprid invading the crabs and then developing into a parasite with an internal root system (interna). Once the interna matures, it will develop a reproductive body outside the crabs through the abdominal part called the virgin externa. Male cyprids will then enter the virgin externa, which give rise to a fertilized externa with the eggs brooding inside it. Larvae will then be released via the externa once the eggs became mature." (Found here.)
Comments by deinonychus
deinonychus commented on the list name-name
i still love this list and keep coming back with my little names to add to the big pile
March 7, 2023
deinonychus commented on the word Coccothraustes coccothraustes
there seems to be some secret invisible characters in this word? In the url i see "Coccothraustes%20%20%20%20%20 coccothraustes" but searching for just "Coccothraustes coccothraustes" tells me it's not on any list. (And i got excited about having a new one for name-name)
April 26, 2020
deinonychus commented on the word grasshopper escapement
It could also be the start of a horror movie. And/or a biblical plague.
July 31, 2018
deinonychus commented on the list gleaned-words
haven't been here for a while, but today grasshopper escapement brought me back. and then i see the last comment (from 2013!) on this list was about another escapement...
July 30, 2018
deinonychus commented on the list the-porn-birds
Today I heard a mistle thrush sing for the first time, and was pleased to find that it is also called stormcock.
April 30, 2018
deinonychus commented on the list name-name
Nothing for 6 months, and now three in a week!
February 4, 2018
deinonychus commented on the word skin-contact wine
Found this horrible sounding type of wine while researching making wine from oranges. But I do enjoy that something could be described as "the opposite of rosé".
"Skin-contact wine, amber wine, or orange wine is a type of wine made from white wine grapes where the grape skins are not removed, and stay in contact with the juice for days or even months."
"This winemaking style is essentially the opposite of rosé production which involves getting red wine grapes quickly off their skins, leaving the wine with a slightly pinkish hue."
(Wikipedia)
December 7, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word vowel-knob
Found in a text about the construction of an alphabet for the Taíno language.
"The system expresses these consonant-vowel blends by attaching a 'vowel-knob' to the consonant glyph. The position of the vowel-knob denotes which vowel is being sounded after the consonant (above the glyph for the 'ah' sound, to the right of the glyph for 'eh' sound, below the glyph for the 'ee' sound, to the left of the glyph for the 'oh' sound and at the center of the glyph for the 'oo' sound)."
October 14, 2017
deinonychus commented on the list sick-animals
Just found a list of "ways for sheep to die in Austraila", got some good new terms there. Could be of use to someone with a sheep-list, I have a feeling those exist. https://drferox.tumblr.com/post/164511954373/ways-for-sheep-to-die-in-australia
August 27, 2017
deinonychus commented on the list name-name
It's been a while but today I found another one! (Xanthostigma xanthostigma)
June 9, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word frog galvanoscope
"The frog galvanoscope is a sensitive electrical instrument used to detect voltage in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It consists of skinned frog's leg with electrical connections to a nerve."
"Synonyms for this device include galvanoscopic frog, frog's leg galvanoscope, frog galvanometer, rheoscopic frog, and frog electroscope."
(Wikipedia)
April 5, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic rachipagus twin
Ooh, this seems useful...
April 1, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word textiloma
And now I see that gossypiboma already was a popular word here, but maybe we need three synonyms for it so that we can use it many times in a conversation without being repetitive?
March 13, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word textiloma
Fabric inside the body, looking like a tumour. "Hemostat-associated mass lesions have been variously referred to as textilomas, gossypibomas, gauzomas, or muslinomas" (source)
March 13, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word egg veil
"Sometimes, the egg veil is described as being as similar to bubble wrap. Each veil the monkfish lays is dotted with about a million eggs." (Pictures here)
February 11, 2017
deinonychus commented on the word claw crane
Does anyone have a list of things that sound like animals but aren't? (Claw cranes are unfortunately not dangerous birds, but those near-impossible games where you try to catch a toy or something.)
December 18, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word angel insect
I don't know what the insects of the order Zoraptera did to earn this name, but I hope it was performing miracles.
September 19, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word 4 1⁄2
4 1⁄2?
You know, it's a slippery slope. Start counting bathrooms, and the what? Corridors? Closets? Where will it end?!
July 12, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word 4 1⁄2
Interesting! In Sweden this would be called a "trea", which translates as (the number) three. Short for "tre rum och kök" meaning "three rooms and a kitchen". We count the living room but not bathrooms.
July 11, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word Vavilovian mimicry
Vavilovian mimicry (also crop mimicry or weed mimicry) is a form of mimicry in plants where a weed comes to share one or more characteristics with a domesticated plant through generations of artificial selection. It is named after Nikolai Vavilov, a prominent Russian plant geneticist who identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry">Wikipedia</a>)
May 7, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word assfish
Poor bony-eared assfish, Wikipedia only has 5 sentences about it, and one of them is "It holds the record for the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of all vertebrates."
February 20, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word poxvirus
I find this very confusing. Lots of animals have their own poxes, but some of the ones we humans get we have named after innocent animals, like chickenpox and Molluscipoxvirus...
February 17, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word poxvirus
Oh, wow. I probably have to steal all of those for my sick-animals list. Very impressive collection!
February 17, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word traumatin
"Traumatin is a plant hormone produced in response to wound. Traumatin is a precursor to the related hormone traumatic acid. (Wikipedia)
February 12, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word danger triangle of the face
Anyone got a list of human geometry? "The danger triangle of the face consists of the area from the corners of the mouth to the bridge of the nose, including the nose and maxilla. Due to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area, it is possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain causing cavernous sinus thrombosis, meningitis or brain abscess." (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face">Wikipedia</a>)
January 29, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word scarabiasis
Oh, lovely! Good to give people something catchy to help them remember.
January 26, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word scarabiasis
"Scarabiasis is a condition where beetles temporarily infest the digestive tract and the scarabs are identified in the 'fly away' from the anus at the time of the defecation." (Source)
January 26, 2016
deinonychus commented on the list things-to-do-with-animals
@sidereal: Well, sort of. But all of these are things that requires some sort of human intervention. Not that I consider this list to be any form of recommendation to start ferret legging or hypnotising chickens. (The more "natural" animal related words have their own list)
@vendingmachine: Happy to hear that! I'll try to remember to provide more definitions. And nice to see that the poor dried cat finally found a list to live in.
January 19, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word mermaid ivory
Made from bone of the extinct Steller's sea cow. (Found here)
January 17, 2016
deinonychus commented on the list things-to-do-with-animals
I try to find just the right intriguing/disturbing ratio, but I can never really tell how other people will feel about it...
