"Myrmeconema neotropicum is a new genus and species of parasitic tetradonematidnematode that apparently induces fruit mimicry in the tropical ant Cephalotes atratus. Infected ants develop bright red gasters, tend to be more sluggish, and walk with their gasters in a conspicuous elevated position. These changes likely cause frugivorous birds to confuse the infected ants for berries and eat them. Parasite eggs passed in the bird's feces are subsequently collected by foraging Cephalotes atratus and are fed to their larvae, thus completing the life cycle of Myrmeconema neotropicum." (Wikipedia)
"In mathematics, a pair of pants is a simple two-dimensional surface resembling a pair of pants: topologically, it is a sphere with three holes in it. Pairs of pants admit hyperbolic metrics, and their isometry class is determined by the lengths of the boundary curves (the cuff lengths), or dually the distances between the boundaries (the seam lengths)." (Wikipedia)
Ooh, nice meta list, I need to check the others out! And I bet I could find quite a few words that should be used in speculative or science fiction.
(I was wondering if it was metalist, meta list or meta-list, but metalist seems to be someone who works with metals, and the internet is full of lists and all things meta, and then I gave up searching...)
"Flowerhorn cichlids are ornamental aquarium fish noted for their vivid colors and the distinctively shaped heads for which they are named. Their head protuberance, or kok, is formally termed a 'nuchal hump.'" (Wikipedia)
"Pseudo-melanism, also called abundism, is another variant of pigmentation, characterized by dark spots or enlarged stripes, which cover a large part of the body of the animal making it appear melanistic. A deficiency in or total absence of melanin pigments is called amelanism." (Wikipedia)
"At any given moment, there could be heard a 'latrinophone' (which is a toilet seat strung with catgut), a 'crashophone' (bags of metal balls dropped into a metal washtub, in order to make the sound of breaking glass)" (From this article about Spike Jones)
"Two main types of reproduction occur in frogs, prolonged breeding and explosive breeding. In the former, adopted by the majority of species, adult frogs at certain times of year assemble at a pond, lake or stream to breed. Many frogs return to the bodies of water in which they developed as larvae. This often results in annual migrations involving thousands of individuals. In explosive breeders, mature adult frogs arrive at breeding sites in response to certain trigger factors such as rainfall occurring in an arid area. In these frogs, mating and spawning take place promptly and the speed of larval growth is rapid in order to make use of the ephemeral pools before they dry up." (Wikipedia)
"A species of frog has been found to operate a 'functional necrophilia strategy' whereby males extract eggs from dead females and then fertilise them.
The tiny central Amazonian frog -- the Rhinella proboscidea -- is a species that engages in 'explosive breeding', that is, a frantic competition for mates that takes place when large groups of animals gather for a few days. In this case, that means several hundred males congregate in small streamside ponds or headwaters for two or three days. When this happens, there is a brutal struggle to procreate, where many males become exhausted from fighting other males for receptive females. Meanwhile the females can sometimes get unintentionally crushed to death or drowned." (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/20/frog-necrophilia)
"In his later years, Grainger developed an aversion to English words with Latin roots—so the word 'museum' was, in this system, to be replaced with the term 'Hoard House'. He hoped this was what all museums would henceforth be called. I agree. The Guggenheim Hoard House, the Hoard House of Modern Art—let’s be honest about what these places are."
From David Byrne's Journal about Percy Grainger, where there's also a list of "Blue-Eyed English", wich is "the English language purged of all Latinisms", and might deserve a list of its own.
"Multiocular O (ꙮ) is the most rare and exotic glyph variant of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the phrase «серафими многоꙮчитїи» ('many-eyed seraphim')." (Wikipedia)
But... does that mean that someone somewhere is looking up all the other words even more often than every few minutes? Someone who really wants to know everything about infertility? A Fonkbot?
"Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the family Osteoglossidae, also known as bonytongues. In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongate body is covered by large, heavy scales, with a mosaic pattern of canals. The dorsal and the anal fins have soft rays and are long based, while the pectoral and ventral fins are small. The name 'bonytongues' is derived from a toothed bone on the floor of the mouth, the 'tongue', equipped with teeth that bite against teeth on the roof of the mouth. The arowana is a facultative air breather and can obtain oxygen from air by sucking it into the swim bladder, which is lined with capillaries like lung tissue." (Wikipedia)
"In computability theory, a busy beaver is a Turing machine that attains the maximum number of steps performed or number of nonblank symbols finally on the tape among all Turing machines in a certain class. The Turing machines in this class must meet certain design specifications and are required to eventually halt after being started with a blank tape.
A busy beaver function quantifies these upper limits on a given measure, and is a noncomputable function. In fact, a busy beaver function can be shown to grow faster asymptotically than does any computable function. The concept was first introduced by Tibor Radó as the 'busy beaver game' in his 1962 paper, 'On Non-Computable Functions'."
The title or the words? I guess it's easier to be fond of Swedish detectives if they're a bit exotic and not in your face everywhere all the time... (I might be exaggerating a bit here.)
"A beating heart cadaver is a human body that though dead in all medical and legal definitions is attached to a medical ventilator and retains cardio-pulmonary functions. This will keep the organs of the dead body, including the heart, functioning and alive for a few days. As a result, the period of time in which the organs may be used for transplantation is extended." (Wikipedia)
"A hard, highly polishable composition, made of fine sawdust from hard wood (as rosewood) mixed with blood, and pressed." (GNU Webster's 1913, on bois-durci but the hyphenated spelling seems less common)
Phyllobates lugubris. I can't really tell why this is more lovely than other poison dart frogs, but at least the lovely hatchetfish has a companion now. (Not ready to create a list for them just yet...)
As you wish, bilby (although now there's a complete Fonk absence, but I bet it's just a trick). I must say that the trending words list is the thing I understand the least around here. Does anyone know anything about what sort of algorithm it might be using?
Am I imagining things now? I was sure that there was four(!) fonks in the trending list just now, but when I reloaded the page it went down to a more reasonable one Fonk level...
"Cœur en sabot, (French for 'Boot shaped heart'), is a radiological sign seen most commonly in patients with Tetralogy of Fallot, a cyanotic congenital heart disease." (Wikipedia)
"The Lynch motor is a flat (pancake) axial gap permanent magnet brushed DC motor invented by Cedric Lynch." (Wikipedia) That sentence doesn't make much sense to me, but I like the word anyway.
I keep seeing this word as if it was in Swedish. Not that it makes sense, but muskelunge (Wikipedia says that's an alternate way of spelling it, but it doesn't matter, I see it in muskellunge as well) would mean muscle-kid, or perhaps muscle-offspring. So now my brain is trying to make images of what that would look like...
"The Oh-My-God particle was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (most likely a proton) detected on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3×10^20 eV (50 J)—in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)." (Wikipedia)
Eew? More like ooh to me! (I like all the ones listed at animal-identity-crisis, but the ones with three different animals are the best... I hope to one day find one made out of four animals.)
"In graphonomics, sloppiness space is a term introduced by Goldberg and Richardson to describe the shape space of all graph (handwriting) around an idealized allograph. Sloppiness space can be so large that optical character recognition becomes very difficult due to overlap with shapes for non-intended characters." (Wikipedia)
"The Swoon Hypothesis refers to a number of theories that aim to explain the resurrection of Jesus, proposing that Jesus did not die on the cross, but merely fell unconscious ('swooned'), and was later revived in the tomb in the same mortal body." (Wikipedia)
Speaking of Australia... This article is about "earrings made out of koala feces sold by the True Blue Roo Poo Company, an Australian business that specializes in making products out of animal poop." But I can't find their web page, so maybe they are out of business? (But I don't see how that could be possible.)
An unusually efficient spammer too, I had to cut my way through a wall of spam to ger here... And who knows what's buried so deep in spam that it's lost forever? (As far as I see, there is no way of seeing older stuff than what's visible on the first page, is that right?)
"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's dirty-word filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring cunt." (Wikipedia)
"In experimental physics, a wetting layer is an initial layer of atoms that is epitaxially grown on a surface upon which self-assembled quantum dots or thin films are created." (Wikipedia)
"A quantum dot is a portion of matter (e.g., semiconductor) whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. Consequently, such materials have electronic properties intermediate between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules." (Wikipedia)
It looks like I wanted to fit too much into that poor comment. But I like the idea that the internet is big enough to offer everyone extremely specialized entertainment...
