Comments by deinonychus

  • there seems to be some secret invisible characters in this word? In the url i see "Coccothraustes%20%20%20%20%20 coccothraustes" but searching for just "Coccothraustes coccothraustes" tells me it's not on any list. (And i got excited about having a new one for name-name)

    April 26, 2020

  • It could also be the start of a horror movie. And/or a biblical plague.

    July 31, 2018

  • haven't been here for a while, but today grasshopper escapement brought me back. and then i see the last comment (from 2013!) on this list was about another escapement...

    July 30, 2018

  • Today I heard a mistle thrush sing for the first time, and was pleased to find that it is also called stormcock.

    April 30, 2018

  • Nothing for 6 months, and now three in a week!

    February 4, 2018

  • Found this horrible sounding type of wine while researching making wine from oranges. But I do enjoy that something could be described as "the opposite of rosé".

    "Skin-contact wine, amber wine, or orange wine is a type of wine made from white wine grapes where the grape skins are not removed, and stay in contact with the juice for days or even months."

    "This winemaking style is essentially the opposite of rosé production which involves getting red wine grapes quickly off their skins, leaving the wine with a slightly pinkish hue."

    (Wikipedia)

    December 7, 2017

  • Found in a text about the construction of an alphabet for the Taíno language.

    "The system expresses these consonant-vowel blends by attaching a 'vowel-knob' to the consonant glyph. The position of the vowel-knob denotes which vowel is being sounded after the consonant (above the glyph for the 'ah' sound, to the right of the glyph for 'eh' sound, below the glyph for the 'ee' sound, to the left of the glyph for the 'oh' sound and at the center of the glyph for the 'oo' sound)."

    October 14, 2017

  • Just found a list of "ways for sheep to die in Austraila", got some good new terms there. Could be of use to someone with a sheep-list, I have a feeling those exist. https://drferox.tumblr.com/post/164511954373/ways-for-sheep-to-die-in-australia

    August 27, 2017

  • It's been a while but today I found another one! (Xanthostigma xanthostigma)

    June 9, 2017

  • "The frog galvanoscope is a sensitive electrical instrument used to detect voltage in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It consists of skinned frog's leg with electrical connections to a nerve."

    "Synonyms for this device include galvanoscopic frog, frog's leg galvanoscope, frog galvanometer, rheoscopic frog, and frog electroscope."

    (Wikipedia)

    April 5, 2017

  • Ooh, this seems useful...

    April 1, 2017

  • And now I see that gossypiboma already was a popular word here, but maybe we need three synonyms for it so that we can use it many times in a conversation without being repetitive?

    March 13, 2017

  • Fabric inside the body, looking like a tumour. "Hemostat-associated mass lesions have been variously referred to as textilomas, gossypibomas, gauzomas, or muslinomas" (source)

    March 13, 2017

  • "Sometimes, the egg veil is described as being as similar to bubble wrap. Each veil the monkfish lays is dotted with about a million eggs." (Pictures here)

    February 11, 2017

  • Does anyone have a list of things that sound like animals but aren't? (Claw cranes are unfortunately not dangerous birds, but those near-impossible games where you try to catch a toy or something.)

    December 18, 2016

  • I don't know what the insects of the order Zoraptera did to earn this name, but I hope it was performing miracles.

    September 19, 2016

  • 4 1⁄2?

    You know, it's a slippery slope. Start counting bathrooms, and the what? Corridors? Closets? Where will it end?!

    July 12, 2016

  • Interesting! In Sweden this would be called a "trea", which translates as (the number) three. Short for "tre rum och kök" meaning "three rooms and a kitchen". We count the living room but not bathrooms.

    July 11, 2016

  • Vavilovian mimicry (also crop mimicry or weed mimicry) is a form of mimicry in plants where a weed comes to share one or more characteristics with a domesticated plant through generations of artificial selection. It is named after Nikolai Vavilov, a prominent Russian plant geneticist who identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry">Wikipedia</a>)

    May 7, 2016

  • Poor bony-eared assfish, Wikipedia only has 5 sentences about it, and one of them is "It holds the record for the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of all vertebrates."

    February 20, 2016

  • I find this very confusing. Lots of animals have their own poxes, but some of the ones we humans get we have named after innocent animals, like chickenpox and Molluscipoxvirus...

