supermoon

A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the moon's disk as seen from Earth. The technical name is the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system. The term "supermoon" is not an astronomical one, but one that originated in modern astrology. The association of the Moon with both oceanic and crustal tides has led to claims that the supermoon phenomenon may be associated with increased risk of events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. However, the evidence of such a link is widely held to be unconvincing.

Suzerainty

Suzerainty ( /ˈsjuːzərənti/ or /ˈsjuːzərɛnti/) occurs where a region or people is a tributary to a more powerful entity which controls its foreign affairs while allowing the tributary vassal state some limited domestic autonomy. The dominant entity in the suzerainty relationship, or the more powerful entity itself, is called a suzerain. The term suzerainty was originally used to describe the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its surrounding regions. It differs from sovereignty in that the tributary has only some (often limited) self-rule. A suzerain can also refer to a feudal lord, to whom vassals must pay tribute. Although it is a concept which has existed in a number of historical empires, it is a concept that is very difficult to describe using 20th- or 21st-century theories of international law, in which sovereignty either exists or does not. While a sovereign nation can agree by treaty to become a protectorate of a stronger power, modern international law does not recognize any way of making this relationship compulsory on the weaker power.

paramountcy

The doctrine of paramountcy is the legal principle that reconciles contradicting or conflicting laws in a federalist state. Where both the central government and the provincial or state governments have the power to create laws in relation to the same matters, the laws of one government will be given priority over the other through the doctrine.

Jemadar

Jemadar (Urdu: جمعدار) was a rank used in the British Indian Army, where it was the lowest rank for a Viceroy's Commissioned Officer (VCO). Jemadars either commanded platoons or troops themselves or assisted their British commander. They also filled regimental positions such as Assistant Quartermaster (Jemadar Quartermaster) or Assistant Adjutant (Jemadar Adjutant).

It remained in use in the Indian Army until 1965 as the lowest rank of Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO). The rank of Jemadar was later renamed in both the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army as Naib Subedar in infantry units, and Naib Risaldar in cavalry and armoured corps units.

The rank remains in use in the paramilitary police hierarchy.

Princely State

A Princely State (also called Native State or Indian State) was a nominally sovereign entity of British rule in India that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule such as suzerainty or paramountcy.

Kabaddi

Kabaddi (sometimes transliterated Kabbadi or Kabadi; Punjabi: ਕਬੱਡੀ, Marathi: कबड्डी, Hindi: कबड्डी, Bengali: কাবাডি,Urdu: کبڈی, Persian: کودّی، کبدی‎, Kannada: ಕಬಡಿ , Tamil: சடுகுடு, கபடி, Telugu: కబడ్దీ, Malayalam: കബഡി) is a South Asian team sport. The name may be derived from the Tamil word (கை-பிடி) "kai" (hand), "pidi" (catch), which could be translated into "Holding Hands".

Philistinism

Philistinism is a derogatory term used to describe a particular attitude or set of values perceived as despising or undervaluing art, beauty, spirituality, or intellectualism. A person with this attitude is referred to as a Philistine and may also be considered materialistic, favoring conventional social values unthinkingly and forms of art that have a cheap and easy appeal (e.g. kitsch).

persiflage

persiflage (countable and uncountable; plural persiflages)

1. Good-natured banter; raillery.

   After the third strike he returned to the bench to face the inevitable persiflage from his teammates.

2. Frivolous, lighthearted discussion of a topic.

   Polite dinner calls for persiflage rather than in-depth possibly offensive discussion.

Béchamel

Béchamel sauce (English: /bɛʃəˈmɛl, beɪʃəˈmɛl/ French: [beʃamɛl]), also known as white sauce, is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine and is used in many recipes of Italian cuisine, for example lasagne. It is used as the base for other sauces (such as Mornay sauce, which is Béchamel with cheese).

Roux

Roux is a cooking mixture of wheat flour and fat (traditionally butter). It is the thickening agent of three of the mother sauces of classical French cooking: sauce béchamel, sauce velouté and sauce espagnole. Clarified butter, vegetable oils, or lard are commonly used fats. It is used as a thickener for gravy, other sauces, soups and stews. It is typically made from equal parts of flour and fat by weight. When used in Italian food, roux is traditionally equal parts of butter and flour. In Cajun cuisine, roux is almost always made with oil instead of butter and dark brown in color, which lends much richness of flavor, albeit, less thickening power. Hungarian cuisine uses lard (in its rendered form) or—more recently—vegetable oil instead of butter for the preparation of roux (which is called rántás in Hungarian).

ignominious

ignominious (comparative more ignominious, superlative most ignominious)

1. marked by shame or disgrace.

helicity

In fluid mechanics, helicity is the extent to which helix-like motion occurs. If a parcel of fluid is moving, undergoing solid body motion rotating about an axis parallel to the direction of motion, it will have helicity. If the rotation is clockwise when viewed from ahead of the body, the helicity will be positive, if counterclockwise, it will be negative.

