I'm imagining the sitcom now. Equal parts Will & Grace, Cagney & Lacey, and Turner & Hooch, "Crime & Elly" is the story of Elly, a by-the-book manager at a coffee shop, who teams up with "Crime," a corgi who happens to be an undercover detective.
Two days ago, I went to a coffee shop. The guy at the cash register was trying to ring me up, but his computer screen kept giving him trouble. "Criminelly," he said.
I'd only ever heard it as criminently. I assume any variations come from criminy.
As with the Christmas tree, the evergreen tree itself, for Christians, "symbolizes the eternal life Jesus Christ provides". However, the Chrismon tree differs from the traditional Christmas tree in that it "is decorated only with clear lights and Chrismons made from white and gold material", the latter two being the liturgical colours of the Christmas season.
Wow. Bilby has some amazing reviews in the example sentences:
"The Bilby also serves as a cover for a restaurant highchair." -- Ten Tips for All Day Shopping with a Toddler | Thingamababy
"The Bilby slides on and off in seconds, without straps or snaps." -- Ten Tips for All Day Shopping with a Toddler | Thingamababy
"The back of the cover has a huge 2-foot opening for you attach the extra Bilby strap or the cart strap." -- Review: Bilby Shopping Cart Liner | Thingamababy
Do you know, I think gin is what led me to this old wordie site in the first place. See, I'd been at a pesto-making party with a bunch of former English professors, and they were trying to figure out the etymology for cotton gin. The hosts had a compact edition of the OED, but it's so hard to read those entries--even with the magnifying glass--so I was looking it up for them on my phone. It was probably yarb's comments on gin that made me think I wanted to read more here. But I forgot about the site for a while. Eventually I got fascinated by something else--peacock mantis shrimp probably--and someone over on Twitter who followed wordie and wordnik reminded me this place existed. When I came back, I found bilby's animal-identity-crisis list, &c., and the rest, as they say, was history.
"One who brings persons into a place or condition of restraint, in order to subject them to swindling, forced labor, or the like; especially, one who, for a commission, supplies recruits for the army or sailors for ships by nefarious means or false inducements; a decoy; a kidnapper. Such practices have been suppressed in the army and navy, and made highly penal in connection with merchant ships."
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"n. One of a breed of fancy frilled pigeons allied to the owls and turbits, having the body white, the shoulders tricolored, and the tail bluish black with a large white spot on each feather."
Alloxan was used in the production of the purple dye murexide, discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1776. Murexide is the product of the complex in-situ multistep reaction of alloxantin and gaseous ammonia. Murexide results from the condensation of the unisolated intermediate uramil with alloxan, liberated during the course of the reaction.
Scheele sourced uric acid from human calculi (such as kidney stones) and called the compound lithic acid. William Prout investigated the compound in 1818 and he used boa constrictor excrement with up to 90% ammonium acid urate.
In the chapter "Nitrogen" of his memoir The Periodic Table, Primo Levi tells of his futile attempt to make alloxan for a cosmetics manufacturer who has read that it can cause permanent reddening of the lips. Levi considers the droppings of pythons as a source for uric acid for making alloxan, but he is turned down by the director of the Turin zoo because the zoo already has lucrative contracts with pharmaceutical companies, so he is obliged to use chickens as his source of uric acid. The synthesis fails, however, "and the alloxan and its resonant name remained a resonant name."
I might have a lead on a guy who can loan me a pyrophone for the closing number. It's funny how you can just casually mention the name almost Solveig and people go out of their way.
I was at a local coffee shop's self-service station this morning--trying to decide whether to get dark roast, medium roast, or the flavor of the day. I hate having to choose, so I just got a bit of each. The person behind me in line said, "Wait. Is that like a suicide, but with coffee?" I laughed and said, "Yes!"
I don't remember when I first heard "suicide" as the term for combining all the soda pop options from a fountain machine--it's common enough. But it still kinda weirds me out.
Misnegation is an obscure word for a common phenomenon. You won’t find it in dictionaries, but you can probably figure out that it means some kind of ‘incorrect negation’ – not to be confused with double negatives (‘multiple negation’), criticism of which tends to be dubious.
So what exactly are we talking about here?
Misnegation is where we say something with negatives in it that don’t add up the way we intend. We lose track of the logic and reverse it inadvertently. For example, I might say that the likelihood of misnegation cannot be understated, when I mean it cannot be overstated – it is, in fact, easily understated.
n. The morbid state induced by the excessive ingestion of ergot, as from the use of spurred or ergoted rye as food. Spasmodic and gangrenous forms are distinguished.
“Based on the genetic analysis they've done so far, the Dalhousie team has determined that hemimastigotes are unique and different enough from other organisms to form their own "supra-kingdom" — a grouping so big that animals and fungi, which have their own kingdoms, are considered similar enough to be part of the same supra-kingdom.”
“Very early on a weekday, before the sun rose over the town of Aalsmeer, I stepped into Royal FloraHolland, the largest flower auction in the world.
FloraHolland (royal designates a firm that has been in business for more than 100 years) is a single building so large that the numbers describing it make no sense: It covers 1.3 million square meters, 320 acres, the area of 220 football fields. It is one unfathomably large room, but a gantry stretches across it at the level of a second story, for visitors to walk along without getting in the way of business. Suspended in the middle of the gantry is the auction itself, rooms of traders in bleacher seating, wearing headsets and stabbing keyboards, staring at wall-sized screens of flower lots while electronic clocks tick down.“
“Initially, the octopus survey was launched to try to answer a question that staff members got regularly at the Seattle Aquarium: How many giant Pacific octopuses live in the Puget Sound? It turns out it’s not an easy question to answer, since there isn’t a firm population number for giant Pacifics.
These octopuses normally live about three years. They eat a lot of crustaceans, mollusks, squid, fish and sometimes other species of octopus. They are so big that they only really have to watch out for extremely large fish, such as halibut and lingcod, and some marine mammals. But they hatch from an egg the size of a rice grain, so for more than a year after they’re born, they are at the mercy of a wide array of predators.”
When I was a kid, I used to listen to an album where Jean Ritchie sang "Children's Songs & Games from the Southern Mountains." One of the songs was about a bunch of farmyard animals--a horse that "goes neigh-neigh" and a sheep that "goes baa-baa" and a pig that "goes griffy-gruffy."
Maybe grumphie and griffy-gruffy aren't related, but I feel a little more at ease about why that pig wasn't just oinking.
"Counter-mapping refers to efforts to map "against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals". The term was coined by Nancy Peluso in 1995 to describe the commissioning of maps by forest users in Kalimantan, Indonesia, as a means of contesting state maps of forest areas that typically undermined indigenous interests. The resultant counter-hegemonic maps had the ability to strengthen forest users' resource claims."
"The equals sign or equality sign (=) is a mathematical symbol used to indicate equality. It was invented in 1557 by Robert Recorde. In an equation, the equals sign is placed between two (or more) expressions that have the same value."
"Narayana's cows is an integer sequence created by considering a cow, which begins to have one baby a year, beginning in its fourth year, and all its children do the same."
“A hat with three points or horns; a cocked hat having the brim folded upward against the crown on three sides, producing three angles; hence, by popular misapplication, the hat worn by the French gendarmes, which has only two points: usually written as French, tricorne. See cut 13 under hat.”
"An inselberg or monadnock (/məˈnædnɒk/) is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In southern and south-central Africa, a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, an Afrikaans word ("little head") from the Dutch word kopje. If the inselberg is dome-shaped and formed from granite or gneiss, it can also be called a bornhardt, though not all bornhardts are inselbergs."
"Brazil's vast inland cerrado region was regarded as unfit for farming before the 1960s because the soil was too acidic and poor in nutrients, according to Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, an American plant scientist referred to as the father of the Green Revolution. However, from the 1960s, vast quantities of lime (pulverised chalk or limestone) were poured on the soil to reduce acidity. The effort went on and in the late 1990s between 14 million and 16 million tonnes of lime were being spread on Brazilian fields each year. The quantity rose to 25 million tonnes in 2003 and 2004, equalling around five tonnes of lime per hectare. As a result, Brazil has become the world's second biggest soybean exporter and, thanks to the boom in animal feed production, Brazil is now the biggest exporter of beef and poultry in the world."
"Minkowski is perhaps best known for his work in relativity, in which he showed in 1907 that his former student Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905) could be understood geometrically as a theory of four-dimensional space–time, since known as the "Minkowski spacetime"."
"Louis Pasteur could rightly be described as the first stereochemist, having observed in 1842 that salts of tartaric acid collected from wine production vessels could rotate plane polarized light, but that salts from other sources did not. This property, the only physical property in which the two types of tartrate salts differed, is due to optical isomerism."
""We really don't understand what makes the human brain special," said Ed Lein, Ph.D., Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. "Studying the differences at the level of cells and circuits is a good place to start, and now we have new tools to do just that."
In a new study published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Lein and his colleagues reveal one possible answer to that difficult question. The research team, co-led by Lein and Gábor Tamás, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Szeged in Szeged, Hungary, has uncovered a new type of human brain cell that has never been seen in mice and other well-studied laboratory animals.
Tamás and University of Szeged doctoral student Eszter Boldog dubbed these new cells "rosehip neurons" -- to them, the dense bundle each brain cell's axon forms around the cell's center looks just like a rose after it has shed its petals, he said. The newly discovered cells belong to a class of neurons known as inhibitory neurons, which put the brakes on the activity of other neurons in the brain."
"Idiothetic literally means "self-proposition" (Greek derivation), and is used in navigation models (e.g., of a rat in a maze) to describe the use of self-motion cues, rather than allothetic, or external, cues such as landmarks, to determine position and movement."
"The equation of time describes the discrepancy between two kinds of solar time. The word equation is used in the medieval sense of "reconcile a difference". The two times that differ are the apparent solar time, which directly tracks the diurnal motion of the Sun, and mean solar time, which tracks a theoretical mean Sun with noons 24 hours apart."
"|Paul| McCartney's wife Linda said that he had become interested in avant-garde theatre and had immersed himself in the writings of Alfred Jarry. This influence is reflected in the story and tone of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", and also explains how McCartney came across Jarry's word "pataphysical", which occurs in the lyrics."
"Synonyms Accurate, Correct, Exact, Precise, Nice, careful, particular, true, faithful, strict, painstaking, unerring. Of these words correct is the feeblest; it is barely more than not faulty, as tested by some standard or rule. Accurate implies careful and successful endeavor to be correct: as, an accurate accountant, and, by extension of the meaning, accurate accounts; an accurate likeness. Exact is stronger, carrying the accuracy down to minute details: as, an exact likeness. It is more commonly used of things, while precise is used of persons: as, the exact truth; he is very precise in his ways. Precise may represent an excess of nicety, but exact and accurate rarely do so: as, she is prim and precise. As applied more specifically to the processes and results of thought and investigation, exact means absolutely true; accurate, up to a limited standard of truth; precise, as closely true as the utmost care will secure. Thus, the exact ratio of the circumference to the diameter cannot be stated, but the value 3.14159265 is accurate to eight places of decimals, which is sufficiently precise for the most refined measurements. Nice emphasizes the attention paid to minute and delicate points, often in a disparaging sense: as, he is more nice than wise."
"Chicken eyeglasses, also known as chickens specs, chicken goggles, generically as pick guards and under other names, were small eyeglasses made for chickens intended to prevent feather pecking and cannibalism. They differ from blinders as they allowed the bird to see forward whereas blinders do not. One variety used rose-colored lenses as the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens which may increase the tendency for abnormal injurious behavior."
"In the eastern United States, the shafts of mattocks are often fitted with a screw below the head and parallel with it to secure the head from slipping down the shaft, but in the western United States, where tools are more commonly dismantled for transport, this is rarely done. When made to be dismantled, the shaft of a mattock fits into the oval eye of the head, and is fixed by striking the head end of the shaft against a solid surface, such as a tree stump, rock, or firm ground. The head end of the shaft is tapered outwards, and the oval opening of the iron head is similarly tapered so that the head will not fly off when used. The mattock head ought never be raised higher than the user's hands, so that it will not slide down and hit the user's hands."
"In a knitting-machine, mechanism which travels on a bar called the slur-bar, and depresses the jack-sinkers in succession, sinking a loop of thread between every pair of needles."
"Elizabeth Fulhame (fl. 1794) was a Scottish chemist who invented the concept of catalysis and discovered photoreduction. She describes catalysis as a process at length in her 1794 book An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous. The book relates in painstaking detail her experiments with oxidation-reduction reactions, and the conclusions she draws regarding Phlogiston theory, in which she disagrees with both the Phlogistians and Antiphlogistians."
"Culturally Eckstine was a fashion icon. He was famous for his "Mr. B. Collar"- a high roll collar that formed a "B" over a Windsor-knotted tie. The collars were worn by many a hipster in the late 1940s and early 1950s."
"At age 50, Dexter authored A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress, in which he complained about politicians, the clergy, and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but without punctuation and seemingly random capitalization. Dexter initially handed his book out for free, but it became popular and was reprinted eight times. In the second edition, Dexter added an extra page which consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks with the instructions that readers could distribute them as they pleased."
"n. A white clay pipe with the initials T. D. on the bowl. Said to be due to a legacy left by the eccentric “Lord” Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, Mass., in order to perpetuate his name. By extension, T. D. means clay pipe. Dialect Notes, III. iii."
"Catalyst poisoning refers to the partial or total deactivation of a catalyst. Poisoning is caused by chemical compounds. Although usually undesirable, poisoning may be helpful when it results in improved selectivity. For example, Lindlar's catalyst is poisoned so that it selectively catalyzes the reduction of alkynes. On the other hand Lead from leaded gasoline deactivates catalytic converters."
"In natural history, unstable; unfixed; hence, uncertain; unreliable: applied to characters which are not fixed or uniformly present, and therefore are valueless for scientific classification.
In entomology, tending to become obsolete in one part; fading out: as, antennal scrobes evanescent posteriorly."
"The black swallow-wort was recently spotted in the Grand Traverse County community of Kingsley, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported. The vine has heart-shaped leaves and small, dark purple flowers. The plant, which typically grows along roadsides, pastures and gardens, can choke out native vegetation and poison insects and wildlife."
"A pronic number is a number which is the product of two consecutive integers, that is, a number of the form n(n + 1). The study of these numbers dates back to Aristotle. They are also called oblong numbers, heteromecic numbers, or rectangular numbers; however, the "rectangular number" name has also been applied to the composite numbers."
I have a few of these over on my antonomasia list, but this one is better. In fact, I'd be willing to say that rolig is a regular rolig with these (to coin a phrase).
"Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, most commonly in association with the superhero Batman.
"Pennyworth is depicted as Bruce Wayne's loyal and tireless butler, housekeeper, legal guardian, best friend, aide-de-camp, and surrogate father figure following the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. As a classically trained British actor and an ex-Special Operations Executive operative of honor and ethics with connections within the intelligence community, he has been called "Batman's batman"."
"In American English, the original word for this seems to have been mantissa (Burks et al.), and this usage remains common in computing and among computer scientists. However, the term significand was introduced by George Forsythe and Cleve Moler in 1967, and the use of mantissa for this purpose is discouraged by the IEEE floating-point standard committee and by some professionals such as William Kahan and Donald Knuth, because it conflicts with the pre-existing use of mantissa for the fractional part of a logarithm (see also common logarithm). For instance, Knuth adopts the third representation 0.12345 × 10+3 in the example above and calls 0.12345 the fraction part of the number; he adds: "it is an abuse of terminology to call the fraction part a mantissa, since this concept has quite a different meaning in connection with logarithms".
The confusion is because scientific notation and floating-point representation are log-linear, not logarithmic. To multiply two numbers, given their logarithms, one just adds the characteristic (integer part) and the mantissa (fractional part). By contrast, to multiply two floating-point numbers, one adds the exponent (which is logarithmic) and multiplies the significand (which is linear)."
The significand (also mantissa or coefficient, sometimes also argument or fraction) is part of a number in scientific notation or a floating-point number, consisting of its significant digits. Depending on the interpretation of the exponent, the significand may represent an integer or a fraction. The word mantissa seems to have been introduced by Arthur Burks in 1946 writing for the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, although this use of the word is discouraged by the IEEE floating-point standard committee as well as some professionals such as the creator of the standard, William Kahan."
"An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In mathematical notation, an overline has been used for a long time as a vinculum, a way of showing that certain symbols belong together. The original use in Ancient Greek was to indicate compositions of Greek letters as Greek numerals. In Latin it indicates Roman numerals multiplied by a thousand and it forms medieval abbreviations (sigla)."
I just noticed this definition from the Century: "In book-binding, to paste the end-papers and fly-leaves at the beginning and end of (a volume), before fitting it in its covers."
"In 1786, the German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg described the advantages of basing a paper size on an aspect ratio of √2 in a letter to Johann Beckmann. The formats that became ISO paper sizes A2, A3, B3, B4, and B5 were developed in France. They were listed in a 1798 law on taxation of publications that was based in part on page sizes.
The main advantage of this system is its scaling. Rectangular paper with an aspect ratio of √2 has the unique property that, when cut or folded in half midway between its shorter sides, each half has the same √2 aspect ratio and half the area of the whole sheet before it was divided. Equivalently, if one lays two same-sized sheets paper with an aspect ratio of √2 side-by-side along their longer side, they form a larger rectangle with the aspect ratio of √2 and double the area of each individual sheet."
“As numbers go, the familiar real numbers — those found on the number line, like 1, π and -83.777 — just get things started. Real numbers can be paired up in a particular way to form “complex numbers,” first studied in 16th-century Italy, that behave like coordinates on a 2-D plane. Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing is like translating and rotating positions around the plane. Complex numbers, suitably paired, form 4-D “quaternions,” discovered in 1843 by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who on the spot ecstatically chiseled the formula into Dublin’s Broome Bridge. John Graves, a lawyer friend of Hamilton’s, subsequently showed that pairs of quaternions make octonions: numbers that define coordinates in an abstract 8-D space.”
When I talk with folks who've studied mathematics, they like to tell me how helpful induction is--but I've been confused, because it sounds much more like they're using deduction. Instead I've learned that they're actually talking about mathematical induction.
I'll just leave this here for the next time I need to remember which is which:
"For the history of the name "mathematical induction", see
•Florian Cajori, Origin of the Name "Mathematical Induction" (1918):
The process of reasoning called "mathematical induction" has had several independent origins. It has been traced back to the Swiss Jakob (James) Bernoulli |Opera, Tomus I, Genevae, MDCCXLIV, p. 282, reprinted from Acta eruditorum, Lips., 1686, p. 360. See also Jakob Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713, p. 95|, the Frenchmen B.Pascal |OEuvres completes de Blaise Pascal, Vol. 3, Paris, 1866, p. 248| and P.Fermat |Charles S Peirce in the Century Dictionary, Art."Induction," and in the Monist, Vol. 2, 1892, pp. 539, 545; Peirce called mathematical induction the "Fermatian inference"|, and the Italian F.Maurolycus |G.Vacca, Bulletin Am. Math. Soc., Vol. 16, 1909, pp. 70-73|."
"As 17 is a Fermat prime, the regular heptadecagon is a constructible polygon (that is, one that can be constructed using a compass and unmarked straightedge): this was shown by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1796 at the age of 19."
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"A supposed collection of particles of very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or a planet. Descartes attempted to account for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it, by a theory of vortices."
And from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"In the Cartesian philosophy, a collection of material particles, forming a fluid or ether, endowed with a rapid rotatory motion about an axis, and filling all space, by which Descartes accounted for the motions of the universe. This theory attracted much attention at one time, but is now entirely discredited."
"According to Bergman and Hausknecht (1996): "There is no generally accepted word for a set with a not necessarily associative binary operation. The word groupoid is used by many universal algebraists, but workers in category theory and related areas object strongly to this usage because they use the same word to mean 'category in which all morphisms are invertible'. The term magma was used by Serre |Lie Algebras and Lie Groups, 1965|." It also appears in Bourbaki's Éléments de mathématique, Algèbre, chapitres 1 à 3, 1970."
"Heliox generates less airway resistance than air and thereby requires less mechanical energy to ventilate the lungs. "Work of Breathing" (WOB) is reduced. It does this by two mechanisms:
"In botany, a name applied by Richard to a second small cotyledon which is found in wheat and some other grasses.
In embryology, the outer or external blastodermic membrane or layer of cells, forming the ectoderm or epiderm: distinguished at first from hypoblast, then from both hypoblast and mesoblast. See cut under blastocæle."
"While reading Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac's edition of Diophantus' Arithmetica, Pierre de Fermat concluded that a certain equation considered by Diophantus had no solutions, and noted in the margin without elaboration that he had found "a truly marvelous proof of this proposition," now referred to as Fermat's Last Theorem. This led to tremendous advances in number theory, and the study of Diophantine equations ("Diophantine geometry") and of Diophantine approximations remain important areas of mathematical research."
"Euler's work touched upon so many fields that he is often the earliest written reference on a given matter. In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler."
"A significant note, character, sign, token, or indication; a determinative attestation. In logic, to say that a thing has a certain mark is to say that something in particular is true of it. Thus, according to a certain school of metaphysicians, “incognizability is a mark of the Infinite.”"
But, to my shame and horror, I just realized that bilby must have already added foredeck to this list ages ago. I'll still keep searching for fore words, though.
"An iron bar bent at right angles at one end, used in the operation of puddling for stirring the melted iron, so as to allow it to be more fully exposed to the action of the air and the lining of the furnace."
"The first vending machine was also one of his constructions; when a coin was introduced via a slot on the top of the machine, a set amount of holy water was dispensed. This was included in his list of inventions in his book Mechanics and Optics. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve."
"In a poem by Ausonius in the 4th century AD, he mentions a stone-cutting saw powered by water. Hero of Alexandria is credited with many such wind and steam powered machines in the 1st century AD, including the Aeolipile and the vending machine, often these machines were associated with worship, such as animated altars and automated temple doors."
"Coordination complexes have been known since the beginning of modern chemistry. Early well-known coordination complexes include dyes such as Prussian blue. Their properties were first well understood in the late 1800s, following the 1869 work of Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand."
"In chemistry, a coordination complex consists of a central atom or ion, which is usually metallic and is called the coordination centre, and a surrounding array of bound molecules or ions, that are in turn known as ligands or complexing agents."
"Tartaric acid may be most immediately recognizable to wine drinkers as the source of "wine diamonds", the small potassium bitartrate crystals that sometimes form spontaneously on the cork or bottom of the bottle. These "tartrates" are harmless, despite sometimes being mistaken for broken glass, and are prevented in many wines through cold stabilization (which is not always preferred since it can change the wine's profile). The tartrates remaining on the inside of aging barrels were at one time a major industrial source of potassium bitartrate."
"A limit situation (German: Grenzsituation) is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have differing experiences from those arising from ordinary situations.
The concept was developed by Karl Jaspers, who considered fright, guilt, finality and suffering as some of the key limit situations arising in everyday life."
I have a friend who's reading Plutarch and told me she's been thinking about virtue. We were talking about indulgences and Martin Luther. Then I was reading a Wikipedia article about criticism, which led to critical thinking, then sapere aude, then limit-experience, then limit situation, then antinomianism, and I was right back to faith and good works.
"Fincke was born in Flensburg, Schleswig and died in Copenhagen. His lasting achievement is found in his book Geometria rotundi (1583), in which he introduced the modern names of the trigonometric functions tangent and secant."
"A bone in the human body which the Rabbinical writers affirmed to be indestructible, and which is variously said to have been one of the lumbar vertebræ, the sacrum, the coccyx, a sesamoid bone of the great toe, or one of the triquetrous or Wormian bones of the cranium."
““Trojan-horsing” is a term beloved among show creators, who believe that network executives want a dab of originality, but mostly for marketing purposes. When Jenji Kohan explained to NPR why she’d created the prison show “Orange Is the New Black” around the character of Piper, an attractive, upper-middle-class white woman, she said, “Piper was my Trojan horse. You’re not going to go into a network and sell a show on really fascinating tales of black women and Latina women and old women and criminals.””
"In machinery, a gearwheel of which the teeth are so formed that they are acted on and the wheel is made to revolve by a worm or shaft on which a spiral is turned—that is, by an endless screw. See cuts under Hindley's screw (at screw), steam-engine, and odometer."
"In grammar, pertaining to or expressing an attribute; used (as a word) in direct description without predication: as, a bad pen, a burning house, a ruined man."
"An Italian oil-measure, equal in Lucca and Modena to 26⅜ United States (old wine) gallons: but in the Lombardo-Venetian system of 1803 tho coppo or cappo was precisely a deciliter."
I just read Peggy Guggenheim's Confessions of an Art Addict, which reminded me of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, so forgive me if I get stuck in that vein (as it were).
"The issues — which would ultimately claim ten lives — turned out to be the result of a rare phenomenon known as “thunderstorm asthma.” Though still not fully understood, the weather event is thought to occur due to the spread of pollen and mold that gets swept into the high humidity of the clouds, broken into smaller particles, and rained back down. For a person with asthma — whose airways are chronically inflamed — the spread of these particles can set off an attack."
Man. That GNU Webster's definition is something I'd have expected from the Century: "The anguish, like gnawing pain, excited by a sense of guilt; compunction of conscience for a crime committed, or for the sins of one's past life."