Ooh, cellular vampirism! (If people run out of ideas to make bad vampire movies from, this could inspire them to make one filmed entirely in microscope...)
From Wikipedia: "A classic example of myzocytosis is the feeding method of the infamous predatory ciliate, Didinium, where it is often depicted devouring a hapless Paramecium. The suctorian ciliates feed exclusively through myzocytosis, sucking out the cytoplasm of prey via superficially drinking straw-like pseudopodia."
(And Suctoria sounds to me like a name cruel children would invent from combining suck and Victoria. Here are some pretty animated gifs of them.)
Yes, where will it all end? But we must be brave, and continue to move on, further and further, towards the limit. (The human limit, that is, I guess it should be fairly simple to make some sort of computer script to do this... hmm... It could easily become an entire book... hmm...)
Sure, go ahead and add them if you like. I think the best animals are the ones where I can imagine som sort of cyborg monster (like, the knife-footed frog is a frog with actual knives for feet) but other violent animals are also welcome.
At the risk of being spammy... I've made an advent calendar this year, with little stop motion animations for every day until Christmas. It's almost completely wordless, but if you like toys and decorations being sacreligious and/or silly you can see it here.
I grew up with multiple advent calendars myself. In Sweden there is a calendar that is related to a daily television show that most swedish children probably watch every day...
"One technical problem was that buried objects—especially during winter—can get very cold, and it was possible the mine would not have worked after some days underground, due to the electronics being too cold to operate properly. Various methods to get around this were studied, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets. One particularly remarkable proposal suggested that live chickens should be included in the mechanism. The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. The body heat given off by the chickens would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep all the relevant components at a working temperature. This proposal was sufficiently outlandish that it was taken as an April Fool's Day joke when the Blue Peacock file was declassified on April 1, 2004. Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, replied to the media that, 'It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes.'" (Wikipedia)
It sounds like a bad translation of some strange anime, but...
"The Raspberry Bud Dagger Moth, Raspberry Bud Moth or Peach Sword Stripe Night Moth (Acronicta increta) is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is distributed throughout the south of Canada and the United States down to Florida and Texas. The status of this species is disputed. Some authors regard Acronicta increta a synonym of Acronicta inclara." (Wikipedia)
So, today I stumbled over this cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata) and the jack-knifefish (Equetus lanceolatus), and I get the feeling that there is a list out there, waiting for me...
edit: I made a list of weaponized-animals, but now I feel that the finch doesn't really fit in... hmm...
"Caudal luring is the use of tail movements employed by a predator to attract prey animals. It is a form of mimicry classified formally as aggressive mimicry, but perhaps better described by the term feeding mimicry. The behavior is employed by a number of snake species and allegedly by two lizards, though other interpretations (e.g., distraction) seem more plausible for the lizards. Caudal luring also occurs in a shark, the tasselled wobbegong, Eucrossorinus dasypogon." (Wikipedia)
It sounds like a monster, but seems to be a real animal...
"The Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede (Desmoxytes purpurosea) is a spiny and toxicmillipede named for its vivid pink color. First discovered in 2007 in the Hup Pa Tard limestone cavern in Thailand, within the Greater Mekong, the adult millipede is approximately 3 cm long and lives in the open on leaf litter. The millipedes have glands that produce hydrogen cyanide to protect them from predators, a fact advertised by their aposematic color. Because they produce cyanide, they smell like almonds." (Wikipedia)
"Forcipules are a unique feature found only in centipedes and in no other arthropods. The forcipules are modifications of the first pair of legs, forming a pincer-like appendage always found just behind the head. Forcipules are not true mouthparts, although they are used in the capture of prey items, injecting venom and holding onto captured prey. Venom glands run through a tube almost to the tip of each forcipule." (Wikipedia)
Is there a way to remove a tag? (This is a description of the sound of a white stork, not a shoebill, I wouldn't want to spread lies like this by accident. (I prefer my lies to be planned.))
"Matt Visser has described a way of visualising wormhole geometry:
- take a 'normal' region of space
- 'surgically remove' spherical volumes from two regions ('spacetime surgery')
- associate the two spherical bleeding edges, so that a line attempting to enter one 'missing' spherical volume encounters one bounding surface and then continues outward from the other."
I like the sound of pornologic! (Even though it's unnecessary when you have -graphic. Maybe you can use some sort of pseudoetymology to claim that pornography is just one (extreme) form of calligraphy...)
About vulgar, If they mean "adj. Of or associated with the great masses of people; common." there might problems... (that get worse as Wordnik gets more users...)
I appreciated (and read!) the terms as well. But I'm a bit confused about not being able to
"Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any text, graphics, images, software, music, audio, video, information or other material that: ... (iv) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive".
Surely "vulgar" and "pornographic" lists or words can't be banned? Is there a legal interpretation of these words that I'm not aware of?
Good idea! Just watching two episodes made me feel the need for this kind of list (but so far I have managed to put the words in my existing lists...).
"Sacculina larvae are dioecious. The male larvae are often smaller than those of the females. The life cycle begins with the female cyprid invading the crabs and then developing into a parasite with an internal root system (interna). Once the interna matures, it will develop a reproductive body outside the crabs through the abdominal part called the virgin externa. Male cyprids will then enter the virgin externa, which give rise to a fertilized externa with the eggs brooding inside it. Larvae will then be released via the externa once the eggs became mature." (Found here.)
"Branchial hearts are myogenic accessory pumps found in coleoid cephalopods that supplement the action of the main, systemic heart. Each consists of a single chamber and they are always paired, being located at the base of the gills. They pump blood through the gills via the afferent branchial veins." (Wikipedia)
"A love dart (also known as a gypsobelum) is a hard, long, sharp, calcareous or chitinous dart which some hermaphroditic land snails and slugs create. Love darts are made in sexually mature animals only, and are used as part of the sequence of events during courtship, before actual mating takes place. Darts are quite large compared to the size of the animal: in the case of the semi-slug genus Parmarion, the length of a dart can be up to one fifth that of the semi-slug's foot." (Wikipedia)
"In the compound eye of invertebrates such as insects and crustaceans, the pseudopupil appears as a dark spot which moves across the eye as the animal is rotated. This occurs because the ommatidia which one observes 'head-on' (along their optical axes) absorb the incident light, while those to one side reflect it. The pseudopupil therefore reveals which ommatidia are aligned with the axis along which the observer is viewing." (Wikipedia)
"The Neverland gene makes a protein of the same name, which converts cholesterol into 7-dehydrocholesterol. This chemical reaction is the first of many that leads to ecdysone – a hormone that all insects need to transform from a larva into an adult. Most species make their own ecdysone but D.pachea is ill-equipped. Because of its Neverland mutations, the manufacturing process fails at the very first step. Without intervention, the fly would be permanently stuck in larval mode. Hence the name, Neverland—fly genes are named after what happens to the insect when the gene is broken." (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
"Explosions-Polka, op. 43, is a polka written by Johann Strauss II in 1847. The title was inspired by a discovery of guncotton or nitrocellulose by German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1840. The Viennese press eagerly reported this discovery many years later in 1846, describing many products that can then be made 'explosive'." (Wikipedia)
Coronary steal (with its symptoms termed cardiac steal syndrome) is a phenomenon where an alteration of circulation patterns lead to a reduction in the blood directed to the coronary circulation. It is caused when there is narrowing of the coronary arteries and a coronary vasodilator is used - 'stealing' blood away from those parts of the heart. (Wikipedia)
I think there's potential for some nice Valentine's Day cards somwhere around here...
"In sharks and rays, the term ovoviviparity has recently been deprecated in favor of aplacental viviparity. Authors may regard the two terms as synonymous, or equate ovoviviparity only with aplacental yolk-sac viviparity, in which the embryos are solely sustained by yolk (as opposed to secondary provisioning by their mother in the form of 'uterine milk', such as in the stingrays, or unfertilized eggs, such as in the mackerel sharks; the latter is referred to as intrauterine oophagy).
There is a wide range of forms of intrauterine provisioning however, which could complicate the classification. In at least some sharks the routine intrauterine oophagy is not limited to unfertilised or trophic eggs, in various forms and in in some the principle extends to actual intrauterine cannibalism."
