Word of the Day!

adit: [ad-it]

noun:

1. An entrance or passageway

2. In mining jargon, a horizontal passage leading into a mine shaft.


3. An approach or access.



Etymology:  First known use, 1595-1605. From Latin aditus meaning "an approach."

Sorry I'm late!  Completely forgot to do this last night!


killfie: [KILL-fee]

Noun: A selfie taken while performing a risky, life-threatening feat. While the people who take killfies are often killed by their stunts, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case for the term to apply. The word "killfie" was created by the media to identify this alarming trend that is often practiced by young thrill-seekers who combine the adrenaline rush of the feats themselves with that of the attention they receive by posting the dangerous selfies online.

A study conducted at Cornell University has shown that 127 people have died while taking killfies from January of 2014 to September of 2016.

cusper:

noun: A person who was born during the cusp years between any two of the named generational divisions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The categorization of generations is highly generalized, arbitrary, and unscientific with a pretty wide span of years encompassing each generation. In spite of this, generations and their corresponding characteristics are discussed quite frequently in the news and media. This is probably because we as humans enjoy categorizing and looking for patterns in just about everything including our supposed shared experience, behavior, and nostalgia with people somewhat near to us in age.

At any rate, the years of transition between each generation are vague, and people born in that little window might find that they embody characteristics of both generations they walk the line between. Cuspers don't fit so neatly into the facts and figures of the generations that the news is so fond of citing.

Examples of cuspers include:

Silent Generation/Baby Boomers: People born in the early to mid 1940s
Baby Boomers/Generation X: People born in the early to mid 1960s
Generation X/Millennials: People born in the late 1970s to early 1980s (also dubbed "The Oregon Trail Generation.")
Millennials/iGeneration: People born in the late 1990s to early 2000s

I was born in 1981, making me a Generation X/Millennial cusper. I have significent memory of an analog world and came of age with AOL and early internet. I have a sister born in 1973, putting her squarely in Generation X, and a brother born in 1992, making him such a Millennial. :-)

As silly as all of this is, I admit I get a little pleasure out of generational categorization. And popular culture and media make it nearly impossible to ignore.

venter:

noun:

In zoology:

1. the abdomen or belly, the undercarriage of an animal
2. a bellylike cavity
3. a bellylike protuberance

In law:

1. the womb
2: a wife or mother who is the source of offspring
3. in venter, conceived but not yet born

Origin:  Latin, venter meaning belly. First known use 1535-1545

Related: adj: ventral, of or related to the belly; abdominal 

Hi!  After a ridiculously long sabbatical, I'm resuming the Wednesday word. It's nice to be back!

I'll ease back in with a short, simple one this week.

nebbish:

Noun, slang: A pitiful, timid, meek, luckless, ineffectual person

Origin: English use started around the turn of the 20th century. Yiddish nebekh meaning poor, unfortunate. From Czech nebohý.  

phubbing: (also spelled pphubbing or p-phubbing)

Noun and/or verb:
Phubbing is the horribly rude act of ignoring or snubbing the person in front of you to focus on your cell phone instead; In particular, when you pull out your phone while the person in front of you is mid-sentence.

Origin:  Presumably a combination of the words "phone" and "snubbing." Coined by the Australian Macquarie Dictionary in 2012.

salp or salpa:  plural:  salps or salpae.

Noun:  Salpae are small, squishy oceanic animals that resemble jellyfish, but are actually more closely related to humans. They are chordates and possess a dorsal nerve cord similar to the spinal cord in vertebrates. Their rudimentary body structure is often referred to when creating models of how modern verterbrates might have evolved.

Salpae have a complex life cycle consisting of two main phases.  Courtesy of Wikipedia: "The solitary life history phase, also known as an oozoid, is a single, barrel-shaped animal that reproduces asexually by producing a chain of tens to hundreds of individuals, which are released from the parent at a small size.

The chain of salps is the 'aggregate' portion of the lifecycle. The aggregate individuals are also known as blastozooids; they remain attached together while swimming and feeding, and each individual grows in size. Each blastozooid in the chain reproduces sexually (the blastozooids are sequential hermaphrodites, first maturing as females, and are fertilized by male gametes produced by older chains), with a growing embryo oozoid attached to the body wall of the parent. The growing oozoids are eventually released from the parent blastozooids, and then continue to feed and grow as the solitary asexual phase, thus closing the lifecycle of salps."

Etymology: New Latin, Greek, French 1510-1520 meaning "fish." Modern use of the word used to describe this particular creature began in the mid 1800s.


Aren't they lovely??

simulacrum: [sim-yuh-ley-kruh m]

Plural: simulacra: [sim-yuh-ley-kruh]

noun: An imitation or representation of a person or a thing, like a statue or a painting. One could argue that words themselves are simulacra as they are merely representations of the things, people, and ideas they describe, rather than the actual things.

etymology: Latin from 1590-1600. Literal translation "likeness" or "similarity."

Simulacrum of the goddess Artemis:

cryoseism

Noun: Also known as an ice quake or a frost quake, a cryoseism is an earthquake that that is caused when soil or rock saturated with water freezes.  As the water freezes, it expands and puts stress on the saturated soil and its surroundings. The stress builds up until it relieves itself by cracking, resulting in the cryoseism.

Cryoseisms can also occur through abrupt glacial movements.