seaplane tender

A seaplane tender (or seaplane carrier) is a ship that provides facilities for operating seaplanes. These ships were the first aircraft carriers and appeared just before the First World War.

Desalination

Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from water. More generally, desalination may also refer to the removal of salts and minerals, as in soil desalination.

Water is desalinated in order to convert salt water to fresh water so it is suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. Desalination is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of fresh water is, or is becoming, limited.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.

Amanuensis

Amanuensis is a Latin word adopted in various languages, including English, for certain persons performing a function by hand, either writing down the words of another or performing manual labour. The term is derived from a Latin expression which may be literally translated as "manual labourer".

Hussar

Hussar refers to a number of types of light cavalry which originated in Hungary in the 14th century, tracing its roots from Serbian medieval cavalry tradition, brought to Hungary in the course of the Serb migrations, which began in the late 14th century.

cinquefoil

In knot theory, the cinquefoil knot, also known as Solomon's seal knot or the pentafoil knot, is one of two knots with crossing number five, the other being the three-twist knot. It is listed as the 5₁ knot in the Alexander-Briggs notation, and can also be described as the (5,2)-torus knot. The cinquefoil is the closed version of the double overhand knot.

The cinquefoil is a prime knot. Its writhe is 5, and it is invertible but not amphichiral.

Verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the quality of realism in something (such as film, literature, the arts, etc). The property of seeming true, of resembling reality; resemblance to reality, realism

arepa

An arepa is a dish made of ground corn dough or cooked flour, popular in Colombia, Venezuela and other Spanish-speaking countries. It is similar to the Mesoamerican tortilla and even more to the Salvadoran pupusa. Arepas can also be found in Panama, Puerto Rico and the Canary Islands.

Dubtitle

Dubtitle is a term for a show recorded in which the subtitles are merely transcriptions of the new alternative dialogue spoken on the dubbed soundtrack rather than a translation of the original dialogue and was popularized by anime and kung fu film fans to refer to this practice.

yooper

yooper

Yoopers, people from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the "UP")

kayfabe

In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of events within the industry as "real" or "true". Specifically, the portrayal of professional wrestling, in particular the competition and rivalries between participants, as being genuine or not of a worked nature. Referring to events or interviews as being a "chore" means that the event/interview has been "kayfabed" or staged, or is part of a wrestling angle while being passed off as legitimate. Kayfabe has also evolved to become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the realm of the general public.

Kayfabe is often seen as the suspension of disbelief that is used to create the non-wrestling aspects of promotions, such as feuds, angles, and gimmicks, in a similar manner with other forms of entertainment such as soap opera or film.

biostitute

biostitute

a biologist who supports environmentally deleterious activities.

Venin

Venin is the French word for venom, the toxic substance found in venomous animals.

Gyrojet

The Gyrojet is a family of unique firearms developed in the 1960s named for the method of gyroscopically stabilizing its projectiles. Gyrojets fire small rockets, rather than inert bullets, which have little recoil and do not require a heavy barrel to resist the pressure of the combustion gases. Velocity on leaving the tube was very low, but increased to around 1,250 feet per second (380 m/s) at 30 feet (9.1 m). The result is a very lightweight weapon with excellent ballistics.

Long out of production, today they are a coveted collector's item with prices for even the most common model ranging above $1,000. They are, however, rarely fired; ammunition, when available at all, can cost over $100 per round.

Promethium

Promethium is a chemical element with the symbol Pm and atomic number 61. It is notable for being the only exclusively radioactive element besides technetium that is followed by chemical elements with stable isotopes.

muchacho

muchacho m (plural muchachos, feminine singular muchacha, feminine plural muchachas)

1. boy
2. young man
3. young person, youngster
4. teenager

Usage notes

The noun muchacho is like several other Spanish nouns with a human referent. The masculine forms are used when the referent is known to be male, a group of males, a group of mixed or unknown gender, or an individual of unknown or unspecified gender. The feminine forms are used if the referent is known to be female or a group of females.

Punycode

In computing, Punycode is an instance of a general encoding syntax (Bootstring) by which a string of Unicode characters is transformed uniquely and reversibly into a smaller, restricted character set.

Castanets

Castanets are a percussion instrument (idiophone), used in Moorish, Ottoman, ancient Roman, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese music. The instrument consists of a pair of concave shells joined on one edge by a string. They are held in the hand and used to produce clicks for rhythmic accents or a ripping or rattling sound consisting of a rapid series of clicks. They are traditionally made of hardwood, although fibreglass is becoming increasingly popular.