"An idiosyncrasy peculiar to the herring is that, when dead, it begins to glow; this property, which resembles phosphorescence and is yet altogether different, peaks a few days after death and then ebbs away as the fish decays. For a long time no one could account for this glowing of the lifeless herring, and indeed I believe that it still remains unexplained. Around 1870, when projects for the total illumination of our cities were everywhere afoot, two English scientists with the apt names of Herrington and Lightbown investigated the unusual phenomenon in the hope that the luminous substance exuded by dead herrings would lead to a formula for an organic source of light that had the capacity to regenerate itself. The failure of this eccentric undertaking, as I read some time ago in a history of artificial light, constituted no more than a negligible setback in the relentless conquest of darkness."
Passing this yesterday, I realized that I needed to share this with... well, someone, and Wordnik might be the right place for it. I've always thought this sign was a bit disturbing, even before I knew the word tappen in English. ("Godis" means candy, and "tappen" means the gas station (in Swedish)).
"Beefy meatypeptide, also known as delicious peptide and abbreviated as BMP, is an 8-amino acid long peptide that has been identified as giving a beefy flavor to foods in which it is present." (Wikipedia)
"A Bitter electromagnet or Bitter solenoid is a type of electromagnet used in scientific research to create extremely strong magnetic fields. Bitter electromagnets have been used to produce some of the strongest continuous manmade magnetic fields on earth (up to 35 teslas as of 2008)." (Wikipedia) Named after Francis Bitter.
"A Darwinian Demon is a hypothetical organism that can maximize all aspects of fitness simultaneously and would exist if the evolution of species was entirely unconstrained. Such organisms would reproduce directly after being born, produce infinitely many offspring, and live indefinitely. Even though no such organisms exist, biologists use Darwinian Demons in thought experiments to understand different life history strategies among different organisms." (Wikipedia)
"Sloth moth is a generic term used to refer to coprophagous moths which have evolved to exclusively inhabit the fur of sloths and to use sloth dung as a substrate for the early stages of reproduction." (Wikipedia)
"The large variety of arthropods associated with sloths comprise two distinct feeding guilds – the haematophagous guild, represented by biting flies and ticks, and the coprophagous guild which comprises a unique assemblage of moths, beetles and mites which utilize the sloth principally for phoresis and whose larval stages feed and develop in the dung of the host sloth." (Wikipedia)
"The obelisk posture is a handstand-like position that some dragonflies and damselflies assume to prevent overheating on sunny days. The abdomen is raised until its tip points at the sun, minimizing the surface area exposed to solar radiation. When the sun is close to directly overhead, the vertical alignment of the insect's body suggests an obelisk." (Wikipedia)
"The slender snipe eel, Nemichthys scolopaceus, sometimes referred to as the deep sea duck, is a fish that can weigh only a few ounces, yet reach 5 feet or 1.5 m in length. Features include a bird-like beak with curving tips, covered with tiny hooked teeth, which they use to sweep through the water to catch shrimp and other crustaceans. It has a lifespan of ten years.
It has more vertebrae in its backbone than any other animal, around 750. However, its anus has moved forward during its evolution and is now located on its throat. Its larvae are shaped like leaves, which actually get smaller before transforming into adults."
"The pigbutt worm or flying buttocks (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus) is a newly discovered species of worm found by scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The worm is round in shape, approximately the size of a hazelnut, and bears a strong resemblance to a disembodied pair of buttocks. Because of this, it was given a Latin species name that roughly translates to 'resembling a pig's rear.'" (Wikipedia)
"The tempest prognosticator, also known as the leech barometer, is a 19th-century invention by George Merryweather in which leeches are used in a barometer. The twelve leeches are kept in small bottles inside the device; when they become agitated by an approaching storm they attempt to climb out of the bottles and trigger a small hammer which strikes a bell. The likelihood of a storm is indicated by the number of times the bell is struck." (Wikipedia)
"In mathematics, a dessin d'enfant (French for a 'child's drawing', plural dessins d'enfants, 'children's drawings') is a type of graph drawing used to study Riemann surfaces and to provide combinatorial invariants for the action of the absolute Galois group of the rational numbers." (Wikipedia)
"The algorithm was first published in the 1979 paper 'Intersection numbers of sections of elliptic surfaces' by Cox and Zucker and it was later named the "Cox–Zucker machine" by Charles Schwartz in 1984." (Wikipedia)
"Cow blowing, Kuhblasen, or doom dev, is a process used in many countries according to ethnographers, in which forceful blowing of air into a cow's vagina (or sometimes anus) is applied to induce her to produce more milk." (Wikipedia)
"The tremble dance of the honeybee is similar to the waggle dance, but is used by a forager when the foraging bee perceives a long delay in unloading its nectar or a shortage of receiver bees, sometimes due to low numbers of receiver bees. It may also spread the scent released during the forager's waggle dance. Like the waggle dance, the tremble dance is likely one of two 'primary regulation mechanisms' for regulating bee colony behavior at the group level, and one of four or five observed mechanisms known to be used by honeybees to change the task allocation among worker bees. The consumption of ethanol by foraging bees has been shown to increase the occurrence of the tremble dance while decreasing the occurrence of the waggle dance." (Wikipedia)
"The Law of the gut is the theory of gastrointestinal motility developed by Dr. William Jacobus at the University of Toledo College of Medicine. The Law of the Gut states 'The peristaltic wave of gastrointestinal smooth muscle contraction begins at the oral end and moves to the anal end'." (Wikipedia)
"In the mathematical field of probability, the Wiener sausage is a neighborhood of the trace of a Brownian motion up to a time t, given by taking all points within a fixed distance of Brownian motion. It can be visualized as a sausage of fixed radius whose centerline is Brownian motion. The Wiener sausage was named after Norbert Wiener..." (Wikipedia)
And I'm pleased to find someone else who can appreciate it! My studies of mycology is mostly limited to periods of frenetic Wikipedia browsing... (And some basic knowledge of edible and poisonous ones, I actually picked some today!) Feel free to add words that you find suitable.
"Bubblenests, also spelled bubble nests or bubble-nests, created by some fish species, are floating masses of bubbles blown with an oral secretion, saliva bubbles, and occasionally aquatic plants, or an area for egg deposit attached at the bottom. Fish that build and guard bubble nests are known as aphrophils." (Wikipedia)
deinonychus commented on the word fruit mimicry
"Myrmeconema neotropicum is a new genus and species of parasitic tetradonematid nematode that apparently induces fruit mimicry in the tropical ant Cephalotes atratus. Infected ants develop bright red gasters, tend to be more sluggish, and walk with their gasters in a conspicuous elevated position. These changes likely cause frugivorous birds to confuse the infected ants for berries and eat them. Parasite eggs passed in the bird's feces are subsequently collected by foraging Cephalotes atratus and are fed to their larvae, thus completing the life cycle of Myrmeconema neotropicum." (Wikipedia)
May 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word yellow-bellied sapsucker
There's just so much insult potential in this poor animal: yellow-bellied + sap + sucker!
May 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word pair of pants
"In mathematics, a pair of pants is a simple two-dimensional surface resembling a pair of pants: topologically, it is a sphere with three holes in it. Pairs of pants admit hyperbolic metrics, and their isometry class is determined by the lengths of the boundary curves (the cuff lengths), or dually the distances between the boundaries (the seam lengths)." (Wikipedia)
May 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Carpediemonas
"Carpediemonas is a genus of protozoa. The single known species, Carpediemonas membranifera, is a small flagellate that was originally isolated from anaerobic intertidal sediment. It is distantly related to diplomonads. It has been shown to have a membrane-bounded organelle reminiscent of a hydrogenosome." (Wikipedia)
May 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word hog-nosed skunk
I liked the name hog-nosed skunk, but "naked-muzzled" in the description is even better...
May 1, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Or maybe the list of fictional Antichists...
Apr 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of fictional colors!
Apr 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list science-fact-or-fiction
I guess those are more sciency-fictiony...
Apr 26, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list science-fact-or-fiction
Ooh, nice meta list, I need to check the others out! And I bet I could find quite a few words that should be used in speculative or science fiction.
(I was wondering if it was metalist, meta list or meta-list, but metalist seems to be someone who works with metals, and the internet is full of lists and all things meta, and then I gave up searching...)
