Vocabulary: Arcane
Oniomania
Precocial
sequestration
neonate
Rattlesnakes are predators who live in a wide array of habitats, hunting small animals such as birds and rodents. They kill their prey with a venomous bite. All rattlesnakes possess a set of fangs with which they inject large quantities of hemotoxic venom. The venom travels through the bloodstream, destroying tissue and causing swelling, internal bleeding, and intense pain. Some species, such as the Mojave Rattlesnake, additionally possess a neurotoxic component in their venom that causes paralysis and other nervous symptoms.
The threat of envenomation, advertised with the shaking of the rattle, deters many predators. However, rattlesnakes fall prey to hawks, weasels, king snakes, and a variety of other species. Rattlesnakes are heavily preyed upon as neonates, while they are still weak and mentally immature. Very large numbers of rattlesnakes are killed by humans. Rattlesnake populations in many areas are severely threatened by habitat destruction, poaching, and extermination campaigns.
scuttle
During the 1980s go-fast boats became the drug-smuggling vessel of choice in many parts of the world. These boats can be detected by radar; as radar coverage improved, Colombian drug cartels started using less easily detected semi-submersibles from the 1990s.
The first time the U.S. Coast Guard found one, authorities dubbed it Bigfoot because they had heard rumors that such things existed, but none had actually been seen. It was late 2006 when a Bigfoot was seized 145 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Costa Rica carrying several tons of cocaine. In 2006 US officials say they detected three; in 2008 they were spotting an average of ten per month, but only one out of ten was intercepted. Few were seized as their crews scuttle them upon interception and they sink within a minute or so.
ethology
Ethology (from Greek: ἦθος, ethos, “character”; and -λογία, -logia, “the study of”) is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology.
Although many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour throughout history, the modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, joint winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to certain other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolution. Ethologists are typically interested in a behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behavior (e.g. aggression) in a number of unrelated animals.
Effervescence
locomotion
Knuckle-walking is a form of quadrupedal walking in which the forelimbs hold the fingers in a partially flexed posture that allows body weight to press down on the ground through the knuckles.
Gorillas and chimpanzees use this style of locomotion as do anteater and platypuses.
Anthropologists once thought that the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans engaged in knuckle-walking, and humans evolved upright walking from knuckle-walking: a view thought to be supported by reanalysis of overlooked features on hominid fossils.
Since then, scientists discovered Ardipithecus ramidus, a human-like hominid descended from the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. Ar. ramidus engaged in upright walking, but not knuckle-walking. This leads scientists to conclude that chimpanzees evolved knuckle-walking after they split from humans 6 million years ago, and humans evolved upright walking without knuckle-walking.
technophilia
Neo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816. Neo-Luddism includes the critical examination of the effects technology has on individuals and communities.
Reform Luddism is an offshoot of Neo-Luddism and represents a personal world view skeptical of modern technology and critical of its many purported benefits.
Both Reform Luddism and Neo-Luddism express significant doubts about the nature of benefits from uncritically embracing new information technology. Neo-Luddism holds the belief that we were better off before its advent and is the opposite of technophilia, the belief that technological innovation will remedy all ills.
Caesarean section
A Caesarean section, is a surgical procedure in which one or more incisions are made through a mother's abdomen (laparotomy) and uterus (hysterotomy) to deliver one or more babies, or, rarely, to remove a dead fetus. A late-term abortion using Caesarean section procedures is termed a hysterotomy abortion (not to be confused with hysterectomy) and is very rarely performed. The first modern Caesarean section was performed by German gynecologist Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer in 1881.
A Caesarean section is usually performed when a vaginal delivery would put the baby's or mother's life or health at risk. More recently it has been performed upon request for childbirths that may otherwise have been natural. In recent years the rate has risen to a record level of 46% in China and to levels of 25% and above in many Asian, European and Latin American countries. In 2007, in the United States, the Caesarean section rate was 31.8%. Across Europe, there are significant differences between countries: in Italy the Caesarean section rate is 40%, while in the Nordic countries it is only 14%.
numeronyms
ethnology
Anthropology
dildo
petroglyphs
minimalism
Mesmerism
autodidact
- galling → As for the “rightness” of using a case-preserving, case-insensitive filesystem, though… well, I come from a UNIX-geek background myself, and it was many galling years before I understood why it was designed that way in the first place. [an email comment on Apple's HSF file system by Brian Tiemann, published on http://www.birdhouse.org/macos/beos_osx/redux.html]
- paraplegia → in the movie _Born on the 4th of July_ starring Tom Cruze, the Ron Kovic guy was a paraplegic. Be amused at the scene when he is about to demo to his mon how he pee, and laugh at the scene where he's about to make love to a Mexican prostitute. Whilist his ex-marines buddy (one of the few goodmen, also wasted from the waist down), merry-making with two New York chicks. Be a war-mongering hero!
- palpation → exame by touching. Like how a family doctor touches your neck, chest, belly, and groins.
- palsy → reminds me of The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe.
- numismatics → coin collecting
- ventral → dorsal fin, ventral fin.
- entomology
- epilepsy
- fatalism → belief in fate.
- determinism → a word from 19th century science. With today's science, we know that things deterministic can be unpredictable
- bowdlerize
- catechism
- escapism → escapism is essentially inflicts self-damage, but perhaps slight escapism behavior has psychological benefits, ultimately beneficial to the individual. The ultimate escapism is of course suicide. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism .
- ageism
- homology → Math term. Requires a math degree to understand.
- incontinent → one who pisses all over the place involuntarily.
- pederast
- dystopia → opposite of utopia.
- gastrointestinal
- protectionism → uneducated stupidity
- philander → playboy, womanizer. e.g. Bill Clinton.
