Word of the Day

[Yarjka]

chyron - television graphics that occupy the lower area of the screen

(due to the popularity of Chyron Corporation's Chiron I character generator, an early digital solution developed in the 1970s for rendering lower thirds)

[Katya]

asterism - a pattern of stars recognized on Earth's night sky, which may form part of an official constellation, or be composed of stars from more than one

E.g., Orion's Belt is an asterism.

[Cindy]

hibernaculum -- a shelter occupied during the winter by a dormant animal

During the winter, Indiana bats hibernate in caves or abandoned mines. In summer, bats use forested areas for roosting, foraging, and raising young. Males generally stay within ten miles of the hibernaculum. Females, on the other hand, establish maternity colonies farther away from the cave. Known maternity colonies have been found primarily in prairie areas of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and northern Missouri. Maternity colonies generally contain 100 or fewer adult female bats. Indiana bats use mostly dead and dying trees to roost. The most suitable roost trees are large and have flaking bark with space between the bark and the tree bole, cavities, hollow portions, or crevices where bats can roost. Both male and female Indiana bats return to the hibernaculum in the fall to mate and to prepare for winter hibernation.

Source: Heartwood, Inc. v. U.S. Forest Serv., 380 F.3d 428, 435 (8th Cir. 2004).

[Katya]

Source: Heartwood, Inc. v. U.S. Forest Serv., 380 F.3d 428, 435 (8th Cir. 2004).

Light reading?

[S.A.M.]

Executrix - Someone who is responsible for executing, or following through, on an assigned task or duty. (female form of executor)

[Katya]

apologue - a moral fable, esp. one with animals as characters

[Katya]

calumny - the making of false and defamatory statements in order to damage someone's reputation; slander

[Portia]

imbricate: arrange (scales, sepals, plates, etc.) so that they overlap like roof tiles.

From this article on the geography of beer consumption.

“In short, this exercise in mapping georeferenced social media about beer shows how tightly imbricated the material and digital worlds are in the twenty-first century.”

[the anglophile]

nescient: lacking knowledge; ignorant

I may or may not have learned this while reading a Buzzfeed article on irony...

[Yarjka]

arthrous:
Of, pertaining to, or being the use of a term together with a grammatical article.

It came up during a discussion about The Gambia

[Katya]

doughty: brave and persistent

[Yarjka]

paronomastically

by means of a play on words, esp. a pun

[Yarjka]

Adynaton
hyperbole that insinuates a complete impossibility (ie, "when pigs fly")

[Portia]

arthrous:
Of, pertaining to, or being the use of a term together with a grammatical article.

It came up during a discussion about The Gambia

I spent a good deal of time last night reading about arthrousness (of band names, of freeways) on Language Log. Found one of my comments from over three years ago.

[Yarjka]

irredentism (n.)
a member of a party in any country advocating the acquisition of some region included in another country by reason of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties.

Came up in some discussions about Russia/Ukraine

[SmurfBlueSnuggie]

Dissemble: conceal one's true motives, feelings, or beliefs.

Was trying to convince someone that I'm terrible at lying or hiding my emotions. I think he finally believed just how bad I am at dissembling.

[Portia]

Mondegreen - misheard lyrics. My example is "I want to make it from the back of my broken van" (actually "I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand") from The Killers.

Soramimi - the related phenomenon of foreign lyrics sounding like a phrase in your native language. This used to happen to me all the time with ballet terms -- or randomly, the French pledge of allegiance* -- that I heard spoken well before seeing them written. (I still thought of them as French, but was off on the spelling/etymology.) I still remember how surprised I was that tendu comes from the word for "to stretch" (think "extend"), not tondu.

*zhapret sairmah defeedel eetay ...

[Katya]

epizootic

adjective: of, relating to, or denoting a disease that is temporarily prevalent and widespread in an animal population.

noun: an outbreak of an epizootic disease.

I find it interesting that the adjective and noun forms are the same.

[Katya]

adit - a horizontal passage leading into a mine for the purposes of access or drainage

[Digit]

Graphograph (OK, so it's not really a word...funny concept, though)