Apr 25, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list things-that-freak-me-out--animals
Nice list! Nature is good at making that sort of things...
Apr 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the user FreeRun_5
When a spammer is too wordy, the link to report them seems to fail...
Apr 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word surface of last scattering
Ooh, I really like it!
Apr 18, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word squashed face rattail
A fish, Nezumia namatahi, suitable for insults.
Apr 15, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word nuchal hump
"Flowerhorn cichlids are ornamental aquarium fish noted for their vivid colors and the distinctively shaped heads for which they are named. Their head protuberance, or kok, is formally termed a 'nuchal hump.'" (Wikipedia)
Apr 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Inglorius mediocris
The mediocre skipper.
Apr 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word mediocre skipper
Poor Inglorius mediocris. "The scientific name Inglorius means undistinguished, as the only known species is a nondescript brown butterfly referred to as mediocris, meaning ordinary." (Wikipedia)
Apr 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bloody parrot
"The blood parrot cichlid (also known as parrot cichlid and bloody parrot; no binomial nomenclature) is a hybrid cichlid." (Wikipedia)
Apr 11, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word abundism
"Pseudo-melanism, also called abundism, is another variant of pigmentation, characterized by dark spots or enlarged stripes, which cover a large part of the body of the animal making it appear melanistic. A deficiency in or total absence of melanin pigments is called amelanism." (Wikipedia)
Mar 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word starry sturgeon
Also known as stellate sturgeon, but that isn't as nice to say...
Mar 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list twitter-favorites
Oh, I love these automatically generated lists! Someday I'll make my own.
Mar 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list identify-the-word-ie-nik--2013
Is there a deadline for this? (So I know when to give up thinking and send in a random word)
Mar 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Killing field
I am so happy that Wilhelm Killing got to name so many things! Killing horizon and Killing form are other good ones. (If anyone finds more good eponyms, I've got a list for those...).
Mar 16, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word latrinophone
"At any given moment, there could be heard a 'latrinophone' (which is a toilet seat strung with catgut), a 'crashophone' (bags of metal balls dropped into a metal washtub, in order to make the sound of breaking glass)" (From this article about Spike Jones)
Mar 11, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bipolar feeding
What a sea cucumber does when it ingests food through its anus, according to this study. Found here.
Mar 9, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
I guess I want to be in on this too, even though I might have a disadvantage since I haven't played before...
Mar 8, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
I just found the List of chics. "This is a list of notable chics.".
Mar 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Maybe you can find some good words in this article about human dung being the most attractive (for dung beetles, that is).
Mar 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Location hypotheses of Atlantis.
Feb 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word explosive breeding
"Two main types of reproduction occur in frogs, prolonged breeding and explosive breeding. In the former, adopted by the majority of species, adult frogs at certain times of year assemble at a pond, lake or stream to breed. Many frogs return to the bodies of water in which they developed as larvae. This often results in annual migrations involving thousands of individuals. In explosive breeders, mature adult frogs arrive at breeding sites in response to certain trigger factors such as rainfall occurring in an arid area. In these frogs, mating and spawning take place promptly and the speed of larval growth is rapid in order to make use of the ephemeral pools before they dry up." (Wikipedia)
Feb 25, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word functional necrophilia strategy
"A species of frog has been found to operate a 'functional necrophilia strategy' whereby males extract eggs from dead females and then fertilise them.
The tiny central Amazonian frog -- the Rhinella proboscidea -- is a species that engages in 'explosive breeding', that is, a frantic competition for mates that takes place when large groups of animals gather for a few days. In this case, that means several hundred males congregate in small streamside ponds or headwaters for two or three days. When this happens, there is a brutal struggle to procreate, where many males become exhausted from fighting other males for receptive females. Meanwhile the females can sometimes get unintentionally crushed to death or drowned." (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/20/frog-necrophilia)
Feb 25, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word hoard house
"In his later years, Grainger developed an aversion to English words with Latin roots—so the word 'museum' was, in this system, to be replaced with the term 'Hoard House'. He hoped this was what all museums would henceforth be called. I agree. The Guggenheim Hoard House, the Hoard House of Modern Art—let’s be honest about what these places are."
From David Byrne's Journal about Percy Grainger, where there's also a list of "Blue-Eyed English", wich is "the English language purged of all Latinisms", and might deserve a list of its own.
Feb 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word death sandwich
I wonder what sort of drink you should serve to a death sandwich...
Feb 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word ꙮ
"Multiocular O (ꙮ) is the most rare and exotic glyph variant of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the phrase «серафими многоꙮчитїи» ('many-eyed seraphim')." (Wikipedia)
Feb 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list o--6
I like these: Ꙩ (monocular O), Ꙫ (binocular O), Ꙭ (double monocular O), and ꙮ (multiocular O), described by Wikipedia as "exotic glyph variants of Cyrillic letter O".
(I've got an oooooolist, but that's mostly for words starting with oo.)
Feb 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list wordnik-puzzle--neat-porters
A porn street?
Feb 7, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list wordnik-puzzle--neat-porters
Paternoster? Or maybe... pater noster?
Feb 7, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word imp of the perverse
Ooh, that sounds like an interesting (professional? honorary?) title...
Feb 7, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word love
Somehow that feels like cheating, but it can't really be since you make the rules for your list...
Feb 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list trending-words
But... does that mean that someone somewhere is looking up all the other words even more often than every few minutes? Someone who really wants to know everything about infertility? A Fonkbot?
Feb 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bonytongue
"Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the family Osteoglossidae, also known as bonytongues. In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongate body is covered by large, heavy scales, with a mosaic pattern of canals. The dorsal and the anal fins have soft rays and are long based, while the pectoral and ventral fins are small. The name 'bonytongues' is derived from a toothed bone on the floor of the mouth, the 'tongue', equipped with teeth that bite against teeth on the roof of the mouth. The arowana is a facultative air breather and can obtain oxygen from air by sucking it into the swim bladder, which is lined with capillaries like lung tissue." (Wikipedia)
Feb 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word hornyhead turbot
Another potentially indecent fish, Pleuronichthys verticalis (see more at Harry hotlips). Time for a list, i guess...
Feb 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word broth of a man
Wow... But what could you call a lesser (more watery) man, not (yet) boiled down?
Feb 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Harry hotlips
Maybe it's time for a list of porn fish? It's not as easy as with the birds, but... checking my fish list gives me slippery dick, sucker barb, half-naked hatchetfish, honey-head damsel, cockabully, smooth lumpsucker, orange roughy, naked puffer, velvet belly, lollipop catshark and pink-lipped moray eel...
Feb 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Harry hotlips
A fish, Plectorhinchus gibbosus. Many of the sweetlips have funny names that sound like (disturbing or sweet) nicknames: sordid rubberlip, dusky rubberlip, rubberlip grunt, harlequin sweetlips...
Feb 3, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list model-organisms
Nice list. (I added some yeast to the mix...)
Feb 1, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word busy beaver
"In computability theory, a busy beaver is a Turing machine that attains the maximum number of steps performed or number of nonblank symbols finally on the tape among all Turing machines in a certain class. The Turing machines in this class must meet certain design specifications and are required to eventually halt after being started with a blank tape.
A busy beaver function quantifies these upper limits on a given measure, and is a noncomputable function. In fact, a busy beaver function can be shown to grow faster asymptotically than does any computable function. The concept was first introduced by Tibor Radó as the 'busy beaver game' in his 1962 paper, 'On Non-Computable Functions'."
(From Wikipedia, and there a lot more on big numbers (the biggest even) in this essay.)
Feb 1, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list death--4
Thanks, ruzuzu!
n. Greek mythology Ancient Greek God of peaceful or natural death.
n. psychoanalysis the death drive in Freudian psychoanalysis.
Hmm... peaceful or natural death and death drive sound almost like opposites to me.
Jan 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word fuming ptomaine
Oooh...
Jan 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list death--4
The title or the words? I guess it's easier to be fond of Swedish detectives if they're a bit exotic and not in your face everywhere all the time... (I might be exaggerating a bit here.)
Jan 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word beating heart cadaver
"A beating heart cadaver is a human body that though dead in all medical and legal definitions is attached to a medical ventilator and retains cardio-pulmonary functions. This will keep the organs of the dead body, including the heart, functioning and alive for a few days. As a result, the period of time in which the organs may be used for transplantation is extended." (Wikipedia)
Jan 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word rocksucker
Also a species of clingfish, Chorisochismus dentex.