Terrestrial animals

Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g., cats, ants, emus), as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water (e.g., fish, lobsters, octopuses), or amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats (e.g., frogs). The term terrestrial is also frequently used for species that live primarily on the ground, in contrast to arboreal species, which live primarily in trees.

Google hacking

Google hacking is a computer hacking technique that uses Google Search and other Google applications to find security holes in the configuration and computer code that websites use.

Niya

Niya, Niye, and also Niy of Thutmose I's Ancient Egypt, also Nii of the Amarna letters, and Nihe, etc. was a kingdom in Syria, or northern Syria.

In the Amarna letters correspondence of 1350-1335 BC, Nii is only referenced in two letters, but each is of some importance. The city of Tunip in the northern Levant had been trying to communicate to the Egyptian pharaoh for two decades, and finally resorted to another letter, EA 59: entitled: "From the citizens of Tunip", (EA for 'el Amarna'). The city-state of Arqa also sent a letter to pharaoh, requesting aid, (EA 100).

The other letter referencing Nii concerns the individual Etakkama, his collusion with the Hittites, and the takeover of territory, 'city-states', and peoples in the northern and western Levant.

yoof

yoof (countable and uncountable; plural yoofs)

1. (British slang) Youth (young person, young people or the state of being young).
2. (used as a modifier before a noun) Of or relating to youth or youths.
3. (used as a modifier before a noun) Intended for youths.

Mead

Mead, also called honey wine, is an alcoholic beverage that is produced by fermenting a solution of honey and water. It may also be produced by fermenting a solution of water and honey with grain mash, which is strained after fermentation. Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be flavored with spices, fruit, or hops (which produce a bitter, beer-like flavor). The alcoholic content of mead may range from about 8% ABV to 18%. It may be still, carbonated, or naturally sparkling, and it may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.

beignet

A beignet (pronounced /bɛnˈjeɪ/ in English, /bɛˈɲɛ/ in French; French, literally "bump" ) in the U.S. is a pastry made from deep-fried dough, much like a doughnut, and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar, or frostings. Savory versions of beignets are also popular as an appetizer, with fillings such as maple or fruit preserves. Yeast is used as the leavening agent in beignets.

In France, beignet is an umbrella term for a large variety of pastries made from deep-fried dough with fruit filling. The tradition of deep-frying fruits for a side dish dates to the time of Ancient Rome. Names for beignet recipes vary throughout France: beignets, bugnes, merveilles, oreillettes, beignets de carnaval, bottereaux, tourtisseaux, corvechets, ganses, nouets, vautes and others.

dermographism

Dermatographic urticaria (also known as dermographism, dermatographism or "skin writing") is a skin disorder seen in 4–5% of the population and is one of the most common types of urticaria, in which the skin becomes raised and inflamed when stroked, scratched, rubbed, and sometimes even slapped.

Irruptive growth

Irruptive growth, sometimes called Malthusian growth, is a growth pattern defined by population explosions and subsequent sharp population crashes, or diebacks. It is an extension of the Malthusian growth model, specifically the growth pattern that causes a Malthusian catastrophe, and can occur when populations overshoot their carrying capacity, a phenomenon typically associated with r-strategists. Populations which exhibit irruptive growth do not stabilize around their carrying capacity, a feature of logistic growth. Irruptive growth occurs when a species reproduces more rapidly than the environment is capable of supporting with the available resources.

Metonymy

Metonymy (/mɨˈtɒnɨmi/ mi-TONN-ə-mee) is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. Metonyms can be either real or fictional concepts representing other concepts real or fictional, but they must serve as an effective and widely understood second name for what they represent.

For instance, "Hollywood" is used as a metonym (an instance of metonymy) for US cinema, because of the fame and cultural identity of Hollywood, a district of the city of Los Angeles, California as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars.

Underemployment

Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the requirements of the job.