“Richard Bernstein is the medical director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and delivers his expertise to me in the patient-if-slightly brusque tone to which I am accustomed in every doctor I speak to. On a hunch I asked him if “beauty parlor stroke syndrome” is a real medical term, and he said no — getting one’s hair washed is merely one possibility in a range of options that cause the actual medical condition properly known as “vertebral artery dissection from hyperextension of the neck,” a considerably less grabby, though ultimately scarier name. What seems to happen is that certain movements of or pressures on the neck can result in a flap-like tear in the vertebral artery, which supplies blood to the brain. From there blood enters (and thereby thickens) the arterial wall, which can cause a blood clot, impeding blood flow and potentially causing a stroke.”
"All around |Walter| Cannon, theorists were thrilling to the idea of self-righting systems, resistant to the buffeting forces of change. The English botanist Arthur Tansley coined the word “ecosystem” in 1935; the maintenance of stability would soon be described as one of the cardinal properties of ecologies. Soon economists were relating homeostasis to self-correcting markets; Norbert Wiener, the mathematician, saw that machines and creatures might be governed by autonomous control systems stabilized by “feedback” loops. Cells, cities, societies, even political institutions—all had the capacity to steady their states through the actions of self-regulated and counterpoised forces."
"In the late nineteen-twenties, the physiologist Walter Cannon coined the term “homeostasis”—joining together the Greek homoios (similar) and stasis (stillness). The capacity to sustain internal constancy was an essential feature of an organism, he argued."
"Of course, you might dismiss my suspicions as no more than the vivid imagination of a writer, and that’s certainly possible, because an occupational hazard of reading and writing about crime is spotting possible criminal enterprise everywhere and in everyone. To be a writer is to be curious, or to use Pittsburgh parlance, a nebnose."
"|Robert| Proctor had found that the cigarette industry did not want consumers to know the harms of its product, and it spent billions obscuring the facts of the health effects of smoking. This search led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology.
It comes from agnosis, the neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or ‘not knowing’, and ontology, the branch of metaphysics which deals with the nature of being. Agnotology is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour."
"Rod Bray of developers Northbridge Properties told Newshub that the culprits were probably trying to cut their own demolition costs by fly-tipping the house.
"The options are either pay to have it demolished, or you dump it somewhere else and make it someone else's problem," he said, pointing out that it would cost his company over NZ$20,000 ($13,800; £10,300) to remove it."
"Earthquake Baroque is a style of Baroque architecture found in the Philippines, which suffered destructive earthquakes during the 17th century and 18th century, where large public buildings, such as churches, were rebuilt in a Baroque style. Similar events led to the Pombaline architecture in Lisbon following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and Sicilian Baroque in Sicily following the 1693 earthquake."
"The exhibition’s title suggests an agon — Overlook: Teresita Fernández Confronts Frederic Church at Olana. Fernández admits that’s the intention in a promotional video where she addresses the viewer, relating that she “wanted to create a somewhat confrontational and immersive experience” that would reinsert the “cultural component that’s always erased.”"
"Beginning in the mid-1960s, investigators recognized that many HSPs function as molecular chaperones and thus play a critical role in protein folding, intracellular trafficking of proteins, and coping with proteins denatured by heat and other stresses."
The usage examples for this suggest something quite different: "The so-called phene, or lammergeier, is fond of its young, provides its food with ease, fetches food to its nest, and is of a kindly disposition. (The History of Animals)"
"The physician reading this mysterious letter was no ordinary doctor. He was the Honorable Gustav Scholer, head Coroner for the city of New York, and one of the era’s leading alienists—an arcane term for specialists who studied the mental pathology of those deemed “alienated” from society."
-- "Peek Inside the Grisly, Salacious Case Files of NYC’s Head Coroner in the Early 1900s"
"Of course, if a piano and a violin play the same high C at the exact same volume, there is still some quality that feels different between the two notes. It turns out that pure tones do not occur naturally, and when a piano or violin produces a high C, the sound wave is made up of a specific combination of different pure tones. The different amplitudes and frequencies have nice relationships with one another, which is why you hear a specific note rather than a mess of clashing noises, but the single pitch you hear does not correspond to a single frequency. The hard-to-define quality of sound that allows you to identify what instrument you’re listening to is determined by the exact combination of pure tones. When different instruments all play at the same time, the various pure tones add together to create the music you hear.
"So what do pure tones have to do with the groove on a record being able to tell David Bowie and Nina Simone apart? It turns out that any curve can be written in exactly one way as a combination of curves with uniform amplitude and frequency. In other words, the single squiggle captured in the groove of a record player can be written as a combination of pure tones. And there is only one combination that will produce any particular squiggle. The tool that makes this possible comes from mathematics and is called the Fourier transform. Combined with the fact that the sound we experience is determined by the exact combination of pure tones, this bit of mathematics explains how the vinyl record groove can completely determine the music you hear."
Heck yeah, it's interesting. I've been trying to figure out how to collect and grind my own pigments (mostly for paper marbling on alum-mordanted paper, but it's fun no matter what).
"Proteins were recognized as a distinct class of biological molecules in the eighteenth century by Antoine Fourcroy and others, distinguished by the molecules' ability to coagulate or flocculate under treatments with heat or acid. Noted examples at the time included albumin from egg whites, blood serum albumin, fibrin, and wheat gluten.
"Proteins were first described by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Johannes Mulder and named by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1838. Mulder carried out elemental analysis of common proteins and found that nearly all proteins had the same empirical formula, C400H620N100O120P1S1. He came to the erroneous conclusion that they might be composed of a single type of (very large) molecule. The term "protein" to describe these molecules was proposed by Mulder's associate Berzelius; protein is derived from the Greek word πρώτειος (proteios), meaning "primary", "in the lead", or "standing in front", + -in."
"Linnaeus' remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens, following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen he is known to have examined when writing the species description was himself."
"The concept of avian milk (Ancient Greek: ὀρνίθων γάλα, ornithon gala) stretches back to ancient Greece. Aristophanes uses "the milk of the birds" in the plays The Birds and The Wasps as a proverbial rarity. The expression is also found in Strabo's Geographica where the island of Samos is described as a blest country to which those who praise it do not hesitate to apply the proverb that "it produces even bird's milk" (φέρει καί ὀρνίθων γάλα). A similar expression lac gallinaceum (Latin for "chicken's milk") was also later used by Petronius (38.1) and Pliny the Elder (Plin. Nat. pr. 24) as a term for a great rarity. The idiom became later common in many languages and appeared in Slavic folk tales. In one such tale the beautiful princess tests the ardor and resourcefulness of her suitor by sending him out into the wilderness to find and bring back the one fantastical luxury she does not have: bird's milk. In the fairy tale Little Hare by Aleksey Remizov (who wrote many imitations of traditional Slavic folk tales) the magic bird Gagana produces milk."
"A genus of parmeliaceous lichens having a fruticulose or pendulous thallus, and apothecia with a concave disk of a color different from that of the thallus. Evernia Prunastri is used for dyeing, and was formerly used, ground down with starch, for hair-powder."
I like this part from the Century: "In printing, one of a number of pieces of wood or metal, channeled in the center with a groove or gutter, used to separate the pages of type in a form. Also gutter-stick."
"Sea silk sounds like the stuff of legend. Harvested from rare clams, this thread flashes gold in the sunlight, weighs almost nothing, and comes with a heavy load of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misinformation. But the fiber itself is no myth. Its flaxen strands come from Pinna nobilis, or the pen shell, a giant Mediterranean mollusk that measures up to a yard in length. To attach themselves to rocks or the seafloor, some clams secrete proteins that, upon contact with seawater, harden into a silky filament called byssus. The byssus of the pen shell makes sea silk, the world’s rarest thread."
"As human settlements expand across the earth’s surface, conflicts with wildlife are increasing. According to a review in the journal Animal Conservation, this represents “one of the most widespread and intractable issues facing |conservationists| today.” Researchers have been paying closer attention to these clashes: The number of scientific articles published annually about human-wildlife conflict (ranging from grain theft by rodents to farmers being trampled by elephants) increased from zero to more than 700 between 1995 and 2015, as indexed by Google Scholar. There have even been calls to coin an entire new discipline for studying the issue: anthrotherology, combining the Greek words for human (anthropos) and wild animal (ther). To understand the anthrotherologist’s dilemma, look to other countries’ parallels, like Japan’s wild hog problem or, closer to home, many national parks’ issues with bears."
So I was just doing a bit of Wiki-ing and found this: "In addition, polyploidy occurs in some tissues of animals that are otherwise diploid, such as human muscle tissues. This is known as endopolyploidy."
"In the 1950s, Philip Anderson, a physicist at Bell Laboratories, discovered a strange phenomenon. In some situations where it seems as though waves should advance freely, they just stop — like a tsunami halting in the middle of the ocean.
Anderson won the 1977 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of what is now called Anderson localization, a term that refers to waves that stay in some “local” region rather than propagating the way you’d expect. He studied the phenomenon in the context of electrons moving through impure materials (electrons behave as both particles and waves), but under certain circumstances it can happen with other types of waves as well."
"The researchers focused on a small amphipathic compound known as guaiacol. This molecule is linked with the smoky taste that develops when malted barley is smoked on peat fires, and is far more common in Scottish whiskies than in American or Irish ones, the researchers said."
"The biggest limitation to this research may be the definition of swaddling itself. The authors of the study acknowledge one of the “several” limitations to their meta-analysis is the fact that none of the studies they reviewed clearly outlined what constitutes a swaddle. And besides that, as anyone who has tried to swaddle a baby can confirm, good swaddling takes practice. Many parents, for fear of too tightly wrapping their babies, end up swaddling too loosely, which is itself a suffocation hazard. (Some daycare centers in the United States don’t allow swaddling for this reason.)"
"The term "sousveillance", coined by Steve Mann, stems from the contrasting French words sur, meaning "above", and sous, meaning "below", i.e. "surveillance" denotes the "eye-in-the-sky" watching from above, whereas "sousveillance" denotes bringing the camera or other means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings), or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching)."
"In music of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, a bicinium (pl. bicinia) was a composition for only two parts, especially one for the purpose of teaching counterpoint or singing."
"Nutation and counternutation refer to movement of the sacrum defined by the rotation of the promontory downwards and anteriorly, as with lumbar extension (nutation); or upwards and posteriorly, as with lumbar flexion (counternutation)."
"Few neuroscientists still believe in an immaterial soul. Yet many follow Descartes in claiming that conscious experience involves awareness of a ‘thinking thing’: the self. There is an emerging consensus that such self-awareness is actually a form of bodily awareness, produced (at least in part) by interoception, our ability to monitor and detect autonomic and visceral processes. For example, the feeling of an elevated heart rate can provide information to the embodied organism that it is in a dangerous or difficult situation."
"As the name suggests, the original function of a millwright was the construction of flour mills, sawmills, paper mills and fulling mills powered by water or wind, mostly of wood with a limited number of metal parts. Since both of these structures originated from antiquity, millwrighting could be considered, arguably, as one of the oldest engineering trades and the forerunner of the modern mechanical engineer.
In modern usage, a millwright is engaged with the erection of machinery. This includes such tasks as leveling, aligning and installing machinery on foundations or base plates and setting, leveling and aligning electric motors or other power sources such as turbines with the equipment, which millwrights typically connect with some type of coupling."
"A bit of calm doesn’t sound so bad, but the sedative dose of bromide is too near bromide’s toxicity level. Plus, bromide can accumulate in our bodies. Back in the 1930s-1950s, overuse of bromide products led to appropriately named medical conditions. Bromide-induced coma was dubbed ‘the bromide sleep’. General bromide toxicity was ‘bromism’. Outside medicine, if you were just a bit of a bore you were insultingly called a ‘bromide’."
"Brominated vegetable oil, called BVO for short, is made by adding bromine across the double bonds of certain fatty acids in vegetable oil, usually soybean oil. Like plain vegetable oil, BVO does a good job of dissolving water-insoluble food flavour, fragrance and colouring agents, serving as a carrier for these agents in soft drinks, which are mostly water. Neither plain vegetable oil or BVO is water soluble, but we can make oil/water emulsions, dispersing tiny droplets of flavour-carrying oil throughout a soda solution.
"But why use BVO when plain ol’ vegetable oil could work? Density. Over time, gravity does its job and the emulsion breaks down, causing the oil and water to separate. If a plain vegetable oil is used, the oil fraction – which contains those all-important flavouring agents – would float to the top. Food scientists call this ‘creaming’."
"On the occasion of receiving his degree in 1536, Ramus allegedly took as his thesis Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse, which Walter J. Ong paraphrases as follows: 'All the things that Aristotle has said are inconsistent because they are poorly systematized and can be called to mind only by the use of arbitrary mnemonic devices.'"
"One of the most significant changes between the original and the second version of the Art was in the visuals used. The early version used 16 figures presented as complex, complementary trees, while the system of the Ars Magna featured only four, including one which combined the other three. This figure, a "Lullian Circle," took the form of a paper machine operated by rotating concentrically arranged circles to combine his symbolic alphabet, which was repeated on each level. These combinations were said to show all possible truth about the subject of inquiry."
"Leibniz’s broader vision of the power of logical calculation was inspired by many thinkers — from the logical works of Aristotle and Ramus to Thomas Hobbes’s proposal to equate reasoning with computation. But Leibniz’s curiosity around the art of combinations per se was sparked by a group called the “Herborn Encyclopaedists” through whom he became acquainted with the works of Ramon Llull, a Majorcan philosopher, logician, and mystical thinker who is thought to have died seven centuries ago this year. Llull’s Ars magna (or “ultimate general art”) from 1308 outlines a form of analysis and argumentation based on working with different permutations of a small number of fundamental attributes."
Wikipedia says "the term elephant test refers to situations in which an idea or thing, 'is hard to describe, but instantly recognizable when spotted'."
"And sometimes your gut distress isn’t caused by a germ at all. It could be an overdose of fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols, known in public health circles as Fodmaps. These are essentially carbohydrates that, eaten in excess, are not well absorbed in the small intestine and then make their way into your colon to cause all kinds of trouble. They include myriad things we’re encouraged to eat including broccoli, brussels sprouts, radicchio, asparagus, avocados, mushrooms, peaches, whole grains and legumes."
"Each pyrosome is made up of individual zooids – small, multicellular organisms – linked together in a tunic to form a tube-like colony that is closed on one end. They are filter feeders and use cilia to draw plankton into their mucous filter."
""|Hélène| Grimaud doesn't sound like most pianists: she is a rubato artist, a reinventor of phrasings, a taker of chances. "A wrong note that is played out of élan, you hear it differently than one that is played out of fear," she says.""
"The pigment replaced the expensive lapis lazuli and was an important topic in the letters exchanged between Johann Leonhard Frisch and the president of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, between 1708 and 1716."
"Marked with fine lines, as if scratched with a pen or painted with a fine brush; specifically, marked with a series of concentric lines, as every feather of the body-plumage of a dark brahma or a partridge cochin hen."
"To an extent, we are accident-prone because we are imaginative. We are determined to use familiar tools in novel ways—we might use a knife handle, say, to break up ice in the freezer, or a screwdriver to pry open a stuck drawer. The problem is that we imagine how things will go right but not how they will go wrong. In psychological terms, we perceive “affordances for action” (the blade of the screwdriver prying off the lid), but not “affordances for harm” (the blade breaking off, flying upward, and stabbing us in the eye). Casner worries that our optimism about our own plans might be an insurmountable part of our evolutionary heritage. Recalling the time he fell off a chair while trying to replace the batteries in his smoke detector—he should have used a ladder—Casner reflects that, in our primate past, it was the climbers who ate."
And if that grumpy hen has a raccoon keeping track of her finances from another quiet corner, that would be the Book Book chook cook's raccoon nook bookkeeper.
"Your car is equipped not with a thermometer but with a thermistor. Thermistors work in a similar manner to thermometers, but rather than using a liquid like mercury, thermistors measure the change in electrical current as a result of heat added or taken away. Thermistors are quite convenient, since they are small, cheap to make and for the most part, accurate."
"n. A stringy, mucilaginous substance which forms in vinegar during the acetous fermentation, and the presence of which sets up and hastens this kind of fermentation. It is produced by a plant, Mycoderma aceti, the germs of which, like those of the yeast-plant, exist in the atmosphere."
"Mention of this substance is made in (Proverbs 25: 20) -- "and as vinegar upon nitre" -- and in (Jeremiah 2: 26) The article denoted is not that which we now understand by the term nitre i.e. nitrate of Potassa -- "saltpetre" -- but the nitrum of the Latins and the natron or native carbonate of soda of modern chemistry."
"Four thieves vinegar (also called Marseilles vinegar, Marseilles remedy, prophylactic vinegar, vinegar of the four thieves, camphorated acetic acid, vinaigre des quatre voleurs and acetum quator furum) is a concoction of vinegar (either from red wine, white wine, cider, or distilled white) infused with herbs, spices or garlic that was believed to protect users from the plague. The recipe for this vinegar has almost as many variations as its legend."
"Justin believes that he experienced what’s called a side flash or side splash, in which the lightning ‘splashes’ from something that has been struck – such as a tree or telephone pole – hopscotching to a nearby object or person. Considered the second most common lightning hazard, side splashes inflict 20 to 30 per cent of injuries and fatalities."
I remember many happy childhood hours spent in my small town playing games such as "How Far Does This Crack In The Dirt Go?" or "Can We Knock Down That Icicle With A Snowball?"
"Pittacal was the first synthetic dyestuff to be produced commercially. It was accidentally discovered by German chemist Carl Ludwig Reichenbach in 1832, who was also the discoverer of kerosene, phenol, eupion, paraffin wax and creosote.
As the history goes, Reichenbach applied creosote to the wooden posts of his home, in order to drive away dogs who urinated on them. The strategy was ineffectual, however, and he noted that the dog's urine reacted with creosote to form an intense dark blue deposit. He named the new substance píttacal (from Greek words tar and beautiful). He later was able to produce pure pittacal by treating beechwood tar with barium oxide and using alumina as a mordant to the dye's fabrics. Although sold commercially as a dyestuff, it did not fare well."
"In the 18th century airwood came to be used by marqueteurs; for most artificial colours they used holly, which takes vegetable dyes very well, but airwood was employed either in its natural off-white state or stained with iron sulphate to produce a range of silver and silver-grey hues. The reason that airwood was preferred to holly for this colour was that it gave a metallic sheen or lustre, while holly dyed by the same process turned a rather dead grey. The use of airwood in this way meant that by the 19th century it was associated specifically with that colour, and at the same time name gradually changed from airwood to harewood."
Someone just listed cattle egret on a different list. I clicked on it, made sure it was listed on my cattle list, then showed up over here--only to see my comment from 2012.
I have access to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, which lists usage examples going back to at least the 1600's. Here are some of the definitions:
1. "Med. The excretion, expulsion, or removal of something from the body. Obs."
3.a. "The action of bringing out or developing something from a state of latent, rudimentary, or potential existence; an instance or result of this."
3.b. "Chem. The action of isolating a substance from a compound or mixture in which it is present; extraction. Now rare."
4. "The inferring of a principle, conclusion, etc., from premises or available data. Also: a result of this, an inference; cf. eductn. 3." (Which has "That which is inferred or elicited from something; a product or result of inference or development.")
5. "Mech a. The passage of steam, water, or vapour out of a vessel through a pipe or tube provided for the purpose; spec. (in a steam engine) the exit of steam from the cylinder after it has done its work in propelling the piston; cf. exhaustn. 1a(a) and the note there. Usu. attrib. (see Compounds). Now chiefly hist."
6. "The bringing about or occasioning of an act, event, emotion, etc. Cf. educev. 4."
"Iodine is used in chemistry as an indicator for starch. When starch is mixed with iodine in solution, an intensely dark blue colour develops, representing a starch/iodine complex. Starch is a substance common to most plant cells and so a weak iodine solution will stain starch present in the cells. Iodine is one component in the staining technique known as Gram staining, used in microbiology. Lugol's solution or Lugol's iodine (IKI) is a brown solution that turns black in the presence of starches and can be used as a cell stain, making the cell nuclei more visible. Iodine is also used as a mordant in Gram's staining, it enhances dye to enter through the pore present in the cell wall/membrane."
"Van Gogh was a fan of the vivid scarlet ‘geranium lake’ pigment derived from the synthetic dye, eosin. Even at the time it was known to fade. He compensated by using it more intensely, but was ultimately unable to hold back the photochemical tide."
"The mouth of most sea urchins is made up of five calcium carbonate teeth or jaws, with a fleshy, tongue-like structure within. The entire chewing organ is known as Aristotle's lantern . . . , from Aristotle's description in his History of Animals:
...the urchin has what we mainly call its head and mouth down below, and a place for the issue of the residuum up above. The urchin has, also, five hollow teeth inside, and in the middle of these teeth a fleshy substance serving the office of a tongue. Next to this comes the esophagus, and then the stomach, divided into five parts, and filled with excretion, all the five parts uniting at the anal vent, where the shell is perforated for an outlet... In reality the mouth-apparatus of the urchin is continuous from one end to the other, but to outward appearance it is not so, but looks like a horn lantern with the panes of horn left out. (Tr. D'Arcy Thompson)
However, this has recently been proven to be a mistranslation. Aristotle's lantern is actually referring to the whole shape of sea urchins, which look like the ancient lamps of Aristotle's time."
"Structural coloration is the production of colour by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light, sometimes in combination with pigments. For example, peacock tail feathers are pigmented brown, but their microscopic structure makes them also reflect blue, turquoise, and green light, and they are often iridescent."
"Pollia condensata, colloquially called the marble berry, is a perennial herbaceous plant with stoloniferous stems and shiny, metallic blue, hard, dry, round fruit. It is found in forested regions of Africa. The glossy blue of the berry-like fruit, created by structural coloration, is the most intense of any known biological material."
"Water hammer (or, more generally, fluid hammer) is a pressure surge or wave caused when a fluid (usually a liquid but sometimes also a gas) in motion is forced to stop or change direction suddenly (momentum change). A water hammer commonly occurs when a valve closes suddenly at an end of a pipeline system, and a pressure wave propagates in the pipe. It is also called hydraulic shock."
"plural In chem., fine particles of a substance, especially when raised by fire in sublimation, and adhering to the heads of vessels in the form of a powder or mealy deposit: as, the flowers of sulphur."
"A logical term considered as capable of being universally predicated of another; usually, one of the five words, or five kinds of predicates, according to the Aristotelian logic, namely genus, species, difference, property, and accident."
That's fantastic, alexz. I've been amused by how all of this stuff seems to be related--alchemy, chemistry, cooking, pharmacy, &c., but now I'm reminded of an old joke: What do you get for the person who has everything? Penicillin.
"Bolus of Mendes (Greek: Βῶλος Bolos; fl. 3rd century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a neo-Pythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medical works, who worked in Ptolemaic Egypt. The Suda, and Eudocia after him, mention a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt, who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena. The Suda, however, also describes a Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus, who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." But, from a passage of Columella, it appears that Bolos of Mendes and the follower of Democritus were one and the same person; and he seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work On Plants he appears to have known."
"Pseudo-Democritus was an unidentified Greek philosopher writing on chemical and alchemical subjects under the pen name "Democritus," probably around 60 AD. He was the second most respected writer on alchemy (after Hermes Trismegistus)."
"Diogenes Laërtius gives two different accounts of his death. In the first account, Chrysippus was seized with dizziness having drunk undiluted wine at a feast, and died soon after. In the second account, he was watching a donkey eat some figs and cried out: "Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs", whereupon he died in a fit of laughter."
According to Wikipedia, ekpyrosis is "a Stoic belief in the periodic destruction of the cosmos by a great conflagration every Great Year. The cosmos is then recreated (palingenesis) only to be destroyed again at the end of the new cycle. This form of catastrophe is the opposite of kataklysmos (κατακλυσμός, "inundation"), the destruction of the earth by water," and "the concept of ekpyrosis is attributed to Chrysippus by Plutarch." (See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ekpyrosis&oldid=765510670.)
"Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use."
"In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle."
I just encountered the word botryoidal and wondered whether there was a corresponding "bunch of grapes" list--and of course there was. Thank you, biocon. You've restored my faith in humanity (once again).
"A 2006 study has produced evidence that chrysocolla may be a microscopic mixture of the copper hydroxide mineral spertiniite, amorphous silica and water."
"A geoporphyrin, also known as a petroporphyrin, is a porphyrin of geologic origin. They can occur in crude oil, oil shale, coal, or sedimentary rocks. Abelsonite is possibly the only geoporphyrin mineral, as it is rare for porphyrins to occur in isolation and form crystals."
"Thomas Fowler of Stafford, England, proposed the solution in 1786 as a substitute for a patent medicine, "tasteless ague drop". From 1845, Fowler's solution was a leukemia treatment.
At 1905, inorganic arsenicals, like Fowler's solution, saw diminished use as attention turned to organic arsenicals, starting with Atoxyl. Still, into the late 1950s, Fowler's solution—also termed liquor potassii arenitis, Kali arsenicosum, or Kali arseniatum—was prescribed in the United States for a wide range of diseases, including malaria, chorea, and syphilis."
