insidious
I haven't seen Xah in this newsgroup before, so for those of you who don't know him from the Perl or Python or other newsgroups he infects, Xah Lee is a particularly insidious troll, and if you feel you must reply to him, please follow up only to the newsgroup where you read him, to reduce the number of flamewars that get crossposted (which is the Xah troll's main method of trolling).
newsgroup posting. 2006-03-12
impecunious
The plot concerns Justine, a twelve-year-old maiden who sets off, impecunious, to make her way in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Misfortunes_of_Virtue, 2006-03-28
bandolier
A bandolier is a pocketed belt for holding ammunition. In its original form, it was common issue to soldiers from the 16th to 18th centuries. A somewhat different form came into use in the 20th century for use with modern cartridges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandolier, 2006-04-04
loamy
Wheat fields in northern Morocco have soils that are loamy↗ and rich.
Google Earth National Geographics caption.
vamp
Her next book was an essay collection titled Vamps and Tramps, a collection of her writings since her previous essay collection, and the mixed critical response generally concurred that too much was written on too wide a variety of topics.
truancy
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) took a cautious stand of discouraging truancy from school, and encouraging participants in the strike to “get pre-approval of a holiday or ‘leave without pay’ from […] work”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Boycott, 2006-05-02.
teenybopper
He watches dreadful tv shows and movies, howling at the screen with a mixture of delight and loathing at the teenybopper drivel, and in the privacy of his room his self-gratification is performed while imagining visions of the old family dog.
amazon.com books review by J Mullin 2000-07-17 of the book A Confederacy of Dunces↗ by John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969).
jabber
He knew us by our countenances to be Englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language, swore we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea.
Gulliver's Travels, part 3, chapter 1.
buss
Thereupon the Sultan came down forthright from his seat of estate and, forbidding him to buss the carpet, embraced and kissed and seated him to the right of and beside himself.
from Aladdin (Sir Richard Burton).
Hooliganism
Hooliganism refers to unruly and destructive behavior.Such behavior is commonly associated with sports fans, particularly supporters of professional football and university sports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooliganism
petrichor
Petrichor is the name of the yellow organic oil that causes the familiar scent of rain on dry earth.
The term was coined by Bear and Thomas (1964), two Australian researchers for an article in the journal Nature. In the article, the smell is shown to derive from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is adsorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. In a follow up paper, Bear and Thomas (1965) showed the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
loft
That's as far as you get with the dome kit: a plywood shell. It looks like an enormous accomplishment, but it is really only about one percent of the finished house. The dome will not support anything but itself, so if you want a loft or second floor, you have to build another house inside the one you just built.
Domebuilder’s Blues, by George Oakes↗, accessed 2006-06-27.
inclement
The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
Gulliver's Travels, section 3 chapter 5.
corrigendum
Since the completion of the original version of the standard in May of 2003, the JVT has also completed two generations of corrigendum↗ errata corrections to the text of the standard.
Source:: MPEG-4_AVC↗.
plenary
The host committee in Beijing also asked Tian to give a plenary address.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2 “Manifold Destiny: a legendary problem and the battle over who solved it”. By Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber. August 28, 2006
altercation
In 1881, Poincaré, who was then at the University of Caen, had an altercation with a German mathematician in Leipzig named Felix Klein.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2 “Manifold Destiny: a legendary problem and the battle over who solved it”. By Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber. August 28, 2006
porte cochere
The porte cochere entrance is designed to set the Moroccan theme for arriving guests.
parochial
There are parochial villagers who still use the imperial system. (for measurement, as opposed to the metric system)
from a friend in chat.
© 2004-2007 by Xah Lee.