Hypocatastasis

Hypocatastasis is a figure of speech that declares or implies a resemblance, representation or comparison. It differs from a metaphor, because in a metaphor the two nouns are both named and given; while, in hypocatastasis, only one is named and the other is implied, or as it were, is put down underneath out of sight. Hence hypocatastasis is an implied resemblance or representation: that is an implied simile or metaphor. A hypocatastasis has more force than a metaphor or simile, and expresses as it were a superlative degree of resemblance.

Bullinger gives the following example: one may say to another, “You are like a beast.” This would be simile, tamely stating a fact. If, however, he said, “You are a beast” that would be metaphor. But, if he said simply, “Beast!” that would be hypocatastasis, for the other part of the simile or metaphor (“you”), would be implied and not stated. This figure, therefore, is calculated to arouse the mind and attract and excite the attention to the greatest extent.

Euphuism

Euphuism is a peculiar mannered style of English prose. It takes its name from a prose romance by John Lyly. It consists of a preciously ornate and sophisticated style, employing in deliberate excess a wide range of literary devices such as antitheses, alliterations, repetitions and rhetorical questions. Classical learning and remote knowledge of all kinds are displayed. Euphuism was fashionable in the 1580s, especially in the Elizabethan court but never previously or subsequently.

"It is virtue, yea virtue, gentlemen, that maketh gentlemen; that maketh the poor rich, the base-born noble, the subject a sovereign, the deformed beautiful, the sick whole, the weak strong, the most miserable most happy. There are two principal and peculiar gifts in the nature of man, knowledge and reason; the one commandeth, and the other obeyeth: these things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can change, neither the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, neither age abolish". (Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit)

mytheme

In the study of mythology, a mytheme is the essential kernel of a myth—an irreducible, unchanging element, a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways—"bundled" was Claude Lévi-Strauss's image— or linked in more complicated relationships, like a molecule in a compound. For example, the myths of Adonis and Osiris share several elements, leading some scholars to conclude that they share a source, i.e., images passed down in cultures or from one to another, being ascribed new interpretations of the action depicted as well as new names in various readings of icons. Claude Lévi-Strauss, who gave the term wide circulation, wrote, "If one wants to establish a parallel between structural linguistics and the structural analysis of myths, the correspondence is established, not between mytheme and word but between mytheme and phoneme."

trema

A trema (from the Greek τρῆμα trêma; plural tremas or tremata) is a diacritic consisting of two dots ( ¨ ) placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. (When that letter is an i, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï.) The trema is usually used to denote one of two distinct phonological phenomena: diaeresis (pronounced /daɪˈɛrɨsɨs/ dy-ERR-ə-səs), in which the trema is used to show that a vowel letter is not part of a digraph or diphthong; and umlaut (pronounced /ˈʊmlaʊt/ OOM-lowt), in which the trema illustrates a sound shift.

varmint

varmint

1. A pestering animal such as one that kills or harasses a farmer's livestock.
2. A person who is obnoxious or makes trouble.

Earworm

Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one's mind, put colloquially as "music being stuck in one's head." Use of the English translation was popularized by James Kellaris, a marketing researcher at the University of Cincinnati, and Daniel Levitin and the boss CTK. Kellaris' studies demonstrated that different people have varying susceptibilities to earworms, but that almost everybody has been afflicted with one at some time or another.

contrabass

The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2 (see standard tuning). The double bass is a standard member of the string section of the symphony orchestra and smaller string ensembles in Western classical music. In addition, it is used in other genres such as jazz, 1950s-style blues and rock and roll, rockabilly/psychobilly, traditional country music, bluegrass, tango and many types of folk music. A person who plays the double bass is usually referred to as a bassist.

Gefilte

Gefilte fish (from the Yiddish and German: Gefüllter Fisch "stuffed fish") (Yiddish: געפֿילטע פֿיש, Hebrew: דגים ממולאים‎ dagim memula'im, literally "filled fish") is a poached fish mince stuffed into the fish skin.