January 17, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word reify
Looks lika a little space has snuck into the link, making it " reify". I make that mistake a lot when I copy/paste things.
January 15, 2016
deinonychus commented on the word superrationality
"Superrational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers." (Douglas Hofstadter, via Wikipedia)
December 28, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word self-harvest
"When the larvae have completed their larval development through six instars, they enter a stage called the 'prepupa' wherein they cease to eat, they empty their guts, their mouth parts change to an appendage that aids climbing, and they seek a dry, sheltered area to pupate. This prepupal migration instinct is used by grub composting bins to self-harvest the mature larvae. These containers have ramps or holes on the sides to allow the prepupae to climb out of the composter and drop into a collection area." (Wikipedia)
December 20, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word goat bending
Ooh, I hope I will find opportunities for using this phrase somehow. And it's perfect for my things-to-do-with-animals list.
December 18, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word third sound
From http://what-if.xkcd.com/50/: "Superfluid helium films, like the one rapidly covering you, carry the same types of ordinary sound waves that most materials do. But they also exhibit an additional type of wave, a slow-moving ripple that propogates along thin films of helium. It's only observed in superfluids, and has the mysterious and poetic name 'third sound.'"
December 18, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word necrobiome
Interesting. A while ago I found the term thanatomicrobiome for the same thing here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death. Necrobiome seems simpler and more familiar, but I guess time will tell which term will win in the long run.
December 10, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list the-porn-birds
How about the oxpecker? (I think about this list a lot)
December 7, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word angel’s glow
Glowing wounds caused by Photorhabdus luminescens. "During the US Civil war, the same bacteria sometimes contaminated the wounds of soldiers, giving them an eerie blue shine while also protecting them from infections—they called it the 'angel’s glow'." (Source)
December 5, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list name-name
Hmm, I'm too lazy for that. I'll guess I'll have to survive without access to all the data!
November 23, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list name-name
Yay, I found a new one! (Sprattus sprattus) It's been a while since last time (is there a way to tell when a word was listed?), but there are still unlisted species out there waiting...
November 22, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word crown shyness
"Crown shyness is a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps. It is also known as canopy disengagement, canopy shyness, or intercrown spacing. The phenomenon is most prevalent among trees of the same species, but also occurs between trees of different species." (Wikipedia)
October 18, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word dinocyst
I know! Or maybe what you could call a really big cyst you've got, to make it sound cool.
August 15, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word bulbil
I love this sentence from Wikipedia: "A bulbil is a small bulb, and may also be called a bulblet, bulbet, or bulbel."
July 12, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word pyramidal eminence
"The pyramidal eminence (pyramid) is situated immediately behind the fenestra vestibuli, and in front of the vertical portion of the facial canal; it is hollow, and contains the Stapedius muscle; its summit projects forward toward the fenestra vestibuli, and is pierced by a small aperture which transmits the tendon of the muscle." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidal_eminence)
May 28, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list the-porn-birds
What?! I haven't been here since 2013? Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that dick-dick-the-devil is an old name for the crested bellbird.
March 31, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Ooh, just one poem ending in fecal plumes would have made me happy, but now three!
March 24, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Not sure if this is specific enough, but I didn't know a better place for it:
(http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/17/sciencespeak-whale-pump/)March 23, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word tankette
Found this word today. Is there a list of misleadingly cute-sounding diminutive forms?
March 23, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list contextomies
The quotation mark breaks wordnik a little. I've hade the same problem, but only in the middle of a "word", so I never got to the randomness. (My random words: direct-driven, honouring, perilune. Will someone tell us how to interpret this type of bibliomancy?)
March 21, 2015
deinonychus commented on the list wild-turkey-vocalizations-and-sounds
Nice! I might steal some of these for my list of sounds of birds...
March 16, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word home scar
I stumbled over the poetic term "home scar" and then learned about aggressive gardening mollusks! From Wikipedia:
March 11, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word General Hard Times Measure
"Professor Terry Frank Pettijohn II, of Coastal Carolina University, is the lead author of a new study which investigates the ‘Chin Area’ (and other facial features such as ‘Eye Width’) of US country Music singers between 1946 and 2010 – and examines possible correlations with an index of economic and social conditions called the General Hard Times Measure (GHTM)." (found here)
January 11, 2015
deinonychus commented on the word community
I'm glad to see that you're all still alive! (I found my way here by googling "502 Bad Gateway" and then following ruzuzu.)
December 28, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word Thomasson
This podcast introduced me to the architectural term Thomasson, a structure in a city that is useless but maintained. Named after a baseball player...
November 21, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word insominator
A machine to make make bees sleep deprived... Found here: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/berrett-klein-honeybees/.
November 16, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mating ball
I now see very vivid images of snakes in historical costumes in a mating ball. It would make a great illustrated children's book.
November 5, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mating ball
"Female garter snakes will emerge from their winter hibernation — technically called 'brumation,' a hibernation-like state that cold-blooded animals go through during chilly months — a few days after males do. When males catch the pheromone scent of a female, they will swarm over her, forming a 'mating ball.'" (Source)
November 3, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word gleaning bell
Ooh, I want one!
September 29, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word cat gap
"The cat gap is a period in the fossil record of approximately 25 to 18.5 million years ago in which there are few fossils of cats or cat-like species found in North America." (Wikipedia)
hmm... strange visuals for this one...
September 3, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word nuptial spines
Reading about the Emei moustache toad on Wikipedia: "Male Leptobrachium boringii exhibit conspicuous keratinized nuptial spines that grow on their upper lip during the breeding season—these are the 'moustache' and 'spines' referred to in its common names."
August 6, 2014
deinonychus commented on the list we-test-our-lists-again
Hmm... Maybe I should hurry to close all of my open lists before something terrible and irreversible happens to them!
(I used to be able to do it the way ruzuzu describes, but it seems impossible now.)
July 16, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word boar taint
"Boar taint is the offensive odour or taste that can be evident during the cooking or eating of pork or pork products derived from non-castrated male pigs once they reach puberty." (Wikipedia)
July 3, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word buzz pollination
"In order to release the pollen, bumblebees and some species of solitary bees are able to grab onto the flower and move their flight muscles rapidly, causing the flower and anthers to vibrate, dislodging pollen. This resonant vibration is called buzz pollination. The honeybee rarely performs buzz pollination. About 8% of the flowers of the world are primarily pollinated using buzz pollination." (Wikipedia)
June 28, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word Extra extra
"Extra extra</i> or Marginella extra is a species of minute sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk or micromollusk in the family Cystiscidae. Some malacologists place this genus more simply in the family Marginellidae." (Wikipedia)
I hope it continues to be Extra extra, it's a much funnier name.