    February 17, 2016

  • Oh, wow. I probably have to steal all of those for my sick-animals list. Very impressive collection!

    February 17, 2016

  • "Traumatin is a plant hormone produced in response to wound. Traumatin is a precursor to the related hormone traumatic acid. (Wikipedia)

    February 12, 2016

  • Anyone got a list of human geometry? "The danger triangle of the face consists of the area from the corners of the mouth to the bridge of the nose, including the nose and maxilla. Due to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area, it is possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain causing cavernous sinus thrombosis, meningitis or brain abscess." (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face">Wikipedia</a>)

    January 29, 2016

  • Oh, lovely! Good to give people something catchy to help them remember.

    January 26, 2016

  • "Scarabiasis is a condition where beetles temporarily infest the digestive tract and the scarabs are identified in the 'fly away' from the anus at the time of the defecation." (Source)

    January 26, 2016

  • @sidereal: Well, sort of. But all of these are things that requires some sort of human intervention. Not that I consider this list to be any form of recommendation to start ferret legging or hypnotising chickens. (The more "natural" animal related words have their own list)

    @vendingmachine: Happy to hear that! I'll try to remember to provide more definitions. And nice to see that the poor dried cat finally found a list to live in.

    January 19, 2016

  • Made from bone of the extinct Steller's sea cow. (Found here)

    January 17, 2016

  • I try to find just the right intriguing/disturbing ratio, but I can never really tell how other people will feel about it...

    January 17, 2016

  • Looks lika a little space has snuck into the link, making it " reify". I make that mistake a lot when I copy/paste things.

    January 15, 2016

  • "Superrational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers." (Douglas Hofstadter, via Wikipedia)

    December 28, 2015

  • "When the larvae have completed their larval development through six instars, they enter a stage called the 'prepupa' wherein they cease to eat, they empty their guts, their mouth parts change to an appendage that aids climbing, and they seek a dry, sheltered area to pupate. This prepupal migration instinct is used by grub composting bins to self-harvest the mature larvae. These containers have ramps or holes on the sides to allow the prepupae to climb out of the composter and drop into a collection area." (Wikipedia)

    December 20, 2015

  • Ooh, I hope I will find opportunities for using this phrase somehow. And it's perfect for my things-to-do-with-animals list.

    December 18, 2015

  • From http://what-if.xkcd.com/50/: "Superfluid helium films, like the one rapidly covering you, carry the same types of ordinary sound waves that most materials do. But they also exhibit an additional type of wave, a slow-moving ripple that propogates along thin films of helium. It's only observed in superfluids, and has the mysterious and poetic name 'third sound.'"

    December 18, 2015

  • Interesting. A while ago I found the term thanatomicrobiome for the same thing here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death. Necrobiome seems simpler and more familiar, but I guess time will tell which term will win in the long run.

    December 10, 2015

  • How about the oxpecker? (I think about this list a lot)

    December 7, 2015

  • Glowing wounds caused by Photorhabdus luminescens. "During the US Civil war, the same bacteria sometimes contaminated the wounds of soldiers, giving them an eerie blue shine while also protecting them from infections—they called it the 'angel’s glow'." (Source)

    December 5, 2015

  • Hmm, I'm too lazy for that. I'll guess I'll have to survive without access to all the data!

    November 23, 2015

  • Yay, I found a new one! (Sprattus sprattus) It's been a while since last time (is there a way to tell when a word was listed?), but there are still unlisted species out there waiting...

    November 22, 2015

  • "Crown shyness is a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps. It is also known as canopy disengagement, canopy shyness, or intercrown spacing. The phenomenon is most prevalent among trees of the same species, but also occurs between trees of different species." (Wikipedia)

    October 18, 2015

  • I know! Or maybe what you could call a really big cyst you've got, to make it sound cool.

    August 15, 2015

  • I love this sentence from Wikipedia: "A bulbil is a small bulb, and may also be called a bulblet, bulbet, or bulbel."

    July 12, 2015

  • "The pyramidal eminence (pyramid) is situated immediately behind the fenestra vestibuli, and in front of the vertical portion of the facial canal; it is hollow, and contains the Stapedius muscle; its summit projects forward toward the fenestra vestibuli, and is pierced by a small aperture which transmits the tendon of the muscle." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidal_eminence)

    May 28, 2015

  • What?! I haven't been here since 2013? Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that dick-dick-the-devil is an old name for the crested bellbird.