More common since the Second World War are the Polish patties similar to quenelles or fish balls made from a mixture of ground deboned fish, mostly carp or pike. They are popular in the Ashkenazi Jewish community and are typically eaten on Shabbat and Holidays.

admonitory

admonitory

1. Of or pertaining to an admonition. Gentle or friendly reproof; counseling against fault or oversight; warning.

   The schoolboy left an admonitory message on the bathroom wall.

stratovolcano

A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a tall, conical volcano built up by many layers (strata) of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile and periodic, explosive eruptions. The lava that flows from stratovolcanoes typically cools and hardens before spreading far due to high viscosity. The magma forming this lava is often felsic, having high-to-intermediate levels of silica (as in rhyolite, dacite, or andesite), with lesser amounts of less-viscous mafic magma. Extensive felsic lava flows are uncommon, but have travelled as far as 15 km (9.3 mi).

octothorpe

octothorpe

(chiefly US) A name for the hash or square symbol (#), used mainly in telephony and computing

torii

A torii (鳥居・鳥栖・鶏栖 lit. bird perch) is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred (see Sacred-profane dichotomy). The presence of a torii at the entrance is usually the simplest way to identify Shinto shrines, and a small torii icon represents them on Japanese road maps. They are however a common sight at Japanese Buddhist temples too, where they stand at the entrance of the temple's own shrine, called chinjusha (鎮守社 tutelary god shrine) and usually very small.

Nureongi

Nureongi (누렁이) and Hwangu (황구; 黃狗) are Korean terms meaning "Yellow Dog" used to refer to tannish mongrel or landrace of dog in Korea. These dogs are not formally recognized as a breed or type by any official breed club.

While other kinds of dogs are also farmed and eaten, the Nureongi is the most common dog in Korea to be used in this way. He describes them as "mid-sized, short haired, and yellow furred" and that notes that they "are not normally kept as pets".

salubrious

salubrious

1. Promoting health or well-being; wholesome. Especially related to air.

factoid

A factoid is a questionable or spurious—unverified, incorrect, or fabricated—statement presented as a fact, but with no veracity. The word can also be used to describe a particularly insignificant or novel fact, in the absence of much relevant context. The word is defined by the Compact Oxford English Dictionary as "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact".

Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper", and created the word by combining the word fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact". CNN's Headline News incorporated factoids into its half-hour newscast in the early 1990s under the direction of Jon Petrovich.

Guillemots

Guillemots is the common name for several species of seabird in the auk family (part of the order Charadriiformes). In British use, the term comprises two genera: Uria and Cepphus. In North America the Uria species are called "murres" and only the Cepphus species are called "guillemots". This word of French origin apparently derives from a form of the name William, cf. the Welsh: Gwillim or the French: Guillaume.

Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism is a label formulated by US academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals. The label primarily encompasses the intellectual developments of certain mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and theorists. The movement is difficult to summarize, but may be broadly understood as a body of distinct responses to structuralism, which argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure-—modeled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and the organization of ideas and imagination—a "third order." The precise nature of the revision or critique of structuralism differs with each post-structuralist author, though common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures. Writers whose work is often characterised as post-structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva.

polybag

A plastic bag, polybag, or pouch is a type of packaging made of thin, flexible, plastic film, nonwoven fabric, or plastic textile. Plastic bags are used for containing and transporting goods such as foods, produce, powders, ice, magazines, comic books, chemicals and waste.

property

In modern philosophy, mathematics, and logic, a property is an attribute of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. It differs from the logical concept of class by not having any concept of extensionality, and from the philosophical concept of class in that a property is considered to be distinct from the objects which possess it. Understanding how different individual entities (or particulars) can in some sense have some of the same properties is the basis of the problem of universals. The terms attribute and quality have similar meanings.

Discordianism

Discordianism is a religion, or parody religion, that worships Eris (also known as Discordia), the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 by Malaclypse the Younger with the publication of its principal text, the Principia Discordia.