Jan 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bois durci
"A hard, highly polishable composition, made of fine sawdust from hard wood (as rosewood) mixed with blood, and pressed." (GNU Webster's 1913, on bois-durci but the hyphenated spelling seems less common)
Jan 31, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word lovely poison frog
Phyllobates lugubris. I can't really tell why this is more lovely than other poison dart frogs, but at least the lovely hatchetfish has a companion now. (Not ready to create a list for them just yet...)
Jan 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
As you wish, bilby (although now there's a complete Fonk absence, but I bet it's just a trick). I must say that the trending words list is the thing I understand the least around here. Does anyone know anything about what sort of algorithm it might be using?
Jan 29, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
They seem to be taking over Wordnik (or the internet? or the world?). Now they're six.
edit: But there seems to be some sort of battle going on, since the number never stays the same when I recount. Maybe I should go to bed now...
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sugar-coated spleen
I can't belive that this isn't listed by anyone else. Or that it's not a brand name for candy.
"In pathology, hyaloserositis is the coating of an organ with a fibrous hyaline, resulting from inflammation of the serous membrane (serositis) covering the organ.
The spleen is commonly affected and often referred to as sugar-coated spleen. The liver and heart are also sometimes affected and referred to as frosted liver (or sugar-coated liver) and frosted heart respectively." (Wikipedia)
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word broken heart syndrome
"Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as transient apical ballooning syndrome, apical ballooning cardiomyopathy, stress-induced cardiomyopathy, Gebrochenes-Herz-Syndrome, and stress cardiomyopathy is a type of non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy in which there is a sudden temporary weakening of the myocardium (the muscle of the heart). Because this weakening can be triggered by emotional stress, such as the death of a loved one, a break-up, or constant anxiety, the condition is also known as broken heart syndrome. Stress cardiomyopathy is a well-recognized cause of acute heart failure, lethal ventricular arrhythmias, and ventricular rupture." (Wikipedia)
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
Am I imagining things now? I was sure that there was four(!) fonks in the trending list just now, but when I reloaded the page it went down to a more reasonable one Fonk level...
edit: and now they're back!
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word cooing dove murmur
"The cooing dove murmur is a cardiac murmur with a musical quality (high pitched - hence the name) and is associated with acute mitral valve regurgitation, preceded by a rupture of the chordae tendinea (the fibrous 'strings' that connect the papillary muscle to the cusps of the valves). It is a systolic murmur which is best heard over the left second, third and fourth intercostal spaces." (a href="Wikipedia">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooing_dove_murmur#Cooing_dove_murmur">Wikipedia) Part of me wants to list this on the-sound-of-birds, but I guess I won't...
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word cœur en sabot
"Cœur en sabot, (French for 'Boot shaped heart'), is a radiological sign seen most commonly in patients with Tetralogy of Fallot, a cyanotic congenital heart disease." (Wikipedia)
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Lynch motor
"The Lynch motor is a flat (pancake) axial gap permanent magnet brushed DC motor invented by Cedric Lynch." (Wikipedia) That sentence doesn't make much sense to me, but I like the word anyway.
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word muskellunge
I keep seeing this word as if it was in Swedish. Not that it makes sense, but muskelunge (Wikipedia says that's an alternate way of spelling it, but it doesn't matter, I see it in muskellunge as well) would mean muscle-kid, or perhaps muscle-offspring. So now my brain is trying to make images of what that would look like...
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Fonk
Not just trending, double trending! (I see it twice in the list, is it a bug perhaps, or just really trendy?)
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word oh-my-god particle
"The Oh-My-God particle was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (most likely a proton) detected on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3×10^20 eV (50 J)—in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)." (Wikipedia)
Jan 28, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word mimesis
Yes, seems to be the same origin as meme (see etyomology section).
Jan 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sabre squirrelfish
A fish, Sargocentron spiniferum, armed with a sabre squirrel?
Jan 27, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word pink slime
"Pink slime (often written with quotation marks as "pink slime") is the common name for a controversial beef product. The name used in the meat industry is lean finely textured beef (LFTB) and boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT). It is also known by the dysphemistic slang term soylent pink. It is a processed beef product that was originally used in pet food and cooking oil. It was later approved for human consumption." (Wikipedia)
Jan 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word activated sludge
Sounds like food in a dystopian world. Maybe similar to pink slime.
Jan 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word monkey slug caterpillar
Eew? More like ooh to me! (I like all the ones listed at animal-identity-crisis, but the ones with three different animals are the best... I hope to one day find one made out of four animals.)
Jan 23, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sloppiness space
"In graphonomics, sloppiness space is a term introduced by Goldberg and Richardson to describe the shape space of all graph (handwriting) around an idealized allograph. Sloppiness space can be so large that optical character recognition becomes very difficult due to overlap with shapes for non-intended characters." (Wikipedia)
Jan 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word wordmap
Found in the same context as Godzilla: commedian, notecase, azz, carmaker, houseman, remake, head-mistress, wrestling-match, strongpoint, champan, roller-skate, firepot, safe,trackage, millionairess, exegete, tea-garden, bourse, exobiologist, shogun, concessionaire, homunculi. Interesting...
Jan 22, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word swoon hypothesis
"The Swoon Hypothesis refers to a number of theories that aim to explain the resurrection of Jesus, proposing that Jesus did not die on the cross, but merely fell unconscious ('swooned'), and was later revived in the tomb in the same mortal body." (Wikipedia)
Jan 21, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word chimpanzee fire
A bioluminescent fungus. There's a video of it here.
Jan 21, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word welcome home husband though never so drunk
One of the names for Sedum acre, a succulent plant.
Jan 21, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Speaking of Australia... This article is about "earrings made out of koala feces sold by the True Blue Roo Poo Company, an Australian business that specializes in making products out of animal poop." But I can't find their web page, so maybe they are out of business? (But I don't see how that could be possible.)
Jan 20, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list 1906-railway-cipher-code
That's what I've been wondering too. And, will you be working these words into your telegraphic communications?
Jan 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bat eagle ray
A fish, Myliobatis californica. But I prefer to think about as some sort of raygun, shooting eagles, that Batman uses.
Jan 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word anatiferous
I hope I'll find some good occasion to use this. Soon...
Jan 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word bat-eared fox
How did I miss this one when listing weaponized animals?
Jan 19, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Ooh, you listed rectally applied yoghurt as well! That one sort of got stuck in my mind...
I'm glad this list exists, it's not easy to find a place where an article like that will be properly appreciated!
Jan 15, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word goropism
I didn't know how much I needed this word until I saw it! So, would a person who invents these absurd etymologies be a goropist?
Jan 14, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word spammer
An unusually efficient spammer too, I had to cut my way through a wall of spam to ger here... And who knows what's buried so deep in spam that it's lost forever? (As far as I see, there is no way of seeing older stuff than what's visible on the first page, is that right?)
Jan 13, 2013
deinonychus commented on the list specific-excrement
Not sure if they make the list, but this article about faecal transplants is full of stuff like RePOOPulate, stool substitute and pseudo-poo... And for some reason I felt that I had to share that with someone.
Jan 12, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word sinapize
That... sounds painful. And what kind of monster will be born after that pregnancy?
Jan 10, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word paternoster while
Ah, yes, all the different forms could be performed at the annual paternoster festival. Fun for the whole family!
Jan 6, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word paternoster while
Record for fastest or slowest? Both could be a challenge...
Jan 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word Scunthorpe problem
"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's dirty-word filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring cunt." (Wikipedia)
Jan 5, 2013
deinonychus commented on the word wetting layer
"In experimental physics, a wetting layer is an initial layer of atoms that is epitaxially grown on a surface upon which self-assembled quantum dots or thin films are created." (Wikipedia)
Dec 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word quantum dot
"A quantum dot is a portion of matter (e.g., semiconductor) whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. Consequently, such materials have electronic properties intermediate between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules." (Wikipedia)
And, apparantly, you can make earthworms procuce them.
Dec 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user soba4u
Spam in (bad) swedish! That's exotic...
Dec 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cherpumple pie
But... Shouldn't it be made into a pie instead? That would make it a perfect meta-pie...