"An incorrect example often used to demonstrate rheopecty is cornstarch mixed with water, which resembles a very viscous, white fluid. It is a cheap and simple demonstrator, which can be picked up by hand as a near-solid, but flows easily when not under pressure. However, cornstarch in water is actually a dilatant fluid, since it does not show the time-dependent, shear-induced change required in order to be labeled rheopectic. These terms are often and easily confused since the terms are rarely used; a true rheopectic fluid would when shaken be liquid at first, becoming thicker as shaking continued."
"Traditional papers were often highly polished with beeswax and an application of 50% beeswax/50% white spirit on the papers before use is recommended. This enhances the colour as well making them more durable."
"In the southern United States, a low spot, as near the mouth of a river, where the soil under the matted surface has been washed away, or has been so exhausted that nothing will grow on it. See bay-gall."
"A method of painting in which the colors are mixed with any binding medium soluble in water, such as yolk of egg and an equal quantity of water, yolk and white of egg beaten together and mixed with an equal quantity of milk, fig-tree sap, vinegar, wine, ox-gall, etc."
"The term adiaphane seems to be Stephen's own. Neither the Greek αδιαφανὲς nor the Latin adiaphana is to be found in his sources. The obvious meaning of adiaphane is the opaque or opacity, which is what adiaphane means in French. (Stephen, and Joyce, read Aristotle in Paris. See 026.04 ff.) Four lines below, however, Stephen refers to the darkness as it. In Aristotle's text, darkness (σκότος) is defined as the privation of light. See also Stephen's description of darkness on the next page as the black adiaphane."
I'd swear there was a list of these somewhere. I tried looking up zombie ant, but didn't get very far. I also tried looking through my mr--wilsons-cabinet-of-wonder list, but again, no dice.
Oh, qms! I've been trying to come up with one about nightshades, but I just don't think I can do anything with belladonna and love apples without trying to bring in pupils (the apple of one's eye? throwing rotten tomatoes?), and it's just not coming together. I bow before your prowess.
Oh, fun! It doesn't surprise me that something might be missing from the Scrabble dictionaries. Traditionally, the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary pulled from just "five in-print collegiate dictionaries, namely The Random House College Dictionary (1968), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969), Webster's New World Dictionary (1970), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (1973) and Funk & Wagnalls (1973)" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Official_Scrabble_Players_Dictionary&oldid=698206686).
So I looked up undine on an online version of the OED (subscription only, sadly). At the bottom of the entry, it has a "Draft additions 1993" section which has information about undinal--it references the 1891 Century Dictionary definition--which brings us right back to the Century definition here on this Wordnik page.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to wander off to look up confectio Damocritis again.
"A potato cannon (sometimes known as a spud gun, not to be confused with a toy of the same name) is a pipe-based cannon which uses air pressure (pneumatic), or combustion of a flammable gas (aerosol, propane, etc.), to launch projectiles at high speeds. They are built to fire chunks of potato, as a hobby, or to fire other sorts of projectiles, for practical use. Projectiles or failing guns can be dangerous and result in life-threatening injuries, including cranial fractures, enucleation, and blindness if a person is hit."
"Written by one Robert Draper to a Mr. Bilby, the shopping list includes pewter spoons, a frying pan, and “greenfish,” which is now known as unsalted cod. It also asks Mr. Bilby to send a “fireshovel” and “lights” to Copt Hall, which is 36 miles away on the other side of London."
"The word “jawn” is unlike any other English word. In fact, according to the experts that I spoke to, it’s unlike any other word in any other language. It is an all-purpose noun, a stand-in for inanimate objects, abstract concepts, events, places, individual people, and groups of people. It is a completely acceptable statement in Philadelphia to ask someone to “remember to bring that jawn to the jawn.”"
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"adj. a colorless, mobile liquid, HCO.OH, of a sharp, acid taste, occurring naturally in ants, nettles, pine needles, etc., and produced artifically in many ways, as by the oxidation of methyl alcohol, by the reduction of carbonic acid or the destructive distillation of oxalic acid. It is the first member of the fatty acids in the paraffin series, and is homologous with acetic acid."
"The Florida Highway Patrol confirmed the substance was black liquor — a waste product in the paper manufacturing process — in a news release early Monday morning."
"|Paul| Burrell said that he had approached a Catholic priest about a private marriage between Diana and the heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan, and he rubbished rumours that Diana was about to announce her engagement to Dodi Fayed."
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."
""Vexilloid" is a term used tenuously to describe vexillary (flag-like) objects used by countries, organizations, or individuals as a form of representation other than flags. Whitney Smith coined the term in 1958, defining it as:
"An object which functions as a flag but differs from it in some respect, usually appearance. Vexilloids are characteristic of traditional societies and often consist of a staff with an emblem, such as a carved animal, at the top."
"Vexilloid" can be used in a broader sense of any banner (vexillary object) which is not a flag (that is, taking only Smith's first sentence into account). Thus it includes vexilla, banderoles, pennons, streamers, standards, and gonfalons."
"What is swill milk? The New York Times described it as a “filthy, bluish substance milked from cows tied up in crowded stables adjoining city distilleries and fed the hot alcoholic mash left from making whiskey. This too was doctored—with plaster of Paris to take away the blueness, starch, and eggs to thicken it and molasses to give it the buttercup hue of honest Orange County milk.” Back when people were drinking the stuff, reported the Times, it probably killed as many as 8,000 children a year."
"The compound has widespread use in blueprint drawing and in photography (Cyanotype process). Several photographic print toning processes involve the use of potassium ferricyanide. Potassium ferricyanide is used as an oxidizing agent to remove silver from negatives and positives, a process called dot etching. In color photography, potassium ferricyanide is used to reduce the size of color dots without reducing their number, as a kind of manual color correction. It is also used in black-and-white photography with sodium thiosulfate (hypo) to reduce the density of a negative or gelatin silver print where the mixture is known as Farmer's reducer; this can help offset problems from overexposure of the negative, or brighten the highlights in the print."
"During a tidal disruption, the extreme gravitational forces of a supermassive black hole “spaghettifies” and rips apart a star when it wanders too close."
Thanks, vm. I especially liked the Nebraska reference in the article you linked to--and I had no idea the trademark for Dumpster had expired in 2008. Cool!
"The word “dumpster” sounds so perfectly suited to its purpose that it hardly seems necessary to question its origins. But that would be a mistake, because the real story is even more linguistically charming. The dumpster broke onto the scene in 1936, part of a brand-new patented trash-collection system that introduced the basic concept of the modern garbage truck, with containers that could be mechanically lifted and emptied into the vehicle from above. The system, invented by future mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, George Dempster, took its creator’s name, and the Dempster-Dumpster was born.
“Dumpster,” the word we use today, emerged from the fortuitous marriage of “dump” and “Dempster.” Though Dempster trademarked the brand name “Dumpster,” the term has been so thoroughly applied as a generic noun that the Associated Press now directs that it be styled in lowercase. No one, after all, would choose to write “trash bin” when “dumpster” would do better.
Had this sanitation system not been engineered by a man with such a punny name (Dempster-Dumpster), would “dumpster fire” as an insult have ever taken off?"
"The dangerous bend or caution symbol ☡ (U+2621 ☡ CAUTION SIGN) was created by the Nicolas Bourbaki group of mathematicians and appears in the margins of mathematics books written by the group. It resembles a road sign that indicates a "dangerous bend" in the road ahead, and is used to mark passages tricky on a first reading or with an especially difficult argument."
"Spaghetti bolognese translates, roughly, to “spaghetti from Bologna.” But if you try to take this particular flavor train back where it supposedly comes from, forget it—you’ll be turned straight around. The British broadcaster and politician Michael Portillo found this out the hard way when he took a camera crew to the city seeking the dish. “Oh my gosh, no,” says the first young woman he encounters in the footage. She makes an X with her arms, as though warding off a great evil. ”Absolutamente no. No no no no.”"
"You don’t hear about a lot of meatball backlash. But many Italians clearly see the spaghettification of bolognese, specifically, as a dire wrong. Their attempts to right it have ranged from organized, high-level efforts to, more recently, a kind of Internet comment trench warfare. In 1982, Bologna’s chamber of commerce officially notarized what they consider to be the authentic recipe, which contains beef skirt, pancetta, celery, carrot, onion, a little tomato, wine, and milk."
"According to the book State Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and Other Symbols by George Earlie Shankle (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1941):
“The sobriquet, the Nutmeg State, is applied to Connecticut because its early inhabitants had the reputation of being so ingenious and shrewd that they were able to make and sell wooden nutmegs. Sam Slick (Judge Halliburton) seems to be the originator of this story. Some claim that wooden nutmegs were actually sold, but they do not give either the time or the place.”
Yankee peddlers from Connecticut sold nutmegs, and an alternative story is that:
“Unknowing buyers may have failed to grate nutmegs, thinking they had to be cracked like a walnut. Nutmegs are wood, and bounce when struck. If southern customers did not grate them, they may very well have accused the Yankees of selling useless “wooden” nutmegs, unaware that they wear down to a pungent powder to season pies and breads.” Elizabeth Abbe, Librarian, the Connecticut Historical Society; Connecticut Magazine, April 1980."
"While this experiment isn’t on the quantum scale, it does help to demonstrate the way quantum-scale particles may operate according to the pilot wave theory. And for any lay people who’ve struggled with grasping why things are so strange on the quantum scale according to the standard interpretation, this pilot wave theory—proposed by Louis de Broglie in 1927—provides a far more palatable framework for understanding quantum mechanics."
"According to Merriam-Webster, “lepo-” — that’s as in “what’s a lepo?” — topped the list of search terms queried over the course of the 90-minute" presidential debate.
"In physical chemistry, a constant by means of which can be expressed the distribution of a base between two acids each sufficient to neutralize the whole of the base, or conversely; that is, the relative energy with which the acids tend to seize their shares of base: a term employed to avoid the use of the word affinity."
"A rabaska or Maître canoe (French: canot de maître, after Louis Maitre, an artisan from Trois-Rivières who made them) was originally a large canoe made of tree bark, used by the Algonquin people."
"Capable of being extended or shut up like a spy-glass; having joints or sections which slide one within another; especially, in machinery, constructed of concentric tubes, either stationary, as in the telescopic boiler, or movable, as in the telescopic chimney of a war-vessel, which may be lowered out of sight in action, or in the telescopic jack, a screw-jack in which the lifting head is raised by the action of two screws having reversed threads, one working within the other, and both sinking or telescoping within the base—an arrangement by which greater power is obtained."
"Another method of marbling more familiar to Europeans and Americans is made on the surface of a viscous mucilage, known as size or sizing in English. This method is commonly referred to as "Turkish" marbling and is called ebru in Turkish, although ethnic Turkic peoples were not the only practitioners of the art, as Persian Tajiks and people of Indian origin also made these papers. The term "Turkish" was most likely used as a reference to the fact that many Europeans first encountered the art in Istanbul."
I'm also fond of listing words related to cattle. :-)
But mostly it's because I've been learning how to marble paper. Synthetic ox gall is a surfactant used to create "blank" spaces in the paint floating on the size. I'm forever adding too much and ruining my designs.
I love the synonyms from the Century: "Size, Magnitude, Bulk, Volume. Size is the general word for things large or small. In ordinary discourse magnitude applies to large things; but it is also an exact word, and is much used in science: as, a star of the fourth magnitude. Bulk suggests noticeable size, especially size rounding out into unwieldiness. Volume is a rather indefinite word, arising from the idea of rolling a thing up till it attains size, though with no especial suggestion of shape. We speak of the magnitude of a calamity or of a fortune, the bulk of a bale of cotton or of an elephant, the volume of smoke or of an avalanche."
"A "lasagna cell" is accidentally produced when salty moist food such as lasagna is stored in a steel baking pan and is covered with aluminum foil. After a few hours the foil develops small holes where it touches the lasagna, and the food surface becomes covered with small spots composed of corroded aluminum.
In this example, the salty food (lasagna) is the electrolyte, the aluminum foil is the anode, and the steel pan is the cathode. If the aluminum foil only touches the electrolyte in small areas, the galvanic corrosion is concentrated, and corrosion can occur fairly rapidly."
In Rex Parker's blog about solving crossword puzzles, he complains about a puzzle where 1A "Natick" and 1D "NC Wyeth" share a letter: "I am going to honor this puzzle by naming a crossword constructing principle after one of its elements. I call it: The NATICK Principle. And here it is: If you include a proper noun in your grid that you cannot reasonably expect more than 1/4 of the solving public to have heard of, you must cross that noun with reasonably common words and phrases or very common names." -- http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/07/sunday-jul-6-2008-brendan-emmett.html
"The St. Augustine Monster is one of the earliest examples of a globster—a delightful term referring to an unidentified animal mass that washes up on a beach and results in cryptozoologists speculating about sea monsters. This particular—and particularly large—carcass was discovered by a couple of young boys playing on Anastasia Island, Florida in November 1896. The boys assumed it was a whale, but Dr. De Witt Webb, the founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, concluded that it was the remains of a giant octopus and sent photos and a specimen to the Smithsonian labeled as such. Over the next century-plus, various tests claimed to “prove” at one time or another that it was a whale or an octopus, depending on which test was run. Finally, in 2004, it was conclusively proven that the St. Augustine Monster was a whale all along—just like the two boys who discovered it had thought."
"Pendulum Music (For Microphones, Amplifiers Speakers and Performers) is the name of a work by Steve Reich, involving suspended microphones and speakers, creating phasing feedback tones. The piece was composed in August 1968 and revised in May 1973, and is an example of process music."
My first thought was poet, my second thought was Edgar Allen, and my third thought was the po-po. I never would have gotten to Poe's law. Thanks again, qms.
Not that I know of, vm. When I was a kid we used to have big yellow and black hand-painted signs that said "POSTED NO HUNTING" but they never seemed to do much good.
"n. A hood or front-piece made of silk shirred upon whalebones, worn over the front of a bonnet as a protection from sun or wind. Such hoods were in fashion about 1850. Compare ugly, n."
"Vaudeville actress Aida Overton Walker refused to act in the mammy stereotype, though became known for performing the cakewalk with her husband, a dance originally designed to mock slave owners’ gaudy dance moves and later used as a tool to mock black dancers.
Dora Dean, another black actress of the time, similarly rejected minstrel stereotypes. She performed the cakewalk with her husband and helped influence public views that black women were as elegant as their white peers, evidenced in her professional nickname “The Black Venus.” Both women, though restricted by racist laws and an unfair social order, were able to earn and control assets that were essentially barred from them in other facets of society."
The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories tells me "The tack associated with horse-riding was originally dialect in the general sense 'apparatus, equipment' and is a contraction of tackle. The current sense (as in tack room) dates from the 1920s."
"In saddlery, a long handle fitted at one end with a knob and at the other with a branch for receiving a small circular tool: used for ornamenting leather."
"They had viewed, through widely different lenses, the amazing and disturbing and exhilarating American scene, Mencken aiming his binoculars and his bung starter at those well-known and badly battered objects of his eloquent scorn and ridicule, the booboisie, the Bible belt, the professor doctors, the lunatics of the political arena, and the imbeciles infesting literature; while Ross, fascinated by many things that would have bored Mencken, took in the panorama and personalities of New York City and finally the whole American spectacle, interested in everything from a swizzle stick he picked up one day ("There's a story in this damn thing") to the slight swaying of the Empire State Building in a stiff gale."
"The sniffing position has been recommended as optimal for patient intubation and airway management. Historically, the definition of this position is credited to an Irish-born anesthetist, Sir Ivan Magill, who described it as “sniffing the morning air” or “draining a pint of beer.”"
"I coined a term a while ago, privelobliviousness, to try to describe the way that being the advantaged one, the represented one, often means being the one who doesn’t need to be aware and, often, isn’t."
"Pentaour (Pentaur, Pentewere), the Egyptian scribe, is the least known of the major historic figures on the outside of Nebraska's capitol. An unknown court poet of the 13th-century-B.C. pharaoh, Ramses II, composed a poem celebrating his pharaoh's exploits at the battle of Kadesh in Syria. A copy on papyrus was made of this epic-like poem by the scribe, Pentaour. Early scholars mistakenly thought Pentaour was the author and he still often receives credit. This poem, when coupled with reliefs on various surviving Egyptian temple walls, makes the battle of Kadesh the first battle in history which can be studied for its maneuvers and strategy. History, the record of man's experience, although viewed and interpreted anew through the eyes of each generation, provides both guidance for, and understanding of, the present. On the capitol the scribe Pentaour stands holding the tools of his craft: pen, papyrus and ink pot."
"Your half-brother from the same mother. A term used in old legal documents or other discussions of inheritance and succession. Half-siblings of the same mother are "uterine" and of the same father are "consanguine.""
"Child of your paternal uncle. Also, a child of your own brother. It hasn't gotten a lot of use in the past few centuries, but it was once convenient to have a term for this relationship because it factored into royal succession considerations. The first citation for it in the OED, from 1538, reads, "Efter his patruell deid withoutin contradictioun he wes king.""
"A Markov chain (discrete-time Markov chain or DTMC), named after Andrey Markov, is a random process that undergoes transitions from one state to another on a state space. It must possess a property that is usually characterized as "memorylessness": the probability distribution of the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. This specific kind of "memorylessness" is called the Markov property. Markov chains have many applications as statistical models of real-world processes."
"A group of researchers at the University of Alberta have developed what may be the first mathematical theory of humor, all thanks to a funny-sounding nonsense word: snunkoople.
Psychology professor Chris Westbury was studying people with aphasia, a disorder affecting language comprehension, when he noticed something strange. Subjects were asked to read strings of letters and identify whether they were real words. After a while, Westbury noticed subjects seemed to laugh at certain nonsense words—snunkoople in particular."
"The phrase OODA loop refers to the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide, and act, developed by military strategist and USAF Colonel John Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the strategic level in military operations. It is now also often applied to understand commercial operations and learning processes. The approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor."
"Ballas or shot bort is a term used in the diamond industry to refer to shards of non-gem-grade/quality diamonds. It comprises small diamond crystals that are concentrically arranged in rough spherical stones with a fibrous texture. Ballas is hard, tough, and difficult to cleave. It is mostly found in Brazil and South Africa."
"Porcelain is traditionally made from two essential ingredients: kaolin, also called china clay, a silicate mineral that gives porcelain its plasticity, its structure; and petunse, or pottery stone, which lends the ceramic its translucency and hardness. Kaolin is the more essential ingredient—a potter’s clay is meant to exist, like his glazes, in variations—and it takes its name from a mountain in Jingdezhen, China, where porcelain was first created, more than a thousand years ago, called Gaoling, which means “high ridge.” The name was recorded incorrectly by a Jesuit priest, Pere d’Entrecolles, in the early eighteenth century, in his letters home describing the Chinese technique."
Comments by ruzuzu
Show previous 200 comments...
ruzuzu commented on the word mellophone
Dude.
January 10, 2019
ruzuzu commented on the word almost Solveig
Anyone have a mellophone I can borrow?
January 10, 2019
ruzuzu commented on the word Buzzbyfeed
See Ten.
December 28, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Ten
Thank you, Buzzbyfeed.
December 28, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Ten
Brackets around Buzzbyfeed, please.
December 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word criminelly
I'm imagining the sitcom now. Equal parts Will & Grace, Cagney & Lacey, and Turner & Hooch, "Crime & Elly" is the story of Elly, a by-the-book manager at a coffee shop, who teams up with "Crime," a corgi who happens to be an undercover detective.
December 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word criminelly
One of the managers came over and fixed it--it'd be great if her name were Nelly.
December 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word criminelly
Two days ago, I went to a coffee shop. The guy at the cash register was trying to ring me up, but his computer screen kept giving him trouble. "Criminelly," he said.
I'd only ever heard it as criminently. I assume any variations come from criminy.
December 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Chrismon tree
I'm not sure. Perhaps someone should fund a research trip for me.
December 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Chrismon tree
"A Chrismon tree is an evergreen tree often found in the chancel or nave of a church during Advent and Christmastide."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chrismon_tree&oldid=871803470
December 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Chrismon
-- From https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chrismon_tree&oldid=871803470 (footnote references removed)
December 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Bilby
Wow. Bilby has some amazing reviews in the example sentences:
"The Bilby also serves as a cover for a restaurant highchair." -- Ten Tips for All Day Shopping with a Toddler | Thingamababy
"The Bilby slides on and off in seconds, without straps or snaps." -- Ten Tips for All Day Shopping with a Toddler | Thingamababy
"The back of the cover has a huge 2-foot opening for you attach the extra Bilby strap or the cart strap." -- Review: Bilby Shopping Cart Liner | Thingamababy
December 19, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list thank-you-for-being-eponymous
This is the Best list.
December 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word mammillated
I love that the reverse dictionary options for this are Lachesis and mammillated.
December 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word pesto-making gin rambler
Haha! I know it *seems* like I'd seen a bit of gin before I wrote that, but it was just cold medicine, I swear.
Also, I love this site and everyone here. For real.
December 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word cornel cherry
See cornel. Also see citation on sloe.
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word saw-gin
Also, I was just scrolling past this word again and read it as "slaw-gin" (like sloe gin, maybe).
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list in-cookery
No bears were harmed in the making of this list.
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word saw-gin
Do you know, I think gin is what led me to this old wordie site in the first place. See, I'd been at a pesto-making party with a bunch of former English professors, and they were trying to figure out the etymology for cotton gin. The hosts had a compact edition of the OED, but it's so hard to read those entries--even with the magnifying glass--so I was looking it up for them on my phone. It was probably yarb's comments on gin that made me think I wanted to read more here. But I forgot about the site for a while. Eventually I got fascinated by something else--peacock mantis shrimp probably--and someone over on Twitter who followed wordie and wordnik reminded me this place existed. When I came back, I found bilby's animal-identity-crisis list, &c., and the rest, as they say, was history.
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word mixer
"Specifically, a machine for mixing various substances. See malaxator."
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
December 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word preditor
I wonder whether Predator had a preditor.
December 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Boops boops
See bogue.
December 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word crimp
"One who brings persons into a place or condition of restraint, in order to subject them to swindling, forced labor, or the like; especially, one who, for a commission, supplies recruits for the army or sailors for ships by nefarious means or false inducements; a decoy; a kidnapper. Such practices have been suppressed in the army and navy, and made highly penal in connection with merchant ships."
-- From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
December 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ci-devant
The words found under "same context" are fantastic:
67-year-old
abstinent
arvernian
be-ribboned
chid
crutched
curmudgeonly
ever-popular
ever-youthful
gray-uniformed
moire
n'est-ce
natural-born
nursemaid
pro-german
rebuffingthe
shrivelled-up
unfrocked
vivant
yellow-bearded
your
December 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word iroquoisy
So, cake, obviously. But also Witter Bynner, who appears in the index of a book I've been reading--even though he's nowhere in the text--and who apparently wrote a play called Cake as revenge against Mabel Dodge Luhan. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Witter_Bynner&oldid=867008750)
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word cake
Yum! In Latvian, the word for cake sounds a bit like "kooks."
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word finska kakor
Delightful! I accept.
Should we make a party? I could probably whip up some fufluns.
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word cake
"From Middle English cake, from Old Norse kaka ("cake") . . . ."
Remind me to think twice before I call something a "piece of cake."
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word finska kakor
All these pepparkakors and finska kakors and shortcakes and piparkūkas have me wondering (yet again) about the etymology for cake.
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word finska kakor
My ancient Betty Crocker cookbook calls these "Nut-studded butter strips from Finland."
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word incult
Ooh, bilby bilby, it's a wild world.
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list cookie-monster
Oh! I wonder whether they're like Latvian piparkūkas.
December 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list against-nature
Wait. So is it like a cowcatcher? (Add it if you like--it's an open list.)
December 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word zambomba
R'amen.
December 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word zambomba
*curtseys*
December 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word catadromous
She probably got catfished.
December 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word zambomba
Thanks, bilby. It was you're something of a hotdog, aren't you (as originally seen in one of dontcry's comments over on spaghetti).
December 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word haha
Also see ha-ha.
December 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word satinette
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"n. One of a breed of fancy frilled pigeons allied to the owls and turbits, having the body white, the shoulders tricolored, and the tail bluish black with a large white spot on each feather."
December 3, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word alloxan
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alloxan&oldid=822802116
November 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word murexide
For more, see alloxan.
November 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghett
I find myself at quite a loss
To decide upon this evening’s sauce.
What goes with spaghett?
Is it just mignonette?
Perhaps I’ll decide by coin toss.
November 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghetti
Cf. spaghett.
November 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghett
This "noodle" is vaguely spaghetty,
Though my soup should have been alphabetty.
That cook in the back
Looks a bit like yak--
Perhaps this stray hair's from a yeti.
November 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ibex dearie
I might have a lead on a guy who can loan me a pyrophone for the closing number. It's funny how you can just casually mention the name almost Solveig and people go out of their way.
November 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word suicide
I was at a local coffee shop's self-service station this morning--trying to decide whether to get dark roast, medium roast, or the flavor of the day. I hate having to choose, so I just got a bit of each. The person behind me in line said, "Wait. Is that like a suicide, but with coffee?" I laughed and said, "Yes!"
