Gravamen

Gravamen (from Lat. gravare, to weigh down; gravis, heavy), a complaint or grievance, the ground of a legal action, and particularly the more serious part of a charge against an accused person. In legal terms, the essential element of a lawsuit.

In English the term is used chiefly in legal submissions and judicial opinions. The word is commonly misspelled gravaman.

motorjet

A motorjet is a rudimentary type of jet engine which is sometimes referred to as thermojet, a term now commonly used to describe a particular and completely unrelated pulsejet design.

Reinheitsgebot

The Reinheitsgebot, literally "purity order"), sometimes called the "German Beer Purity Law" or the "Bavarian Purity Law" in English, was a regulation concerning the production of beer in Germany. In the original text, the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley and hops. The law has since been repealed but many German and American beers, for marketing purposes, continue to claim to abide by the rule.

The law originated in the city of Ingolstadt in the duchy of Bavaria on 23 April 1516, although first put forward in 1487, concerning standards for the sale and composition of beer.

gules

In heraldry, gules is the tincture with the colour red, and belongs to the class of dark tinctures called "colours". In engraving, it is sometimes depicted as a region of vertical lines or else marked with gu. as an abbreviation.

Mestizo

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent. The term originated as a racial category in the Casta system that was in use during the Spanish empire's control of their American colonies; it was used to describe those who had one European-born parent and one who was a member of an indigenous American population. In the Casta system mestizos had fewer rights than European born persons called "Peninsular", and "Criollos" who were persons born in the New World of two European-born parents, but more rights than "Indios" and "Negros".

Sepak takraw

Sepak takraw, or kick volleyball, is a sport native to the Malay-Thai Peninsula. Sepak takraw differs from the similar sport of volleyball in its use of a rattan ball and only allowing players to use their feet, knee, chest and head to touch the ball. It is a popular sport in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Philippines.

Anosognosia

Anosognosia is a condition in which a person who suffers disability seems unaware of the existence of his or her disability. Unlike denial, which is a defense mechanism, anosognosia is rooted in physiology (for example, damage to the frontal or parietal lobe due to illness and disease). This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments, such as blindness or paralysis. It was first named by the neurologist Joseph Babinski in 1914, although relatively little has been discovered about the cause of the condition since its initial identification. The word comes from the Greek words "nosos" disease and "gnosis" knowledge (an- / a- is a negative prefix).

Cavitation

Cavitation is the formation and then immediate implosion of cavities in a liquid – i.e. small liquid-free zones ("bubbles") – that are the consequence of forces acting upon the liquid. It usually occurs when a liquid is subjected to rapid changes of pressure that cause the formation of cavities where the pressure is relatively low.

Cavitation is a significant cause of wear in some engineering contexts. When entering high pressure areas, cavitation bubbles that implode on a metal surface cause cyclic stress. This results in surface fatigue of the metal causing a type of wear also called "cavitation". The most common examples of this kind of wear are pump impellers and bends when a sudden change in the direction of liquid occurs. Cavitation is usually divided into two classes of behaviour: inertial (or transient) cavitation and non-inertial cavitation.

kerf

kerf (plural kerfs)

The groove or slit created by cutting a workpiece; an incision; the width of the groove made while cutting.

deuteragonist

In literature, the deuteragonist (from Greek: δευτεραγωνιστής, deuteragonistes, second actor) is the second most important character, after the protagonist and before the tritagonist. The deuteragonist may switch from being with or against the protagonist depending on the deuteragonist's own conflict/plot.

Quasicrystals

Quasicrystals are structural forms that are ordered but not periodic. They form patterns that fill all the space though they lack translational symmetry. While crystals, according to the classical crystallographic restriction theorem, can possess only 2, 3, 4, and 6-fold rotational symmetries, the Bragg diffraction pattern of quasicrystals shows sharp peaks with other symmetry orders, for instance 5-fold.

Fartburglar

Fartburglar A person who farts right after you and steals your thunder, so to speak, claiming they are responsible for the horrible smell when it is really you.

matriculant

matriculant (plural matriculants)

1. A person who has matriculated or been registered on a list or roll, usually at a school.

blatherskite

blatherskite (countable and uncountable; plural blatherskites)

1. A voluble purveyor of nonsense.
2. Nonsense or blather.

Tapatío

Tapatío is a hot sauce, produced in Vernon, California, that can be found at many grocery stores in the United States. It rates 3,000 on the scale of Scoville units.

"Tapatío" is the name given to people from Guadalajara, Jalisco: the company's founders come from Guadalajara. It is exported to Mexico, Canada, Central America and a few countries in Europe.

Yarn bombing

Yarn bombing, yarnbombing, yarnstorming, guerrilla knitting, or graffiti knitting is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted cloth rather than paint or chalk.

videlicet

Viz. (also rendered viz without a period) and the adverb videlicet are used as synonyms for "namely", "that is to say", and "as follows".

Antinomy

Antinomy (Greek αντι-, for or instead of, plus νομος, law) literally means the mutual incompatibility, real or apparent, of two laws. It is a term used in logic and epistemology.

The term acquired a special significance in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who used it to describe the equally rational but contradictory results of applying to the universe of pure thought the categories or criteria of reason proper to the universe of sensible perception or experience (phenomena). Empirical reason cannot here play the role of establishing rational truths because it goes beyond possible experience and is applied to the sphere of that which transcends it.

