Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sunday, May 29, 2011

acrolect - mesolect - basilect

Three portions of the post-creole continuum:

acrolect

(linguistics) The variety of speech that is considered the standard form.

mesolect

(linguistics) A variety of speech that is midway between the acrolect and the basilect.

basilect

(linguistics) A variety of a language that has diverged greatly from the standard form.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Singlish


Singapore Vernacular English, commonly known as Singlish is an English-based creole used in Singapore. According to the 2000 census, which does not distinguish between Singlish and English, "English" is the lingua franca of Singapore and 71% of Singaporeans are literate in the language. However, well-educated Singaporeans are able to code-switch between Singlish and standard English.

Friday, May 27, 2011

cajón

A cajón (Spanish: 'crate', 'drawer', or 'box') is a kind of box drum played by slapping the front face (generally thin plywood) with the hands.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as number (typically singular vs. plural), case (subject, object, and so on), gender, and possession.

-s

Declension occurs in a great many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many European languages, but is much less prominent in English. English nouns decline only to distinguish singular from plural (e.g., book vs. books); only very few English adjectives decline (the French loan-word blond(e) being a rare exception), and only a few English pronouns show vestiges of case-triggered declension (e.g., nominative case he, dative case or accusative case him, genitive case (possessive case) his). As detailed below, English was once a highly inflected language, as befitting its Indo-European and especially its Germanic linguistic ancestry, but it became greatly simplified as it evolved.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

pied-à-terre

A pied-à-terre (French, "foot on the ground") is a small living unit usually located in a large city some distance away from an individual's primary residence. It may be an apartment or condominium.

The term pied-à-terre implies usage as a temporary second residence, either for part of the year or part of the work week, by a person of some means.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

booby


A booby is a seabird in the Sula genus, part of the Sulidae family. Boobies are closely related to the gannets (Morus), which were formerly included in Sula.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Hoon

Hoon is a derogatory term used in Australia and New Zealand to refer to a younger person who engages in loutish, anti-social behaviour. In particular, it is used to refer to one who drives in a manner which is anti-social by the standards of contemporary society, that is, fast, noisily or dangerously. While generally applied to automobiles and other road vehicles, anti-hooning legislation also targets hooning behavior wherever it occurs, including motor boats. Hoon activities can include speeding, burnouts, doughnuts or screeching tires. Those commonly identified as being involved in "hooning" or street racing are young, and predominantly male.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Houyhnhnms

Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift's satiric Gulliver's Travels.

Interpretation of the Houyhnhnms has been vexatious. It is possible, for example, to regard them as a veiled criticism by Swift of the British Empire's treatment of non-whites as lesser humans, and it is similarly possible to regard Gulliver's preference (and immediate division of Houyhnhnms into color-based hierarchies) as absurd and the sign of his self-deception.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Yahoo

A Yahoo is a legendary being in the novel Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift.

Swift describes the Yahoos as vile and savage creatures, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist Lemuel Gulliver, who finds the calm and rational society of intelligent horses, the Houyhnhnms, far preferable. The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with "pretty stones" they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term "Yahoo" has become synonymous with "cretin," "dinosaur," and/or "Neanderthal."

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

struldbrug

In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, the name struldbrug is given to those humans in the nation of Luggnagg who are born seemingly normal, but are in fact immortal. However, although struldbrugs do not die, they do nonetheless continue aging. Swift's work depicts the evil of immortality without eternal youth.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

refractory

A refractory material is one that retains its strength at high temperatures. ASTM C71 defines refractories as "non-metallic materials having those chemical and physical properties that make them applicable for structures, or as components of systems, that are exposed to environments above 1,000 °F (811 K; 538 °C)".