I don't remember when I first heard "suicide" as the term for combining all the soda pop options from a fountain machine--it's common enough. But it still kinda weirds me out.
November 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word metempsychotic fit
Didn't ibex dearie sing "Peel Me A Grape"?
November 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word apoplexy
There ought. There's afflictions-of-the-realm and lots of old pharmacy terms formerly-used-in-medicine, but I still nominate you to create a more specific one for our amusement.
November 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word pandowdy
Good one, qms. Yeehaw!
November 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user MaryW
Your citations are inspiring. I’ve been lazy about using the blockquote HTML tag—but no more! Thank you for your precision and dedication.
November 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word misnegation
— https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/11/19/misnegation-should-not-be-overestimated-i-mean-underestimated/amp
November 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word yea
This must be the yea of yea-high. Yeah?
November 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list anything-but-standard-international
Nice! (I found this list as I was searching for yea-high.)
November 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ergotism
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. The spur of rye; ergot.
n. The morbid state induced by the excessive ingestion of ergot, as from the use of spurred or ergoted rye as food. Spasmodic and gangrenous forms are distinguished.
n. A logical inference; a conclusion.
n. Logical reasoning; ratiocination."
November 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word supra-kingdom
See citation on hemimastigote.
November 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word hemimastigote
“Based on the genetic analysis they've done so far, the Dalhousie team has determined that hemimastigotes are unique and different enough from other organisms to form their own "supra-kingdom" — a grouping so big that animals and fungi, which have their own kingdoms, are considered similar enough to be part of the same supra-kingdom.”
—“Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life” https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hemimastigotes-supra-kingdom-1.4715823
November 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word readd
Here’s one: correctly-spelled-words-that-look-like-misspellings-of-other-words
November 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word gantry
“Very early on a weekday, before the sun rose over the town of Aalsmeer, I stepped into Royal FloraHolland, the largest flower auction in the world.
FloraHolland (royal designates a firm that has been in business for more than 100 years) is a single building so large that the numbers describing it make no sense: It covers 1.3 million square meters, 320 acres, the area of 220 football fields. It is one unfathomably large room, but a gantry stretches across it at the level of a second story, for visitors to walk along without getting in the way of business. Suspended in the middle of the gantry is the auction itself, rooms of traders in bleacher seating, wearing headsets and stabbing keyboards, staring at wall-sized screens of flower lots while electronic clocks tick down.“
—“Killer Tulips Hiding in Plain Sight” The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/when-tulips-kill/574489/
November 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list swim-bladder
My new favorite list.
November 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word lingcod
Lovely, qms! If I had at least three more sets of tentacle-y appendages, I'd be clapping them all together right now!
November 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word giant Pacific octopus
See citation on lingcod.
November 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word lingcod
“Initially, the octopus survey was launched to try to answer a question that staff members got regularly at the Seattle Aquarium: How many giant Pacific octopuses live in the Puget Sound? It turns out it’s not an easy question to answer, since there isn’t a firm population number for giant Pacifics.
These octopuses normally live about three years. They eat a lot of crustaceans, mollusks, squid, fish and sometimes other species of octopus. They are so big that they only really have to watch out for extremely large fish, such as halibut and lingcod, and some marine mammals. But they hatch from an egg the size of a rice grain, so for more than a year after they’re born, they are at the mercy of a wide array of predators.”
— https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/11/giant-pacific-octopus-survey-puget-sound-seattle-aquarium/574408/
November 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word touch wood
Cf. touchwood.
November 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word grumphie
When I was a kid, I used to listen to an album where Jean Ritchie sang "Children's Songs & Games from the Southern Mountains." One of the songs was about a bunch of farmyard animals--a horse that "goes neigh-neigh" and a sheep that "goes baa-baa" and a pig that "goes griffy-gruffy."
Maybe grumphie and griffy-gruffy aren't related, but I feel a little more at ease about why that pig wasn't just oinking.
November 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word counter-mapping
"Counter-mapping refers to efforts to map "against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals". The term was coined by Nancy Peluso in 1995 to describe the commissioning of maps by forest users in Kalimantan, Indonesia, as a means of contesting state maps of forest areas that typically undermined indigenous interests. The resultant counter-hegemonic maps had the ability to strengthen forest users' resource claims."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Counter-mapping&oldid=863668724 (footnote references removed)
November 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word equals sign
"The equals sign or equality sign (=) is a mathematical symbol used to indicate equality. It was invented in 1557 by Robert Recorde. In an equation, the equals sign is placed between two (or more) expressions that have the same value."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Equals_sign&oldid=865723782
November 1, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Narayana's cows
"Narayana's cows is an integer sequence created by considering a cow, which begins to have one baby a year, beginning in its fourth year, and all its children do the same."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Narayana_Pandita&oldid=860912535
October 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word tricorn
“A hat with three points or horns; a cocked hat having the brim folded upward against the crown on three sides, producing three angles; hence, by popular misapplication, the hat worn by the French gendarmes, which has only two points: usually written as French, tricorne. See cut 13 under hat.”
— from The Century Dictionary
October 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word NASA Thesaurus
So cool--thanks for sharing this, alexz!
October 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list stars--1
Oh, gold star for that one, TankHughes!
October 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word bornhardt
See citation on inselberg.
October 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word inselberg
"An inselberg or monadnock (/məˈnædnɒk/) is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In southern and south-central Africa, a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, an Afrikaans word ("little head") from the Dutch word kopje. If the inselberg is dome-shaped and formed from granite or gneiss, it can also be called a bornhardt, though not all bornhardts are inselbergs."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inselberg&oldid=854724700
October 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word lime
"Brazil's vast inland cerrado region was regarded as unfit for farming before the 1960s because the soil was too acidic and poor in nutrients, according to Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, an American plant scientist referred to as the father of the Green Revolution. However, from the 1960s, vast quantities of lime (pulverised chalk or limestone) were poured on the soil to reduce acidity. The effort went on and in the late 1990s between 14 million and 16 million tonnes of lime were being spread on Brazilian fields each year. The quantity rose to 25 million tonnes in 2003 and 2004, equalling around five tonnes of lime per hectare. As a result, Brazil has become the world's second biggest soybean exporter and, thanks to the boom in animal feed production, Brazil is now the biggest exporter of beef and poultry in the world."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agricultural_lime&oldid=854535911
October 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
tropicopolitan
October 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
circa?
October 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word letterboxing
I've heard of kangaroo boxing... is this a marsupial thing?
October 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list in-the-colorhouse
Man! How did I miss this great list? I just stumbled upon it only after looking up morin.
October 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word opuscula
See opuscule.
October 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word sirds puķīte
I'll add only that puķīte sounds a little better than it looks--that ķ in the middle makes it more like "pooch-eat."
October 15, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list blooms--2
Aw, shucks. Thanks, vm. (And it looks like that one has been fixed now.)
October 15, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list blooms--2
Thanks! Glad to see you've tossed in a few of your own.
October 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word plateresque
Oh, nice! I am ever in awe at your skill with these, qms.
October 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word chocolate bloom
Here's a blooming list for our amusement: blooms--2.
October 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word chocolate bloom
Has anyone made a list of blooms yet? I'd add Leopold.
October 9, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Hermann Minkowski
"Minkowski is perhaps best known for his work in relativity, in which he showed in 1907 that his former student Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905) could be understood geometrically as a theory of four-dimensional space–time, since known as the "Minkowski spacetime"."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hermann_Minkowski&oldid=861259780
October 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word tartaric acid
"Louis Pasteur could rightly be described as the first stereochemist, having observed in 1842 that salts of tartaric acid collected from wine production vessels could rotate plane polarized light, but that salts from other sources did not. This property, the only physical property in which the two types of tartrate salts differed, is due to optical isomerism."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stereochemistry&oldid=858092147
October 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Amsterdammer
I’m reminded of a song my grandmother taught me about the three jolly fisher- fisher- men men men who should have gone to Amster- Amster- sh! sh! sh!
September 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Amstetdamster
Stet.
September 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word scop
Thanks, qms, but yours are always better.
I'm beginning to wonder whether your initials stand for Quite Masterful Scop (or some such).
September 28, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user bilby
Mmm. Tasty lichens.
September 28, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word rosehip neuron
""We really don't understand what makes the human brain special," said Ed Lein, Ph.D., Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. "Studying the differences at the level of cells and circuits is a good place to start, and now we have new tools to do just that."
In a new study published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Lein and his colleagues reveal one possible answer to that difficult question. The research team, co-led by Lein and Gábor Tamás, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Szeged in Szeged, Hungary, has uncovered a new type of human brain cell that has never been seen in mice and other well-studied laboratory animals.
Tamás and University of Szeged doctoral student Eszter Boldog dubbed these new cells "rosehip neurons" -- to them, the dense bundle each brain cell's axon forms around the cell's center looks just like a rose after it has shed its petals, he said. The newly discovered cells belong to a class of neurons known as inhibitory neurons, which put the brakes on the activity of other neurons in the brain."
-- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180827180809.htm
September 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word allothetic
See citation on idiothetic.
September 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word idiothetic
"Idiothetic literally means "self-proposition" (Greek derivation), and is used in navigation models (e.g., of a rat in a maze) to describe the use of self-motion cues, rather than allothetic, or external, cues such as landmarks, to determine position and movement."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Idiothetic&oldid=800426728
September 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word equation of time
See citation on equation.
September 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word equation
"The equation of time describes the discrepancy between two kinds of solar time. The word equation is used in the medieval sense of "reconcile a difference". The two times that differ are the apparent solar time, which directly tracks the diurnal motion of the Sun, and mean solar time, which tracks a theoretical mean Sun with noons 24 hours apart."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Equation_of_time&oldid=861068135
September 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word scop
Oh, fun! I had a copy of Grendel when I was a kid, so I have a sentimental fondness for the monster.
In his novel take on the plot
John Gardner's hero was not
A prince or a poet
But (wouldn't you know it)
The beast--who finally gets caught.
September 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word commesso
"Commesso, also referred to as Florentine mosaic, is a method of piecing together cut sections of luminous, narrow gemstones to form works of art."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commesso&oldid=804026345
September 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Rufillus
See https://medievalbooks.nl/2018/09/20/me-myself-and-i/
September 24, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word adynaton
Paldies, vendingmachine! I hadn't heard that one before--though it fits perfectly with bird's milk and blooming fern.
September 24, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word erythrophyl
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. A name given by Berzelius to the substance to which the red color of leaves in autumn is due."
September 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Mangkhut
"'Mangkhut'" (Thai pronunciation: |māŋ.kʰút|) is the Thai name for the mangosteen."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Typhoon_Mangkhut&oldid=860020566
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word pataphysics
Also see comment on pataphysical.
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word pataphysical
"|Paul| McCartney's wife Linda said that he had become interested in avant-garde theatre and had immersed himself in the writings of Alfred Jarry. This influence is reflected in the story and tone of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", and also explains how McCartney came across Jarry's word "pataphysical", which occurs in the lyrics."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maxwell%27s_Silver_Hammer&oldid=859775445
See pataphysics.
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list words-meaning-nonsense
Excellent. You might also like these hogwash and humbug-and-bafflegab lists.
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word accurate
Here's a nice bit from The Century:
"Synonyms Accurate, Correct, Exact, Precise, Nice, careful, particular, true, faithful, strict, painstaking, unerring. Of these words correct is the feeblest; it is barely more than not faulty, as tested by some standard or rule. Accurate implies careful and successful endeavor to be correct: as, an accurate accountant, and, by extension of the meaning, accurate accounts; an accurate likeness. Exact is stronger, carrying the accuracy down to minute details: as, an exact likeness. It is more commonly used of things, while precise is used of persons: as, the exact truth; he is very precise in his ways. Precise may represent an excess of nicety, but exact and accurate rarely do so: as, she is prim and precise. As applied more specifically to the processes and results of thought and investigation, exact means absolutely true; accurate, up to a limited standard of truth; precise, as closely true as the utmost care will secure. Thus, the exact ratio of the circumference to the diameter cannot be stated, but the value 3.14159265 is accurate to eight places of decimals, which is sufficiently precise for the most refined measurements. Nice emphasizes the attention paid to minute and delicate points, often in a disparaging sense: as, he is more nice than wise."
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word palter
Well done, qms!
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word cloud cuckoo land
See cloud-cuckoo-land.
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word cloud cuckoo
See cloud cuckoo land.
September 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list ruzuzus-ideal-list
Found another. Check out write--2.
September 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list write--2
Hm... pyrolytic, motor pool, Jonbar hinge, pariah dog and zopilote, contrail, gyrodyne, gum....
Yup. An ideal list.
September 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word chicken eyeglasses
"Chicken eyeglasses, also known as chickens specs, chicken goggles, generically as pick guards and under other names, were small eyeglasses made for chickens intended to prevent feather pecking and cannibalism. They differ from blinders as they allowed the bird to see forward whereas blinders do not. One variety used rose-colored lenses as the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens which may increase the tendency for abnormal injurious behavior."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chicken_eyeglasses&oldid=826144795
September 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list ptolemys-gate
Arrived here after looking up motor. What a fun list!
September 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word mattock
"In the eastern United States, the shafts of mattocks are often fitted with a screw below the head and parallel with it to secure the head from slipping down the shaft, but in the western United States, where tools are more commonly dismantled for transport, this is rarely done. When made to be dismantled, the shaft of a mattock fits into the oval eye of the head, and is fixed by striking the head end of the shaft against a solid surface, such as a tree stump, rock, or firm ground. The head end of the shaft is tapered outwards, and the oval opening of the iron head is similarly tapered so that the head will not fly off when used. The mattock head ought never be raised higher than the user's hands, so that it will not slide down and hit the user's hands."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mattock&oldid=855853143
(I wonder whether lyron's father's mattock was actually from West Virginia.)
September 10, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word slur
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"In a knitting-machine, mechanism which travels on a bar called the slur-bar, and depresses the jack-sinkers in succession, sinking a loop of thread between every pair of needles."
September 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Elizabeth Fulhame
"Elizabeth Fulhame (fl. 1794) was a Scottish chemist who invented the concept of catalysis and discovered photoreduction. She describes catalysis as a process at length in her 1794 book An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous. The book relates in painstaking detail her experiments with oxidation-reduction reactions, and the conclusions she draws regarding Phlogiston theory, in which she disagrees with both the Phlogistians and Antiphlogistians."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Fulhame&oldid=850969064
September 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list numbering
Oh! What an ingenious list.
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Mr. B. Collar
See comment on Billy Eckstine.
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Billy Eckstine
"Culturally Eckstine was a fashion icon. He was famous for his "Mr. B. Collar"- a high roll collar that formed a "B" over a Windsor-knotted tie. The collars were worn by many a hipster in the late 1940s and early 1950s."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Billy_Eckstine&oldid=852426215
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list shoes
Just added shoe-boss.
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Timothy Dexter
"At age 50, Dexter authored A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress, in which he complained about politicians, the clergy, and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but without punctuation and seemingly random capitalization. Dexter initially handed his book out for free, but it became popular and was reprinted eight times. In the second edition, Dexter added an extra page which consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks with the instructions that readers could distribute them as they pleased."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timothy_Dexter&oldid=851828716
Also see t.
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word t
"n. A white clay pipe with the initials T. D. on the bowl. Said to be due to a legacy left by the eccentric “Lord” Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, Mass., in order to perpetuate his name. By extension, T. D. means clay pipe. Dialect Notes, III. iii."
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word catalyst poison
"Catalyst poisoning refers to the partial or total deactivation of a catalyst. Poisoning is caused by chemical compounds. Although usually undesirable, poisoning may be helpful when it results in improved selectivity. For example, Lindlar's catalyst is poisoned so that it selectively catalyzes the reduction of alkynes. On the other hand Lead from leaded gasoline deactivates catalytic converters."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catalyst_poisoning&oldid=851286480
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word poison
"Chemistry & Physics: A substance that inhibits another substance or a reaction: a catalyst poison."
-- from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
September 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word evanescent
"In natural history, unstable; unfixed; hence, uncertain; unreliable: applied to characters which are not fixed or uniformly present, and therefore are valueless for scientific classification.
In entomology, tending to become obsolete in one part; fading out: as, antennal scrobes evanescent posteriorly."
-- Century Dictionary
September 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word black swallow-wort
"The black swallow-wort was recently spotted in the Grand Traverse County community of Kingsley, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported. The vine has heart-shaped leaves and small, dark purple flowers. The plant, which typically grows along roadsides, pastures and gardens, can choke out native vegetation and poison insects and wildlife."
-- "Monarch butterfly-killing invasive plant found in northern Michigan" https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/09/03/monarch-butterfly-black-swallow-wort/1185116002/
September 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word pronic
"A pronic number is a number which is the product of two consecutive integers, that is, a number of the form n(n + 1). The study of these numbers dates back to Aristotle. They are also called oblong numbers, heteromecic numbers, or rectangular numbers; however, the "rectangular number" name has also been applied to the composite numbers."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pronic_number&oldid=850129619
August 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word recursion
Ha! Check out the "reverse dictionary" section for this word.
August 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list bywords
I have a few of these over on my antonomasia list, but this one is better. In fact, I'd be willing to say that rolig is a regular rolig with these (to coin a phrase).
August 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list antonomasia
Ooh! Thanks, rolig.
August 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ago
I was wondering whether the "go" part of this was a clue.
August 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word metewand
hbd, qms!
August 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word fewmet
I'm pretty sure I first encountered fewmets in Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wind in the Door.
August 21, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
I pressed Random word and got Englishly, but that seemed too on the nose. How's about paleoichnology?
August 20, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word batman
"Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, most commonly in association with the superhero Batman.
"Pennyworth is depicted as Bruce Wayne's loyal and tireless butler, housekeeper, legal guardian, best friend, aide-de-camp, and surrogate father figure following the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. As a classically trained British actor and an ex-Special Operations Executive operative of honor and ethics with connections within the intelligence community, he has been called "Batman's batman"."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alfred_Pennyworth&oldid=854935165
August 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word genethlialogy
Stellar work once again, qms!
August 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list profondeurs-de-nervose
I like that I can look at the Recently Listed Words and tell right away that they'll be on one of your wonderful lists.
August 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word significand
"In American English, the original word for this seems to have been mantissa (Burks et al.), and this usage remains common in computing and among computer scientists. However, the term significand was introduced by George Forsythe and Cleve Moler in 1967, and the use of mantissa for this purpose is discouraged by the IEEE floating-point standard committee and by some professionals such as William Kahan and Donald Knuth, because it conflicts with the pre-existing use of mantissa for the fractional part of a logarithm (see also common logarithm). For instance, Knuth adopts the third representation 0.12345 × 10+3 in the example above and calls 0.12345 the fraction part of the number; he adds: "it is an abuse of terminology to call the fraction part a mantissa, since this concept has quite a different meaning in connection with logarithms".
The confusion is because scientific notation and floating-point representation are log-linear, not logarithmic. To multiply two numbers, given their logarithms, one just adds the characteristic (integer part) and the mantissa (fractional part). By contrast, to multiply two floating-point numbers, one adds the exponent (which is logarithmic) and multiplies the significand (which is linear)."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Significand&oldid=850602451 (citations and emphasis removed)
August 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word mantissa
The significand (also mantissa or coefficient, sometimes also argument or fraction) is part of a number in scientific notation or a floating-point number, consisting of its significant digits. Depending on the interpretation of the exponent, the significand may represent an integer or a fraction. The word mantissa seems to have been introduced by Arthur Burks in 1946 writing for the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, although this use of the word is discouraged by the IEEE floating-point standard committee as well as some professionals such as the creator of the standard, William Kahan."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Significand&oldid=850602451
August 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list mantisic
I found myself here again after looking up mantissa. Thanks, fbharjo!
August 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word trifurcated
I didn't know fish had fur.
August 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list a-fight
I hope you won't fight me on this--I've added a couple entries.
August 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word chicken scratch
(Note the "n. Poultry feed" and "n. Slang Money" definitions over on scratch.)
August 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word chicken feed
Cf. chicken scratch.
August 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word chicken scratch
I'd thought "paltry sum of money" too--but I just discovered chicken feed, which seems to be the more common expression.
August 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word sigla
See comment on overline.
July 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word vinculum
See citations on radical and overline.
July 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word overline
"An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In mathematical notation, an overline has been used for a long time as a vinculum, a way of showing that certain symbols belong together. The original use in Ancient Greek was to indicate compositions of Greek letters as Greek numerals. In Latin it indicates Roman numerals multiplied by a thousand and it forms medieval abbreviations (sigla)."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Overline&oldid=844031262
July 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word radical
"In 1637 Descartes was the first to unite the German radical sign √ with the vinculum to create the radical symbol in common use today."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Radical_symbol&oldid=852068667
July 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word flesh-brush
*sings* It's beginning to look a lot like flesh-brush....
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list honk
Honk if you love this list. (*honk!*)
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word paper
I just noticed this definition from the Century: "In book-binding, to paste the end-papers and fly-leaves at the beginning and end of (a volume), before fitting it in its covers."
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Lichtenberg ratio
"In 1786, the German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg described the advantages of basing a paper size on an aspect ratio of √2 in a letter to Johann Beckmann. The formats that became ISO paper sizes A2, A3, B3, B4, and B5 were developed in France. They were listed in a 1798 law on taxation of publications that was based in part on page sizes.
The main advantage of this system is its scaling. Rectangular paper with an aspect ratio of √2 has the unique property that, when cut or folded in half midway between its shorter sides, each half has the same √2 aspect ratio and half the area of the whole sheet before it was divided. Equivalently, if one lays two same-sized sheets paper with an aspect ratio of √2 side-by-side along their longer side, they form a larger rectangle with the aspect ratio of √2 and double the area of each individual sheet."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ISO_216&oldid=836238841
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list paper-and-papermaking
Absolutely.
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word bird's milk
Cf. non-dairy-beverages.
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word casse paper
Awwww. What a cutie! Okay, fine--I'll foster a list.
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word paper
Does anybody have a list about paper and/or papermaking yet?
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Myrica
God bless Myrica.
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list galactic-milk--words-that-lead-the-whey
There's fun stuff over on this non-dairy-beverages list, too.
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list non-dairy-beverages
This is great! I'd never heard of candlenut milk.
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ginglymus
So profoundly articulate!
July 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word octonion
“As numbers go, the familiar real numbers — those found on the number line, like 1, π and -83.777 — just get things started. Real numbers can be paired up in a particular way to form “complex numbers,” first studied in 16th-century Italy, that behave like coordinates on a 2-D plane. Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing is like translating and rotating positions around the plane. Complex numbers, suitably paired, form 4-D “quaternions,” discovered in 1843 by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who on the spot ecstatically chiseled the formula into Dublin’s Broome Bridge. John Graves, a lawyer friend of Hamilton’s, subsequently showed that pairs of quaternions make octonions: numbers that define coordinates in an abstract 8-D space.”
— “The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature” (https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/)
July 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word beet
"To make better; improve; alleviate or relieve (hunger, thirst, grief, the needs of a person, etc.)."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
July 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word tanuki
Consider yourself added to my calendar.
July 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Fermatian inference
See comment on mathematical induction.
July 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word mathematical induction
When I talk with folks who've studied mathematics, they like to tell me how helpful induction is--but I've been confused, because it sounds much more like they're using deduction. Instead I've learned that they're actually talking about mathematical induction.
I'll just leave this here for the next time I need to remember which is which:
"For the history of the name "mathematical induction", see
•Florian Cajori, Origin of the Name "Mathematical Induction" (1918):
The process of reasoning called "mathematical induction" has had several independent origins. It has been traced back to the Swiss Jakob (James) Bernoulli |Opera, Tomus I, Genevae, MDCCXLIV, p. 282, reprinted from Acta eruditorum, Lips., 1686, p. 360. See also Jakob Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713, p. 95|, the Frenchmen B.Pascal |OEuvres completes de Blaise Pascal, Vol. 3, Paris, 1866, p. 248| and P.Fermat |Charles S Peirce in the Century Dictionary, Art."Induction," and in the Monist, Vol. 2, 1892, pp. 539, 545; Peirce called mathematical induction the "Fermatian inference"|, and the Italian F.Maurolycus |G.Vacca, Bulletin Am. Math. Soc., Vol. 16, 1909, pp. 70-73|."
-- https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1080417/why-is-mathematical-induction-called-mathematical
July 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list this-word-is-more-than-one-word
I adore this list!
July 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word tanuki
You've outdone yourself once again, qms!
July 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word heptadecagon
"As 17 is a Fermat prime, the regular heptadecagon is a constructible polygon (that is, one that can be constructed using a compass and unmarked straightedge): this was shown by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1796 at the age of 19."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heptadecagon&oldid=837458759
July 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word vortex
Ha! The first time I read that, I thought it said "vicious."
July 3, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word vortex
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"A supposed collection of particles of very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or a planet. Descartes attempted to account for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it, by a theory of vortices."
And from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"In the Cartesian philosophy, a collection of material particles, forming a fluid or ether, endowed with a rapid rotatory motion about an axis, and filling all space, by which Descartes accounted for the motions of the universe. This theory attracted much attention at one time, but is now entirely discredited."
July 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word sycee
I'll second both previous comments.
July 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word groupoid
See citation on magma.