Vaisakhi

Vaisakhi is an ancient harvest festival in the Punjab region, which also marks beginning of a new solar year, and new harvest season. Baisakhi is a Sikh religious festival. It falls on the first day of the Baisakh month in the solar Nanakshahi calendar, which corresponds to April 14 in the Gregorian calendar.

In Sikhism, it is one of the most significant holidays in the Sikh calendar, commemorating the establishment of the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib in 1699, by the 10th Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh.

Orbital

In Iain M. Banks' fictional Culture universe, an Orbital (sometimes also simply called an O or a small ring) is a purpose-built space habitat forming a massive ring (though much smaller than a ringworld) rotating to simulate gravity.

Its inhabitants, often numbering many billions, live on the inside of the ring, where continent-sized 'plates' have been shaped to provide all sorts of natural environments and climates, often with the aim of producing especially spectacular results.

Post scarcity

Post scarcity describes a hypothetical form of economy or society, often explored in science fiction, in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free. This would be due to an abundance of fundamental resources (matter, energy and intelligence), in conjunction with sophisticated automated systems capable of converting raw materials into finished goods, allowing manufacturing to be as easy as duplicating software.

Tachycardia

Tachycardia comes from the Greek words tachys (rapid or accelerated) and kardia (of the heart). Tachycardia typically refers to a heart rate that exceeds the normal range for a resting heart rate (heart rate in an inactive or sleeping individual). It can be dangerous depending on the speed and type of rhythm.

Derealization

Derealization (sometimes abbreviated as DR) is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems strange or unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions, such as psychiatric and neurological disorders, and not a standalone disorder. It is also a transient side effect of acute drug intoxication, sleep deprivation, and stress.

duty cycle

In engineering, the duty cycle of a machine or system is the time that it spends in an active state as a fraction of the total time under consideration.

photonics

The science of photonics includes the generation, emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, detection and sensing of light. The term photonics thereby emphasizes that photons are neither particles nor waves — they are different in that they have both particle and wave nature. It covers all technical applications of light over the whole spectrum from ultraviolet over the visible to the near-, mid- and far-infrared. Most applications, however, are in the range of the visible and near infrared light. The term photonics developed as an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s and optical fibers developed in the 1970s.

war hammer

A war hammer is a late medieval weapon of war intended for close combat action, the design of which resembles the hammer. The war hammer consists of a handle and a head. The handle may be of different lengths, the longest being roughly equivalent to the halberd, and the shortest about the same as a mace. Long war hammers were pole weapons (polearms) meant for use against riders, whereas short ones were used in closer quarters and from horseback. Later war hammers often had a spike on one side of the head, thus making it a more versatile weapon.

SHRDLU

SHRDLU was an early natural language understanding computer program, developed by Terry Winograd at MIT from 1968-1970. It was written in the Micro Planner and Lisp programming language on the DEC PDP-6 computer and a DEC graphics terminal. Later additions were made at the computer graphics labs at the University of Utah, adding a full 3D rendering of SHRDLU's "world".

The name SHRDLU was derived from ETAOIN SHRDLU, the arrangement of the alpha keys on a Linotype machine, arranged in descending order of usage frequency in English.

London Stone

The London Stone is a stone that is said to be the place from which the Romans measured all distances in Britannia. It is now set within a stone surround and iron grille on Cannon Street, in the City of London. This artefact is sometimes called the Stone of Brutus. Popular legends include the stone being the remains of an ancient stone circle that is alleged to have stood on Ludgate Hill and even the stone from which King Arthur drew Excalibur.

heteronym

In linguistics, heteronyms (also known as heterophones) are words that are written identically but have different pronunciations and meanings. In other words, they are homographs that are not homophones. Thus, row (propel with oars) and row (argument) are heteronyms, but mean (intend) and mean (average) are not (since they are pronounced the same). Heteronym pronunciation may vary in vowel realisation, in stress pattern (see also Initial-stress-derived noun).