June 19, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word spraint
Learning a new kind of excrement, heading over here... finding that of course it is listed at specific-excrement.
June 17, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mud-puddling
"Mud-puddling, or simply puddling, is behaviour most conspicuous in butterflies, but occurs in other animals as well, mainly insects; they seek out certain moist substances such as rotting plant matter, mud and carrion and they suck up the fluid. Where the conditions are suitable conspicuous insects such as butterflies commonly form aggregations on wet soil, dung or carrion." (Wikipedia)
April 22, 2014
deinonychus commented on the list zombification
This article mentions witch's broom. (or witches' broom, I find it very hard to choose!)
(edit: but now i see that the links get broken anyway...)
April 15, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mummyberry
Yay! I'll have that in mind when the zombies appear. Hopefully not actual zombies.
April 9, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word ugly law
"From the late 1860s until the 1970s, several American cities had ugly laws making it illegal for persons with "unsightly or disgusting" disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called unsightly beggar ordinances." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law">Wikipedia)
April 3, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word sniffer wasp
"Insects in the order Hymenoptera can be trained to perform a variety of tasks. The sensitivity of the olfactory senses of bees and wasps in particular have been shown to rival the abilities of sniffer dogs, though they can only be trained to detect a single scent each. Sniffer bees and sniffer wasps have been trained to detect substances such as explosive materials or illegal drugs, as well as some human and plant diseases." (Wikipedia)
April 3, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word nilpotent
I have a feeling that it could work well as an insult of some sort...
April 2, 2014
deinonychus commented on the list name-name
Damn, I just saw "Dugong dugong" and headed straight for this list, but it turns out that it's actually Dugong dugon. Oh well, at least I got to see some pretty pictures of fetal dugong skeletons...
April 2, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mad itch
"Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 (SuHV-1), which is also called pseudorabies virus (PRV) and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch." (Wikipedia)
(Accidentally made this comment at " mad itch", and then bilby mentioned pseudorables...)
March 31, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mad itch
Wait, how did I manage to get an empty space in the beginning this word? I thought Wordnik was smarter than this. Now I'll never find these comments again...
March 31, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word pseudorable
I think it could be pretending to be adorable, but you are actually not. Like something from a horror movie, attracting its prey with big puppy eyes, and then BAM! the stinger/slime/fangs comes out.
March 31, 2014
deinonychus commented on the list sick-animals
I'm pretty sure classical swine fever is a radio station.
March 30, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mad itch
"Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 (SuHV-1), which is also called pseudorabies virus (PRV) and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch." (Wikipedia)
March 30, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word louping-ill
Ooh... I came here to list louping-ill, but leaping-evil is even better. Also trembling-ill, and the less magic-sounding infectious encephalomyelitis of sheep.
March 30, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word hote
"just to avoid/create confusion" seems like a very useful phrase...
March 23, 2014
deinonychus commented on the user madmouth
Aha! I was just a bit ahead of my time. Thank's for pointing this out, I had completely forgotten about traumatic insemination and was surprised to see it mentioned on my profile...
March 19, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word puppy pregnancy syndrome
"People suffering from this condition believe that shortly after being bitten by a dog, puppies are conceived within their abdomen." (Wikipedia)
March 8, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mummyberry
Yes, ruzuzu there should be a list! Surely there must be some vampires that should fit in too...
March 7, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word dauer tower
This article contained lots of good stuff:
"At some point during its early days, P.pacificus pauses its growth and becomes a dauer—an especially tough larva that’s adapted to survive through harsh conditions."
"groups of P.pacificus can merge to form a single waving 'dauer tower', composed of up to a thousand individuals."
"Such teamwork! Such togetherness! Such low odds of ever appearing on a motivational poster!"
March 7, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word mummyberry
"Another fungus, called 'mummyberry,' infects blueberry plants and turns their fruits into pale, shriveled carcasses. But it doesn’t stop there. Infected shoots of the plant grow grayish spots at their tips that reflect UV light, smell like flowers, and leak sugary liquid. Pollinators that are attracted to these 'pseudoflowers' will pick up more infectious spores on their bodies." http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/02/25/the-5-creepiest-ways-plant-diseases-mutate-flowers/
March 6, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word slime flux
"Slime flux is a bacterial disease of certain trees, primarily elm, cottonwood, poplar, boxelder, ash, aspen, fruitless mulberry, and oak. A wound to the bark, caused by pruning, insects, poor branch angles or natural cracks and splits, causes sap to ooze from the wound. Bacteria may infect this sap causing it to darken and stain the bark, eventually taking on a foamy appearance and unpleasant odor. This slimy ooze becomes toxic to the bark and eats into the tree. Additionally, the fermented sap attracts insects like flies, ants, worms, and maggots, which further weaken the tree." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_flux)
February 26, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word chronic bee paralysis virus
I was reading about bee diseases (here) and found this:
"Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV), is a virus that cause an infectious disease of the adult honey bees. Previously known with different names in different countries such as 'little blacks' (UK), 'hairless black syndrome' (US), 'mal nero' (Italy), 'Schwarzsucht' (Germany) and 'mal noire' (France) (Ribière et al., 2008)."
The "prevously" made me a bit sad, since all of these names fit better at my list of sick animals (that often also would be great band names) but I guess I'm just going to list them all anyway...
February 20, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word skinny pig
There, almost hairless bracketed. (I get an image of a poor guinea pig losing its hair but trying to make the most of what's left, maybe trying a combover?) Are there any lists of naked or almost naked animals?
edit: I got so frustrated by trying to edit my original post that I slipped and deleted it. Fortunately, it wasn't very important.
February 13, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word sword razor
"Ensis ensis, or the sword razor, is a razor clam, a marine bivalve mollusc in the family Pharidae." (Wikipedia) Perhaps sharpest sounding animal on my weaponized-animals list so far.
February 7, 2014
deinonychus commented on the list parasitic
Thanks markusloke! (It's an open list so feel free to add words, but it's nice to get a comment so I'll notice it.)
Now I wonder if kentrogon will also fit on my sounding-like-a-superhero list, there's something about words ending i -on...
January 19, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word backlash
Do it, bilby! I'm sure I can think of something to add...