July 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word magma
"According to Bergman and Hausknecht (1996): "There is no generally accepted word for a set with a not necessarily associative binary operation. The word groupoid is used by many universal algebraists, but workers in category theory and related areas object strongly to this usage because they use the same word to mean 'category in which all morphisms are invertible'. The term magma was used by Serre |Lie Algebras and Lie Groups, 1965|." It also appears in Bourbaki's Éléments de mathématique, Algèbre, chapitres 1 à 3, 1970."
-- From Wikipedia's page for "Magma (algebra)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magma_(algebra)&oldid=848070422)
July 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word rewet
Not what I was expecting.
June 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user jamesdye
I just found your lovely hollow-land list. Someone had listed seeing, and I was intrigued by the tags.
June 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word epiblast
Blast! I nominate you to make the list, bilby.
June 25, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word heliox
"Heliox generates less airway resistance than air and thereby requires less mechanical energy to ventilate the lungs. "Work of Breathing" (WOB) is reduced. It does this by two mechanisms:
1.increased tendency to laminar flow;
2.reduced resistance in turbulent flow."
-- From Wikipedia's heliox page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heliox&oldid=835607282
June 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word epiblast
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"In botany, a name applied by Richard to a second small cotyledon which is found in wheat and some other grasses.
In embryology, the outer or external blastodermic membrane or layer of cells, forming the ectoderm or epiderm: distinguished at first from hypoblast, then from both hypoblast and mesoblast. See cut under blastocæle."
June 21, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user postnomer
I like your lists.
June 21, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Euler's identity
See citation (with a bit about Gauss) on pons asinorum.
June 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Diophantus of Alexandria
"While reading Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac's edition of Diophantus' Arithmetica, Pierre de Fermat concluded that a certain equation considered by Diophantus had no solutions, and noted in the margin without elaboration that he had found "a truly marvelous proof of this proposition," now referred to as Fermat's Last Theorem. This led to tremendous advances in number theory, and the study of Diophantine equations ("Diophantine geometry") and of Diophantine approximations remain important areas of mathematical research."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Diophantus&oldid=842662729
June 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word can
Cogito ergo can.
June 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Aw, shucks. Thanks vm. I love this site and everyone here--and I'm glad you're on the remarkable list, too.
June 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Euler
"Euler's work touched upon so many fields that he is often the earliest written reference on a given matter. In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_things_named_after_Leonhard_Euler&oldid=844040346
June 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
I've been having fun with the "List of things named after Leonhard Euler" page.
June 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word farnarkle
Define pissfart.
June 1, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word harmamaxa
Ha--not sure how I missed it. Thank you, bilby!
May 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word mark
"A significant note, character, sign, token, or indication; a determinative attestation. In logic, to say that a thing has a certain mark is to say that something in particular is true of it. Thus, according to a certain school of metaphysicians, “incognizability is a mark of the Infinite.”"
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
May 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list curry-zone
Any time!
May 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word well-heeled
That's some etymology.
May 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list curry-zone
I went to a restaurant yesterday that offered bhendi masala, aloo govi, and baigan vartha.
May 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list fore
That's the risk (and joy) of open lists (and why open list is my middle name.)
But, to my shame and horror, I just realized that bilby must have already added foredeck to this list ages ago. I'll still keep searching for fore words, though.
May 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list fore
I'd forgotten how much I love this list. (I just added foredeck.)
May 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list simplified-spellings
Thanks, blby!
May 18, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list the-bindery
And fanfare.
May 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list path-finding
You're not moved by pathos?
May 15, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word rabble
"An iron bar bent at right angles at one end, used in the operation of puddling for stirring the melted iron, so as to allow it to be more fully exposed to the action of the air and the lining of the furnace."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list my-stupid-day
And I love that this list has rewrite.
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list retention-of-larval-traits-in-adults
My new favorite list.
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user blafferty
*passes out spoons for everyone*
Do we all have plates? Who still needs fufluns?
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word scrumpy
Brackets around "proto-Wordie und playboy" please--I might have a couple places for it.
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word spoon
See semantic satiation.
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word dust
Yes! And/or Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
May 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user qms
Just stopping by to say your prowess with the limericks is astonishing. I am ever in awe.
May 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word zaddy
why do you hate freedom
May 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list cattle
Thanks, bilby!
May 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word usurps the prerogative of her husband
How had I never heard of Ebenezer Brewer before? Thank you!!!
May 3, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word spinning a brody
Spinning one's car in a circle on the ice. See http://helenair.com/lifestyles/words-and-phrases-that-really-only-make-sense-to-montanans/collection_fa664822-0e12-11e5-b51b-5f1cdc6da6b1.html#18
May 3, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list a-boat
Each new list you make is my favorite!
May 3, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list washington--my-home
I think the Moines are allowed to travel where they please.
May 3, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Kentucky
See my-old-kentucky-home; also see word-derby.
May 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Oregon
Also see places-in-oregon by misterbaby.
May 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
seamount
May 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word fish-ball
It's something that sounds infinitely more appetizing than a foot-ball.
April 24, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word a busybody
See comments on narrowbody.
April 19, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word narrowbody
Brackets around a busybody, please. I have a list for it.
Also, I looked through nobody's lists, but I didn't see this word there.
April 19, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word bilby
*presses button politely*
April 17, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word bilby
Ooh! A delicious food pellet!
What a great party.
April 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word bilby
*presses button*
April 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list o-4
Is the Italian version called lapotopogigio?
April 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list but-y-tho
Ythanked.
April 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word yfastened
See comment on yclept.
April 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word yclensed
See comment on yclept.
April 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ypunched
See comment on yclept.
April 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ylem
If those lamingtons were made with yellowcake uranium, I think I'll just hold out for a ylemon tart.
April 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ylem
This word reminds me of Elam.
April 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word vending machine
Holy water.
"The first vending machine was also one of his constructions; when a coin was introduced via a slot on the top of the machine, a set amount of holy water was dispensed. This was included in his list of inventions in his book Mechanics and Optics. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hero_of_Alexandria&oldid=835926439
April 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word vending machine
"In a poem by Ausonius in the 4th century AD, he mentions a stone-cutting saw powered by water. Hero of Alexandria is credited with many such wind and steam powered machines in the 1st century AD, including the Aeolipile and the vending machine, often these machines were associated with worship, such as animated altars and automated temple doors."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Engine&oldid=833084943
April 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list fresco
I think it's chapter 718, but who's counting?
Edit: No, wait--it's 717. My plaster--1 list is 718.
April 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word myrobalan
See comment on myrobolan.
April 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list hebrew-words--1
Nice! You might enjoy john's yiddishkeit list.
April 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list words-from-fables
I adore Fables--and now I adore this list.
April 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Prussian blue
"Coordination complexes have been known since the beginning of modern chemistry. Early well-known coordination complexes include dyes such as Prussian blue. Their properties were first well understood in the late 1800s, following the 1869 work of Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coordination_complex&oldid=829385587
March 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word coordination complex
"In chemistry, a coordination complex consists of a central atom or ion, which is usually metallic and is called the coordination centre, and a surrounding array of bound molecules or ions, that are in turn known as ligands or complexing agents."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coordination_complex&oldid=829385587
March 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user tsukum
Aw--thanks! And welcome to Wordnik!
March 30, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list words-from-chess
Might I suggest the Latvian Gambit?
March 29, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
quibbling
March 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list sickle-shaped
Would you consider adding falx?
March 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word wine diamond
"Tartaric acid may be most immediately recognizable to wine drinkers as the source of "wine diamonds", the small potassium bitartrate crystals that sometimes form spontaneously on the cork or bottom of the bottle. These "tartrates" are harmless, despite sometimes being mistaken for broken glass, and are prevented in many wines through cold stabilization (which is not always preferred since it can change the wine's profile). The tartrates remaining on the inside of aging barrels were at one time a major industrial source of potassium bitartrate."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tartaric_acid&oldid=830080069
March 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Rockoonnookkeeper
Cf. raccoonnookkeeper.
March 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Rockoon
And if that Rockoon had a nook and a keeper, you could be a Rockoonnookkeeper.
March 26, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word limit situation
"A limit situation (German: Grenzsituation) is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have differing experiences from those arising from ordinary situations.
The concept was developed by Karl Jaspers, who considered fright, guilt, finality and suffering as some of the key limit situations arising in everyday life."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Limit_situation&oldid=814921970
March 21, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word iroquoisy
I have a friend who's reading Plutarch and told me she's been thinking about virtue. We were talking about indulgences and Martin Luther. Then I was reading a Wikipedia article about criticism, which led to critical thinking, then sapere aude, then limit-experience, then limit situation, then antinomianism, and I was right back to faith and good works.
Saint Kateri Tekakwitha strikes again.
March 21, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word siling
What do we think of the Century definition here? Should it actually be under sling? (Cf. sile.)
March 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list duelistic
Just arrived here after getting push-pull as a random word. I adore this list.
March 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Thomas Fincke
"Fincke was born in Flensburg, Schleswig and died in Copenhagen. His lasting achievement is found in his book Geometria rotundi (1583), in which he introduced the modern names of the trigonometric functions tangent and secant."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Fincke&oldid=816128832
March 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word luz
"A bone in the human body which the Rabbinical writers affirmed to be indestructible, and which is variously said to have been one of the lumbar vertebræ, the sacrum, the coccyx, a sesamoid bone of the great toe, or one of the triquetrous or Wormian bones of the cranium."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
March 16, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Trojan-horsing
““Trojan-horsing” is a term beloved among show creators, who believe that network executives want a dab of originality, but mostly for marketing purposes. When Jenji Kohan explained to NPR why she’d created the prison show “Orange Is the New Black” around the character of Piper, an attractive, upper-middle-class white woman, she said, “Piper was my Trojan horse. You’re not going to go into a network and sell a show on really fascinating tales of black women and Latina women and old women and criminals.””
— From “Donald Glover Can’t Save You: The creator of “Atlanta” wants TV to tell hard truths. Is the audience ready?” By Tad Friend in The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/donald-glover-cant-save-you).
March 11, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word manspalining
Spa... lining?
March 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word retiracy
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"n. Retirement; -- mostly used in a jocose or burlesque way."
March 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list heraldry
decrement
March 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list heraldry
sinister
March 6, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user mercy
I like your lists.
March 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word harlotry
"A harlot; a strumpet; a baggage."
--from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
March 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list am-and-fm
What a great list!
March 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word Mama Plethora
See plethora's "words-and-phrases-i-picked-up-from-my-mother" list.
March 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list words-and-phrases-i-picked-up-from-my-mother
Awww. Greetings, Mama Plethora!
March 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word stick
"The number of twenty-five eels, or the tenth part of a bind, according to the old statute de ponderibus. Also called strike."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
March 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list in-seal-engraving
No seals were harmed in the making of this list.
March 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list clarissa-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady
Just arrived here after getting varletess as a random word. What a great list!
March 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word warp-beam
Not what I was expecting.
March 1, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word worm gear
"In machinery, a gearwheel of which the teeth are so formed that they are acted on and the wheel is made to revolve by a worm or shaft on which a spiral is turned—that is, by an endless screw. See cuts under Hindley's screw (at screw), steam-engine, and odometer."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
March 1, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word attributive
"In grammar, pertaining to or expressing an attribute; used (as a word) in direct description without predication: as, a bad pen, a burning house, a ruined man."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
March 1, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list the-bindery
And undercut.
February 28, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word coppo
"An Italian oil-measure, equal in Lucca and Modena to 26⅜ United States (old wine) gallons: but in the Lombardo-Venetian system of 1803 tho coppo or cappo was precisely a deciliter."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
February 27, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word askutasquash
See comments on squash.
February 23, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word coral
I like how different these definitions are:
"The unfertilized eggs of a female lobster, which turn a reddish color when cooked."
-- from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
"The ovaries of a cooked lobster; -- so called from their color."
-- from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
"The unimpregnated roe or eggs of the lobster, which when boiled assume the appearance of coral."
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
February 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word rutsutsumu
Thanks, Bilby Baggins.
February 22, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word tsutsumu
With a furoshiki?
February 21, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word hbty
Hottest baseball team yet.
February 15, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word hbty
How 'bout them Yankees?
February 15, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list our-potential-autobiographies
I just read Peggy Guggenheim's Confessions of an Art Addict, which reminded me of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, so forgive me if I get stuck in that vein (as it were).
February 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word btvs
(Best to view surreptitiously.)
February 13, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list underside-of-a-body--as-in-a-bird
I'd say this is my favorite of your lists so far, but I'd end up having to say that every time you make a new one.
February 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word unrestrained condiments
Ooh--brackets around "misuse of mustard" please.
February 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list quacksalvers-et-al--nostrum
Arrived here after seeing armamentarium on the list of Recently Loved Words. What a fun list!
February 5, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list triple-anagrams
What a fantastic list!
February 2, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word thunderstorm asthma
"The issues — which would ultimately claim ten lives — turned out to be the result of a rare phenomenon known as “thunderstorm asthma.” Though still not fully understood, the weather event is thought to occur due to the spread of pollen and mold that gets swept into the high humidity of the clouds, broken into smaller particles, and rained back down. For a person with asthma — whose airways are chronically inflamed — the spread of these particles can set off an attack."
-- https://undark.org/article/thunderstorm-asthma-australia/
January 31, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word terminal burrowing
See comments on aporrhipsis.
January 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word aporrhipsis
Cf. terminal burrowing.
January 14, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word remorse
Man. That GNU Webster's definition is something I'd have expected from the Century: "The anguish, like gnawing pain, excited by a sense of guilt; compunction of conscience for a crime committed, or for the sins of one's past life."
January 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list potential-names-for-my-autobiography
I favorited this list even before it had any entries--but now if I could favorite it again, I would.
January 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word knifegun
Brackets around "bilbutt" and "Captain Cranky Bowtie Bilbutt," please. I have a list for them.
January 12, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list calendar-stories
Ach! How did I miss this? Sionnach, you are the best.
January 10, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
brumaire?
January 10, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word nihil ex nihilo
Nothing ever could.
January 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the user tsukum
I like your lists.
January 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the list things-that-could-go-in-a-house-or-mansion
What a fun list!
January 8, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word beauty parlor stroke syndrome
“Richard Bernstein is the medical director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and delivers his expertise to me in the patient-if-slightly brusque tone to which I am accustomed in every doctor I speak to. On a hunch I asked him if “beauty parlor stroke syndrome” is a real medical term, and he said no — getting one’s hair washed is merely one possibility in a range of options that cause the actual medical condition properly known as “vertebral artery dissection from hyperextension of the neck,” a considerably less grabby, though ultimately scarier name. What seems to happen is that certain movements of or pressures on the neck can result in a flap-like tear in the vertebral artery, which supplies blood to the brain. From there blood enters (and thereby thickens) the arterial wall, which can cause a blood clot, impeding blood flow and potentially causing a stroke.”
— “Is Beauty Parlor Stroke Syndrome Going to Kill Me?” by Katie Heany (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/is-this-going-to-kill-me-beauty-parlor-stroke-syndrome/517851/)
January 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word aglaja
I’m so sorry for your loss, rolig. It sounds like she was a delightful friend.
January 7, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word feedback loop
See citation on ecosystem.
January 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word ecosystem
"All around |Walter| Cannon, theorists were thrilling to the idea of self-righting systems, resistant to the buffeting forces of change. The English botanist Arthur Tansley coined the word “ecosystem” in 1935; the maintenance of stability would soon be described as one of the cardinal properties of ecologies. Soon economists were relating homeostasis to self-correcting markets; Norbert Wiener, the mathematician, saw that machines and creatures might be governed by autonomous control systems stabilized by “feedback” loops. Cells, cities, societies, even political institutions—all had the capacity to steady their states through the actions of self-regulated and counterpoised forces."
-- "My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion" by Siddhartha Mukherjee (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/my-fathers-body-at-rest-and-in-motion)
January 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word homeostasis
"In the late nineteen-twenties, the physiologist Walter Cannon coined the term “homeostasis”—joining together the Greek homoios (similar) and stasis (stillness). The capacity to sustain internal constancy was an essential feature of an organism, he argued."
-- "My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion" by Siddhartha Mukherjee (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/my-fathers-body-at-rest-and-in-motion)
January 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word nebnose
"Of course, you might dismiss my suspicions as no more than the vivid imagination of a writer, and that’s certainly possible, because an occupational hazard of reading and writing about crime is spotting possible criminal enterprise everywhere and in everyone. To be a writer is to be curious, or to use Pittsburgh parlance, a nebnose."
-- "The Suburban Serial Killer Next Door: On the Dark, Imagined Secrets of Pittsburgh" by Rebecca Drake (http://lithub.com/the-suburban-serial-killer-next-door/)
January 4, 2018
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
assay
December 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word agnotology
"|Robert| Proctor had found that the cigarette industry did not want consumers to know the harms of its product, and it spent billions obscuring the facts of the health effects of smoking. This search led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology.
It comes from agnosis, the neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or ‘not knowing’, and ontology, the branch of metaphysics which deals with the nature of being. Agnotology is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour."
-- http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance
December 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
clinquant?
December 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
moire
December 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word fly-tipping
"Rod Bray of developers Northbridge Properties told Newshub that the culprits were probably trying to cut their own demolition costs by fly-tipping the house.
"The options are either pay to have it demolished, or you dump it somewhere else and make it someone else's problem," he said, pointing out that it would cost his company over NZ$20,000 ($13,800; £10,300) to remove it."
-- "Entire house fly-tipped in New Zealand" http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42166058
November 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Earthquake Baroque
"Earthquake Baroque is a style of Baroque architecture found in the Philippines, which suffered destructive earthquakes during the 17th century and 18th century, where large public buildings, such as churches, were rebuilt in a Baroque style. Similar events led to the Pombaline architecture in Lisbon following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and Sicilian Baroque in Sicily following the 1693 earthquake."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earthquake_Baroque&oldid=808426572
November 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list first-letter-removed-anagram
Wow! What a cool list.
November 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list molding--or-having-the-capacity-to-mold-disparate-things-into-a-unified-whole
Would you accept plasticity?
November 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Thorsday
Ha!
November 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word agon
"The exhibition’s title suggests an agon — Overlook: Teresita Fernández Confronts Frederic Church at Olana. Fernández admits that’s the intention in a promotional video where she addresses the viewer, relating that she “wanted to create a somewhat confrontational and immersive experience” that would reinsert the “cultural component that’s always erased.”"
-- https://hyperallergic.com/396690/grappling-with-the-hudson-river-school/
October 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word heat shock protein
"Beginning in the mid-1960s, investigators recognized that many HSPs function as molecular chaperones and thus play a critical role in protein folding, intracellular trafficking of proteins, and coping with proteins denatured by heat and other stresses."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heat_shock_protein&oldid=797825597
October 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word lammergeier
See the examples on phene.
October 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word phene
The usage examples for this suggest something quite different: "The so-called phene, or lammergeier, is fond of its young, provides its food with ease, fetches food to its nest, and is of a kindly disposition. (The History of Animals)"
October 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word alienist
"The physician reading this mysterious letter was no ordinary doctor. He was the Honorable Gustav Scholer, head Coroner for the city of New York, and one of the era’s leading alienists—an arcane term for specialists who studied the mental pathology of those deemed “alienated” from society."
-- "Peek Inside the Grisly, Salacious Case Files of NYC’s Head Coroner in the Early 1900s"
by Luke Spencer (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/peek-inside-the-grisly-salacious-case-files-of-nycs-head-coroner-in-the-early-1900s)
October 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list i-hate-perfume
I just noticed that this is the only listing of "ointmint" (my new favorite word).
October 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list exposure
What a great list!
October 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Fourier transform
"Of course, if a piano and a violin play the same high C at the exact same volume, there is still some quality that feels different between the two notes. It turns out that pure tones do not occur naturally, and when a piano or violin produces a high C, the sound wave is made up of a specific combination of different pure tones. The different amplitudes and frequencies have nice relationships with one another, which is why you hear a specific note rather than a mess of clashing noises, but the single pitch you hear does not correspond to a single frequency. The hard-to-define quality of sound that allows you to identify what instrument you’re listening to is determined by the exact combination of pure tones. When different instruments all play at the same time, the various pure tones add together to create the music you hear.
"So what do pure tones have to do with the groove on a record being able to tell David Bowie and Nina Simone apart? It turns out that any curve can be written in exactly one way as a combination of curves with uniform amplitude and frequency. In other words, the single squiggle captured in the groove of a record player can be written as a combination of pure tones. And there is only one combination that will produce any particular squiggle. The tool that makes this possible comes from mathematics and is called the Fourier transform. Combined with the fact that the sound we experience is determined by the exact combination of pure tones, this bit of mathematics explains how the vinyl record groove can completely determine the music you hear."
-- "Which Sounds Better, Analog or Digital Music?" by Katrina Morgan (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/which-sounds-better-analog-or-digital-music/)
October 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word fresh
These are my favorites from the Century:
"Tipsy."
"Sober; not tipsy."
October 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list confectio-damocritis
Aw, thanks, c_b. Anything to further our studies.
October 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list nets
Would you consider adding set-net?
October 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list a-perfect-red
Another book to add to my list! Thanks, c_b.
October 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word st johns blood
Heck yeah, it's interesting. I've been trying to figure out how to collect and grind my own pigments (mostly for paper marbling on alum-mordanted paper, but it's fun no matter what).
October 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word protein
"Proteins were recognized as a distinct class of biological molecules in the eighteenth century by Antoine Fourcroy and others, distinguished by the molecules' ability to coagulate or flocculate under treatments with heat or acid. Noted examples at the time included albumin from egg whites, blood serum albumin, fibrin, and wheat gluten.
"Proteins were first described by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Johannes Mulder and named by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1838. Mulder carried out elemental analysis of common proteins and found that nearly all proteins had the same empirical formula, C400H620N100O120P1S1. He came to the erroneous conclusion that they might be composed of a single type of (very large) molecule. The term "protein" to describe these molecules was proposed by Mulder's associate Berzelius; protein is derived from the Greek word πρώτειος (proteios), meaning "primary", "in the lead", or "standing in front", + -in."
-- from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Protein&oldid=799576822 (footnote citations removed)
October 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list mauve
*favorited* (and also added to my request list at the library)
October 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list latinized-meme-animals
This list makes me happy.
October 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word seythe
Further affiant sayeth naught.
October 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word coal tar
These are great, c_b!
October 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list meme-animals
Would you accept doge and/or doggo?
October 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word type specimen
"Linnaeus' remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens, following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen he is known to have examined when writing the species description was himself."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carl_Linnaeus&oldid=801408157
September 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list linnaean-lexicon
Are there any lists of scientific names coined by Linnaeus? (And have I just nominated myself to make one?)
September 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word lac gallinaceum
See comment on bird's milk.
September 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Gagana
See comment on bird's milk.
September 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word bird's milk
"The concept of avian milk (Ancient Greek: ὀρνίθων γάλα, ornithon gala) stretches back to ancient Greece. Aristophanes uses "the milk of the birds" in the plays The Birds and The Wasps as a proverbial rarity. The expression is also found in Strabo's Geographica where the island of Samos is described as a blest country to which those who praise it do not hesitate to apply the proverb that "it produces even bird's milk" (φέρει καί ὀρνίθων γάλα). A similar expression lac gallinaceum (Latin for "chicken's milk") was also later used by Petronius (38.1) and Pliny the Elder (Plin. Nat. pr. 24) as a term for a great rarity. The idiom became later common in many languages and appeared in Slavic folk tales. In one such tale the beautiful princess tests the ardor and resourcefulness of her suitor by sending him out into the wilderness to find and bring back the one fantastical luxury she does not have: bird's milk. In the fairy tale Little Hare by Aleksey Remizov (who wrote many imitations of traditional Slavic folk tales) the magic bird Gagana produces milk."
-- From https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ptasie_mleczko&oldid=781825215 (footnote citations removed)
September 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word ring
"In salt-making, a fire-brick arch of varying length, placed under the evaporating-pans to temper the heat and so prevent the salt from being burned."
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
September 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word evernia
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"A genus of parmeliaceous lichens having a fruticulose or pendulous thallus, and apothecia with a concave disk of a color different from that of the thallus. Evernia Prunastri is used for dyeing, and was formerly used, ground down with starch, for hair-powder."
September 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the user Josh.thomaa
I thought the first rule of linguistics fight club was that we weren't allowed to verb about linguistics fight club.
September 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word obelus
Oh, excellent, qms. Well done!
September 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word gutter
It certainly stands out--I guess I'd never thought about where it comes from before.
September 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word gutter
I like this part from the Century: "In printing, one of a number of pieces of wood or metal, channeled in the center with a groove or gutter, used to separate the pages of type in a form. Also gutter-stick."
September 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word sea silk
See comment on byssus.
September 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word byssus
"Sea silk sounds like the stuff of legend. Harvested from rare clams, this thread flashes gold in the sunlight, weighs almost nothing, and comes with a heavy load of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misinformation. But the fiber itself is no myth. Its flaxen strands come from Pinna nobilis, or the pen shell, a giant Mediterranean mollusk that measures up to a yard in length. To attach themselves to rocks or the seafloor, some clams secrete proteins that, upon contact with seawater, harden into a silky filament called byssus. The byssus of the pen shell makes sea silk, the world’s rarest thread."