Hummels

Hummel figurines (also known as M.I. Hummel figurines or simply Hummels) are a series of porcelain figurines based on the drawings of Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel.

plinth

In architecture, a plinth is the base or platform upon which a column, pedestal, statue, monument or structure rests. Gottfried Semper's The Four Elements of Architecture (1851) posited that the plinth, the hearth, the roof, and the wall make up all of architectural theory. The plinth usually rests directly on the ground, or "stylobate". According to Semper, the plinth exists to negotiate between a structure and the ground. Semper's theory has been influential in the development of architecture.

Many houses in flood-prone rural areas of Bangladesh are built on plinths ("homestead plinths").

Pica

Pica is a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive (e.g., metal, clay, coal, sand, dirt, soil, feces, chalk, pens and pencils, paper, batteries, spoons, toothbrushes, soap, mucus, latex gloves, ash, gum, lip balm, tacks and other office supplies, etc.) For these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate. The name of the condition originates from the Latin word for magpie, a bird that is reputed to eat almost anything. Pica is seen in all ages, particularly in pregnant women, small children, and those with developmental disabilities.

Tiffin

Tiffin is lunch, or any light meal. It originated in British India, and is today found primarily in Indian English. The word originated when Indian custom superseded the British practice of an afternoon tea, leading to a new word for the afternoon meal. It is derived from the obsolete English slang tiffing, for "taking a little drink or sip". When used for "lunch", it is not necessarily a light meal.

barn

A barn (symbol b) is a unit of area. Originally used in nuclear physics for expressing the cross sectional area of nuclei and nuclear reactions, today it is used in all fields of high energy physics to express the cross sections of any scattering process. A barn is defined as 10 m² (100 fm) and is approximately the cross sectional area of a uranium nucleus. The barn is also the unit of area used in nuclear quadrupole resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance to quantify the interaction of a nucleus with an electric field gradient. While the barn is not an SI unit, it is accepted for use with the SI due to its continued use in particle physics. It is one of the very few units which are accepted to be used with SI units, and one of the most recent units to have been established (cf. the knot and the bar, other non-SI units acceptable in limited circumstances).

Two related units are the outhouse (10⁻³⁴ m, or 1 μb) and the shed (10⁻⁵² m, or 1 yb), although these are rarely used in practice.

roundhouse

A roundhouse is a building used by railroads for servicing locomotives. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that were traditionally located surrounding or adjacent to turntables. The defining feature of the traditional roundhouse was the turntable, which facilitates access when the building is used for repair facilities or for storage of steam locomotives.

Pocosin

Pocosin is a term for a type of palustrine wetland with deep, acidic, sandy, peat soils. Groundwater saturates the soil except during brief seasonal dry spells and during prolonged droughts. Pocosin soils are nutrient deficient (oligotrophic), especially in phosphorus.

Fanfare

A Fanfare is a relatively short piece of music that is typically played by trumpets and other brass instruments often accompanied by percussion. It is usually intended for important social purposes, such as ceremonial events involving royalty or important people, as exclamations of significant activities during an event (such as with introductions and closings), or to precede announcements with the purpose of gaining the attention of the audience. Similarly, musical works themselves often begin, transition, or end with fanfares or fanfare-like themes. The term is also used symbolically, such as to describe occasions that are greatly publicized, even when no music is involved.

histosol

In both the FAO soil classification and the USA soil taxonomy, a histosol is a soil consisting primarily of organic materials. They are defined as having 40 centimetres (16 in) or more of organic soil material in the upper 80 centimetres (31 in). Organic soil material has an organic carbon content (by weight) of 12 to 18 percent, or more, depending on the clay content of the soil. These materials include muck (sapric soil material), mucky peat (hemic soil material), or peat (fibric soil material). Aquic conditions or artificial drainage are required. Typically, histosols have very low bulk density and are poorly drained because the organic matter holds water very well. Most are acidic and many are very deficient in major plant nutrients which are washed away in the consistently moist soil.

terajoule

The terajoule (TJ) is equal to one trillion (10¹²) joules. About 63 terajoules were released by the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima.^[10] The International Space Station, at completion, with a mass of 450,000kg and orbital velocity of 7.7 km/s,^[11] will have a kinetic energy of roughly 13 terajoules.

husting

A husting (called a stump in the United States) originally referred to a physical platform from which representatives presented their views or cast votes before a parliamentary or other election body. By metonymy, the term may now refer to any event, such as debates or speeches, during an election campaign where one or more of the representative candidates are present.

numeronym

A numeronym is a number-based word.

Most commonly, a numeronym is a word where a number is used to form an abbreviation (albeit not an acronym or an initialism). Pronouncing the letters and numbers may sound similar to the full word: "K9" for "canine" (phonetically: "kay" + "nine"). A similar example in French is "K7" for "cassette" (phonetically: "ka" + "sept").

Alternatively, the letters between the first and last are replaced with a number representing the number of letters omitted, such as "i18n" for "internationalization". Sometimes the last letter is also counted and omitted.

Plasmolysis

Plasmolysis is the process in plant cells where the plasma membrane pulls away from the cell wall due to the loss of water through osmosis. The reverse process, cytolysis, can occur if the cell is in a hypotonic solution resulting in a higher external osmotic pressure and a net flow of water into the cell. Through observation of plasmolysis and deplasmolysis it is possible to determine the tonicity of the cell's environment as well as the rate solute molecules cross the cellular membrane.