January 13, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word speech banana
"The speech banana is a region in which all the phonemes of the world's languages fall on an audiogram. An audiogram is a graphical representation of a person's hearing acuity at a range of frequencies and loudness levels, and it is generally charted with frequency level (in Hertz on the x-axis and decibel level (dB) on the y-axis. When the sounds of speech or phonemes of all known human languages are plotted on an audiogram, they cluster in a banana-shaped region known as the speech banana." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_banana">Wikipedia)
January 13, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word ferret legging
"The ferrets are occasionally put inside the contestants' shirts in addition to their trousers. An attempt to introduce a female version of the sport—ferret busting, in which female contestants introduced ferrets down their blouses—proved unsuccessful." (Wikipedia)
January 1, 2014
deinonychus commented on the word evangelical superhero
I found this disappointing link (actually two links) researching Bibleman. But there's most likely more than one evangelical superhero out there...
October 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word fighting teeth
Sharp teeth that male alpacas develop.
October 26, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word ruin value
"Ruin value (German: Ruinenwert) is the concept that a building be designed such that if it eventually collapsed, it would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins that would last far longer without any maintenance at all. The idea was pioneered by German architect Albert Speer while planning for the 1936 Summer Olympics and published as "The Theory of Ruin Value" (Die Ruinenwerttheorie), although he was not its original inventor." (Wikipedia)
October 17, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list medtech
Nice list! I think I'll stay here a while...
October 15, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word buccal fat pad
"The buccal fat pad (also called Bichat’s fat pad, after Marie François Xavier Bichat, and the buccal pad of fat), is one of several encapsulated fat masses in the cheek. It is a deep fat pad located on either side of the face between the buccinator muscle and several more superficial muscles (including the masseter, the zygomaticus major, and the zygomaticus minor). The inferior portion of the buccal fat pad is contained within the buccal space. It should not be confused with the malar fat pad, which is directly below the skin of the cheek. It should also not be confused with jowl fat pads. It is implicated in the formation of hollow cheeks and the nasolabial fold, but not in the formation of jowls." (Wikipedia)
October 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Mormon cricket
"Despite its name, the Mormon cricket is actually a shieldbacked katydid, not a cricket. They take their name from Mormon settlers in Utah, who encountered them while pushing westward, and for the prominent role they play in the miracle of the gulls." (Wikipedia)
October 10, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word play
Thanks, dinkum! I was just about to check my geology list for terms that could be used in an erotic context...
October 9, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list the-porn-birds
Anyone interested in a porn bird comic?
October 7, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word chick-a-dee-dee-dee
"It has been observed to consist of up to four distinct units which can be arranged in different patterns to communicate information about threats from predators and coordination of group movement. Recent study of the call shows that the number of dees indicates the level of threat from nearby predators. In an analysis of over 5,000 alarm calls from chickadees, it was found that alarm calls triggered by small, dangerous raptors had a shorter interval between chick and dee and tended to have extra dees, usually averaging four instead of two. In one case, a warning call about a pygmy owl – a prime threat to chickadees – contained 23 dees" (Wikipedia)
October 4, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list bird-songs
How did it take me so long to find this list? Some of these will definitely end up in my nest...
October 4, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
Of course I don't mind. I feel a little sorry for those cars, especially the ones with rather human-like cries and a typically raucous honking call...
October 4, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word donkey dung sea cucumber
"Holothuria mexicana, also known as the Donkey Dung sea cucumber is commonly found in the Caribbean. It is a commercially important aspidochirote (sediment feeding) sea cucumber that can reach a total length of 50 cm (20 in)." (Wikipedia)
September 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list upward-mobility
Ooh, thanks for the wienermobile! "Drivers of the Wienermobiles are known as Hotdoggers and often hand out toy whistles shaped as replicas of the Wienermobile, known as Wienerwhistles."
August 30, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list religous
Thank you, ruzuzu! And I don't need to have the words to myself, they are free to be a band or do what they please...
August 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Bullycide
I was just heading here to say something about what that definition would make matricide, but I was too late! At least I was rewarded by finding a list of "familial killing terms" on Wikipedia.
August 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word cat scratch fever
Oh, I see now that I had put this on the wrong list! It's not about sick-animals but sick people. Fortunately, I found feline foamy virus today.
edit: Are the word-links out of order or am I doing something wrong all of a sudden? Hmm... Well, at least I'm not the only one, it seems.
August 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word normopathy
Ooh, that's a word I've been missing without knowing it!
July 16, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word fecal shield
Here I am, thinking that I found something new and amazing, only to find that it's been discussed here five years ago! Anyway, here's a beautiful picture of it.
(And how come it's not on the specific-excrement list?)
July 12, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list rosenfield-titles-of-attribute
Then I will have to control myself a bit. Now to investigate titles...
July 1, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list rosenfield-titles-of-attribute
So, are the attributes mostly positive? I can imagine that this form would work well for insults...
July 1, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word cryptic female choice
"Cryptic choice allows females to preferentially choose sperm. Females are thus able to mate multiple times and allocate sperm to their eggs according to paternal phenotype, or according to other characteristics. In some cases, such as in the yellow dung fly, certain male traits will affect the fitness of eggs laid in particular environmental conditions. Females can choose sperm based on male quality as a function of its interaction with the environment. In other species, such as the fly Dryomyza anilis, females preferentially choose sperm from one storage location over another. Males of this species have developed behaviors, such as abdominal tapping, to increase their number of sperm stored in the favored storage site." (Wikipedia)
June 26, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word golden dung fly
"Scathophaga stercoraria, commonly known as the yellow dung fly or the golden dung fly, is one of the most familiar and abundant flies in many parts of the northern hemisphere. As its common name suggests, it is often found on the feces of large mammals, such as horses, cows, sheep, deer, and wild boar, where it goes to breed." (Wikipedia)
June 26, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Symbolic chickens
June 16, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word orthosexuality
Extremely unsexy...
June 10, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word pyrogen
It's all just water, anyway...
June 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list astronomical--1
Thanks! I haven't been adding anything to this for a long time, might be time for a new astronomical Wikipedia binge...
June 4, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word fruit mimicry
"Myrmeconema neotropicum is a new genus and species of parasitic tetradonematid nematode that apparently induces fruit mimicry in the tropical ant Cephalotes atratus. Infected ants develop bright red gasters, tend to be more sluggish, and walk with their gasters in a conspicuous elevated position. These changes likely cause frugivorous birds to confuse the infected ants for berries and eat them. Parasite eggs passed in the bird's feces are subsequently collected by foraging Cephalotes atratus and are fed to their larvae, thus completing the life cycle of Myrmeconema neotropicum." (Wikipedia)
May 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word yellow-bellied sapsucker
There's just so much insult potential in this poor animal: yellow-bellied + sap + sucker!