-- http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sea-silk-rarest-thread-italy-clams-textiles-fabric
September 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list encyclopedia-gustatorica
*favorited*
September 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word chalupa
It's also the name for a kind of boat. See la chalupa.
September 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list anagrams-of-placenames
I adore anagrams. Any chance we could convince you to tag each of these with their corresponding place names?
September 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list stormanteau
Any portmanteau in a stormanteau!
September 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word anthrotherology
"As human settlements expand across the earth’s surface, conflicts with wildlife are increasing. According to a review in the journal Animal Conservation, this represents “one of the most widespread and intractable issues facing |conservationists| today.” Researchers have been paying closer attention to these clashes: The number of scientific articles published annually about human-wildlife conflict (ranging from grain theft by rodents to farmers being trampled by elephants) increased from zero to more than 700 between 1995 and 2015, as indexed by Google Scholar. There have even been calls to coin an entire new discipline for studying the issue: anthrotherology, combining the Greek words for human (anthropos) and wild animal (ther). To understand the anthrotherologist’s dilemma, look to other countries’ parallels, like Japan’s wild hog problem or, closer to home, many national parks’ issues with bears."
-- "On the Front Lines of South Africa's Baboon Wars" by Kimon de Greef (https://www.outsideonline.com/2231291/frontlines-south-africas-human-vs-baboon-war)
September 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word polyploidy
Here's where I was looking: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polyploid&oldid=798346728
September 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word endopolyploidy
See comments on polyploidy.
September 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word polyploidy
So I was just doing a bit of Wiki-ing and found this: "In addition, polyploidy occurs in some tissues of animals that are otherwise diploid, such as human muscle tissues. This is known as endopolyploidy."
September 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list animal-identity-crisis
Wasn't there a list of plants that have animals in their names? Where was that?
Edit: I found it! See madmouth's love-across-kingdoms.
September 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list love-across-kingdoms
Ah, here it is! I was looking for this list over on bilby's animal-identity-crisis.
September 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word localization
See citation on Anderson localization.
August 30, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Anderson localization
"In the 1950s, Philip Anderson, a physicist at Bell Laboratories, discovered a strange phenomenon. In some situations where it seems as though waves should advance freely, they just stop — like a tsunami halting in the middle of the ocean.
Anderson won the 1977 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of what is now called Anderson localization, a term that refers to waves that stay in some “local” region rather than propagating the way you’d expect. He studied the phenomenon in the context of electrons moving through impure materials (electrons behave as both particles and waves), but under certain circumstances it can happen with other types of waves as well."
-- "Mathematicians Tame Rogue Waves, Lighting Up Future of LEDs" by Kevin Hartnett (https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-tame-rogue-waves-lighting-up-future-of-leds-20170822)
August 30, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word fist cods
Apparently "a slaughterhouse worker who removes the hide from the rear legs of lambs and calves and curries calf carcasses."
-- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fist%20cods
August 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Moon illusion
"The Moon illusion is an optical illusion which causes the Moon to appear larger near the horizon than it does higher up in the sky."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moon_illusion&oldid=796703035
August 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list sick-animals
Nice! Hernesheir's got a sheepishness list.
August 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list test-list--23
Test.
August 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word amphipathic
See usage example on guaiacol.
August 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word guaiacol
"The researchers focused on a small amphipathic compound known as guaiacol. This molecule is linked with the smoky taste that develops when malted barley is smoked on peat fires, and is far more common in Scottish whiskies than in American or Irish ones, the researchers said."
-- https://www.livescience.com/60158-why-whiskey-tastes-good-diluted.html#undefined.uxfs
August 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word swaddle
"The biggest limitation to this research may be the definition of swaddling itself. The authors of the study acknowledge one of the “several” limitations to their meta-analysis is the fact that none of the studies they reviewed clearly outlined what constitutes a swaddle. And besides that, as anyone who has tried to swaddle a baby can confirm, good swaddling takes practice. Many parents, for fear of too tightly wrapping their babies, end up swaddling too loosely, which is itself a suffocation hazard. (Some daycare centers in the United States don’t allow swaddling for this reason.)"
-- https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/is-swaddling-safe/482055/
August 16, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word sousveillance
"The term "sousveillance", coined by Steve Mann, stems from the contrasting French words sur, meaning "above", and sous, meaning "below", i.e. "surveillance" denotes the "eye-in-the-sky" watching from above, whereas "sousveillance" denotes bringing the camera or other means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings), or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching)."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sousveillance&oldid=788558213
August 16, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pastry
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. A place where pies, tarts, etc., are made.
"n. Viands made of paste, or of which paste constitutes a principal ingredient; particularly, the crust or cover of a pie, tart, or the like."
August 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word squaffles
I prefer fufluns.
August 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word twistical
Another great one. Thanks, qms.
August 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word bicinia
"In music of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, a bicinium (pl. bicinia) was a composition for only two parts, especially one for the purpose of teaching counterpoint or singing."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bicinium&oldid=782797821
August 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word curculio
Is it weird that I think those weevils are kinda cute?
August 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word nutation
Compare counternutation.
August 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word counternutation
"Nutation and counternutation refer to movement of the sacrum defined by the rotation of the promontory downwards and anteriorly, as with lumbar extension (nutation); or upwards and posteriorly, as with lumbar flexion (counternutation)."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anatomical_terms_of_motion&oldid=778251662
August 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word et in arcadia ego
Arcades ambo.
August 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word scenography
Nice one, qms!
August 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word interoception
"Few neuroscientists still believe in an immaterial soul. Yet many follow Descartes in claiming that conscious experience involves awareness of a ‘thinking thing’: the self. There is an emerging consensus that such self-awareness is actually a form of bodily awareness, produced (at least in part) by interoception, our ability to monitor and detect autonomic and visceral processes. For example, the feeling of an elevated heart rate can provide information to the embodied organism that it is in a dangerous or difficult situation."
-- https://aeon.co/essays/psychedelics-work-by-violating-our-models-of-self-and-the-world
August 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word tork
See comments on torks, torque, etc.
August 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word torque
There were a couple of examples over on torked.
August 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word millwright
"As the name suggests, the original function of a millwright was the construction of flour mills, sawmills, paper mills and fulling mills powered by water or wind, mostly of wood with a limited number of metal parts. Since both of these structures originated from antiquity, millwrighting could be considered, arguably, as one of the oldest engineering trades and the forerunner of the modern mechanical engineer.
In modern usage, a millwright is engaged with the erection of machinery. This includes such tasks as leveling, aligning and installing machinery on foundations or base plates and setting, leveling and aligning electric motors or other power sources such as turbines with the equipment, which millwrights typically connect with some type of coupling."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Millwright&oldid=785197392
August 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word paraquat
See comment on viologen.
August 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word viologen
"The name is because this class of compounds is easily reduced to the radical mono cation, which is colored intensely blue.
Possibly the best-known viologen is paraquat, which is one of the world's most widely used herbicides."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Viologen&oldid=792580672
August 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word bromide
"A bit of calm doesn’t sound so bad, but the sedative dose of bromide is too near bromide’s toxicity level. Plus, bromide can accumulate in our bodies. Back in the 1930s-1950s, overuse of bromide products led to appropriately named medical conditions. Bromide-induced coma was dubbed ‘the bromide sleep’. General bromide toxicity was ‘bromism’. Outside medicine, if you were just a bit of a bore you were insultingly called a ‘bromide’."
-- From "Brominated vegetable oil" by Raychelle Burks (https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/brominated-vegetable-oil/9527.article)
See, also: brominated vegetable oil, creaming.
July 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word brominated vegetable oil
See comment on creaming.
July 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word BVO
Short for brominated vegetable oil. See comment on creaming.
July 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word creaming
"Brominated vegetable oil, called BVO for short, is made by adding bromine across the double bonds of certain fatty acids in vegetable oil, usually soybean oil. Like plain vegetable oil, BVO does a good job of dissolving water-insoluble food flavour, fragrance and colouring agents, serving as a carrier for these agents in soft drinks, which are mostly water. Neither plain vegetable oil or BVO is water soluble, but we can make oil/water emulsions, dispersing tiny droplets of flavour-carrying oil throughout a soda solution.
"But why use BVO when plain ol’ vegetable oil could work? Density. Over time, gravity does its job and the emulsion breaks down, causing the oil and water to separate. If a plain vegetable oil is used, the oil fraction – which contains those all-important flavouring agents – would float to the top. Food scientists call this ‘creaming’."
-- From "Brominated vegetable oil" by Raychelle Burks (https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/brominated-vegetable-oil/9527.article)
July 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list dogs-named-in-russian-literature
What a delightful list!
July 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word iphone
See iPhone.
July 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list chemistry-and-alchemy
I just arrived here after clicking on lixiviate. What a nice list!
July 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word kali
See additional definitions on Kali.
July 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Kali
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. The plant Salsola Kali, the prickly saltwort or glasswort. See alkali and Salsola.
n. Potash: so called by German chemists. Also kalin.
n. A carpet with a long pile, as distinguished from the carpets without nap.
n. The largest in the set of carpets commonly used in a Persian room, filling the center of the room."
n. For words beginning thus, see cali-."
July 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the user luthien13
luthien13: Welcome to Wordnik!
bilby: I totally read that as ADHD.
July 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word encephalophone
*press*
July 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word encephalophone
Oh look! A delicious food pellet!
July 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list western-pioneer-modern-recipes
I love that bunny salad and drum major salad appear right next to each other on this list.
July 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word encephalophone
*waits*
July 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word encephalophone
*sends telepathic button-pushing signal*
July 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word encephalophone
Ooh! Does anyone have a theremin I can borrow?
July 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word buhach
See citation on pyrethrum.
July 12, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word insectifuge
See citation on pyrethrum.
July 12, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pyrethrum
From the Century:
"n. A powdered preparation of pyrethrum, used as an insectifuge. Also called pyrethrum-powder. See insect-powder and buhach.
n. In pharmacy, the Anacyclus Pyrethrum, or pellitory-of-Spain."
July 12, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word butcha
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"A young one; a boy, babe, bairn, urchin, chit, chicken, sapling, etc."
July 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Ramus
"On the occasion of receiving his degree in 1536, Ramus allegedly took as his thesis Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse, which Walter J. Ong paraphrases as follows: 'All the things that Aristotle has said are inconsistent because they are poorly systematized and can be called to mind only by the use of arbitrary mnemonic devices.'"
-- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrus_Ramus
July 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Lullian Circle
See comment on Ars magna.
July 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Ars magna
"One of the most significant changes between the original and the second version of the Art was in the visuals used. The early version used 16 figures presented as complex, complementary trees, while the system of the Ars Magna featured only four, including one which combined the other three. This figure, a "Lullian Circle," took the form of a paper machine operated by rotating concentrically arranged circles to combine his symbolic alphabet, which was repeated on each level. These combinations were said to show all possible truth about the subject of inquiry."
-- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull
July 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Ars magna
See comment on Herborn Encyclopaedists.
July 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Llull
See comment on Herborn Encyclopaedists.
July 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Herborn Encyclopaedists
"Leibniz’s broader vision of the power of logical calculation was inspired by many thinkers — from the logical works of Aristotle and Ramus to Thomas Hobbes’s proposal to equate reasoning with computation. But Leibniz’s curiosity around the art of combinations per se was sparked by a group called the “Herborn Encyclopaedists” through whom he became acquainted with the works of Ramon Llull, a Majorcan philosopher, logician, and mystical thinker who is thought to have died seven centuries ago this year. Llull’s Ars magna (or “ultimate general art”) from 1308 outlines a form of analysis and argumentation based on working with different permutations of a small number of fundamental attributes."
-- http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/11/10/let-us-calculate-leibniz-llull-and-computational-imagination/
July 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word elephant test
Wikipedia says "the term elephant test refers to situations in which an idea or thing, 'is hard to describe, but instantly recognizable when spotted'."
See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Duck_test&oldid=785523971
June 30, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Fodmaps
"And sometimes your gut distress isn’t caused by a germ at all. It could be an overdose of fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols, known in public health circles as Fodmaps. These are essentially carbohydrates that, eaten in excess, are not well absorbed in the small intestine and then make their way into your colon to cause all kinds of trouble. They include myriad things we’re encouraged to eat including broccoli, brussels sprouts, radicchio, asparagus, avocados, mushrooms, peaches, whole grains and legumes."
-- "What to Blame for Your Stomach Bug? Not Always the Last Thing You Ate" (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/well/live/what-to-blame-for-your-stomach-bug-not-always-the-last-thing-you-ate.html)
June 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-that-sound-like-insults-but-are-not
Fun!
June 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list drug-store-items-that-would-make-horrible-superhero-names
Exactly--with his aviator glasses and bomber jacket (which he'd have picked up last winter in the "seasonal" section).
June 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list drug-store-items-that-would-make-horrible-superhero-names
Stellar list!
June 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list brokeneyes-words
Fantastic!
June 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list poetic-notions
Or paradelle?
June 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word logothete
Nice one, qms.
Also, I'm adding this to my hence list.
June 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list confused-pairs
Oh, fun!
June 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list every-word-ive-seen-objected-to-on-grammatical-grounds
Alright!
June 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word civet
Compare zibet.
June 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word meteotsunami
I saw something about that, too--was it about one of the Great Lakes?
June 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word zooid
See citation on pyrosome.
June 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pyrosome
"Each pyrosome is made up of individual zooids – small, multicellular organisms – linked together in a tunic to form a tube-like colony that is closed on one end. They are filter feeders and use cilia to draw plankton into their mucous filter."
-- "Researchers probe explosion of pyrosomes off the Northwest Coast" (https://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/news/features/pyrosomes/index.cfm)
June 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word frugivore
I haven't had enough coffee for a limerick, so I'll default to haiku:
qms plants seeds
and encourages us to
cultivate our own.
June 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word sourtoe
Why a cocktail? Wouldn't jam make more sense?
June 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word frugivore
Chimps and fruit bats are picky.
When it comes to their lunch, it's sticky.
Why eat cheese or meat?
Choose fruits or a beet.
(But maybe not a durian--they're icky.)
June 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word matta
I was thinking something more like the university from Rocky and Bullwinkle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSVq7X7OPeQ
June 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list woolfs-to-the-lighthouse
Arrived here after getting liftman as a random word. What a nice list!
June 21, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word matta
What's a matta?
June 21, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the user lanas
Your lists are lovely.
June 21, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word rubato
""|Hélène| Grimaud doesn't sound like most pianists: she is a rubato artist, a reinventor of phrasings, a taker of chances. "A wrong note that is played out of élan, you hear it differently than one that is played out of fear," she says.""
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Grimaud&oldid=778559561
June 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list is-defined-as---search-results
I've added it to my list.
June 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list is-defined-as---search-results
This is great!
June 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
adagio
June 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Prussian blue
"The pigment replaced the expensive lapis lazuli and was an important topic in the letters exchanged between Johann Leonhard Frisch and the president of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, between 1708 and 1716."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prussian_blue&oldid=785238123
June 16, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list antiquated-quackery
Would you consider adding bezoars to your list?
June 15, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word penciled
"Marked with fine lines, as if scratched with a pen or painted with a fine brush; specifically, marked with a series of concentric lines, as every feather of the body-plumage of a dark brahma or a partridge cochin hen."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
June 15, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list cryptolects
Just got polari as a random word. Is someone trying to send me a message?
June 15, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list will-do-in-a-pinch
I just read this in an article about Steve Casner's “Careful: A User’s Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds,” (at http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/be-careful-your-mind-makes-accidents-inevitable):
"To an extent, we are accident-prone because we are imaginative. We are determined to use familiar tools in novel ways—we might use a knife handle, say, to break up ice in the freezer, or a screwdriver to pry open a stuck drawer. The problem is that we imagine how things will go right but not how they will go wrong. In psychological terms, we perceive “affordances for action” (the blade of the screwdriver prying off the lid), but not “affordances for harm” (the blade breaking off, flying upward, and stabbing us in the eye). Casner worries that our optimism about our own plans might be an insurmountable part of our evolutionary heritage. Recalling the time he fell off a chair while trying to replace the batteries in his smoke detector—he should have used a ladder—Casner reflects that, in our primate past, it was the climbers who ate."
June 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list pickle-and-such
From now on, I'll be saying ptero's name as pterodactickle.
June 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list will-do-in-a-pinch
This is great, hh. Just arrived here after looking up buffalo nickel.
June 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Book Book
The keeper of the raccoon's nook, of course, is the raccoonnookkeeper, which see.
June 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word raccoonnookkeeper
Also see Book Book.
June 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Book Book
And if that grumpy hen has a raccoon keeping track of her finances from another quiet corner, that would be the Book Book chook cook's raccoon nook bookkeeper.
June 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word thermistor
"Your car is equipped not with a thermometer but with a thermistor. Thermistors work in a similar manner to thermometers, but rather than using a liquid like mercury, thermistors measure the change in electrical current as a result of heat added or taken away. Thermistors are quite convenient, since they are small, cheap to make and for the most part, accurate."
-- from "This is why your car thermometer is almost always wrong" by Greg Porter, in the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/06/12/this-is-why-your-car-thermometer-is-almost-always-wrong/?utm_term=.3c6fc7bbdc39)
June 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list food-that-shall-not-be-named
Um, would you rather have some fufluns? I'm sure we could scare up a few around here somewhere.
June 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list de--3
De-lightful!
June 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list food-that-shall-not-be-named
What--you don't think baby mice wine would go with the head cheese?
June 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word mother
Haha! I'm a sucker for anything stringy and mucilaginous.
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word mother
"n. A stringy, mucilaginous substance which forms in vinegar during the acetous fermentation, and the presence of which sets up and hastens this kind of fermentation. It is produced by a plant, Mycoderma aceti, the germs of which, like those of the yeast-plant, exist in the atmosphere."
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word nitrum
From the examples:
"Mention of this substance is made in (Proverbs 25: 20) -- "and as vinegar upon nitre" -- and in (Jeremiah 2: 26) The article denoted is not that which we now understand by the term nitre i.e. nitrate of Potassa -- "saltpetre" -- but the nitrum of the Latins and the natron or native carbonate of soda of modern chemistry."
Smith's Bible Dictionary
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word guile
"n. The fermented wort used by vinegar-makers."
--from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word mosto
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. Must; specifically, a preparation used for “doctoring” wines of inferior quality: same as doctor, 6."
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word four thieves vinegar
"Four thieves vinegar (also called Marseilles vinegar, Marseilles remedy, prophylactic vinegar, vinegar of the four thieves, camphorated acetic acid, vinaigre des quatre voleurs and acetum quator furum) is a concoction of vinegar (either from red wine, white wine, cider, or distilled white) infused with herbs, spices or garlic that was believed to protect users from the plague. The recipe for this vinegar has almost as many variations as its legend."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Four_thieves_vinegar&oldid=748099207
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list food-that-shall-not-be-named
This list could be paired nicely with john's revolting-beverages.
June 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list food-that-shall-not-be-named
I'm glad this is an open list.
June 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word morsure
Oh, you--with your mordant wit. Now I'm even more sure to add this to my mordants list.
June 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word morsus
This seems right up biocon's alley.
June 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Holdrege
"The Holdrege series consists of very deep, well drained, moderately permeable soils formed in calcareous loess."
-- https://soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/H/HOLDREGE.html
May 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word entisol
Do we not have any lists of soils? I'm fond of the Holdrege series (for obvious reasons).
May 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word evaporated cane juice
Ah. Nice. I just added it to Prolagus's •-crappie-food list.
May 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word versing
Epic.
May 24, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word conker
Thanks, hh!
May 24, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word lightning
See citation on side splash.
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word side flash
See citation on side splash.
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word side splash
"Justin believes that he experienced what’s called a side flash or side splash, in which the lightning ‘splashes’ from something that has been struck – such as a tree or telephone pole – hopscotching to a nearby object or person. Considered the second most common lightning hazard, side splashes inflict 20 to 30 per cent of injuries and fatalities."
-- https://qz.com/989827/what-happens-to-people-who-are-struck-by-lightning/
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word bad trim
Oh, reverse dictionary. You're my favorite. (Just don't tell weirdnet.)
Edit: (Or the Century.)
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list bon-voyage
Excellent.
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word dirt crack assessor
Thanks, bilby.
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list vocabularies
My new favorite list! Thanks, kalayzich.
May 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word conker
I remember many happy childhood hours spent in my small town playing games such as "How Far Does This Crack In The Dirt Go?" or "Can We Knock Down That Icicle With A Snowball?"
Kids these days don't know what they're missing.
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list marble--2
I just found oner.
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list impossible-wind-up-toys
Just arrived here again after looking up conker. I still love this list!
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word tyromancy
I had the same thought, seanahan.
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list heraldry
rectangled
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word barium oxide
See comment on pittacal.
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pittacal
"Pittacal was the first synthetic dyestuff to be produced commercially. It was accidentally discovered by German chemist Carl Ludwig Reichenbach in 1832, who was also the discoverer of kerosene, phenol, eupion, paraffin wax and creosote.
As the history goes, Reichenbach applied creosote to the wooden posts of his home, in order to drive away dogs who urinated on them. The strategy was ineffectual, however, and he noted that the dog's urine reacted with creosote to form an intense dark blue deposit. He named the new substance píttacal (from Greek words tar and beautiful). He later was able to produce pure pittacal by treating beechwood tar with barium oxide and using alumina as a mordant to the dye's fabrics. Although sold commercially as a dyestuff, it did not fare well."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pittacal&oldid=534436190
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word harewood
"In the 18th century airwood came to be used by marqueteurs; for most artificial colours they used holly, which takes vegetable dyes very well, but airwood was employed either in its natural off-white state or stained with iron sulphate to produce a range of silver and silver-grey hues. The reason that airwood was preferred to holly for this colour was that it gave a metallic sheen or lustre, while holly dyed by the same process turned a rather dead grey. The use of airwood in this way meant that by the 19th century it was associated specifically with that colour, and at the same time name gradually changed from airwood to harewood."
-- From Wikipedia's harewood (material) page
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word iron sulphate
"Known since ancient times as copperas and as green vitriol, the blue-green heptahydrate is the most common form of this material."
-- From Wikipedia's Iron(II) sulphate page
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word airwood
See citation in comment on harewood.
May 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list my-stupid-day
I also love that this list has proofread.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-from-the-airport
Ooh! More excellent band names here.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list animal-identity-crisis
Someone just listed cattle egret on a different list. I clicked on it, made sure it was listed on my cattle list, then showed up over here--only to see my comment from 2012.
Egrets, I have a few.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word open lists
open list is my middle name.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list can-t-stop-won-t-stop
I miss our-john.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list the-notions-salesman
That's good to hear. I've been looking forward to reading it.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list disappointing-wikipedia-links
So many potential band names here.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list the-notions-salesman
Oh! Wordsmith? I get those e-mails, too--and I'm a huge fan of the Internet Anagram Server.
May 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list the-notions-salesman
Oh, fun! Nice list, tristero.
May 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list soup-words
schav!
May 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word schav
I adore sorrels.
Don't we have some soup lists around here?
May 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list yall
How'd y'all feel about adding all y'all?
May 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list possess-a-fimbriate-and-otherwise-adorned-opisthocephalic-plate
Superb.
May 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pronged ant
Having just seen the citation on zombee, I'm left wondering whether the prongs should be called ant-lers.
May 11, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-from-arabic
One of my favorite qualities about this site is that every potential list is an existing list--but I think it's also true that every list has potential.
And this is a good one.
May 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list common-names-for--i-datura-stramonium-i
*favorited*
(I just got metel as a random word.)
May 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-from-arabic
Nice! You might find some yoinkworthy entries over on of-arabic-origin.
May 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word eduction
But most of the usage examples and tweets do seem to be typos about education.
May 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word eduction
I have access to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, which lists usage examples going back to at least the 1600's. Here are some of the definitions:
1. "Med. The excretion, expulsion, or removal of something from the body. Obs."
3.a. "The action of bringing out or developing something from a state of latent, rudimentary, or potential existence; an instance or result of this."
3.b. "Chem. The action of isolating a substance from a compound or mixture in which it is present; extraction. Now rare."
4. "The inferring of a principle, conclusion, etc., from premises or available data. Also: a result of this, an inference; cf. educt n. 3." (Which has "That which is inferred or elicited from something; a product or result of inference or development.")
5. "Mech a. The passage of steam, water, or vapour out of a vessel through a pipe or tube provided for the purpose; spec. (in a steam engine) the exit of steam from the cylinder after it has done its work in propelling the piston; cf. exhaust n. 1a(a) and the note there. Usu. attrib. (see Compounds). Now chiefly hist."
6. "The bringing about or occasioning of an act, event, emotion, etc. Cf. educe v. 4."