Dec 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word myzotrophy
It looks like I wanted to fit too much into that poor comment. But I like the idea that the internet is big enough to offer everyone extremely specialized entertainment...
Dec 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word myzotrophy
Ooh, cellular vampirism! (If people run out of ideas to make bad vampire movies from, this could inspire them to make one filmed entirely in microscope...)
From Wikipedia: "A classic example of myzocytosis is the feeding method of the infamous predatory ciliate, Didinium, where it is often depicted devouring a hapless Paramecium. The suctorian ciliates feed exclusively through myzocytosis, sucking out the cytoplasm of prey via superficially drinking straw-like pseudopodia."
(And Suctoria sounds to me like a name cruel children would invent from combining suck and Victoria. Here are some pretty animated gifs of them.)
Dec 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word brogrammer
Are bromanteaus like this one really pejorative? I would never use them (non-ironically) myself, but some people sure seem to think it's a good thing.
Dec 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Oh, great! Then I don't have to make it myself...
Dec 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Yes, where will it all end? But we must be brave, and continue to move on, further and further, towards the limit. (The human limit, that is, I guess it should be fairly simple to make some sort of computer script to do this... hmm... It could easily become an entire book... hmm...)
Dec 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word worm burden
Ooh, perfect for my parasitic list... (and I can't stop thinking that it's related to the diet of worms...)
Dec 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Yes, do it! I think it's that kind of idea, that once you say it out loud, you have actually already started it...
Dec 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Sure, go ahead and add them if you like. I think the best animals are the ones where I can imagine som sort of cyborg monster (like, the knife-footed frog is a frog with actual knives for feet) but other violent animals are also welcome.
Dec 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word advent calendar
At the risk of being spammy... I've made an advent calendar this year, with little stop motion animations for every day until Christmas. It's almost completely wordless, but if you like toys and decorations being sacreligious and/or silly you can see it here.
I grew up with multiple advent calendars myself. In Sweden there is a calendar that is related to a daily television show that most swedish children probably watch every day...
Dec 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word dream box
Wow! Reminds me of relaxing chamber, the box where you let your dead insects soften up a bit before you pin them up... (found here)
Nov 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word chicken-powered nuclear bomb
"One technical problem was that buried objects—especially during winter—can get very cold, and it was possible the mine would not have worked after some days underground, due to the electronics being too cold to operate properly. Various methods to get around this were studied, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets. One particularly remarkable proposal suggested that live chickens should be included in the mechanism. The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. The body heat given off by the chickens would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep all the relevant components at a working temperature. This proposal was sufficiently outlandish that it was taken as an April Fool's Day joke when the Blue Peacock file was declassified on April 1, 2004. Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, replied to the media that, 'It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes.'" (Wikipedia)
Nov 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
I couldn't help making another list now, with zoomorphic-weapons...
Nov 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word peach sword stripe night moth
Is the sword made of peaches, or especially made for cutting peaches? (Or something completely different?)
Nov 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Honorable mention: flail snail (found when exploring the addictive prefix search of Wikipedia.)
Nov 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word peach sword stripe night moth
It sounds like a bad translation of some strange anime, but...
"The Raspberry Bud Dagger Moth, Raspberry Bud Moth or Peach Sword Stripe Night Moth (Acronicta increta) is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is distributed throughout the south of Canada and the United States down to Florida and Texas. The status of this species is disputed. Some authors regard Acronicta increta a synonym of Acronicta inclara." (Wikipedia)
Nov 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Ooh, thanks for the kukri snake, I would never have found that myself since I didn't know what a kukri was.
Nov 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list weaponized-animals
Glad you all like it! And, of course, feel free to add your combatants.
(The club-foot whiting might be more dangerous than you think...)
Nov 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word knifetooth sawfish
Wow, knifetooth sawfish (Anoxypristis cuspidata) is so full of sharp things...
Nov 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cut-throat finch
So, today I stumbled over this cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata) and the jack-knifefish (Equetus lanceolatus), and I get the feeling that there is a list out there, waiting for me...
edit: I made a list of weaponized-animals, but now I feel that the finch doesn't really fit in... hmm...
Nov 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word chorea
So... en en en en, then?
Nov 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word caudal luring
"Caudal luring is the use of tail movements employed by a predator to attract prey animals. It is a form of mimicry classified formally as aggressive mimicry, but perhaps better described by the term feeding mimicry. The behavior is employed by a number of snake species and allegedly by two lizards, though other interpretations (e.g., distraction) seem more plausible for the lizards. Caudal luring also occurs in a shark, the tasselled wobbegong, Eucrossorinus dasypogon." (Wikipedia)
Seductive and lethal...
Nov 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word shocking pink dragon millipede
It sounds like a monster, but seems to be a real animal...
"The Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede (Desmoxytes purpurosea) is a spiny and toxic millipede named for its vivid pink color. First discovered in 2007 in the Hup Pa Tard limestone cavern in Thailand, within the Greater Mekong, the adult millipede is approximately 3 cm long and lives in the open on leaf litter. The millipedes have glands that produce hydrogen cyanide to protect them from predators, a fact advertised by their aposematic color. Because they produce cyanide, they smell like almonds." (Wikipedia)
Nov 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word common slug eater
"Duberria lutrix, or the common slug eater, is a small, ovoviviparous, molluscivorous, nonvenomous snake, which is endemic to Africa." (Wikipedia)
Oct 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list qi-words
today: no-eyed big-eyed wolf spider.
Oct 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word forcipule
"Forcipules are a unique feature found only in centipedes and in no other arthropods. The forcipules are modifications of the first pair of legs, forming a pincer-like appendage always found just behind the head. Forcipules are not true mouthparts, although they are used in the capture of prey items, injecting venom and holding onto captured prey. Venom glands run through a tube almost to the tip of each forcipule." (Wikipedia)
Oct 28, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word golly
"Hack up a golly" sounds disturbing as it is, but after those examples...
Oct 25, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word diplomatic pouch
I prefer to imagine this as some sort of special anatomical feature of diplomats...
Oct 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
There, tagged! (I was lazy and copy-pasted the bird names from Wikipedia, so now they're capitalized, even though I prefer them uncapitalized...)
Oct 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cat-like mew
Is there a way to remove a tag? (This is a description of the sound of a white stork, not a shoebill, I wouldn't want to spread lies like this by accident. (I prefer my lies to be planned.))
Oct 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
That's a good idea, I'll try to do that. (And a forceful cooing is perfect!)
Oct 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word plaintive woo-OO-oo-oo-oo call
"Did you mean plaintive woo-oo-oo-oo-oo call or plaintive woo oo oo oo oo call?"
Of course not!
Oct 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word greatest known penis length relative to body size
"Deep water squid have the greatest known penis length relative to body size of all mobile animals, second in the entire animal kingdom only to certain sessile barnacles." (Wikipedia)
Oct 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word temporal slices of spacetime worms
Ooh, I like this even better than spacetime surgery!
Oct 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word spacetime surgery
"Matt Visser has described a way of visualising wormhole geometry:
- take a 'normal' region of space
- 'surgically remove' spherical volumes from two regions ('spacetime surgery')
- associate the two spherical bleeding edges, so that a line attempting to enter one 'missing' spherical volume encounters one bounding surface and then continues outward from the other."
(Wikipedia)
Oct 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word terms of service
I like the sound of pornologic! (Even though it's unnecessary when you have -graphic. Maybe you can use some sort of pseudoetymology to claim that pornography is just one (extreme) form of calligraphy...)
About vulgar, If they mean "adj. Of or associated with the great masses of people; common." there might problems... (that get worse as Wordnik gets more users...)
Oct 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word terms of service
I appreciated (and read!) the terms as well. But I'm a bit confused about not being able to
"Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any text, graphics, images, software, music, audio, video, information or other material that: ... (iv) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive".
Surely "vulgar" and "pornographic" lists or words can't be banned? Is there a legal interpretation of these words that I'm not aware of?
Oct 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list qi-words
Good idea! Just watching two episodes made me feel the need for this kind of list (but so far I have managed to put the words in my existing lists...).