Underemployment has been studied in recent decades from a variety of perspectives, including economics, management, psychology, and sociology. In economics, for example, the term underemployment has three different distinct meanings and applications. All meanings involve a situation in which a person is working, unlike unemployment, where a person who is searching for work cannot find a job. All meanings involve under-utilization of labor which is missed by most official (governmental agency) definitions and measurements of unemployment.

Underemployment can refer to:

1. "Overqualification" or "overeducation", or the employment of workers with high education, skill levels, and/or experience in jobs that do not require such abilities. For example, a trained medical doctor who works as a taxi driver would experience this type of underemployment.
2. "Involuntary part-time" work, where workers who could (and would like to) be working for a full work-week can only find part-time work. By extension, the term is also used in regional planning to describe regions where economic activity rates are unusually low, due to a lack of job opportunities, training opportunities, or due to a lack of services such as childcare and public transportation.
3. "Overstaffing" or "hidden unemployment" (also called "labor hoarding"), the practice in which businesses or entire economies employ workers who are not fully occupied---for example, workers currently not being used to produce goods or services due to legal or social restrictions or because the work is highly seasonal.

baby diaper cake

A baby diaper cake is made out of disposable diapers and other baby care supplies, such as baby oil, powder, bottles, wash cloths etc. The diaper cake construction is very functional and easy to disassemble. The diaper cake can have 1-4+ tiers and can contain whatever the budget allows. There are many styles of diaper cakes a few are bouquets, baby carriages and baby booties. Many diaper cakes can be customized to match a particular style, theme or color to fit the occasion. Diaper cakes are a growing trend as they serve to be not only functional baby shower gifts but also serve as decor. It is common to find many items hidden within a diaper cake. These items range from common baby supplies as mentioned above to individualized products selected from a mothers / babies registry.

alveolar trill

The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is ⟨r⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R. Quite often, ⟨r⟩ is used in phonemic transcriptions (especially those found in dictionaries) of languages like English and German that have rhotic consonants that are not an alveolar trill. This is partly due to ease of typesetting and partly because ⟨r⟩ is the letter used in the orthographies of these languages.

Archaic

Archaic may refer to a period of time preceding a "classical period":

• List of archaeological periods
  • Archaic Greece
  • Archaic period in the Americas
  • Early Dynastic Period of Egypt

Kinship

Kinship is a term with various meanings depending upon the context. This article reflects the long-standing use of the term in anthropology, which is usually considered to refer to the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of most humans in most societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated (see below).

anecdote

An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place.

spurious

spurious

spurious (comparative more spurious, superlative most spurious)

1. false, not authentic, not genuine
2. (archaic) bastardly, illegitimate

Rogue wave

Rogue waves (also known as freak waves, monster waves, killer waves, extreme waves, and abnormal waves) are relatively large and spontaneous ocean surface waves that occur far out at sea, and are a threat even to large ships and ocean liners. In oceanography, they are more precisely defined as waves whose height is more than twice the significant wave height (SWH), which is itself defined as the mean of the largest third of waves in a wave record. Therefore rogue waves are not necessarily the biggest waves found at sea; they are, rather, surprisingly large waves for a given sea state. Rogue waves seem not to have a single distinct cause, but occur where physical factors such as high winds and strong currents cause waves to merge to create a single exceptionally large wave.

Sueca

Sueca (meaning Swedish in Portuguese) is a 4 player-partnership point trick-taking card game. The game is most popular in Portugal, Brazil and Angola. Its closest known relative is the very similar German game Einwerfen.

Gymkhana

Gymkhana (Hindi: जिमख़ाना, Bengali: জিমখানা, Urdu: جِمخانہ) is a typical Anglo-Indian expression, which is derived from the Hindi-Urdu word for "racket court," is an Indian term which originally referred to a place where sporting events take place. The meaning then altered to denote a place where skill-based contests were held. Most gymkhanas have a Gymkhana Club associated with it, a term coined during British Raj for gentlemen's club.

In India, the term gymkhana is commonly used to refer to a gymnasium. More generally, gymkhana referred (and still refers) to a social and sporting club in the Indian subcontinent, and in other Asian countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and Singapore, as well as in East Africa.

In English-speaking countries, a gymkhana refers to a multi-game equestrian event performed to display the training and talents of horses and their riders. The plot of the children's story "The Mystery of the Invisible Thief" by Enid Blyton begins at a gymkhana held at an English village, testifying to its being a common institution in English society at the time of writing (the 1940s).