    March 31, 2015

  • Ooh, just one poem ending in fecal plumes would have made me happy, but now three!

    March 24, 2015

  • Not sure if this is specific enough, but I didn't know a better place for it:

    In the words of marine biologists Joe Roman and James McCarthy, many whales feed in the deeper tiers of the sea to then return to the surface and release “flocculent fecal plumes” – cetacean clouds that may create what Roman and McCarthy call a “whale pump“.
    (http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/17/sciencespeak-whale-pump/)

    March 23, 2015

  • Found this word today. Is there a list of misleadingly cute-sounding diminutive forms?

    March 23, 2015

  • The quotation mark breaks wordnik a little. I've hade the same problem, but only in the middle of a "word", so I never got to the randomness. (My random words: direct-driven, honouring, perilune. Will someone tell us how to interpret this type of bibliomancy?)

    March 21, 2015

  • Nice! I might steal some of these for my list of sounds of birds...

    March 16, 2015

  • I stumbled over the poetic term "home scar" and then learned about aggressive gardening mollusks! From Wikipedia:

    Some species of limpets return to the same spot on the rock known as a "home scar" just before the tide recedes. In such species, the shape of their shell often grows to precisely match the contours of the rock surrounding the scar. This behaviour presumably allows them to form a better seal to the rock and may help protect them from both predation and desiccation.

    It is still unclear how limpets find their way back to the same spot each time, but it is thought that they follow pheromones in the mucus left as they move. Other species, notably Lottia gigantea seem to "garden" a patch of algae around their home scar. They are one of the few invertebrates to exhibit territoriality and will aggressively push other organisms out of this patch by ramming with their shell, thereby allowing their patch of algae to grow for their own grazing.

    March 11, 2015

  • "Professor Terry Frank Pettijohn II, of Coastal Carolina University, is the lead author of a new study which investigates the ‘Chin Area’ (and other facial features such as ‘Eye Width’) of US country Music singers between 1946 and 2010 – and examines possible correlations with an index of economic and social conditions called the General Hard Times Measure (GHTM)." (found here)

    January 11, 2015

  • I'm glad to see that you're all still alive! (I found my way here by googling "502 Bad Gateway" and then following ruzuzu.)

    December 28, 2014

  • This podcast introduced me to the architectural term Thomasson, a structure in a city that is useless but maintained. Named after a baseball player...

    November 21, 2014

  • A machine to make make bees sleep deprived... Found here: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/berrett-klein-honeybees/.

    November 16, 2014

  • I now see very vivid images of snakes in historical costumes in a mating ball. It would make a great illustrated children's book.

    November 5, 2014

  • "Female garter snakes will emerge from their winter hibernation — technically called 'brumation,' a hibernation-like state that cold-blooded animals go through during chilly months — a few days after males do. When males catch the pheromone scent of a female, they will swarm over her, forming a 'mating ball.'" (Source)

    November 3, 2014

  • Ooh, I want one!

    September 29, 2014

  • "The cat gap is a period in the fossil record of approximately 25 to 18.5 million years ago in which there are few fossils of cats or cat-like species found in North America." (Wikipedia)
    hmm... strange visuals for this one...

    September 3, 2014

  • Reading about the Emei moustache toad on Wikipedia: "Male Leptobrachium boringii exhibit conspicuous keratinized nuptial spines that grow on their upper lip during the breeding season—these are the 'moustache' and 'spines' referred to in its common names."

    August 6, 2014

  • Hmm... Maybe I should hurry to close all of my open lists before something terrible and irreversible happens to them!

    (I used to be able to do it the way ruzuzu describes, but it seems impossible now.)

    July 16, 2014

  • "Boar taint is the offensive odour or taste that can be evident during the cooking or eating of pork or pork products derived from non-castrated male pigs once they reach puberty." (Wikipedia)

    July 3, 2014

  • "In order to release the pollen, bumblebees and some species of solitary bees are able to grab onto the flower and move their flight muscles rapidly, causing the flower and anthers to vibrate, dislodging pollen. This resonant vibration is called buzz pollination. The honeybee rarely performs buzz pollination. About 8% of the flowers of the world are primarily pollinated using buzz pollination." (Wikipedia)

    June 28, 2014

  • "Extra extra</i> or Marginella extra is a species of minute sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk or micromollusk in the family Cystiscidae. Some malacologists place this genus more simply in the family Marginellidae." (Wikipedia)

    I hope it continues to be Extra extra, it's a much funnier name.

