Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Desenrascanço



Desenrascanço
(loosely translatable as "disentanglement") is a Portuguese word used, in common language, to express an ability to solve a problem without having the knowledge or the adequate tools to do so, by use of imaginative resources or by applying knowledge to new situations. Achieved when resulting in a hypothetical good-enough solution. When that good solution doesn't occur we got a failure (enrascanço - entanglement). It is taught, more or less, informally in some Portuguese institutions, such as universities, navy or army. Portuguese people, strongly believe it to be one of the their most valued virtues and a living part of their culture. Desenrascanço, in fact, is the opposite of planning, but managing for the problem not becoming completely out of control and without solution.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

spat


A spat is a type of shoe accessory covering the instep and ankle. Spats were primarily worn in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Monday, March 28, 2011

flitch beam

A flitch beam (or flitched beam) is a compound beam used in the construction of houses, decks, and other primarily wood-frame structures. Typically, the flitch beam is made up of a steel plate sandwiched between two wood beams, the three layers being held together with bolts. In that common form it is sometimes referenced as a steel flitch beam. Further alternating layers of wood and steel can be used to produce an even stronger beam. The metal plate(s) within the beam are known as flitch plates.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

pulpitum


The pulpitum is a common feature in medieval cathedral and monastic architecture in Europe. It is a massive screen, most often constructed of stone, or occasionally timber, that divides the choir (the area containing the choir stalls and high altar in a cathedral, collegiate or monastic church) from the nave and ambulatory (the parts of the church to which lay worshippers may have access). Typically the pulpitum is lavishly carved and decorated, and those of York Minster and Canterbury Cathedral preserve complete medieval sets of statues of the Kings of England.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Friday, March 25, 2011

The guayabera is a men's shirt popular in Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Zimbabwe. It is also referred to as a "Mexican Wedding Shirt".

Protectionism

Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states, through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to discourage imports, and prevent foreign take-over of native markets and companies.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Andreus

Andreus (Greek: Ἀνδρεύς) was the son of the river-god Peneus in Thessaly, from whom the district about Orchomenos in Boeotia was called Andreis.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Crémone


Crémone or "Crémone Bolt" is a type of decorative hardware used as a locking device to fasten a pair of swinging windows or "French doors".

Monday, March 21, 2011

Geopolymer

Geopolymer is a term covering a class of synthetic aluminosilicate materials with potential use in a number of areas, essentially as a replacement for Portland cement and for advanced high-tech composites and ceramic applications.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

peruse

to peruse (third-person singular simple present peruses, present participle perusing, simple past and past participle perused)

  1. (transitive) To examine or consider with care.
  2. (transitive) To read completely.
    • 1887, H. Rider Haggard, She, Introduction:
      We are for reasons that, after perusing this manuscript, you may be able to guess, going away again this time to Central Asia []
  3. (transitive, informal) To look over casually; to skim.
    • 2001, Doug Stanton, In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis[1], ISBN 0805066322, page 35:
      Haynes quickly perused the message, then took it to the captain on the bridge.
    • 2005, Al Lovejoy, Acid Alex[2], ISBN 1770070931, page 98:
      She asked Denise for the court file, which she fussed from her handbag. The woman perused it briefly and then beamed up at me.
  4. (intransitive, regional) To go from place to place; to wander.
    • 1957, Robert Ruark, The Old Man And The Boy[3], ISBN 0805002391, page 55:
      I loved to straggle off in the mornings [] , just perusing around for firewood.

Usage notes

  • The sense of "skimming" is proscribed by some authorities on usage, including the Oxford American Dictionary. The shift, however, is not dissimilar to that found in scan. The Oxford English Dictionary further notes that the word was used as a general synonym for read as far back as the 16th century.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Zwieback


Zwieback is a type of crispy, sweetened bread, made with eggs and baked twice. It is sliced before it is baked a second time, which produces crispy, brittle slices that closely resemble melba toast.

The name comes from German zwei ("two") or zwie ("twi-"), and backen, meaning "to bake". Zwieback hence literally translates to "twice-baked."

Friday, March 18, 2011

sacerdotal

sacerdotal

Positive
sacerdotal


Comparative
more sacerdotal


Superlative
most sacerdotal

  1. Of or relating to priests or a high religious order; priestly.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

sciolist

sciolist

One who exhibits only superficial knowledge; a self-proclaimed expert with little real understanding.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Pebre

Pebre is a Chilean condiment made of coriander, chopped onion, olive oil, garlic and ground or pureed spicy aji peppers. Pebre is most commonly spooned on meat.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

grapheme

A grapheme (from the Greek: γράφω, gráphō, "write") is a fundamental unit in a written language. Examples of graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems, although arguably[citation needed] a diacritical mark or ancillary glyph does not constitute a grapheme.