Lipofuscin

Lipofuscin is the name given to finely granular yellow-brown pigment granules composed of lipid-containing residues of lysosomal digestion. It is considered one of the aging or "wear-and-tear" pigments, found in the liver, kidney, heart muscle, adrenals, nerve cells, and ganglion cells. It is specifically arranged around the nucleus, and is a type of Lipochrome.

sans voir

Blindfold chess (also known as sans voir) is a form of chess play wherein the players do not see the positions of the pieces or touch them. This forces players to maintain a mental model of the positions of the pieces. Moves are communicated via a recognized chess notation.

Blindfold chess was considered miraculous for centuries, but it is now accepted that any strong player today can play blindfolded, and many can keep track of more than one simultaneous blindfolded game. In simultaneous blindfold play, an intermediary usually relays the moves between the players.

idioticon

idioticon (plural idioticons)

1. A dictionary of a peculiar dialect, or of the words and phrases peculiar to one part of a country; a glossary

citharede

A citharede (Greek: κιθαροιδός, Latin: citharoedus; British English citharoede) or, in modern usage, citharist, refers to a classical Greek professional performer of the cithara (or sometimes lyre), especially one who used the cithara to accompany singing. Famous citharedes included Terpander and Arion.

"Citharede" was also an epithet of Apollo (Apollo Citharede), and the term is used to refer to statues which portray Apollo with his lyre.

Payasam

Payasam (Sanskrit: क्षीर/Ksheer)(Hindi: खीर, Punjabi: ਖੀਰ, Khiri (ଖିରି) in Oriya, Urdu: کھیر/kheer) also known as Payasam (Tamil: பாயசம்) or Payesh (Bengali) (Malayalam: പായസം) (Kannada:ಪಾಯಸ) (Telugu:పాయసం) is a rice pudding, which is a traditional South Asian sweet dish. It is made by boiling rice or broken wheat with milk and sugar, and flavored with cardamom, raisins, saffron, cashewnuts, pistachios or almonds. It is typically served during a meal or also consumed alone as a dessert.

Coulrophobia

Coulrophobia is a fear of clowns. The term is of recent origin, probably dating from the 1980s, and according to one analyst, "has been coined more on the Internet than in printed form because it does not appear in any previously published, psychiatric, unabridged, or abridged dictionary," however the author later notes, "regardless of its less-than-verifiable etymology, coulrophobia exists in several lists". The condition is a specific phobia (DSM-IV Code 300.29).

Scamp

Scamp - a first rough or mockup usually used in artworking terms (scamp up a design during a design brief).

hypovolemia

In physiology and medicine, hypovolemia (also hypovolaemia) is a state of decreased blood volume; more specifically, decrease in volume of blood plasma. It is thus the intravascular component of volume contraction (or loss of blood volume due to things such as hemorrhaging or dehydration), but, as it also is the most essential one, hypovolemia and volume contraction are sometimes used synonymously.

Hypovolemia is characterized by salt (sodium) depletion and thus differs from dehydration, which is defined as excessive loss of body water.

euphonium

The euphonium is a conical-bore, tenor-voiced brass instrument. It derives its name from the Greek word euphonos, meaning "well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced" (eu means "well" or "good" and phonos means "of sound", so "of good sound"). The euphonium is a valved instrument; nearly all current models are piston valved, though rotary valved models do exist.

Cymatics

Cymatics (from Greek: κῦμα "wave") is the study of visible sound and vibration, a subset of modal phenomena. Typically the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane is vibrated, and regions of maximum and minimum displacement are made visible in a thin coating of particles, paste, or liquid. Different patterns emerge in the exitatory medium depending on the geometry of the plate and the driving frequency.

The apparatus employed can be simple, such as a Chladni Plate or advanced such as the CymaScope, a laboratory instrument that makes visible the inherent geometries within sound and music.

litotes

In rhetoric, litotes is a figure of speech in which understatement is employed for rhetorical effect when an idea is expressed by a denial of its opposite, principally via double negatives. For example, rather than saying that something is attractive (or even very attractive), one might merely say it is "not unattractive."

Litotes is a form of understatement, always deliberate and with the intention of emphasis. However, the interpretation of negation may depend on context, including cultural context. In speech, it may also depend on intonation and emphasis; for example, the phrase "not bad" can be said in such a way as to mean anything from "mediocre" to "excellent."

The use of litotes appeals specifically to certain cultures including the northern Europeans and is popular in English, Russian, and French. They are features of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas and are a means of much stoical restraint.

e.g. not bad means good.

clarion

The clarion or claro is a type of cylindrical brass instrument dating from the 11th to 14th centuries. It is the ancestor to the trumpet and was used by cavalries in camp and as a signal during war. It had a narrower, and perhaps shorter, tube and produced a more acute and shrill tone than the modern trumpet.

nebulous

nebulous (comparative more nebulous, superlative most nebulous)

1. In the form of a cloud or haze; hazy.
2. Vague or ill-defined.
3. Relating to a nebula or nebulae.