May 10, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals
Fantastic list! I just arrived here after getting ilicic as a random word.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list fix
Marvelous. I wish I knew more about Ludolf Bakhuizen.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word psychozoic
Likewise, qms.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Lugol's solution
See citation on iodine.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word iodine
"Iodine is used in chemistry as an indicator for starch. When starch is mixed with iodine in solution, an intensely dark blue colour develops, representing a starch/iodine complex. Starch is a substance common to most plant cells and so a weak iodine solution will stain starch present in the cells. Iodine is one component in the staining technique known as Gram staining, used in microbiology. Lugol's solution or Lugol's iodine (IKI) is a brown solution that turns black in the presence of starches and can be used as a cell stain, making the cell nuclei more visible. Iodine is also used as a mordant in Gram's staining, it enhances dye to enter through the pore present in the cell wall/membrane."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Staining&oldid=776676067
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word geranium lake
See citation on eosin.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word eosin
"Van Gogh was a fan of the vivid scarlet ‘geranium lake’ pigment derived from the synthetic dye, eosin. Even at the time it was known to fade. He compensated by using it more intensely, but was ultimately unable to hold back the photochemical tide."
-- https://www.chemistryworld.com/feature/raiders-of-the-lost-pigments/3007237.article
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Aristotle's lantern
From Wikipedia:
"The mouth of most sea urchins is made up of five calcium carbonate teeth or jaws, with a fleshy, tongue-like structure within. The entire chewing organ is known as Aristotle's lantern . . . , from Aristotle's description in his History of Animals:
...the urchin has what we mainly call its head and mouth down below, and a place for the issue of the residuum up above. The urchin has, also, five hollow teeth inside, and in the middle of these teeth a fleshy substance serving the office of a tongue. Next to this comes the esophagus, and then the stomach, divided into five parts, and filled with excretion, all the five parts uniting at the anal vent, where the shell is perforated for an outlet... In reality the mouth-apparatus of the urchin is continuous from one end to the other, but to outward appearance it is not so, but looks like a horn lantern with the panes of horn left out. (Tr. D'Arcy Thompson)
However, this has recently been proven to be a mistranslation. Aristotle's lantern is actually referring to the whole shape of sea urchins, which look like the ancient lamps of Aristotle's time."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_urchin&oldid=776559759)
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word psychozoic
Fantastic, qms.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list tweezer-like
Perfection.
May 9, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word structural coloration
"Structural coloration is the production of colour by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light, sometimes in combination with pigments. For example, peacock tail feathers are pigmented brown, but their microscopic structure makes them also reflect blue, turquoise, and green light, and they are often iridescent."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Structural_coloration&oldid=776840981
May 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word marble berry
"Pollia condensata, colloquially called the marble berry, is a perennial herbaceous plant with stoloniferous stems and shiny, metallic blue, hard, dry, round fruit. It is found in forested regions of Africa. The glossy blue of the berry-like fruit, created by structural coloration, is the most intense of any known biological material."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pollia_condensata&oldid=769696583
May 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word fluid hammer
See citation on water hammer.
May 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word hydraulic shock
See citation on water hammer.
May 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word water hammer
"Water hammer (or, more generally, fluid hammer) is a pressure surge or wave caused when a fluid (usually a liquid but sometimes also a gas) in motion is forced to stop or change direction suddenly (momentum change). A water hammer commonly occurs when a valve closes suddenly at an end of a pipeline system, and a pressure wave propagates in the pipe. It is also called hydraulic shock."
-- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hammer
May 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word paillard
Oh, cruel bilby! I just went to see whether that's an actual list--but it's not. I hereby nominate you to create it.
May 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word flowers
For its use in old chemistry, see flower.
May 5, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word flower
"plural In chem., fine particles of a substance, especially when raised by fire in sublimation, and adhering to the heads of vessels in the form of a powder or mealy deposit: as, the flowers of sulphur."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
May 5, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word liquor
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"A solution of a medicinal substance in water; -- distinguished from tincture and aqua."
May 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word paillard
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"A vagabond who sleeps in straw; hence, one who lives alow, knavish life; a dissolute fellow."
May 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list handspinning-words
I just got silk-winder as a random word.
May 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list macquarie-dictionary-bird-references
I'm sure there's a way. There are a couple of us wordnik folk over there--I even share curatorship of some boards (including one that's just plinths).
May 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word predicable
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"A logical term considered as capable of being universally predicated of another; usually, one of the five words, or five kinds of predicates, according to the Aristotelian logic, namely genus, species, difference, property, and accident."
May 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word hylemorphism
See citation in comment on hylomorphism.
May 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word hylomorphism
"Hylomorphism (or hylemorphism) is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which conceives being (ousia) as a compound of matter and form.
The word is a 19th-century term formed from the Greek words ὕλη hyle, "wood, matter" and μορφή, morphē, "form.""
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hylomorphism&oldid=775386104
May 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list and-the-last-first
I'm still combing through the archives (as it were) and finding such gems. Long live wordie/nik!
May 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list and-the-last-first
Just arrived here after getting phylogeography as a random word. What a fun list! Thanks, mollusque.
May 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word passerine bird
See passerine.
May 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list aarne-thompson-classification-system-for-folktales
Thanks, vm. I was working on fairy-tales, too. (I'd thought about cross-referencing them with tags, etc., but haven't gotten there yet.)
May 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word potholer
From Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License:
"n. someone who explores potholes as a hobby"
May 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list polychronic-liquidators--cyf
I arrived here again after catching vent-peg as a random word. I adore this list.
May 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word aarne-thompson-uther classification system
Nice, vm. I had started a list of a few of these... see aarne-thompson-classification-system-for-folktales.
May 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list confectio-damocritis
That's fantastic, alexz. I've been amused by how all of this stuff seems to be related--alchemy, chemistry, cooking, pharmacy, &c., but now I'm reminded of an old joke: What do you get for the person who has everything? Penicillin.
May 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list macquarie-dictionary-bird-references
These are great!
April 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word confectio Damocritis
In the meantime, would you like to snack on a carrot? I've also got some olives.
April 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word confectio Damocritis
Hold on--I just went to the store for gum Arabic, but now I've realized I'm all out of spikenard.
April 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Confectio Damocritis
See comments on confectio damocritis and confectio Damocritis.
April 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Bolus of Mendes
"Bolus of Mendes (Greek: Βῶλος Bolos; fl. 3rd century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a neo-Pythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medical works, who worked in Ptolemaic Egypt. The Suda, and Eudocia after him, mention a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt, who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena. The Suda, however, also describes a Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus, who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." But, from a passage of Columella, it appears that Bolos of Mendes and the follower of Democritus were one and the same person; and he seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work On Plants he appears to have known."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bolus_of_Mendes&oldid=754867544
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word confectio Damocritis
Or Bolus of Mendes.
*starts muttering again*
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Pseudo-Democritus
"Pseudo-Democritus was an unidentified Greek philosopher writing on chemical and alchemical subjects under the pen name "Democritus," probably around 60 AD. He was the second most respected writer on alchemy (after Hermes Trismegistus)."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pseudo-Democritus&oldid=665210781
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word confectio Damocritis
Oh! I wonder whether Damocritis is actually Pseudo-Democritus.
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word crybaby tree
The crista-galli part is fun.
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Chrysippus
"Diogenes Laërtius gives two different accounts of his death. In the first account, Chrysippus was seized with dizziness having drunk undiluted wine at a feast, and died soon after. In the second account, he was watching a donkey eat some figs and cried out: "Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs", whereupon he died in a fit of laughter."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chrysippus&oldid=776089952
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word ekpyrosis
According to Wikipedia, ekpyrosis is "a Stoic belief in the periodic destruction of the cosmos by a great conflagration every Great Year. The cosmos is then recreated (palingenesis) only to be destroyed again at the end of the new cycle. This form of catastrophe is the opposite of kataklysmos (κατακλυσμός, "inundation"), the destruction of the earth by water," and "the concept of ekpyrosis is attributed to Chrysippus by Plutarch." (See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ekpyrosis&oldid=765510670.)
April 26, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Latvian Gambit
"The Latvian Gambit or Greco Counter Gambit is a chess opening characterised by the moves:
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 f5?!"
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Latvian_Gambit&oldid=707357277
April 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list chess-gambits
There's always the Latvian Gambit.
April 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word acuteness
Compare gravity.
April 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word gravity
"In acoustics, the state of being low in pitch: opposed to acuteness."
-- from the Century Dictionary
April 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list flow--flower
How clever!
April 24, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list a-breakage--break--cleavage-or-split
I just added lacuna.
April 24, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word snake-flower
Snake-flower (a poem by The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia):
n. The viper's-bugloss, Echium vulgare.
n. The greater stitch wort, Alsine Holostea.
n. The white dead-nettle, Lamium album.
n. The white campion, Lychnis alba.
n. The star-flower or American chickweed-wintergreen, Trientalis Americana.
April 21, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word sandbox
Also see sand-box.
April 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word sand-box
See sandbox.
April 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list a-ballad-of-remembrance
*favorited*
April 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word ring-mountain
Mount Doom?
April 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the user Gildedmuse
I like your lists. :-)
April 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word eyesalve
"Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use."
-- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/getting-medieval-on-bacteria-ancient-books-may-point-to-new-antibiotics/
April 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word wen
"In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle."
-- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/getting-medieval-on-bacteria-ancient-books-may-point-to-new-antibiotics/
April 19, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word anenome
See anemone or sea anemone.
April 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word nothing
Ha!
April 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word mock-doc
See mockumentary.
April 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word shipworm
"“It’s sort of the unicorn of mollusks,” Margo Haygood, a marine microbiologist at the University of Utah, told The Washington Post.""
-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/04/17/scientists-find-giant-elusive-clam-known-as-the-unicorn-of-mollusks
April 18, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list pigeon
Nice list!
April 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word crocogator
Oh, funny! You should add it to the words-ending-with--gator list.
April 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list my-favourite-interjections
Fantastic!
April 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-ending-with--gator
So much pun-worthy potential here.
See you later, navigator.
After while, compass dial.
April 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list hail-size-descriptors
Done! And thanks.
You know, "open list" is my middle name....
April 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list hail-size-descriptors
Fabulous.
I'm also fond of graupel.
April 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list fingerprint-patterns
Oh! Fantastic list.
April 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list resembling-a-cluster-of-grapes
I just encountered the word botryoidal and wondered whether there was a corresponding "bunch of grapes" list--and of course there was. Thank you, biocon. You've restored my faith in humanity (once again).
April 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word chrysocolla
"A 2006 study has produced evidence that chrysocolla may be a microscopic mixture of the copper hydroxide mineral spertiniite, amorphous silica and water."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chrysocolla&oldid=773322642
April 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word abelsonite
See comment on geoporphyrin.
April 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word geoporphyrin
"A geoporphyrin, also known as a petroporphyrin, is a porphyrin of geologic origin. They can occur in crude oil, oil shale, coal, or sedimentary rocks. Abelsonite is possibly the only geoporphyrin mineral, as it is rare for porphyrins to occur in isolation and form crystals."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Porphyrin&oldid=765734325
April 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Fowler's solution
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fowler%27s_solution&oldid=765885803):
"Thomas Fowler of Stafford, England, proposed the solution in 1786 as a substitute for a patent medicine, "tasteless ague drop". From 1845, Fowler's solution was a leukemia treatment.
At 1905, inorganic arsenicals, like Fowler's solution, saw diminished use as attention turned to organic arsenicals, starting with Atoxyl. Still, into the late 1950s, Fowler's solution—also termed liquor potassii arenitis, Kali arsenicosum, or Kali arseniatum—was prescribed in the United States for a wide range of diseases, including malaria, chorea, and syphilis."
April 12, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word ghost
"It is asserted that the spelling of "ghost" with the silent letter h was adopted by Caxton due to the influence of Flemish spelling habits."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Caxton&oldid=773251278
April 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word oxalic acid
"Oxalic acid is rubbed onto completed marble sculptures to seal the surface and introduce a shine."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oxalic_acid&oldid=768237770
April 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word dilatant
See citation in comment on rheopexy.
April 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word rheopexy
"An incorrect example often used to demonstrate rheopecty is cornstarch mixed with water, which resembles a very viscous, white fluid. It is a cheap and simple demonstrator, which can be picked up by hand as a near-solid, but flows easily when not under pressure. However, cornstarch in water is actually a dilatant fluid, since it does not show the time-dependent, shear-induced change required in order to be labeled rheopectic. These terms are often and easily confused since the terms are rarely used; a true rheopectic fluid would when shaken be liquid at first, becoming thicker as shaking continued."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rheopecty&oldid=772633926
April 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word distemper
I did consider it, but the thought of it made me sad.
April 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word white spirit
"Traditional papers were often highly polished with beeswax and an application of 50% beeswax/50% white spirit on the papers before use is recommended. This enhances the colour as well making them more durable."
-- http://www.payhembury.com/Payhembury_Marbled_Papers/History_of_Marbling.html
April 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word gall
"In the southern United States, a low spot, as near the mouth of a river, where the soil under the matted surface has been washed away, or has been so exhausted that nothing will grow on it. See bay-gall."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
April 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word distemper
"A method of painting in which the colors are mixed with any binding medium soluble in water, such as yolk of egg and an equal quantity of water, yolk and white of egg beaten together and mixed with an equal quantity of milk, fig-tree sap, vinegar, wine, ox-gall, etc."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Compare tempera.
April 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list heraldry
addition
April 5, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list parsnips
Great list!
April 5, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list underscoring-the-possibilities
I've always heard that if you're well loved, you'll have many nicknames. These are variations on the wonder that is PossibleUnderscore.
April 5, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word shabradoodle
pootrievherd?
shetrievle?
reheroodle?
shepootriever?
April 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list a-rat-list
Ooh! Nice. I'm going to be yoinking a bunch of these for my list of rats.
April 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list date
expiration date?
April 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list underscoring-the-possibilities
Great to see you, p'underscore!
April 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word hallux
See allex.
March 30, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word macrotis
Also see pinkie.
March 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word hallux
"n. The innermost of the five digits which normally compose the hind foot of air-breathing vertebrates; in man, the great toe. See cut under foot."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
March 29, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list brtom-s-words
Ah. *Favorited*
March 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word locksmith
From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. An artificer whose occupation is to make locks."
March 28, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word adiaphane
"The term adiaphane seems to be Stephen's own. Neither the Greek αδιαφανὲς nor the Latin adiaphana is to be found in his sources. The obvious meaning of adiaphane is the opaque or opacity, which is what adiaphane means in French. (Stephen, and Joyce, read Aristotle in Paris. See 026.04 ff.) Four lines below, however, Stephen refers to the darkness as it. In Aristotle's text, darkness (σκότος) is defined as the privation of light. See also Stephen's description of darkness on the next page as the black adiaphane."
-- https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Annotations_to_James_Joyce%27s_Ulysses/Proteus/037&oldid=3092141
March 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list marbling
Paldies!
March 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list marbling
Thanks. :-)
March 22, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word uninominal
We thank you.
March 21, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word uninominal
Brackets around "nom-nom urinal," please. I have a tag for it.
March 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word rise and shine it's time to make the doughnuts
Ooh! A doughnut party!
March 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list american-saying
Fantastic.
March 16, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list words-not-in-merriam-websters-unabridged
Great list!
March 15, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list my-library
I can't believe I hadn't seen this list before. It's stellar!
March 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word ulysses** - joyce
I'm thinking of starting in on it again.
March 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word mutualism
Is it bad that my first thought upon reading this thread was to wonder whether dingo urine would render those muesli bars non-vegan?
March 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list this-list-is-like-butter
Are you trying to butter me up? 'Cause it's totally working.
March 14, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list zombification
Oh, here it is. I'll add zombie ant so I can find it next time.
March 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word parasitic manipulation
I'd swear there was a list of these somewhere. I tried looking up zombie ant, but didn't get very far. I also tried looking through my mr--wilsons-cabinet-of-wonder list, but again, no dice.
March 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pomato
Oh, qms! I've been trying to come up with one about nightshades, but I just don't think I can do anything with belladonna and love apples without trying to bring in pupils (the apple of one's eye? throwing rotten tomatoes?), and it's just not coming together. I bow before your prowess.
March 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pupil
Huh. I'd never noticed the connections between pupil, pupa, and puppy before.
February 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word grape riffles
Anyone have a recipe?
February 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word confectio Damocritis
Fine. I'll make some more.
February 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word undinal
Lol. I've heard that gullible isn't in Funk & Wagnalls.
February 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word confectio Damocritis
Is anyone going to eat that last fuflun?
February 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word undinal
Oh, fun! It doesn't surprise me that something might be missing from the Scrabble dictionaries. Traditionally, the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary pulled from just "five in-print collegiate dictionaries, namely The Random House College Dictionary (1968), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969), Webster's New World Dictionary (1970), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (1973) and Funk & Wagnalls (1973)" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Official_Scrabble_Players_Dictionary&oldid=698206686).
So I looked up undine on an online version of the OED (subscription only, sadly). At the bottom of the entry, it has a "Draft additions 1993" section which has information about undinal--it references the 1891 Century Dictionary definition--which brings us right back to the Century definition here on this Wordnik page.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to wander off to look up confectio Damocritis again.
February 23, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word attemptress
I'm always in the market for overhead projector bulbs, too.
February 21, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list the-measure-of-man
kishon
February 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list stained-glass-words
Lovely! You might find a few yoink-worthy things over on the-glassworks list.
February 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word phreatophyte
Ah, qms. Another delight. Thank you.
February 17, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list three-sheets-to-the-wind--1
Oh, sheet. It is a truth universally acknowledged that every potential list is an existing list.
I made it to worksheet before I realized the sheet list I'd just created already exists here!
February 16, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list dye-box
My new favorite list! Thank you.
February 16, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word Byronesque
Cf. Byronic.
February 15, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word as you wish
As you wish both, too!
February 15, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word potato cannon
"A potato cannon (sometimes known as a spud gun, not to be confused with a toy of the same name) is a pipe-based cannon which uses air pressure (pneumatic), or combustion of a flammable gas (aerosol, propane, etc.), to launch projectiles at high speeds. They are built to fire chunks of potato, as a hobby, or to fire other sorts of projectiles, for practical use. Projectiles or failing guns can be dangerous and result in life-threatening injuries, including cranial fractures, enucleation, and blindness if a person is hit."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Potato_cannon&oldid=762925678
February 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word potato gun
See potato cannon.
Also see spud gun.
February 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word chip shooter
cf. potato gun
February 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word perdure
Fabulous, qms.
February 13, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word greenfish
"Written by one Robert Draper to a Mr. Bilby, the shopping list includes pewter spoons, a frying pan, and “greenfish,” which is now known as unsalted cod. It also asks Mr. Bilby to send a “fireshovel” and “lights” to Copt Hall, which is 36 miles away on the other side of London."
-- "384-Year-Old Shopping List Discovered Under Floorboards In Historic English Home" By Michael Gardiner (http://all-that-is-interesting.com/shopping-list-discovered)
February 7, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word guldiner
I wish this were a valid Scrabble word.
February 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list set-phasers-to
I just arrived here after getting deadlight as a random word and wondering who had added it to this list.
Bilby, I salute you.
February 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list •-knuckle-tattoos
There might be some interesting options over on 2-4-letter-words, too.
February 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list 2-4-letter-words
Oh, fun! Some of these would make perfect •-knuckle-tattoos.
February 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word jawn
"The word “jawn” is unlike any other English word. In fact, according to the experts that I spoke to, it’s unlike any other word in any other language. It is an all-purpose noun, a stand-in for inanimate objects, abstract concepts, events, places, individual people, and groups of people. It is a completely acceptable statement in Philadelphia to ask someone to “remember to bring that jawn to the jawn.”"
-- Atlas Obscura: "The Enduring Mystery Of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun" by Dan Nosowitz (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-enduring-mystery-of-jawn-philadelphias-allpurpose-noun)
February 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list under-the-umbrella
This is great! You might find some yoink-worthy words over on mollusque's umbrellas-and-parasols list.
February 2, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word squirrel with cereal bowl on its head
"Video: Man comes to aid of Omaha squirrel with cereal bowl on its head," by Courtney Brummer-Clark / World-Herald (Link: http://www.omaha.com/news/goodnews/video-man-comes-to-aid-of-omaha-squirrel-with-cereal/article_f67f469a-e89b-11e6-bbce-175094219752.html)
February 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word nu
"nu: multipurpose interjection often analogous to "well?" or "so?" (Yiddish נו nu, perhaps akin to Russian ну (nu) or German na='well'(OED)"
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_English_words_of_Yiddish_origin&oldid=762317723
February 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word paraffin series
For an example sentence, see formic acid.
February 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word formic acid
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:
"adj. a colorless, mobile liquid, HCO.OH, of a sharp, acid taste, occurring naturally in ants, nettles, pine needles, etc., and produced artifically in many ways, as by the oxidation of methyl alcohol, by the reduction of carbonic acid or the destructive distillation of oxalic acid. It is the first member of the fatty acids in the paraffin series, and is homologous with acetic acid."
February 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list environment--4
I adore this list!
February 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word mingles
"In mining, iron frames or standards carrying the pillow-blocks of pit-head pulleys. Also maidens."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
February 1, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word circumzenithal
Good one, qms!
January 27, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the user AnnePern
That's a good one. I'll ask over on the lost-for-word list.
January 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list lost-for-word
Just saw this from AnnePern's profile page:
"Hi All,
A friend is looking for a word that means to make something a sin, akin to "medicalize."
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Anne"
January 25, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word black liquor
"The Florida Highway Patrol confirmed the substance was black liquor — a waste product in the paper manufacturing process — in a news release early Monday morning."
-- "International Paper explosion: US 29, Muscogee Road open" by Emma Kennedy, Pensacola News Journal (http://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/cantonment/2017/01/23/authorities-clean-up-international-paper-explosion-site/96952852/)
January 24, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list befouled
Love it.
January 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list 5-letter-animals
oribi
January 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word nemertes
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
"n. A genus of nemertean worms, to which different limits have been given."
January 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word rubbished
"|Paul| Burrell said that he had approached a Catholic priest about a private marriage between Diana and the heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan, and he rubbished rumours that Diana was about to announce her engagement to Dodi Fayed."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Burrell&oldid=758769644
January 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list coffee-house
*favorited*
January 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word banoffee
I misread this as banana and "coffee" until just now.
Do we have any coffee lists? *wanders off in search of kopi luwak"
January 20, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word emolument
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."
-- U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8. (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript)
January 12, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word vexilloid
""Vexilloid" is a term used tenuously to describe vexillary (flag-like) objects used by countries, organizations, or individuals as a form of representation other than flags. Whitney Smith coined the term in 1958, defining it as:
"An object which functions as a flag but differs from it in some respect, usually appearance. Vexilloids are characteristic of traditional societies and often consist of a staff with an emblem, such as a carved animal, at the top."
"Vexilloid" can be used in a broader sense of any banner (vexillary object) which is not a flag (that is, taking only Smith's first sentence into account). Thus it includes vexilla, banderoles, pennons, streamers, standards, and gonfalons."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vexilloid&oldid=756849272
January 8, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list shores-of-knowledge
*favorited*
January 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the list a-bean-list
You might enjoy the butter-beans-and-snaps list.
January 6, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word swill milk
"What is swill milk? The New York Times described it as a “filthy, bluish substance milked from cows tied up in crowded stables adjoining city distilleries and fed the hot alcoholic mash left from making whiskey. This too was doctored—with plaster of Paris to take away the blueness, starch, and eggs to thicken it and molasses to give it the buttercup hue of honest Orange County milk.” Back when people were drinking the stuff, reported the Times, it probably killed as many as 8,000 children a year."
-- From CityLab's "The Sanitary Nightmare of Hell's Kitchen in 1860s New York" by John Metcalfe, Dec 27, 2016 (http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/12/swill-milk-fat-boilers-and-other-smelly-delights-of-1860s-new-york/511673/)
January 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word swill-milk
See citation in comment on swill milk.
January 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word boustrophedon
I like weirdnet's "'as the ox ploughs.'" Wouldn't that be a terrific soap opera?
January 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the user chained_bear
Greetings! I have a potential typo to report in your citation over on the Georg Elser page (it's in the last sentence).
January 4, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word surcharge
"In ceramics, a painting in a lighter enamel over a darker one which forms the ground: as, a white flower in surcharge on a buff ground."
--Century Dictionary
January 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word atobarn
Should this be attobarn? (see atto-)
January 3, 2017
ruzuzu commented on the word pisang
Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, pisang-a-phone!
December 29, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Farmer's reducer
See example in citation at potassium ferricyanide.
December 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word potassium ferricyanide
"The compound has widespread use in blueprint drawing and in photography (Cyanotype process). Several photographic print toning processes involve the use of potassium ferricyanide. Potassium ferricyanide is used as an oxidizing agent to remove silver from negatives and positives, a process called dot etching. In color photography, potassium ferricyanide is used to reduce the size of color dots without reducing their number, as a kind of manual color correction. It is also used in black-and-white photography with sodium thiosulfate (hypo) to reduce the density of a negative or gelatin silver print where the mixture is known as Farmer's reducer; this can help offset problems from overexposure of the negative, or brighten the highlights in the print."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Potassium_ferricyanide&oldid=756059556
December 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghettifies
"During a tidal disruption, the extreme gravitational forces of a supermassive black hole “spaghettifies” and rips apart a star when it wanders too close."
-- http://gizmodo.com/brightest-supernova-ever-seen-was-actually-something-mu-1789996116
See spaghettification.
December 12, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word dumpster fire
Thanks, vm. I especially liked the Nebraska reference in the article you linked to--and I had no idea the trademark for Dumpster had expired in 2008. Cool!