In a fully phonemic orthography, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme. However this is very much the exception. In spelling systems that are to some extent non-phonemic, such as in English, multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme. These are called digraphs (two graphemes for a single phoneme) and trigraphs (three graphemes). For example, the word ship contains four graphemes (s, h, i, and p) but only three phonemes, because sh is a digraph. Conversely, a single grapheme can represent multiple phonemes, or no phonemes at all in the case of 'silent' letters: the English word "box" has three graphemes, but four phonemes: /bɒks/.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Manorialism


Manorialism or Seigneurialism or Feudal Society was the organizing principle of rural economy and society widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe. Manorialism was characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord, supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in several ways, in labor (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), in kind, or, on rare occasions, in coin.

Manorialism died slowly. The last feudal dues in France were abolished at the French Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany, the Rittergut manors of Junkers remained until World War II.

Friday, March 11, 2011

globin



The globins are a related family of proteins, all of which have similar primary and tertiary structure (amino acid sequence and folding). These proteins all incorporate the globin fold, a series of eight alpha helical segments. Two prominent members of this family include Myoglobin and Hemoglobin, which both bind the heme (also Haem) prosthetic group. Both these proteins are reversible oxygen binders.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Autocommunication

Autocommunication is a term used in communication studies, semiotics and other cultural studies to describe communication from and to oneself. This is distinguished from the more traditionally studied form of communication where the sender and the receiver of the message are separate. This can be called heterocommunication.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

subirrigation

In agriculture, subirrigation, also known as seepage irrigation, is a method of irrigation where water is delivered to the plant root zone from below the soil surface and absorbed upwards. The excess may be collected for reuse.

Subirrigation is used in growing field crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and sugar cane in areas with high water tables such as Florida and in commercial greenhouse operations.

Three basic types of subirrigation system are in general use for potted plants in greenhouses: ebb-and-flow (bench-mounted enclosures holding pots are filled and then drained); trough (water is flowed through bench-mounted, slightly sloping enclosures containing pots); and flooded floor (special sloped concrete flooring is flooded and drained).

Greenhouse subirrigation has been growing in popularity since the 1990s. Advantages are water and nutrient conservation, and labor-saving. The outfitting cost is relatively high. Potential problems, such as the possibility of increased presence of disease in recycle water, have only begun to be investigated.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

trademark

TM

A trademark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.

Monday, March 7, 2011

cephalalgia


In medicine a headache or cephalalgia is a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head. Headache is caused by a disturbance of the pain-sensitive structures in the head. The brain in itself is not sensitive to pain, because it lacks nociceptors.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Pharming

Pharming is a hacker's attack aiming to redirect a website's traffic to another, bogus website. Pharming can be conducted either by changing the hosts file on a victim’s computer or by exploitation of a vulnerability in DNS server software. DNS servers are computers responsible for resolving Internet names into their real addresses — they are the "signposts" of the Internet. Compromised DNS servers are sometimes referred to as "poisoned".

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Beachcat

Beachcat is a word used to describe an off the beach type of catamaran sailboat.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Borborygmus

Borborygmus (plural borborygmi) (pronounced [ˌborbərˈɪɡməs]) (from Greek βορβορυγμός) also known as stomach growling, or rumbling, is the rumbling sound produced by the movement of gas through the intestines of animals, including humans. The word borborygmus is an onomatopoeia for this rumbling.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

jackanapes

jackanapes (plural jackanapeses)

  1. (obsolete) A monkey
  2. (dated) An impudent or mischievous person

hyōshigi


The hyōshigi (拍子木?) is a simple Japanese musical instrument, consisting of two pieces of hardwood or bamboo that are connected by a thin ornamental rope. Hyoshigi are used in traditional theaters in Japan to announce the beginning of a performance. The clappers are played together or on the floor to create a cracking sound. They are struck, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

A scute or scutum (Latin scutum, plural: scuta "shield") is a bony external plate or scale, as on the shell of a turtle, the skin of crocodilians, the feet of some birds or the anterior portion of the mesonotum in insects.

Trityldon


Trityldon (Greek for 3 cusped tooth) was a species of tritylodont, one of the most advanced group of cynodont therapsids. They lived in the Early Jurassic and possibly Late Triassic periods along with dinosaurs. They also shared a lot of characteristics with mammals, and were once considered mammals because of overall skeleton construction. That was changed due to them retaining the vestigial reptilian jawbones and a different skull structure. Trityldons are now regarded as synapsids (often called "mammal-like reptiles").

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

fritter


A fritter is any kind of food coated in batter and deep fried. The word comes from the Latin *frīctūra ("frying") by way of Old French and Middle English. It can refer to a dessert, a side dish or a main course food.

lordosis

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