    June 19, 2014

  • Learning a new kind of excrement, heading over here... finding that of course it is listed at specific-excrement.

    June 17, 2014

  • "Mud-puddling, or simply puddling, is behaviour most conspicuous in butterflies, but occurs in other animals as well, mainly insects; they seek out certain moist substances such as rotting plant matter, mud and carrion and they suck up the fluid. Where the conditions are suitable conspicuous insects such as butterflies commonly form aggregations on wet soil, dung or carrion." (Wikipedia)

    April 22, 2014

  • This article mentions witch's broom. (or witches' broom, I find it very hard to choose!)
    (edit: but now i see that the links get broken anyway...)

    April 15, 2014

  • Yay! I'll have that in mind when the zombies appear. Hopefully not actual zombies.

    April 9, 2014

  • "From the late 1860s until the 1970s, several American cities had ugly laws making it illegal for persons with "unsightly or disgusting" disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called unsightly beggar ordinances." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law">Wikipedia)

    April 3, 2014

  • "Insects in the order Hymenoptera can be trained to perform a variety of tasks. The sensitivity of the olfactory senses of bees and wasps in particular have been shown to rival the abilities of sniffer dogs, though they can only be trained to detect a single scent each. Sniffer bees and sniffer wasps have been trained to detect substances such as explosive materials or illegal drugs, as well as some human and plant diseases." (Wikipedia)

    April 3, 2014

  • I have a feeling that it could work well as an insult of some sort...

    April 2, 2014

  • Damn, I just saw "Dugong dugong" and headed straight for this list, but it turns out that it's actually Dugong dugon. Oh well, at least I got to see some pretty pictures of fetal dugong skeletons...

    April 2, 2014

  • "Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 (SuHV-1), which is also called pseudorabies virus (PRV) and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch." (Wikipedia)

    (Accidentally made this comment at " mad itch", and then bilby mentioned pseudorables...)

    March 31, 2014

  • Wait, how did I manage to get an empty space in the beginning this word? I thought Wordnik was smarter than this. Now I'll never find these comments again...

    March 31, 2014

  • I think it could be pretending to be adorable, but you are actually not. Like something from a horror movie, attracting its prey with big puppy eyes, and then BAM! the stinger/slime/fangs comes out.

    March 31, 2014

  • I'm pretty sure classical swine fever is a radio station.

    March 30, 2014

  • "Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 (SuHV-1), which is also called pseudorabies virus (PRV) and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch." (Wikipedia)

    March 30, 2014

  • Ooh... I came here to list louping-ill, but leaping-evil is even better. Also trembling-ill, and the less magic-sounding infectious encephalomyelitis of sheep.

    March 30, 2014

  • "just to avoid/create confusion" seems like a very useful phrase...

    March 23, 2014

  • Aha! I was just a bit ahead of my time. Thank's for pointing this out, I had completely forgotten about traumatic insemination and was surprised to see it mentioned on my profile...

    March 19, 2014

  • "People suffering from this condition believe that shortly after being bitten by a dog, puppies are conceived within their abdomen." (Wikipedia)

    March 8, 2014

  • Yes, ruzuzu there should be a list! Surely there must be some vampires that should fit in too...

    March 7, 2014

  • This article contained lots of good stuff:

    "At some point during its early days, P.pacificus pauses its growth and becomes a dauer—an especially tough larva that’s adapted to survive through harsh conditions."

    "groups of P.pacificus can merge to form a single waving 'dauer tower', composed of up to a thousand individuals."

    "Such teamwork! Such togetherness! Such low odds of ever appearing on a motivational poster!"