December 9, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list new--3
Oh, fun. I added a couple--if they're not what you had in mind, I can find new homes for them.
December 8, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word dumpster
See citation in comment on dumpster fire.
December 8, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word dumpster fire
"The word “dumpster” sounds so perfectly suited to its purpose that it hardly seems necessary to question its origins. But that would be a mistake, because the real story is even more linguistically charming. The dumpster broke onto the scene in 1936, part of a brand-new patented trash-collection system that introduced the basic concept of the modern garbage truck, with containers that could be mechanically lifted and emptied into the vehicle from above. The system, invented by future mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, George Dempster, took its creator’s name, and the Dempster-Dumpster was born.
“Dumpster,” the word we use today, emerged from the fortuitous marriage of “dump” and “Dempster.” Though Dempster trademarked the brand name “Dumpster,” the term has been so thoroughly applied as a generic noun that the Associated Press now directs that it be styled in lowercase. No one, after all, would choose to write “trash bin” when “dumpster” would do better.
Had this sanitation system not been engineered by a man with such a punny name (Dempster-Dumpster), would “dumpster fire” as an insult have ever taken off?"
-- "Where Did ‘Dumpster Fire’ Come From? Where Is It Rolling?" by Claire Fallon. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dumpster-fire-slang-history_us_576474d4e4b015db1bc97923)
December 8, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word nickroll
My misreading of rickroll. See Morzouksnick.
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Morzouksnick
Oh, hello.
The community page was showing that someone recently adopted rickroll--which I, perhaps intentionally, misread as nickroll.
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol
"The dangerous bend or caution symbol ☡ (U+2621 ☡ CAUTION SIGN) was created by the Nicolas Bourbaki group of mathematicians and appears in the margins of mathematics books written by the group. It resembles a road sign that indicates a "dangerous bend" in the road ahead, and is used to mark passages tricky on a first reading or with an especially difficult argument."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bourbaki_dangerous_bend_symbol&oldid=744753148
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghetti bolognese
Also see comments on spaghetti alla bolognese.
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghetti alla bolognese
Also see spaghetti bolognese.
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghetti bolognese
"Spaghetti bolognese translates, roughly, to “spaghetti from Bologna.” But if you try to take this particular flavor train back where it supposedly comes from, forget it—you’ll be turned straight around. The British broadcaster and politician Michael Portillo found this out the hard way when he took a camera crew to the city seeking the dish. “Oh my gosh, no,” says the first young woman he encounters in the footage. She makes an X with her arms, as though warding off a great evil. ”Absolutamente no. No no no no.”"
-- http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-are-people-seeing-red-over-spaghetti-bolognese
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word spaghettification
"You don’t hear about a lot of meatball backlash. But many Italians clearly see the spaghettification of bolognese, specifically, as a dire wrong. Their attempts to right it have ranged from organized, high-level efforts to, more recently, a kind of Internet comment trench warfare. In 1982, Bologna’s chamber of commerce officially notarized what they consider to be the authentic recipe, which contains beef skirt, pancetta, celery, carrot, onion, a little tomato, wine, and milk."
-- http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-are-people-seeing-red-over-spaghetti-bolognese
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word The Nutmeg State
"According to the book State Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and Other Symbols by George Earlie Shankle (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1941):
“The sobriquet, the Nutmeg State, is applied to Connecticut because its early inhabitants had the reputation of being so ingenious and shrewd that they were able to make and sell wooden nutmegs. Sam Slick (Judge Halliburton) seems to be the originator of this story. Some claim that wooden nutmegs were actually sold, but they do not give either the time or the place.”
Yankee peddlers from Connecticut sold nutmegs, and an alternative story is that:
“Unknowing buyers may have failed to grate nutmegs, thinking they had to be cracked like a walnut. Nutmegs are wood, and bounce when struck. If southern customers did not grate them, they may very well have accused the Yankees of selling useless “wooden” nutmegs, unaware that they wear down to a pungent powder to season pies and breads.” Elizabeth Abbe, Librarian, the Connecticut Historical Society; Connecticut Magazine, April 1980."
-- http://ctstatelibrary.org/CT-nicknames
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Connecticut
For a list about Connecticut, see the-land-of-steady-habits.
December 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word clove
This is such fun, c_b.
November 28, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word nosing
Who knew?
November 28, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Trump
Lol. I just got tumescence, so....
November 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word sett
Oh funny--another badger word is cete. I wonder whether there are any others (I'd like to collect the whole set).
November 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word ROYGBIV
Also see Roy G. Biv.
November 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word pilot wave
I was picturing someone in a boat on a river--waving at people on the banks.
November 7, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word pilot wave
"While this experiment isn’t on the quantum scale, it does help to demonstrate the way quantum-scale particles may operate according to the pilot wave theory. And for any lay people who’ve struggled with grasping why things are so strange on the quantum scale according to the standard interpretation, this pilot wave theory—proposed by Louis de Broglie in 1927—provides a far more palatable framework for understanding quantum mechanics."
-- http://nerdist.com/pilot-wave-theory-video-will-make-you-totally-rethink-quantum-mechanics/
November 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list the-medieval-european-fantasy-adventurers-backpack
This is great! I arrived here after looking up cuirass from the lobster definitions.
October 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the user Imakeabunchoflists
Hi! I'm wondering whether we're related--I'm definitely a member of the bunchoflists family.
October 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word lepo
"According to Merriam-Webster, “lepo-” — that’s as in “what’s a lepo?” — topped the list of search terms queried over the course of the 90-minute" presidential debate.
-- http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/10/a-lot-of-people-looked-up-the-word-lepo-during-the-debate.html
See Aleppo.
October 11, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Kwisatz Haterade
I finally watched Barbarella the other night. It gave me a completely new understanding of David Lynch's Dune.
October 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word affinity
Cf. avidity.
September 21, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word avidity
"In physical chemistry, a constant by means of which can be expressed the distribution of a base between two acids each sufficient to neutralize the whole of the base, or conversely; that is, the relative energy with which the acids tend to seize their shares of base: a term employed to avoid the use of the word affinity."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
September 21, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word rabaska
"A rabaska or Maître canoe (French: canot de maître, after Louis Maitre, an artisan from Trois-Rivières who made them) was originally a large canoe made of tree bark, used by the Algonquin people."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rabaska&oldid=726470799
September 8, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Like the architect and the lawyer--who agree on everything.
I'm not sure what the rest of my dream was about this morning, but this was the last line before my alarm woke me.
September 7, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word chuffah
This is great!
September 7, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list wow-plays-in-scrabble
I had someone play vomito on me at a charity tournament once. That one definitely evokes some memories.
September 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list canadianisms
Fun! I'd suggest adding Bird's custard powder, but only because it's an essential ingredient in Nanaimo bars (which you've already cleverly listed).
September 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word telescopic
"Capable of being extended or shut up like a spy-glass; having joints or sections which slide one within another; especially, in machinery, constructed of concentric tubes, either stationary, as in the telescopic boiler, or movable, as in the telescopic chimney of a war-vessel, which may be lowered out of sight in action, or in the telescopic jack, a screw-jack in which the lifting head is raised by the action of two screws having reversed threads, one working within the other, and both sinking or telescoping within the base—an arrangement by which greater power is obtained."
-- Century Dictionary
September 2, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word bull-trout
See Century Dictionary definition on whitling.
September 2, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word ebru
See citation on size.
September 2, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word size
"Another method of marbling more familiar to Europeans and Americans is made on the surface of a viscous mucilage, known as size or sizing in English. This method is commonly referred to as "Turkish" marbling and is called ebru in Turkish, although ethnic Turkic peoples were not the only practitioners of the art, as Persian Tajiks and people of Indian origin also made these papers. The term "Turkish" was most likely used as a reference to the fact that many Europeans first encountered the art in Istanbul."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paper_marbling&oldid=736004595
September 2, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list words-to-remember--15
I'm also fond of listing words related to cattle. :-)
But mostly it's because I've been learning how to marble paper. Synthetic ox gall is a surfactant used to create "blank" spaces in the paint floating on the size. I'm forever adding too much and ruining my designs.
September 2, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word latinx
I like the x because it reminds me of Malcolm X, famous Nebraskan.
August 31, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list words-to-remember--15
Aw, thanks, vm.
You know, it's funny--I've been thinking a lot about synthetic ox gall lately.
August 31, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list words-to-remember--15
Fun! I just arrived here from the lateritic page.
August 30, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word latinx
*wanders in*
Ooh! Is that umbrage? I'll take some--is it vegetarian?
*dives for cover*
August 30, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word crocogator
Ha!
August 15, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list the-many-names-of-misko
:(
August 10, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word size
I love the synonyms from the Century: "Size, Magnitude, Bulk, Volume. Size is the general word for things large or small. In ordinary discourse magnitude applies to large things; but it is also an exact word, and is much used in science: as, a star of the fourth magnitude. Bulk suggests noticeable size, especially size rounding out into unwieldiness. Volume is a rather indefinite word, arising from the idea of rolling a thing up till it attains size, though with no especial suggestion of shape. We speak of the magnitude of a calamity or of a fortune, the bulk of a bale of cotton or of an elephant, the volume of smoke or of an avalanche."
August 10, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list shoes
I arrived here with hopes of adding plimsolls, but they're already on the list!
July 28, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word lasagna cell
"A "lasagna cell" is accidentally produced when salty moist food such as lasagna is stored in a steel baking pan and is covered with aluminum foil. After a few hours the foil develops small holes where it touches the lasagna, and the food surface becomes covered with small spots composed of corroded aluminum.
In this example, the salty food (lasagna) is the electrolyte, the aluminum foil is the anode, and the steel pan is the cathode. If the aluminum foil only touches the electrolyte in small areas, the galvanic corrosion is concentrated, and corrosion can occur fairly rapidly."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Galvanic_corrosion&oldid=727505499
July 28, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list things-my-twenty-pound-dog-has-eaten
Aw. RIP, Tito. :-(
July 1, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word nisus
The random word feature showed me conatus, which brought me here. Then, a few clicks later, it showed me continent. I'm sensing a theme.
June 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word cresset
Also see fire-basket.
June 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Gruffalo
So, wait. It was a fight?
Well, kinda--but with limericks.
Limericks?
Yeah, and it was super polite.
--the very next conversation I'm going to have about why I adore this site
June 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Pelon Pelo Rico
Tamarind-flavored candy. See pelon pelo rico for tweeted usage examples.
June 15, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word wrang
Awwww! Thanks, qms!
June 13, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word wrang
You wrang?
June 13, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list aubreys-brief-lives
Ooh! I like this! But wait--where's that "cod's-head" business from? I have a list for it.
June 7, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word uncus
Excellent!
May 25, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word jean dimmock
gibe?
May 24, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word uncus
"The head, hook, or comb of the malleolus or lateral tooth of the mastax of a wheel-animalcule." --Century Dictionary
May 24, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the user ruzuzu
Yum! Thanks.
May 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Natick
In Rex Parker's blog about solving crossword puzzles, he complains about a puzzle where 1A "Natick" and 1D "NC Wyeth" share a letter: "I am going to honor this puzzle by naming a crossword constructing principle after one of its elements. I call it: The NATICK Principle. And here it is: If you include a proper noun in your grid that you cannot reasonably expect more than 1/4 of the solving public to have heard of, you must cross that noun with reasonably common words and phrases or very common names." -- http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/07/sunday-jul-6-2008-brendan-emmett.html
April 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list whist-and-bridge-terms
Found this list again because Random Word led me to crossruff.
April 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word missing sock monkey
Thanks, vm! I'm always on the lookout for them (and my missing socks).
April 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word The St. Augustine Monster
"The St. Augustine Monster is one of the earliest examples of a globster—a delightful term referring to an unidentified animal mass that washes up on a beach and results in cryptozoologists speculating about sea monsters. This particular—and particularly large—carcass was discovered by a couple of young boys playing on Anastasia Island, Florida in November 1896. The boys assumed it was a whale, but Dr. De Witt Webb, the founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, concluded that it was the remains of a giant octopus and sent photos and a specimen to the Smithsonian labeled as such. Over the next century-plus, various tests claimed to “prove” at one time or another that it was a whale or an octopus, depending on which test was run. Finally, in 2004, it was conclusively proven that the St. Augustine Monster was a whale all along—just like the two boys who discovered it had thought."
-- http://mentalfloss.com/article/76883/11-weird-things-have-washed-ashore
April 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word missing sock monkey
Related to the missing link, no doubt. Thousands of monkeys at thousands of keyboards would be likely to generate bunches of 404's, amirite?
April 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the user MaryW
I hear you about editing from a phone--but don't give up, MaryW! I enjoy your citations.
April 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list sad-wallpapers
I'll have my people talk to their people.
April 4, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list sad-wallpapers
Wait. I thought you were the manager/Svengali.
April 1, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word gulible
This works on so many levels. Thanks, qroqqa!
April 1, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word cwm
I nominate qroqqa to make that list for us!
March 31, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list sad-wallpapers
I can't decide which would be a better name for a band: Sad Wallpapers or spam redacted.
March 31, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list eye-dialect
Thanks, vm!
March 29, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list feedback-loops
Thank you, bilby. Yes.
And add away, Alexz!
March 29, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Pendulum Music
"Pendulum Music (For Microphones, Amplifiers Speakers and Performers) is the name of a work by Steve Reich, involving suspended microphones and speakers, creating phasing feedback tones. The piece was composed in August 1968 and revised in May 1973, and is an example of process music."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pendulum_Music&oldid=686787841
March 22, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word poe
I might have gotten around to Poe Dameron, though.
March 15, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word poe
My first thought was poet, my second thought was Edgar Allen, and my third thought was the po-po. I never would have gotten to Poe's law. Thanks again, qms.
March 15, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Sarg
Thanks, qms!
March 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word burin
I like this definition from the Century: "The manner or style of execution of an engraver: as, a soft burin; a brilliant burin."
March 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word marionette
Actually, I think being puzzled by a puzzle counts as being buffled.
March 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word baffle
Cf. buffle.
March 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word marionette
See how I was baffled over on Sarg.
March 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Sarg
I'm working on a crossword puzzle where one of the clues is "Sarg plaything." The answer is "marionette," but I can't figure out why.
March 14, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Old Baldy
That's fantastic! Thanks, vm--I hadn't heard of Old Baldy.
February 29, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word skift
"With the skift of snow, temperatures on Thursday are expected to hold in the low 40s."
-- http://journalstar.com/news/local/a-skift-of-snow-degrees-on-the-horizon/article_1837a68e-45a0-509d-bc4a-ac770281a1bd.html
February 25, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list onomatopoeia-that-best-describes-you-greatest-hits-vol1
Ach. I forgot what mine was.
February 23, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word chia
Cheers!
*takes a sip*
February 22, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word trespassing
Not that I know of, vm. When I was a kid we used to have big yellow and black hand-painted signs that said "POSTED NO HUNTING" but they never seemed to do much good.
February 22, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word trespassing
I love this. Thanks, vm!
February 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Grypserka
This reminds me of our spammer friends.
February 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word yad sdrawkcab
Another interesting name for a band!
February 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the user andrewk
Comments are a good way to start a conversation--welcome to Wordnik!
February 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word chia
I've also had chia pudding. It was okay.
February 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word chia
Generally I'm not a big fan of mucilaginous foods, but I like do like chia--especially when it's in kombucha.
February 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word Verdachtspunkt
Would this be too obvious as a name for a band?
February 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word pakeha
Sorry, bilby. I don't know how to crochet. I'm surprised vanderpink couldn't help you out--doesn't she knit pantsuits out of tiger hair or something?
February 17, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word jobber
Cf. jobbery.
February 12, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word lavender-pink
Gee! Thanks, mister!
February 12, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word lavender-pink
Sorry! I know: Better to be seen than heard....
*scuffs shoe on floor*
February 11, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word lavender-pink
*stomps in*
Old enough to know better!
*stomps out*
February 10, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list noun-en
I like this list!
February 10, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word non-private
How are we tagging these, again?
February 10, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word lavender-pink
Oh! I wanna go! I promise I won't disclose the location of your secret lair... again....
February 10, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word umbonate
"Having a conical or rounded projection or protuberance, like a boss."
-- from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
January 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word sunshade
"n. A hood or front-piece made of silk shirred upon whalebones, worn over the front of a bonnet as a protection from sun or wind. Such hoods were in fashion about 1850. Compare ugly, n."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
January 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word cakewalk
"Vaudeville actress Aida Overton Walker refused to act in the mammy stereotype, though became known for performing the cakewalk with her husband, a dance originally designed to mock slave owners’ gaudy dance moves and later used as a tool to mock black dancers.
Dora Dean, another black actress of the time, similarly rejected minstrel stereotypes. She performed the cakewalk with her husband and helped influence public views that black women were as elegant as their white peers, evidenced in her professional nickname “The Black Venus.” Both women, though restricted by racist laws and an unfair social order, were able to earn and control assets that were essentially barred from them in other facets of society."
-- http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-heavily-judged-female-entertainers-who-crushed-stereotypes-in-the-old-west
January 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word cake-walk
It's actually more of a fuflun run.
January 27, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word tack
The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories tells me "The tack associated with horse-riding was originally dialect in the general sense 'apparatus, equipment' and is a contraction of tackle. The current sense (as in tack room) dates from the 1920s."
January 26, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word carriage
"In saddlery, a long handle fitted at one end with a knob and at the other with a branch for receiving a small circular tool: used for ornamenting leather."
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
January 26, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list sheepishness
Just added skin-wool. Yeesh.
January 26, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word scrog
Here's one for the heraldry lists.
January 26, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of fictional colors.
January 20, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list complimentary-animals
Oh, fun! Great list.
January 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list things-to-do-with-animals
This is great. I might yoink some of these for my against-nature list--thanks!
January 19, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the list 1712-cookbook-terms-found
This is my new favorite list.
January 12, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word endiff
Hm. Could it be endive?
January 12, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word bung starter
"They had viewed, through widely different lenses, the amazing and disturbing and exhilarating American scene, Mencken aiming his binoculars and his bung starter at those well-known and badly battered objects of his eloquent scorn and ridicule, the booboisie, the Bible belt, the professor doctors, the lunatics of the political arena, and the imbeciles infesting literature; while Ross, fascinated by many things that would have bored Mencken, took in the panorama and personalities of New York City and finally the whole American spectacle, interested in everything from a swizzle stick he picked up one day ("There's a story in this damn thing") to the slight swaying of the Empire State Building in a stiff gale."
--From The Years With Ross by James Thurber
January 9, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word marl
"The 65-acre quarry, once the source of a water treatment product called marl, shut down amid the 2007 recession."
--from http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/73306/new-jersey-fossil-haven-might-reveal-what-killed-dinosaurs
January 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word a plump of geese
See skipvia's comment on plump.
January 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word break the internet
Is this why we can't have nice things?
January 6, 2016
ruzuzu commented on the word soft
"Go softly! hold! stop! not so fast!"
-- from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
December 22, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word sniffing position
Just in time for the holidays--a turducken cover to match your tea cosy and beer koozie.
December 22, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word sniffing position
Thanks, vm!
*drains*
December 21, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the list non-rhyming-food
Oh, fun!
December 21, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word sniffing position
"The sniffing position has been recommended as optimal for patient intubation and airway management. Historically, the definition of this position is credited to an Irish-born anesthetist, Sir Ivan Magill, who described it as “sniffing the morning air” or “draining a pint of beer.”"
-- from "Airway Management And Patient Positioning: A Clinical Perspective" by Davide Cattano, MD, PHD, and Laura Cavallone, MD. (http://www.anesthesiologynews.com/download/Positioning_ANGAM12_WM.pdf)
December 20, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word privelobliviousness
"I coined a term a while ago, privelobliviousness, to try to describe the way that being the advantaged one, the represented one, often means being the one who doesn’t need to be aware and, often, isn’t."
-- "MEN EXPLAIN LOLITA TO ME
REBECCA SOLNIT: ART MAKES THE WORLD, AND IT CAN BREAK US" December 17, 2015, by Rebecca Solnit.(http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/)
December 20, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word ound
Ooh! I'm yoinking this for my waves-and-waveforms list.
December 15, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word Pentaour
"Pentaour (Pentaur, Pentewere), the Egyptian scribe, is the least known of the major historic figures on the outside of Nebraska's capitol. An unknown court poet of the 13th-century-B.C. pharaoh, Ramses II, composed a poem celebrating his pharaoh's exploits at the battle of Kadesh in Syria. A copy on papyrus was made of this epic-like poem by the scribe, Pentaour. Early scholars mistakenly thought Pentaour was the author and he still often receives credit. This poem, when coupled with reliefs on various surviving Egyptian temple walls, makes the battle of Kadesh the first battle in history which can be studied for its maneuvers and strategy. History, the record of man's experience, although viewed and interpreted anew through the eyes of each generation, provides both guidance for, and understanding of, the present. On the capitol the scribe Pentaour stands holding the tools of his craft: pen, papyrus and ink pot."
-- From http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/1981-3-Capitol_Sculpture.pdf
December 10, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word brother-uterine
"Your half-brother from the same mother. A term used in old legal documents or other discussions of inheritance and succession. Half-siblings of the same mother are "uterine" and of the same father are "consanguine.""
-- http://mentalfloss.com/article/54486/11-little-known-words-specific-family-members/
December 10, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word patruel
"Child of your paternal uncle. Also, a child of your own brother. It hasn't gotten a lot of use in the past few centuries, but it was once convenient to have a term for this relationship because it factored into royal succession considerations. The first citation for it in the OED, from 1538, reads, "Efter his patruell deid withoutin contradictioun he wes king.""
-- http://mentalfloss.com/article/54486/11-little-known-words-specific-family-members/
December 10, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the list relatives
I just found a few more words from this site: http://mentalfloss.com/article/54486/11-little-known-words-specific-family-members/
December 10, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word melopink
I saw a melopink sunset last night. It was beautiful.
December 10, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word grandam
The visuals for this are almost as interesting as the related words.
December 3, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the list light-delight
Delightful as always, fbharjo.
December 3, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word memorylessness
See citation on Markov chain.
December 3, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word Markov chain
"A Markov chain (discrete-time Markov chain or DTMC), named after Andrey Markov, is a random process that undergoes transitions from one state to another on a state space. It must possess a property that is usually characterized as "memorylessness": the probability distribution of the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. This specific kind of "memorylessness" is called the Markov property. Markov chains have many applications as statistical models of real-world processes."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Markov_chain&oldid=693268836
December 3, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the user ChrisFWestbury
So cool! Thank you.
December 2, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word snunkoople
"A group of researchers at the University of Alberta have developed what may be the first mathematical theory of humor, all thanks to a funny-sounding nonsense word: snunkoople.
Psychology professor Chris Westbury was studying people with aphasia, a disorder affecting language comprehension, when he noticed something strange. Subjects were asked to read strings of letters and identify whether they were real words. After a while, Westbury noticed subjects seemed to laugh at certain nonsense words—snunkoople in particular."
-- http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71851/researchers-have-developed-mathematical-method-identifying-certain-kinds-humor
December 2, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the list australian-films
I'm in.
November 23, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the list titles-for-my-memoirs
Aw. Thanks, theanadroid--this is a fun list!
November 23, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Your wish, my command, &c.
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Maybe. I think my friend settled on outright, which seemed appropriate to whatever the context was.
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Hmm--synthesis has promise.
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the list shapes--3
Me too.
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the user snack
Hello, snack. Nice to meet you!
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Probably. But somehow they don't seem parallel--not that words have to be all matchy-matchy to be antonyms.
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word OODA loop
"The phrase OODA loop refers to the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide, and act, developed by military strategist and USAF Colonel John Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the strategic level in military operations. It is now also often applied to understand commercial operations and learning processes. The approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OODA_loop&oldid=682717349
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Ooh! A tasty food pellet!
November 17, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Great. Now I'm hungry.
November 16, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word piecemeal
Is there a good single-word antonym for this? Maybe wholesale? (Asking for a friend.)
November 16, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word ballas
"Ballas or shot bort is a term used in the diamond industry to refer to shards of non-gem-grade/quality diamonds. It comprises small diamond crystals that are concentrically arranged in rough spherical stones with a fibrous texture. Ballas is hard, tough, and difficult to cleave. It is mostly found in Brazil and South Africa."
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ballas&oldid=573450822
November 16, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word seiche
Ooh! I have no idea, but now I really want to know too--there's great potential for some poem with a sea-bear in it.
November 13, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word petunse
See citation on kaolin.
November 12, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word kaolin
"Porcelain is traditionally made from two essential ingredients: kaolin, also called china clay, a silicate mineral that gives porcelain its plasticity, its structure; and petunse, or pottery stone, which lends the ceramic its translucency and hardness. Kaolin is the more essential ingredient—a potter’s clay is meant to exist, like his glazes, in variations—and it takes its name from a mountain in Jingdezhen, China, where porcelain was first created, more than a thousand years ago, called Gaoling, which means “high ridge.” The name was recorded incorrectly by a Jesuit priest, Pere d’Entrecolles, in the early eighteenth century, in his letters home describing the Chinese technique."
-- http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-european-obsession-with-porcelain
November 12, 2015
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