May 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word pair of pants
"In mathematics, a pair of pants is a simple two-dimensional surface resembling a pair of pants: topologically, it is a sphere with three holes in it. Pairs of pants admit hyperbolic metrics, and their isometry class is determined by the lengths of the boundary curves (the cuff lengths), or dually the distances between the boundaries (the seam lengths)." (Wikipedia)
May 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Carpediemonas
"Carpediemonas is a genus of protozoa. The single known species, Carpediemonas membranifera, is a small flagellate that was originally isolated from anaerobic intertidal sediment. It is distantly related to diplomonads. It has been shown to have a membrane-bounded organelle reminiscent of a hydrogenosome." (Wikipedia)
May 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word hog-nosed skunk
I liked the name hog-nosed skunk, but "naked-muzzled" in the description is even better...
May 2, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Or maybe the list of fictional Antichists...
April 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of fictional colors!
April 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list science-fact-or-fiction
I guess those are more sciency-fictiony...
April 26, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list science-fact-or-fiction
Ooh, nice meta list, I need to check the others out! And I bet I could find quite a few words that should be used in speculative or science fiction.
(I was wondering if it was metalist, meta list or meta-list, but metalist seems to be someone who works with metals, and the internet is full of lists and all things meta, and then I gave up searching...)
April 25, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list things-that-freak-me-out--animals
Nice list! Nature is good at making that sort of things...
April 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the user FreeRun_5
When a spammer is too wordy, the link to report them seems to fail...
April 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word surface of last scattering
Ooh, I really like it!
April 18, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word squashed face rattail
A fish, Nezumia namatahi, suitable for insults.
April 16, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word nuchal hump
"Flowerhorn cichlids are ornamental aquarium fish noted for their vivid colors and the distinctively shaped heads for which they are named. Their head protuberance, or kok, is formally termed a 'nuchal hump.'" (Wikipedia)
April 15, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Inglorius mediocris
The mediocre skipper.
April 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word mediocre skipper
Poor Inglorius mediocris. "The scientific name Inglorius means undistinguished, as the only known species is a nondescript brown butterfly referred to as mediocris, meaning ordinary." (Wikipedia)
April 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bloody parrot
"The blood parrot cichlid (also known as parrot cichlid and bloody parrot; no binomial nomenclature) is a hybrid cichlid." (Wikipedia)
April 12, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word abundism
"Pseudo-melanism, also called abundism, is another variant of pigmentation, characterized by dark spots or enlarged stripes, which cover a large part of the body of the animal making it appear melanistic. A deficiency in or total absence of melanin pigments is called amelanism." (Wikipedia)
March 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word starry sturgeon
Also known as stellate sturgeon, but that isn't as nice to say...
March 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list twitter-favorites
Oh, I love these automatically generated lists! Someday I'll make my own.
March 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list identify-the-word-ie-nik--2013
Is there a deadline for this? (So I know when to give up thinking and send in a random word)
March 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Killing field
I am so happy that Wilhelm Killing got to name so many things! Killing horizon and Killing form are other good ones. (If anyone finds more good eponyms, I've got a list for those...).
March 17, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word latrinophone
"At any given moment, there could be heard a 'latrinophone' (which is a toilet seat strung with catgut), a 'crashophone' (bags of metal balls dropped into a metal washtub, in order to make the sound of breaking glass)" (From this article about Spike Jones)
March 12, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bipolar feeding
What a sea cucumber does when it ingests food through its anus, according to this study. Found here.
March 10, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
I guess I want to be in on this too, even though I might have a disadvantage since I haven't played before...
March 8, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
I just found the List of chics. "This is a list of notable chics.".
March 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Maybe you can find some good words in this article about human dung being the most attractive (for dung beetles, that is).
March 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Location hypotheses of Atlantis.
February 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word explosive breeding
"Two main types of reproduction occur in frogs, prolonged breeding and explosive breeding. In the former, adopted by the majority of species, adult frogs at certain times of year assemble at a pond, lake or stream to breed. Many frogs return to the bodies of water in which they developed as larvae. This often results in annual migrations involving thousands of individuals. In explosive breeders, mature adult frogs arrive at breeding sites in response to certain trigger factors such as rainfall occurring in an arid area. In these frogs, mating and spawning take place promptly and the speed of larval growth is rapid in order to make use of the ephemeral pools before they dry up." (Wikipedia)
February 25, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word functional necrophilia strategy
"A species of frog has been found to operate a 'functional necrophilia strategy' whereby males extract eggs from dead females and then fertilise them.
The tiny central Amazonian frog -- the Rhinella proboscidea -- is a species that engages in 'explosive breeding', that is, a frantic competition for mates that takes place when large groups of animals gather for a few days. In this case, that means several hundred males congregate in small streamside ponds or headwaters for two or three days. When this happens, there is a brutal struggle to procreate, where many males become exhausted from fighting other males for receptive females. Meanwhile the females can sometimes get unintentionally crushed to death or drowned." (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/20/frog-necrophilia)
February 25, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word hoard house
"In his later years, Grainger developed an aversion to English words with Latin roots—so the word 'museum' was, in this system, to be replaced with the term 'Hoard House'. He hoped this was what all museums would henceforth be called. I agree. The Guggenheim Hoard House, the Hoard House of Modern Art—let’s be honest about what these places are."
From David Byrne's Journal about Percy Grainger, where there's also a list of "Blue-Eyed English", wich is "the English language purged of all Latinisms", and might deserve a list of its own.
February 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word death sandwich
I wonder what sort of drink you should serve to a death sandwich...
February 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word ꙮ
"Multiocular O (ꙮ) is the most rare and exotic glyph variant of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the phrase «серафими многоꙮчитїи» ('many-eyed seraphim')." (Wikipedia)
February 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list o--6
I like these: Ꙩ (monocular O), Ꙫ (binocular O), Ꙭ (double monocular O), and ꙮ (multiocular O), described by Wikipedia as "exotic glyph variants of Cyrillic letter O".
(I've got an oooooolist, but that's mostly for words starting with oo.)
February 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list wordnik-puzzle--neat-porters
A porn street?
February 8, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list wordnik-puzzle--neat-porters
Paternoster? Or maybe... pater noster?
February 8, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word imp of the perverse
Ooh, that sounds like an interesting (professional? honorary?) title...
February 7, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word love
Somehow that feels like cheating, but it can't really be since you make the rules for your list...
February 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list trending-words
But... does that mean that someone somewhere is looking up all the other words even more often than every few minutes? Someone who really wants to know everything about infertility? A Fonkbot?