    March 7, 2014

  • "Another fungus, called 'mummyberry,' infects blueberry plants and turns their fruits into pale, shriveled carcasses. But it doesn’t stop there. Infected shoots of the plant grow grayish spots at their tips that reflect UV light, smell like flowers, and leak sugary liquid. Pollinators that are attracted to these 'pseudoflowers' will pick up more infectious spores on their bodies." http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/02/25/the-5-creepiest-ways-plant-diseases-mutate-flowers/

    March 6, 2014

  • "Slime flux is a bacterial disease of certain trees, primarily elm, cottonwood, poplar, boxelder, ash, aspen, fruitless mulberry, and oak. A wound to the bark, caused by pruning, insects, poor branch angles or natural cracks and splits, causes sap to ooze from the wound. Bacteria may infect this sap causing it to darken and stain the bark, eventually taking on a foamy appearance and unpleasant odor. This slimy ooze becomes toxic to the bark and eats into the tree. Additionally, the fermented sap attracts insects like flies, ants, worms, and maggots, which further weaken the tree." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_flux)

    February 26, 2014

  • I was reading about bee diseases (here) and found this:
    "Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV), is a virus that cause an infectious disease of the adult honey bees. Previously known with different names in different countries such as 'little blacks' (UK), 'hairless black syndrome' (US), 'mal nero' (Italy), 'Schwarzsucht' (Germany) and 'mal noire' (France) (Ribière et al., 2008)."
    The "prevously" made me a bit sad, since all of these names fit better at my list of sick animals (that often also would be great band names) but I guess I'm just going to list them all anyway...

    February 20, 2014

  • There, almost hairless bracketed. (I get an image of a poor guinea pig losing its hair but trying to make the most of what's left, maybe trying a combover?) Are there any lists of naked or almost naked animals?

    edit: I got so frustrated by trying to edit my original post that I slipped and deleted it. Fortunately, it wasn't very important.

    February 13, 2014

  • "Ensis ensis, or the sword razor, is a razor clam, a marine bivalve mollusc in the family Pharidae." (Wikipedia) Perhaps sharpest sounding animal on my weaponized-animals list so far.

    February 7, 2014

  • Thanks markusloke! (It's an open list so feel free to add words, but it's nice to get a comment so I'll notice it.)
    Now I wonder if kentrogon will also fit on my sounding-like-a-superhero list, there's something about words ending i -on...

    January 19, 2014

  • Do it, bilby! I'm sure I can think of something to add...

    January 13, 2014

  • "The speech banana is a region in which all the phonemes of the world's languages fall on an audiogram. An audiogram is a graphical representation of a person's hearing acuity at a range of frequencies and loudness levels, and it is generally charted with frequency level (in Hertz on the x-axis and decibel level (dB) on the y-axis. When the sounds of speech or phonemes of all known human languages are plotted on an audiogram, they cluster in a banana-shaped region known as the speech banana." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_banana">Wikipedia)

    January 13, 2014

  • "The ferrets are occasionally put inside the contestants' shirts in addition to their trousers. An attempt to introduce a female version of the sport—ferret busting, in which female contestants introduced ferrets down their blouses—proved unsuccessful." (Wikipedia)

    January 1, 2014

  • I found this disappointing link (actually two links) researching Bibleman. But there's most likely more than one evangelical superhero out there...

    October 31, 2013

  • Sharp teeth that male alpacas develop.

    October 26, 2013

  • "Ruin value (German: Ruinenwert) is the concept that a building be designed such that if it eventually collapsed, it would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins that would last far longer without any maintenance at all. The idea was pioneered by German architect Albert Speer while planning for the 1936 Summer Olympics and published as "The Theory of Ruin Value" (Die Ruinenwerttheorie), although he was not its original inventor." (Wikipedia)

    October 17, 2013

  • Nice list! I think I'll stay here a while...

    October 15, 2013

  • "The buccal fat pad (also called Bichat’s fat pad, after Marie François Xavier Bichat, and the buccal pad of fat), is one of several encapsulated fat masses in the cheek. It is a deep fat pad located on either side of the face between the buccinator muscle and several more superficial muscles (including the masseter, the zygomaticus major, and the zygomaticus minor). The inferior portion of the buccal fat pad is contained within the buccal space. It should not be confused with the malar fat pad, which is directly below the skin of the cheek. It should also not be confused with jowl fat pads. It is implicated in the formation of hollow cheeks and the nasolabial fold, but not in the formation of jowls." (Wikipedia)

    October 14, 2013

  • "Despite its name, the Mormon cricket is actually a shieldbacked katydid, not a cricket. They take their name from Mormon settlers in Utah, who encountered them while pushing westward, and for the prominent role they play in the miracle of the gulls." (Wikipedia)

    October 10, 2013

  • Thanks, dinkum! I was just about to check my geology list for terms that could be used in an erotic context...

    October 9, 2013

  • Anyone interested in a porn bird comic?

