lignify

lignify

1. To become wood.

anachronistic

anachronistic

1. Erroneous in date; containing an anachronism; in a wrong time.

rorqual

rorqual

1. Any whale with longitudinal skin folds running from below the mouth to the navel, allowing the capacity mouth to expand greatly when feeding.

chrestomathy

chrestomathy

1. A collection of written passages, used to learn an unfamiliar language.

zygodactylous

zygodactylous

1. Having two toes pointing forward and two toes pointing backward.

fissiparous

fissiparous

1. Factious, fragmenting, or tending to break into pieces.
2. (biology): Of cells that reproduce through fission, splitting into two.

absquatulate

absquatulate

1. To leave quickly or in a hurry; to take oneself off; to depart.

equipoise

equipoise

1. A state of balance; equilibrium.
2. A counterbalance.

oeuvre

oeuvre

1. The complete body of work created by an artist or writer.

draconian

draconian

1. Very severe, oppressive or strict.

   The despot chose a draconian punishment.

   The Nazi regime was draconian.

   The mayor announced draconian budget cuts today.

prestidigitation

prestidigitation

1. A performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand.
2. A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.

sylph

sylph n

1. A spirit of the air.
2. A slender, graceful girl or woman.

Ruritanian

Ruritanian

1. Of or having the characteristics of adventure, romance, and intrigue, as in works of romantic fiction.
   • 2007, Walter Lippman, Public Opinion‎, chapter X, page 79

     These claims were called the Greater Ruritania by the cultivated classes who regarded Kipling, Treitschke, and Maurice Barres as one hundred percent Ruritanian. But the grandiose idea aroused no enthusiasm abroad. So holding this finest flower of the Ruritanian genius, as their poet laureate said, to their hearts, Ruritania's statesmen went forth to divide and conquer.

2. Used to describe a fictitious and generic foreign government or person, used to state a general or hypothetical situation.

Teletext

Teletext (or "broadcast teletext") is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules. Subtitle (or closed captioning) information is also transmitted in the teletext signal, typically on page 888 or 777.

soigné

soigné

1. immaculate (of clothes etc.); well-manicured (nails)
2. carefully made, well produced
3. meticulous (work)

lacuna

lacuna

1. A small opening; a small pit or depression; a small blank space; a gap or vacancy; a hiatus.
2. An absent part, especially in a book or other piece of writing, often referring to an ancient manuscript or similar.

epicaricacy

epicaricacy

1. Rejoicing at or derivation of pleasure from the misfortunes of others.

euphony

euphony

1. A pronunciation of letters and syllables which is pleasing to the ear.
2. Good phonetic quality of certain words.

worm

A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm (which is a gear in the form of a screw) meshes with a worm gear (which is similar in appearance to a spur gear, and is also called a worm wheel). The terminology is often confused by imprecise use of the term worm gear to refer to the worm, the worm gear, or the worm drive as a unit.

Like other gear arrangements, a worm drive can reduce rotational speed or allow higher torque to be transmitted. The image shows a section of a gear box with a worm gear being driven by a worm. A worm is an example of a screw, one of the six simple machines.

Zmeoaică

The Zmeoaică (plural: zmeoaice) is a character of the Romanian mythology. It is a negative character, the wife of a zmeu.

Redux

"Redux" is a post-positive adjective meaning "brought back, restored" (from the Latin reducere - to bring back) used in literature and film titles.

Works of literature using the word in the title are John Dryden's Astraea Redux (1662), "a poem on the happy restoration and return of His Sacred Majesty"; Anthony Trollope's Phineas Redux (1873), the sequel to Phineas Finn (1867); and John Updike's Rabbit Redux (1970), the second in his sequence of novels about the character Rabbit Angstrom.

WinProm

WinProm is a computer program written by a mathematician Edward Earl of San Diego. The program uses USGS Digital Elevation Model (DEM) databases to automatically calculate peaks, ridges, and key cols. It is intended to help calculate the prominence of a peak in the cases when the key col is very far away from a high-prominence peak.

Slagwerkkrant

Slagwerkkrant is a Dutch bi-monthly magazine for drummers and percussionists.

Daqin

Daqin is the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire and, depending on context, the Near East, especially Syria. It literally means "Great Qin", Qin (Chinese: 秦; pinyin: Qín) being the name of the founding dynasty of the Chinese Empire. Historian John Foster defined it as "...the Roman Empire, or rather that part of it which alone was known to the Chinese, Syria."

polder

A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments (barriers) known as dikes, that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through manually-operated devices. There are three types of polder:

• Land reclaimed from a body of water, such as a lake or the sea bed.
• Flood plains separated from the sea or river by a dike.
• Marshes separated from the surrounding water by a dike and consequently drained.

Speculaas

Speculaas is a type of shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on St Nicholas' Eve in the Netherlands (December 5) and Belgium (December 6). In recent decades it has become available all year round. Speculaas are thin, very crunchy, slightly browned and, most significantly, have some image or figure (often from the traditional stories about St. Nicholas) stamped on the front side before baking; the back is flat.

Hopjes

Hopjes are a type of Dutch sweets with a slight coffee and caramel flavour that originated in the 18th century.

burgemeester

In the Netherlands and Belgium, burgemeester is an appointed government position, whose main responsibility is chairing the executive and legislative councils of a municipality.

DESCENDER

DESCENDER

the part of a lowercase letter (as p) that descends below the main body of the letter, or a letter that has one of these things.

macrotous

macrotous

Long-eared