February 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bonytongue
"Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the family Osteoglossidae, also known as bonytongues. In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongate body is covered by large, heavy scales, with a mosaic pattern of canals. The dorsal and the anal fins have soft rays and are long based, while the pectoral and ventral fins are small. The name 'bonytongues' is derived from a toothed bone on the floor of the mouth, the 'tongue', equipped with teeth that bite against teeth on the roof of the mouth. The arowana is a facultative air breather and can obtain oxygen from air by sucking it into the swim bladder, which is lined with capillaries like lung tissue." (
February 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word hornyhead turbot
Another potentially indecent fish, Pleuronichthys verticalis (see more at Harry hotlips). Time for a list, i guess...
February 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word broth of a man
Wow... But what could you call a lesser (more watery) man, not (yet) boiled down?
February 4, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Harry hotlips
Maybe it's time for a list of porn fish? It's not as easy as with the birds, but... checking my fish list gives me slippery dick, sucker barb, half-naked hatchetfish, honey-head damsel, cockabully, smooth lumpsucker, orange roughy, naked puffer, velvet belly, lollipop catshark and pink-lipped moray eel...
February 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Harry hotlips
A fish, Plectorhinchus gibbosus. Many of the sweetlips have funny names that sound like (disturbing or sweet) nicknames: sordid rubberlip, dusky rubberlip, rubberlip grunt, harlequin sweetlips...
February 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list model-organisms
Nice list. (I added some yeast to the mix...)
February 2, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word busy beaver
"In computability theory, a busy beaver is a Turing machine that attains the maximum number of steps performed or number of nonblank symbols finally on the tape among all Turing machines in a certain class. The Turing machines in this class must meet certain design specifications and are required to eventually halt after being started with a blank tape.
A busy beaver function quantifies these upper limits on a given measure, and is a noncomputable function. In fact, a busy beaver function can be shown to grow faster asymptotically than does any computable function. The concept was first introduced by Tibor Radó as the 'busy beaver game' in his 1962 paper, 'On Non-Computable Functions'."
(From Wikipedia, and there a lot more on big numbers (the biggest even)
February 1, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list death--4
Thanks, ruzuzu!
n. Greek mythology Ancient Greek God of peaceful or natural death.
n. psychoanalysis the death drive in Freudian psychoanalysis.
Hmm... peaceful or natural death and death drive sound almost like opposites to me.
January 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word fuming ptomaine
Oooh...
January 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list death--4
The title or the words? I guess it's easier to be fond of Swedish detectives if they're a bit exotic and not in your face everywhere all the time... (I might be exaggerating a bit here.)
January 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word beating heart cadaver
"A beating heart cadaver is a human body that though dead in all medical and legal definitions is attached to a medical ventilator and retains cardio-pulmonary functions. This will keep the organs of the dead body, including the heart, functioning and alive for a few days. As a result, the period of time in which the organs may be used for transplantation is extended." (Wikipedia)
January 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word rocksucker
Also a species of clingfish, Chorisochismus dentex.
January 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bois durci
"A hard, highly polishable composition, made of fine sawdust from hard wood (as rosewood) mixed with blood, and pressed." (GNU Webster's 1913, on bois-durci but the hyphenated spelling seems less common)
January 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word lovely poison frog
Phyllobates lugubris. I can't really tell why this is more lovely than other poison dart frogs, but at least the lovely hatchetfish has a companion now. (Not ready to create a list for them just yet...)
January 30, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
As you wish, bilby (although now there's a complete Fonk absence, but I bet it's just a trick). I must say that the trending words list is the thing I understand the least around here. Does anyone know anything about what sort of algorithm it might be using?
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
They seem to be taking over Wordnik (or the internet? or the world?). Now they're six.
edit: But there seems to be some sort of battle going on, since the number never stays the same when I recount. Maybe I should go to bed now...
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sugar-coated spleen
I can't belive that this isn't listed by anyone else. Or that it's not a brand name for candy.
"In pathology, hyaloserositis is the coating of an organ with a fibrous hyaline, resulting from inflammation of the serous membrane (serositis) covering the organ.
The spleen is commonly affected and often referred to as sugar-coated spleen. The liver and heart are also sometimes affected and referred to as frosted liver (or sugar-coated liver) and frosted heart respectively." (Wikipedia)
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word broken heart syndrome
"Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as transient apical ballooning syndrome, apical ballooning cardiomyopathy, stress-induced cardiomyopathy, Gebrochenes-Herz-Syndrome, and stress cardiomyopathy is a type of non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy in which there is a sudden temporary weakening of the myocardium (the muscle of the heart). Because this weakening can be triggered by emotional stress, such as the death of a loved one, a break-up, or constant anxiety, the condition is also known as broken heart syndrome. Stress cardiomyopathy is a well-recognized cause of acute heart failure, lethal ventricular arrhythmias, and ventricular rupture." (Wikipedia)
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
Am I imagining things now? I was sure that there was four(!) fonks in the trending list just now, but when I reloaded the page it went down to a more reasonable one Fonk level...
edit: and now they're back!
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word cooing dove murmur
"The cooing dove murmur is a cardiac murmur with a musical quality (high pitched - hence the name) and is associated with acute mitral valve regurgitation, preceded by a rupture of the chordae tendinea (the fibrous 'strings' that connect the papillary muscle to the cusps of the valves). It is a systolic murmur which is best heard over the left second, third and fourth intercostal spaces." (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooing_dove_murmur#Cooing_dove_murmur">Wikipedia) Part of me wants to list this on the-sound-of-birds, but I guess I won't...
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word cœur en sabot
"Cœur en sabot, (French for 'Boot shaped heart'), is a radiological sign seen most commonly in patients with Tetralogy of Fallot, a cyanotic congenital heart disease." (Wikipedia)
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Lynch motor
"The Lynch motor is a flat (pancake) axial gap permanent magnet brushed DC motor invented by Cedric Lynch." (Wikipedia) That sentence doesn't make much sense to me, but I like the word anyway.
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word muskellunge
I keep seeing this word as if it was in Swedish. Not that it makes sense, but muskelunge (Wikipedia says that's an alternate way of spelling it, but it doesn't matter, I see it in muskellunge as well) would mean muscle-kid, or perhaps muscle-offspring. So now my brain is trying to make images of what that would look like...
January 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
Not just trending, double trending! (I see it twice in the list, is it a bug perhaps, or just really trendy?)