    October 7, 2013

  • "It has been observed to consist of up to four distinct units which can be arranged in different patterns to communicate information about threats from predators and coordination of group movement. Recent study of the call shows that the number of dees indicates the level of threat from nearby predators. In an analysis of over 5,000 alarm calls from chickadees, it was found that alarm calls triggered by small, dangerous raptors had a shorter interval between chick and dee and tended to have extra dees, usually averaging four instead of two. In one case, a warning call about a pygmy owl – a prime threat to chickadees – contained 23 dees" (Wikipedia)

    October 4, 2013

  • How did it take me so long to find this list? Some of these will definitely end up in my nest...

    October 4, 2013

  • Of course I don't mind. I feel a little sorry for those cars, especially the ones with rather human-like cries and a typically raucous honking call...

    October 4, 2013

  • "Holothuria mexicana, also known as the Donkey Dung sea cucumber is commonly found in the Caribbean. It is a commercially important aspidochirote (sediment feeding) sea cucumber that can reach a total length of 50 cm (20 in)." (Wikipedia)

    September 22, 2013

  • Ooh, thanks for the wienermobile! "Drivers of the Wienermobiles are known as Hotdoggers and often hand out toy whistles shaped as replicas of the Wienermobile, known as Wienerwhistles."

    August 30, 2013

  • Thank you, ruzuzu! And I don't need to have the words to myself, they are free to be a band or do what they please...

    August 27, 2013

  • I was just heading here to say something about what that definition would make matricide, but I was too late! At least I was rewarded by finding a list of "familial killing terms" on Wikipedia.

    August 23, 2013

  • Oh, I see now that I had put this on the wrong list! It's not about sick-animals but sick people. Fortunately, I found feline foamy virus today.

    edit: Are the word-links out of order or am I doing something wrong all of a sudden? Hmm... Well, at least I'm not the only one, it seems.

    August 23, 2013

  • Ooh, that's a word I've been missing without knowing it!

    July 16, 2013

  • Here I am, thinking that I found something new and amazing, only to find that it's been discussed here five years ago! Anyway, here's a beautiful picture of it.

    (And how come it's not on the specific-excrement list?)

    July 12, 2013

  • Then I will have to control myself a bit. Now to investigate titles...

    July 1, 2013

  • So, are the attributes mostly positive? I can imagine that this form would work well for insults...

    July 1, 2013

  • "Cryptic choice allows females to preferentially choose sperm. Females are thus able to mate multiple times and allocate sperm to their eggs according to paternal phenotype, or according to other characteristics. In some cases, such as in the yellow dung fly, certain male traits will affect the fitness of eggs laid in particular environmental conditions. Females can choose sperm based on male quality as a function of its interaction with the environment. In other species, such as the fly Dryomyza anilis, females preferentially choose sperm from one storage location over another. Males of this species have developed behaviors, such as abdominal tapping, to increase their number of sperm stored in the favored storage site." (Wikipedia)

    June 26, 2013

  • "Scathophaga stercoraria, commonly known as the yellow dung fly or the golden dung fly, is one of the most familiar and abundant flies in many parts of the northern hemisphere. As its common name suggests, it is often found on the feces of large mammals, such as horses, cows, sheep, deer, and wild boar, where it goes to breed." (Wikipedia)

    June 26, 2013

  • Symbolic chickens

    June 16, 2013

  • Extremely unsexy...

    June 10, 2013

  • It's all just water, anyway...

    June 5, 2013

  • Thanks! I haven't been adding anything to this for a long time, might be time for a new astronomical Wikipedia binge...

    June 4, 2013

  • "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

  • There's just so much insult potential in this poor animal: yellow-bellied + sap + sucker!

    May 22, 2013

  • "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 6, 2013

  • "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

  • I liked the name hog-nosed skunk, but "naked-muzzled" in the description is even better...

    May 2, 2013

  • Or maybe the list of fictional Antichists...

    April 27, 2013

  • I guess those are more sciency-fictiony...

    April 26, 2013

  • 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...)

    April 25, 2013

  • Nice list! Nature is good at making that sort of things...

    April 22, 2013

  • When a spammer is too wordy, the link to report them seems to fail...

    April 19, 2013

  • Ooh, I really like it!

    April 18, 2013

  • A fish, Nezumia namatahi, suitable for insults.