Oct 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word virgin externa
"Sacculina larvae are dioecious. The male larvae are often smaller than those of the females. The life cycle begins with the female cyprid invading the crabs and then developing into a parasite with an internal root system (interna). Once the interna matures, it will develop a reproductive body outside the crabs through the abdominal part called the virgin externa. Male cyprids will then enter the virgin externa, which give rise to a fertilized externa with the eggs brooding inside it. Larvae will then be released via the externa once the eggs became mature." (Found here.)
Oct 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word awk
Being left-handed, I find these "synonyms" a bit insulting. (But I guess singular and distinguished are nice...)
Oct 4, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list thigmo-words
Do you have a list of the favorite prefixes of the years after that? (Or the years before?)
Oct 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word rapid plant movement
Like a triffid, then? (I love that there is a Wikipedia list of fictional plants...)
Oct 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word early
I'm trying to be more of an affirmative action fabulist, since I believe that some groups deserve special lying attention.
Sep 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word branchial heart
"Branchial hearts are myogenic accessory pumps found in coleoid cephalopods that supplement the action of the main, systemic heart. Each consists of a single chamber and they are always paired, being located at the base of the gills. They pump blood through the gills via the afferent branchial veins." (Wikipedia)
Sep 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list carl-friedrich-gauss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_named_after_Carl_Friedrich_Gauss (or is that cheating?)
Sep 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word love dart
"A love dart (also known as a gypsobelum) is a hard, long, sharp, calcareous or chitinous dart which some hermaphroditic land snails and slugs create. Love darts are made in sexually mature animals only, and are used as part of the sequence of events during courtship, before actual mating takes place. Darts are quite large compared to the size of the animal: in the case of the semi-slug genus Parmarion, the length of a dart can be up to one fifth that of the semi-slug's foot." (Wikipedia)
Sep 29, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word pseudopupil
"In the compound eye of invertebrates such as insects and crustaceans, the pseudopupil appears as a dark spot which moves across the eye as the animal is rotated. This occurs because the ommatidia which one observes 'head-on' (along their optical axes) absorb the incident light, while those to one side reflect it. The pseudopupil therefore reveals which ommatidia are aligned with the axis along which the observer is viewing." (Wikipedia)
Sep 29, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word prefenestrated
"Sir, at this moment, you should consider yourself prefenestrated!"(SMBC comics)
Sep 29, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list gleaned-words
Ah, yes, it's quite a mess... Not sure where to start scrubbing.
Sep 28, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Neverland
"The Neverland gene makes a protein of the same name, which converts cholesterol into 7-dehydrocholesterol. This chemical reaction is the first of many that leads to ecdysone – a hormone that all insects need to transform from a larva into an adult. Most species make their own ecdysone but D.pachea is ill-equipped. Because of its Neverland mutations, the manufacturing process fails at the very first step. Without intervention, the fly would be permanently stuck in larval mode. Hence the name, Neverland—fly genes are named after what happens to the insect when the gene is broken." (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
Sep 28, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list herring
Or maybe a LED herring (glowing stonger than the dead herring)?
Sep 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Explosions-Polka
"Explosions-Polka, op. 43, is a polka written by Johann Strauss II in 1847. The title was inspired by a discovery of guncotton or nitrocellulose by German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1840. The Viennese press eagerly reported this discovery many years later in 1846, describing many products that can then be made 'explosive'." (Wikipedia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It4VAl4JFH0
Sep 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user deinonychus
Lying! To children! About dinosaurs! And taxonomy! Well, I guess that's one of the privileges of being a parent...
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word coronary steal
Coronary steal (with its symptoms termed cardiac steal syndrome) is a phenomenon where an alteration of circulation patterns lead to a reduction in the blood directed to the coronary circulation. It is caused when there is narrowing of the coronary arteries and a coronary vasodilator is used - 'stealing' blood away from those parts of the heart. (Wikipedia)
I think there's potential for some nice Valentine's Day cards somwhere around here...
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word uterine milk
"In sharks and rays, the term ovoviviparity has recently been deprecated in favor of aplacental viviparity. Authors may regard the two terms as synonymous, or equate ovoviviparity only with aplacental yolk-sac viviparity, in which the embryos are solely sustained by yolk (as opposed to secondary provisioning by their mother in the form of 'uterine milk', such as in the stingrays, or unfertilized eggs, such as in the mackerel sharks; the latter is referred to as intrauterine oophagy).
There is a wide range of forms of intrauterine provisioning however, which could complicate the classification. In at least some sharks the routine intrauterine oophagy is not limited to unfertilised or trophic eggs, in various forms and in in some the principle extends to actual intrauterine cannibalism."
(Wikipedia)
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list herring
In this blog post about bioluminescence, they quote The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald:
"An idiosyncrasy peculiar to the herring is that, when dead, it begins to glow; this property, which resembles phosphorescence and is yet altogether different, peaks a few days after death and then ebbs away as the fish decays. For a long time no one could account for this glowing of the lifeless herring, and indeed I believe that it still remains unexplained. Around 1870, when projects for the total illumination of our cities were everywhere afoot, two English scientists with the apt names of Herrington and Lightbown investigated the unusual phenomenon in the hope that the luminous substance exuded by dead herrings would lead to a formula for an organic source of light that had the capacity to regenerate itself. The failure of this eccentric undertaking, as I read some time ago in a history of artificial light, constituted no more than a negligible setback in the relentless conquest of darkness."
I have a feeling that the dead herring is somehow related to the (more famous) red herring.
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word snus
"Did you mean anus?" No, I did not...
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tappen
Good! I feel at home here. (Home is where my words are?)
Netto is net (as opposed to gross) and snus is... snus. So they're saying that they sell cheap snus. I'd rather have some fufluns.
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tit juice conjunctivitis
Thanks for that link! Reminded me of the SpeechJammer that really needs to be listed somewhere. Perhaps it's a good weapon for a superhero...
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word penis speed painting
The artist "Pricasso" paints portraits "in 20 minutes using only his penis as a brush." His web page is obviously NSFW...
Sep 26, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word herpes gladiatorum
"Herpes Gladiatorum is one of the most infectious of herpes-caused diseases, and is transmissible by skin-to-skin contact."
"While the disease is commonly passed through normal human contact, it is strongly associated with contact sports — outbreaks in sporting clubs being relatively common. Other names for the disease are herpes rugbiorum or 'scrumpox' (after rugby football), 'wrestler's herpes' or 'mat pox' (after wrestling)."
(Wikipedia)
Sep 25, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tappen
Passing this yesterday, I realized that I needed to share this with... well, someone, and Wordnik might be the right place for it. I've always thought this sign was a bit disturbing, even before I knew the word tappen in English. ("Godis" means candy, and "tappen" means the gas station (in Swedish)).
Sep 24, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word bathtub Madonna
"A bathtub Madonna (also known as a lawn shrine, Mary on the half shell, bathtub Mary, and bathtub shrine) is an artificial grotto typically framing a Roman Catholic religious figure." (Wikipedia)
Sep 24, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word beefy meaty peptide
"Beefy meaty peptide, also known as delicious peptide and abbreviated as BMP, is an 8-amino acid long peptide that has been identified as giving a beefy flavor to foods in which it is present." (Wikipedia)
Sep 24, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tit juice conjunctivitis
Found in this chart.
Sep 24, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user deinonychus
I guess I'm more of a dinosaur (if that was the question). I wasn't even aware of the Dutch doom metal band (now on my list of disappointing-wikipedia-links)!
Sep 23, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Bitter electromagnet
"A Bitter electromagnet or Bitter solenoid is a type of electromagnet used in scientific research to create extremely strong magnetic fields. Bitter electromagnets have been used to produce some of the strongest continuous manmade magnetic fields on earth (up to 35 teslas as of 2008)." (Wikipedia) Named after Francis Bitter.
Sep 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Darwinian demon
"A Darwinian Demon is a hypothetical organism that can maximize all aspects of fitness simultaneously and would exist if the evolution of species was entirely unconstrained. Such organisms would reproduce directly after being born, produce infinitely many offspring, and live indefinitely. Even though no such organisms exist, biologists use Darwinian Demons in thought experiments to understand different life history strategies among different organisms." (Wikipedia)
Sep 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list plant-diseases
Oh... I didn't find this list until I had listed 20 diseases in my own list. Probably going to steal some (or most) of these!
Sep 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath number
Cool. It would be nice to have at least one of those numbers...