Refractory materials are used in linings for furnaces, kilns, incinerators and reactors. They are also used to make crucibles.

poltroon

A poltroon is an ignoble or total coward; a dastard; a mean-spirited wretch.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Shirring



Shirring is two or more rows of gathers used to decorate parts of garments, usually the sleeves, bodice and yoke.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Craic

Craic or crack is a term for fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

subpoena

A subpoena is a writ issued by a court that commands the presence of a witness to testify, under a penalty for failure.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

sleeping policeman


A speed bump (in British English a speed hump, road hump or sleeping policeman; in New Zealand English a judder bar) is a velocity-reducing feature of road design to slow traffic or reduce through traffic.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Mitteleuropa


Mitteleuropa (Central/Middle Europe) is the German term equal to Central Europe.

The word has political, geographic and cultural meaning. While it describes a geographical location, it also is the word describing a German political program that was put into motion during First World War.

The historian Jörg Brechtefeld describes 'Mitteleuropa' as the following:

The term 'Mitteleuropa' never has been merely a geographical term; it is also a political one, much as Europe, East and West, are terms that political scientists employ as synonyms for political ideas or concepts. Traditionally, Mitteleuropa has been that part of Europa between East and West. As profane as this may sound, this is probably the most precise definition of Mitteleuropa available.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

identifier

An identifier is a unique expression in a written format either by a code, by numbers or by the combination of both to distinguish variations from one to another among a class of substances, items, or objects. For living organisms and the structural identifications of objects, identifiers could be more complicated.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Chitin

Chitin (C8H13O5N)n is a long-chain polymer of a N-acetylglucosamine, a derivative of glucose, and is found in many places throughout the natural world. It is the main component of the cell walls of fungi, the exoskeletons of arthropods such as crustaceans (e.g. crabs, lobsters and shrimps) and insects, the radulas of mollusks and the beaks of cephalopods, including squid and octopuses.

Friday, May 6, 2011

standard

A technical standard is an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices. In contrast, a custom, convention, company product, corporate standard, etc which becomes generally accepted and dominant is often called a de facto standard.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Sindarin


Sindarin is an artificial language developed by J. R. R. Tolkien. In Tolkien's mythos, it was the Elvish language most commonly spoken in Middle-earth in the Third Age.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Sepoy


A sepoy (from Persian سپاهی Sipâhi meaning "soldier") was a native of India, a soldier allied to a European power, usually the United Kingdom or Portugal, where the term "sipaio" was used. Specifically, it was the term used in the British Indian Army, and earlier in the East India Company, for an infantry private (a cavalry trooper was a Sowar), and is still so used in the modern Indian Army, Pakistan Army and Bangladesh Army. Close to 300,000 sepoys were crucial in securing the subcontinent for the British East India Company, and played a prominent role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 after it was alleged that the new rifles being issued to them used animal fat to grease the casing.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Holarctic


The Holarctic ecozone refers to the habitats found throughout the northern continents of the world as a whole. This region is divided into the Palearctic, consisting of Northern Africa and all of Eurasia, with the exception of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and the Nearctic, consisting of North America north of southern Mexico. These are further subdivided into a variety of ecoregions. Many ecosystems, and the animal and plant communities that depend on them, are found across multiple continents in large portions of this ecozone. The continuity of these ecosystems results from the shared glacial history of this ecozone. The Floristic Boreal Kingdom corresponds to the Holarctic ecozone.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Arachnology


Arachnology is the scientific study of spiders and related organisms such as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, collectively called arachnids. However, the study of ticks and mites is sometimes not included in arachnology, but is called Acarology. Those who study spiders are arachnologists.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Chromatophores


Chromatophores are pigment-containing and light-reflecting cells found in amphibians, fish, reptiles, crustaceans, and cephalopods. They are largely responsible for generating skin and eye colour in cold-blooded animals and are generated in the neural crest during embryonic development. Mature chromatophores are grouped into subclasses based on their colour (more properly "hue") under white light: xanthophores (yellow), erythrophores (red), iridophores (reflective / iridescent), leucophores (white), melanophores (black/brown) and cyanophores (blue). The term can also refer to coloured, membrane associated vesicles found in some forms of photosynthetic bacteria.

lordosis

  Lordosis is historically defined as an abnormal inward curvature of the lumbar spine.