January 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word oh-my-god particle
"The Oh-My-God particle was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (most likely a proton) detected on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3×10^20 eV (50 J)—in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)." (Wikipedia)
January 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word mimesis
Yes, seems to be the same origin as meme (see etyomology section).
January 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sabre squirrelfish
A fish, Sargocentron spiniferum, armed with a sabre squirrel?
January 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word pink slime
"Pink slime (often written with quotation marks as "pink slime") is the common name for a controversial beef product. The name used in the meat industry is lean finely textured beef (LFTB) and boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT). It is also known by the dysphemistic slang term soylent pink. It is a processed beef product that was originally used in pet food and cooking oil. It was later approved for human consumption." (Wikipedia)
January 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word activated sludge
Sounds like food in a dystopian world. Maybe similar to pink slime.
January 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word monkey slug caterpillar
Eew? More like ooh to me! (I like all the ones listed at animal-identity-crisis, but the ones with three different animals are the best... I hope to one day find one made out of four animals.)
January 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sloppiness space
"In graphonomics, sloppiness space is a term introduced by Goldberg and Richardson to describe the shape space of all graph (handwriting) around an idealized allograph. Sloppiness space can be so large that optical character recognition becomes very difficult due to overlap with shapes for non-intended characters." (Wikipedia)
January 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word wordmap
Found in the same context as Godzilla: commedian, notecase, azz, carmaker, houseman, remake, head-mistress, wrestling-match, strongpoint, champan, roller-skate, firepot, safe,trackage, millionairess, exegete, tea-garden, bourse, exobiologist, shogun, concessionaire, homunculi. Interesting...
January 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word swoon hypothesis
"The Swoon Hypothesis refers to a number of theories that aim to explain the resurrection of Jesus, proposing that Jesus did not die on the cross, but merely fell unconscious ('swooned'), and was later revived in the tomb in the same mortal body." (Wikipedia)
January 21, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word chimpanzee fire
A bioluminescent fungus. There's a video of it here.
January 21, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word welcome home husband though never so drunk
One of the names for Sedum acre, a succulent plant.
January 21, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Speaking of Australia... This article is about "earrings made out of koala feces sold by the True Blue Roo Poo Company, an Australian business that specializes in making products out of animal poop." But I can't find their web page, so maybe they are out of business? (But I don't see how that could be possible.)
January 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list 1906-railway-cipher-code
That's what I've been wondering too. And, will you be working these words into your telegraphic communications?
January 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bat eagle ray
A fish, Myliobatis californica. But I prefer to think about as some sort of raygun, shooting eagles, that Batman uses.
January 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word anatiferous
I hope I'll find some good occasion to use this. Soon...
January 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bat-eared fox
How did I miss this one when listing weaponized animals?
January 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Ooh, you listed rectally applied yoghurt as well! That one sort of got stuck in my mind...
I'm glad this list exists, it's not easy to find a place where an article like that will be properly appreciated!
January 16, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word goropism
I didn't know how much I needed this word until I saw it! So, would a person who invents these absurd etymologies be a goropist?
January 15, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word spammer
An unusually efficient spammer too, I had to cut my way through a wall of spam to ger here... And who knows what's buried so deep in spam that it's lost forever? (As far as I see, there is no way of seeing older stuff than what's visible on the first page, is that right?)
January 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Not sure if they make the list, but this article about faecal transplants is full of stuff like RePOOPulate, stool substitute and pseudo-poo... And for some reason I felt that I had to share that with someone.
January 12, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sinapize
That... sounds painful. And what kind of monster will be born after that pregnancy?
January 10, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word paternoster while
Ah, yes, all the different forms could be performed at the annual paternoster festival. Fun for the whole family!
January 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word paternoster while
Record for fastest or slowest? Both could be a challenge...
January 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Scunthorpe problem
"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's dirty-word filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring cunt." (Wikipedia)
January 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word wetting layer
"In experimental physics, a wetting layer is an initial layer of atoms that is epitaxially grown on a surface upon which self-assembled quantum dots or thin films are created." (Wikipedia)
December 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word quantum dot
"A quantum dot is a portion of matter (e.g., semiconductor) whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. Consequently, such materials have electronic properties intermediate between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules." (Wikipedia)
And, apparantly, you can make earthworms procuce them.
December 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user soba4u
Spam in (bad) swedish! That's exotic...
December 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cherpumple pie
But... Shouldn't it be made into a pie instead? That would make it a perfect meta-pie...
December 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word myzotrophy
It looks like I wanted to fit too much into that poor comment. But I like the idea that the internet is big enough to offer everyone extremely specialized entertainment...
December 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word myzotrophy
Ooh, cellular vampirism! (If people run out of ideas to make bad vampire movies from, this could inspire them to make one filmed entirely in microscope...)
From Wikipedia: "A classic example of myzocytosis is the feeding method of the infamous predatory ciliate, Didinium, where it is often depicted devouring a hapless Paramecium. The suctorian ciliates feed exclusively through myzocytosis, sucking out the cytoplasm of prey via superficially drinking straw-like pseudopodia."
(And Suctoria sounds to me like a name cruel children would invent from combining suck and Victoria. Here are some pretty animated gifs of them.)
December 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word brogrammer
Are bromanteaus like this one really pejorative? I would never use them (non-ironically) myself, but some people sure seem to think it's a good thing.
December 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Oh, great! Then I don't have to make it myself...
December 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Yes, where will it all end? But we must be brave, and continue to move on, further and further, towards the limit. (The human limit, that is, I guess it should be fairly simple to make some sort of computer script to do this... hmm... It could easily become an entire book... hmm...)
December 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word worm burden
Ooh, perfect for my parasitic list... (and I can't stop thinking that it's related to the diet of worms...)
December 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Yes, do it! I think it's that kind of idea, that once you say it out loud, you have actually already started it...
December 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Sure, go ahead and add them if you like. I think the best animals are the ones where I can imagine som sort of cyborg monster (like, the knife-footed frog is a frog with actual knives for feet) but other violent animals are also welcome.
December 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word advent calendar
At the risk of being spammy... I've made an advent calendar this year, with little stop motion animations for every day until Christmas. It's almost completely wordless, but if you like toys and decorations being sacreligious and/or silly you can see it here.
I grew up with multiple advent calendars myself. In Sweden there is a calendar that is related to a daily television show that most swedish children probably watch every day...