- senescent → Aging (or the beginning of the senescent process) officially begins at age 29-33 [PK in email]
- polygamy → polygamy means the combination of polygyny and polyandry. Both of which are practiced thru-out animal kingdom, including Homo Sapiens. cuckold
- tribalism
- aleatory
- corolla → the ring around the cock can be termed corolla, poetically. Here we are using a simile, supposing that a cock is a flower, complete with head and stem, and produces honey suitable for reproduction as well as consumption.
- tercentenary → 300
- gerontology → …Aunt May, as her family calls her -- received the honor last week after it was discovered by gerontology researchers that her birthday, June 12, 1889, was exactly a week older than the previous title holder [oldest living American, 113 years old]. [KPIX/KCBS online news on 2002 Nov 7]
- eponymous → they may have had conflicting ideas about the magazine's content, but Rosie O'Donnell and the publisher of her eponymous magazine share a vision of how to resolve the problem: lawsuites. [Time mag, 2000-10-14]
- urticate → whip, flog, thrash
- benthos
- ataraxia
- logorrhea
- corrigendum → “The corrigendum is free”. [Erik Naggum in comp.lang.lisp 2002-08 about a manual.]
- necromancy → talking to the dead
- psychosomatic → somatic, but psychological, as in: stomach pain during an impinging exam or job interview
- neologism
- Nemesis → goddess of vengeance
- Kinesiology → Kinesiology researchers might be better at true health, provided they aren't in the employ of money-making sports programs.
- mycology
- sutra → Hindu doctrines, e.g. Kamasutra [see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_Sutra ]
- exoskeletons → The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA). [from the web]
- paleontology
- anacoluthon → When I was a kid, my Washington journalist parents and their journalist friends condescended to Dwight Eisenhower as the fatuous golfer who read Zane Grey westerns and spoke in ridiculous anacoluthon -- that syntactical incoherence for which he was famous. (Later, it was revealed that Eisenhower often spoke incoherently on purpose, in order to confuse the press. He thought it was funny. And he considered reporters to be a little stupid, a lesser breed.) [Time Mag. Lance Morrow, 2000-03-17]
- apotheosis → aggrandizement, sublimation
-a arpeggio
-a ideologue
-a fundamentalist → in religious contexts, it means people who believed that population are procreated by one man and one woman, and this woman is made up from a rib bone of that man, the value of Pi is 3, and many other holy tales.
- physiognomy
- phytotoxic
- atavism
- horology
- cinematography
- pugilism
- stenography
- monologue
literature
- orthoepy
- phraseology
- Sensationalism
living things
- pachyderm
- araneid → spider
- cetacean
- alga
Metaphysics Related
eschatology
- hagiology
- Hegelianism
- monism
- pluralism
- idealism
- dualism
- atomism
social/political
- imperialism → United Kingdom comes to mind.
- communalism
- paternalism
- classism
philosophy related
- solipsism → …Of even greater significance than the solipsism of students and the pusillanimity of teachers is the third trend, the sheer decline in the amount and quality of work expected in class… [from an essay opposing mass education]
- deconstructionism → You don't know who Foucault was? He was the father of deconstructionism.
- theosophy
- unitarianism
- eudaemonism
- ecumenism
- sensualist
- tautology → i say what i mean, i mean what i say, and tautologies are sometimes actually meaningful because of context.
studies
- vexillology → study of flags. (i.e. their history, social significance etc. See also: Banners, Damsels, and Mores)
- ethology → study of animal behavior, or study of human ethos. Go figure.
- ecology → science of organism and their environments. Fashionable locution among good politicians.
- ethology
- telemetry
- ethnology
- ornithology
- phenomenology
- thanatology
- graphology
English, language
- euphuism → Euphuism is an exaggeratedly fancy English style. It was invented by John Lyly for his novel Euphues (1578), and involves the use of abstruse classical allusion and figures of speech of every kind, particularly similes, extravagant metaphors, alliteration and assonance. Lyly's books were enormously popular and his style was widely imitated. Indeed, even Shakespeare (who sends it up in the utterances of Fluellen and Pistol in Henry V and the Sir-Topas swanking of Feste in Twelfth Night) was not immune to it. In later English literature, the most successful uses of it are Sir Thomas Urquhart's magnificently engorged, 17th-century translation of Rabelais, and the 19th-century, poetical extravagance of Swinburne and his imitators (such as James Elroy Flecker). It also underlies the dandified utterance of Restoration comedy, and is most satisfyingly mocked by Sheridan (for example in Mrs Malaprop's assaults on the language in The Rivals) and by Joyce (in the parodies of romantic literature in Ulysses). [source forgotten]
- archaism → archaic word, idiom etc.
- -a anaphora → e.g. “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills” [Winston S. Churchill]
- anadiplosis
- logorrhea
- agglutinate
- alliteration
- simile
- figures of speech
- metaphor
oddball nouns
- amanuensis → One who is employed to take dictation or to copy manuscript.
- proscenium → The area of a modern theater that is located between the curtain and the orchestra
- apparatchiks → A member of a Communist apparat.
- flan → a desert
- troglodyte → A member of a fabulous or prehistoric race of people that lived in caves, dens, or holes.
- ketch → some kind of sailing boat
instruments
- clepsydra → water clock
- stethoscope → listens the heart
- theodolite → surveyer's scope for measuring angles; similar to sextant
science jargons
- phenotype
- homeostasis
palpus epidermis hemolymph → “blood” of insects. affidavit, animism, arraign, gastronomy, genealogy, geodesy, homeopathy, humanism, hyperventilate, hypothermia, ichthyology, multivalent misology → hatred of reason misogyny → hatred of women mysanthropy → hatred of human pecuniary → relating to money