    April 16, 2013

  • "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)

    April 15, 2013

  • The mediocre skipper.

    April 14, 2013

  • 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)

    April 14, 2013

  • "The blood parrot cichlid (also known as parrot cichlid and bloody parrot; no binomial nomenclature) is a hybrid cichlid." (Wikipedia)

    April 12, 2013

  • "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)

    March 23, 2013

  • Also known as stellate sturgeon, but that isn't as nice to say...

    March 20, 2013

  • Oh, I love these automatically generated lists! Someday I'll make my own.

    March 20, 2013

  • Is there a deadline for this? (So I know when to give up thinking and send in a random word)

    March 20, 2013

  • 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...).

    March 17, 2013

  • "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)

    March 12, 2013

  • What a sea cucumber does when it ingests food through its anus, according to this study. Found here.

    March 10, 2013

  • I guess I want to be in on this too, even though I might have a disadvantage since I haven't played before...

    March 8, 2013

  • I just found the List of chics. "This is a list of notable chics.".

    March 6, 2013

  • Maybe you can find some good words in this article about human dung being the most attractive (for dung beetles, that is).

    March 3, 2013

  • "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)

    February 25, 2013

  • "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)

    February 25, 2013

  • "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.

    February 23, 2013

  • I wonder what sort of drink you should serve to a death sandwich...

    February 20, 2013

  • "Multiocular O () 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)

    February 14, 2013

  • I like these: (monocular O), (binocular O), (double monocular O), and (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.)

    February 14, 2013

  • A porn street?

    February 8, 2013

  • Paternoster? Or maybe... pater noster?

    February 8, 2013

  • Ooh, that sounds like an interesting (professional? honorary?) title...

    February 7, 2013

  • Somehow that feels like cheating, but it can't really be since you make the rules for your list...

    February 6, 2013

  • 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?

    February 6, 2013

  • "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." (

    February 5, 2013

  • Another potentially indecent fish, Pleuronichthys verticalis (see more at Harry hotlips). Time for a list, i guess...

    February 5, 2013

  • Wow... But what could you call a lesser (more watery) man, not (yet) boiled down?

    February 4, 2013

  • 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...

    February 3, 2013

  • 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...

    February 3, 2013

  • Nice list. (I added some yeast to the mix...)

    February 2, 2013

  • "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)

    February 1, 2013

  • 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.

    January 31, 2013

  • Oooh...

    January 31, 2013

  • 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.)

    January 31, 2013

  • "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)

    January 31, 2013

  • Also a species of clingfish, Chorisochismus dentex.

    January 31, 2013

  • "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)

    January 31, 2013

  • 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...)

    January 30, 2013

  • 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?

    January 29, 2013

  • 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...

    January 29, 2013

  • 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)

    January 29, 2013

  • "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)

    January 29, 2013

  • 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!

    January 29, 2013

  • "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="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...

    January 29, 2013

  • "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)

    January 29, 2013

  • "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.

    January 29, 2013

  • 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...

    January 29, 2013

  • Not just trending, double trending! (I see it twice in the list, is it a bug perhaps, or just really trendy?)

    January 28, 2013

  • "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)

    January 28, 2013

  • Yes, seems to be the same origin as meme (see etyomology section).

    January 27, 2013

  • A fish, Sargocentron spiniferum, armed with a sabre squirrel?

    January 27, 2013

  • "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)

    January 23, 2013

  • Sounds like food in a dystopian world. Maybe similar to pink slime.

    January 23, 2013

  • 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.)

    January 23, 2013

  • "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)

    January 23, 2013

  • "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)

    January 21, 2013

  • A bioluminescent fungus. There's a video of it here.

    January 21, 2013

  • One of the names for Sedum acre, a succulent plant.

    January 21, 2013

  • 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.)

    January 20, 2013

  • That's what I've been wondering too. And, will you be working these words into your telegraphic communications?

    January 20, 2013

  • A fish, Myliobatis californica. But I prefer to think about as some sort of raygun, shooting eagles, that Batman uses.

    January 19, 2013

  • I hope I'll find some good occasion to use this. Soon...

    January 19, 2013

  • How did I miss this one when listing weaponized animals?

    January 19, 2013

  • 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!

    January 16, 2013

  • 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?

    January 15, 2013

  • 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?)

    January 14, 2013

  • 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.

    January 12, 2013

Show 200 more comments...