December 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word dream box
Wow! Reminds me of relaxing chamber, the box where you let your dead insects soften up a bit before you pin them up... (found
November 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word chicken-powered nuclear bomb
"One technical problem was that buried objects—especially during winter—can get very cold, and it was possible the mine would not have worked after some days underground, due to the electronics being too cold to operate properly. Various methods to get around this were studied, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets. One particularly remarkable proposal suggested that live chickens should be included in the mechanism. The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. The body heat given off by the chickens would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep all the relevant components at a working temperature. This proposal was sufficiently outlandish that it was taken as an April Fool's Day joke when the Blue Peacock file was declassified on April 1, 2004. Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, replied to the media that, 'It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes.'" (Wikipedia)
November 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
I couldn't help making another list now, with zoomorphic-weapons...
November 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word peach sword stripe night moth
Is the sword made of peaches, or especially made for cutting peaches? (Or something completely different?)
November 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Honorable mention: flail snail (found when exploring the addictive prefix search of Wikipedia.)
November 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word peach sword stripe night moth
It sounds like a bad translation of some strange anime, but...
"The Raspberry Bud Dagger Moth, Raspberry Bud Moth or Peach Sword Stripe Night Moth (Acronicta increta) is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is distributed throughout the south of Canada and the United States down to Florida and Texas. The status of this species is disputed. Some authors regard Acronicta increta a synonym of Acronicta inclara." (Wikipedia)
November 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Ooh, thanks for the kukri snake, I would never have found that myself since I didn't know what a kukri was.
November 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Glad you all like it! And, of course, feel free to add your combatants.
(The club-foot whiting might be more dangerous than you think...)
November 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word knifetooth sawfish
Wow, knifetooth sawfish (Anoxypristis cuspidata) is so full of sharp things...
November 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cut-throat finch
So, today I stumbled over this cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata) and the jack-knifefish (Equetus lanceolatus), and I get the feeling that there is a list out there, waiting for me...
edit: I made a list of weaponized-animals, but now I feel that the finch doesn't really fit in... hmm...
November 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word chorea
So... en en en en, then?
November 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word caudal luring
"Caudal luring is the use of tail movements employed by a predator to attract prey animals. It is a form of mimicry classified formally as aggressive mimicry, but perhaps better described by the term feeding mimicry. The behavior is employed by a number of snake species and allegedly by two lizards, though other interpretations (e.g., distraction) seem more plausible for the lizards. Caudal luring also occurs in a shark, the tasselled wobbegong, Eucrossorinus dasypogon." (Wikipedia)
Seductive and lethal...
November 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word shocking pink dragon millipede
It sounds like a monster, but seems to be a real animal...
"The Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede (Desmoxytes purpurosea) is a spiny and toxic millipede named for its vivid pink color. First discovered in 2007 in the Hup Pa Tard limestone cavern in Thailand, within the Greater Mekong, the adult millipede is approximately 3 cm long and lives in the open on leaf litter. The millipedes have glands that produce hydrogen cyanide to protect them from predators, a fact advertised by their aposematic color. Because they produce cyanide, they smell like almonds." (Wikipedia)
November 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word common slug eater
"Duberria lutrix, or the common slug eater, is a small, ovoviviparous, molluscivorous, nonvenomous snake, which is endemic to Africa." (Wikipedia)
November 1, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list qi-words
today: no-eyed big-eyed wolf spider.
October 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word forcipule
"Forcipules are a unique feature found only in centipedes and in no other arthropods. The forcipules are modifications of the first pair of legs, forming a pincer-like appendage always found just behind the head. Forcipules are not true mouthparts, although they are used in the capture of prey items, injecting venom and holding onto captured prey. Venom glands run through a tube almost to the tip of each forcipule." (Wikipedia)
October 28, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word golly
"Hack up a golly" sounds disturbing as it is, but after those examples...
October 25, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word diplomatic pouch
I prefer to imagine this as some sort of special anatomical feature of diplomats...
October 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
There, tagged! (I was lazy and copy-pasted the bird names from Wikipedia, so now they're capitalized, even though I prefer them uncapitalized...)
October 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cat-like mew
Is there a way to remove a tag? (This is a description of the sound of a white stork, not a shoebill, I wouldn't want to spread lies like this by accident. (I prefer my lies to be planned.))
October 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
That's a good idea, I'll try to do that. (And a forceful cooing is perfect!)
October 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word plaintive woo-OO-oo-oo-oo call
"Did you mean plaintive woo-oo-oo-oo-oo call or plaintive woo oo oo oo oo call?"
Of course not!
October 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word greatest known penis length relative to body size
"Deep water squid have the greatest known penis length relative to body size of all mobile animals, second in the entire animal kingdom only to certain sessile barnacles." (Wikipedia)
October 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word temporal slices of spacetime worms
Ooh, I like this even better than spacetime surgery!
October 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word spacetime surgery
"Matt Visser has described a way of visualising wormhole geometry:
- take a 'normal' region of space
- 'surgically remove' spherical volumes from two regions ('spacetime surgery')
- associate the two spherical bleeding edges, so that a line attempting to enter one 'missing' spherical volume encounters one bounding surface and then continues outward from the other."
(Wikipedia)
October 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word terms of service
I like the sound of pornologic! (Even though it's unnecessary when you have -graphic. Maybe you can use some sort of pseudoetymology to claim that pornography is just one (extreme) form of calligraphy...)
About vulgar, If they mean "adj. Of or associated with the great masses of people; common." there might problems... (that get worse as Wordnik gets more users...)
October 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word terms of service
I appreciated (and read!) the terms as well. But I'm a bit confused about not being able to
"Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any text, graphics, images, software, music, audio, video, information or other material that: ... (iv) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive".
Surely "vulgar" and "pornographic" lists or words can't be banned? Is there a legal interpretation of these words that I'm not aware of?
October 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list qi-words
Good idea! Just watching two episodes made me feel the need for this kind of list (but so far I have managed to put the words in my existing lists...).
October 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word virgin externa
"Sacculina larvae are dioecious. The male larvae are often smaller than those of the females. The life cycle begins with the female cyprid invading the crabs and then developing into a parasite with an internal root system (interna). Once the interna matures, it will develop a reproductive body outside the crabs through the abdominal part called the virgin externa. Male cyprids will then enter the virgin externa, which give rise to a fertilized externa with the eggs brooding inside it. Larvae will then be released via the externa once the eggs became mature." (Found here.)
October 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word awk
Being left-handed, I find these "synonyms" a bit insulting. (But I guess singular and distinguished are nice...)
October 4, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list thigmo-words
Do you have a list of the favorite prefixes of the years after that? (Or the years before?)
October 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word rapid plant movement
Like a triffid, then? (I love that there is a Wikipedia list of fictional plants...)
October 2, 2012
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