Sep 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sloth moth
"Sloth moth is a generic term used to refer to coprophagous moths which have evolved to exclusively inhabit the fur of sloths and to use sloth dung as a substrate for the early stages of reproduction." (Wikipedia)
"The large variety of arthropods associated with sloths comprise two distinct feeding guilds – the haematophagous guild, represented by biting flies and ticks, and the coprophagous guild which comprises a unique assemblage of moths, beetles and mites which utilize the sloth principally for phoresis and whose larval stages feed and develop in the dung of the host sloth." (Wikipedia)
Sep 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word obelisk posture
"The obelisk posture is a handstand-like position that some dragonflies and damselflies assume to prevent overheating on sunny days. The abdomen is raised until its tip points at the sun, minimizing the surface area exposed to solar radiation. When the sun is close to directly overhead, the vertical alignment of the insect's body suggests an obelisk." (Wikipedia)
Sep 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word hog oiler
I started at Wikipedia, and from there I got to a five page article about a collector of hog oilers ("His vanity plate on his Dodge pickup, though, reveals why he'd rather attend the latter instead of the former: HOGOILR"), and he's not the only one.
Sep 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
The list of dreams.
Sep 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word slender snipe eel
I'm also impressed by your memory! I find it hard just to remember my own, but I'm gradually adding a few other lists to my mental meta-list...
Sep 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word slender snipe eel
"The slender snipe eel, Nemichthys scolopaceus, sometimes referred to as the deep sea duck, is a fish that can weigh only a few ounces, yet reach 5 feet or 1.5 m in length. Features include a bird-like beak with curving tips, covered with tiny hooked teeth, which they use to sweep through the water to catch shrimp and other crustaceans. It has a lifespan of ten years.
It has more vertebrae in its backbone than any other animal, around 750. However, its anus has moved forward during its evolution and is now located on its throat. Its larvae are shaped like leaves, which actually get smaller before transforming into adults."
(Wikipedia)
Sep 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word pigbutt worm
"The pigbutt worm or flying buttocks (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus) is a newly discovered species of worm found by scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The worm is round in shape, approximately the size of a hazelnut, and bears a strong resemblance to a disembodied pair of buttocks. Because of this, it was given a Latin species name that roughly translates to 'resembling a pig's rear.'" (Wikipedia)
It's almost too perfect for my insulting-animals list...
Sep 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
I really, really love this list!
Here's another one: List of Guano Island claims.
Sep 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tempest prognosticator
"The tempest prognosticator, also known as the leech barometer, is a 19th-century invention by George Merryweather in which leeches are used in a barometer. The twelve leeches are kept in small bottles inside the device; when they become agitated by an approaching storm they attempt to climb out of the bottles and trigger a small hammer which strikes a bell. The likelihood of a storm is indicated by the number of times the bell is struck." (Wikipedia)
Sep 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word dessin d'enfant
"In mathematics, a dessin d'enfant (French for a 'child's drawing', plural dessins d'enfants, 'children's drawings') is a type of graph drawing used to study Riemann surfaces and to provide combinatorial invariants for the action of the absolute Galois group of the rational numbers." (Wikipedia)
Sep 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Cox-Zucker machine
"The algorithm was first published in the 1979 paper 'Intersection numbers of sections of elliptic surfaces' by Cox and Zucker and it was later named the "Cox–Zucker machine" by Charles Schwartz in 1984." (Wikipedia)
More of that sort here: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume14/v14i3/v14i3.html#BoysBoys
Sep 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tamponade
When life gives you tampons...
Sep 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word death-inducing signaling complex
"The death-inducing signaling complex or DISC is a multi-protein complex formed by members of the 'death receptor' family of apoptosis-inducing cellular receptors." (From Wikipedia where it's illustrated by a rather cute diagram.)
Aug 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cow blowing
"Cow blowing, Kuhblasen, or doom dev, is a process used in many countries according to ethnographers, in which forceful blowing of air into a cow's vagina (or sometimes anus) is applied to induce her to produce more milk." (Wikipedia)
Aug 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tremble dance
"The tremble dance of the honeybee is similar to the waggle dance, but is used by a forager when the foraging bee perceives a long delay in unloading its nectar or a shortage of receiver bees, sometimes due to low numbers of receiver bees. It may also spread the scent released during the forager's waggle dance. Like the waggle dance, the tremble dance is likely one of two 'primary regulation mechanisms' for regulating bee colony behavior at the group level, and one of four or five observed mechanisms known to be used by honeybees to change the task allocation among worker bees. The consumption of ethanol by foraging bees has been shown to increase the occurrence of the tremble dance while decreasing the occurrence of the waggle dance." (Wikipedia)
Aug 29, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word frustrated Lewis pair
That poor, frustrated pair!
Aug 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word law of the gut
"The Law of the gut is the theory of gastrointestinal motility developed by Dr. William Jacobus at the University of Toledo College of Medicine. The Law of the Gut states 'The peristaltic wave of gastrointestinal smooth muscle contraction begins at the oral end and moves to the anal end'." (Wikipedia)
Aug 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
...and the list of patron saints of ailments, illness and dangers.
Aug 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word doubt deficit
"...hypothesizing that focal damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) would cause a 'doubt deficit' that would result in higher credulity and purchase intention for consumer products featured in misleading advertisements." (full article here.)
Aug 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Wiener sausage
"In the mathematical field of probability, the Wiener sausage is a neighborhood of the trace of a Brownian motion up to a time t, given by taking all points within a fixed distance of Brownian motion. It can be visualized as a sausage of fixed radius whose centerline is Brownian motion. The Wiener sausage was named after Norbert Wiener..." (Wikipedia)
Aug 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list fungous
And I'm pleased to find someone else who can appreciate it! My studies of mycology is mostly limited to periods of frenetic Wikipedia browsing... (And some basic knowledge of edible and poisonous ones, I actually picked some today!) Feel free to add words that you find suitable.
Aug 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list my-favorite-illegal-words
I like the deanthropomorphizer, I think it may be a suitable weapon for my superhero list...
Aug 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list mollusks
Killing things with something called "Genesis"? That's... interesting.
Aug 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list the-bible-in-anglish
I don't know what to say. But I do love it.
Aug 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of chess openings named after animals.
(I think my favourites are Hippopotamus Defence, Monkey's Bum, Pterodactyl Variation and Fried Fox Variation.)
Aug 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list things-weve-seen-moved-by-ants
Wow! I wish I had something to put on this list... (Will keep my eyes open from now on.)
Aug 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word gunnel
It's also a rather common name (among women in their sixties) in Sweden...
Jul 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mistpouffer
Ooh, how did I miss that word when I was reading the list of unexplained sounds?
Jul 23, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list bubbles--1
"Bubblenests, also spelled bubble nests or bubble-nests, created by some fish species, are floating masses of bubbles blown with an oral secretion, saliva bubbles, and occasionally aquatic plants, or an area for egg deposit attached at the bottom. Fish that build and guard bubble nests are known as aphrophils." (Wikipedia)
Jul 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word lovely hatchetfish
A fish, Argyropelecus aculeatus. After seeing some pictures, I think it is rather lovely, but perhaps not in the most conventional way...
Jul 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word robovirus
I was hoping for something with robots, but... "A robovirus is a zoonotic virus that is transmitted by a rodent." (Wikipedia)
Jul 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word exploding chocolate
My eye was caught by the tasty-soundning word combination "chocolate bomb" in a headline...
Jul 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word trueair
Exactly! Or it might be the next logical step after bottled water.
Jul 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word trueair
Sounds like a possible product from a dystopian corporation. TrueAir™.
Jul 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list winged-jewels
And how about marvellous spatuletail and fiery-throated metaltail?
Jul 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list barbed-wire
Great list! I had to google the book title, and was surprised (even though I should have known better) by all the museums and collectors out there, such as The Antique Barbed Wire Society that teaches me that "happiness is being a barbed wire collector"...
Jul 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word lumpsucker
I don't take orders from a buff-bellied fat-tailed mouse opossum, you pseudo-babbler of an eel-mother! But I will make a list of insulting-animals.
Jul 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word lumpsucker
Is there such a list? Or was that a suggestion to make one?
Jul 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word iecur ficatus
Sounds like a disease...
Jul 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list words-i-wish-i-didnt-know
A dare! Thank you, looks like I have an interesting night ahead of me.
Jul 18, 2012