Word of the Day : Garnish
Did You Know?
The purpose of Garnishing Food. ... Usually consisting of an edible component, garnishes brighten the plate, give a clue to the flavor of the meal, complement the taste of the dish or fill empty space on the plate. Garnishes can take many forms depending on the food they are decorating.
A garnish is a decoration or embellishment, often used with food. It is also the verb that means to do the decorating: you can garnish a baked fish with a garnish of lemon slices and parsley.Garnishes should always be edible - there may be laws depending where you are, but in general anything on your plate should be edible or very obviously not meant to be eaten (like a skewer or a paper wrapper). ... So probably the best garnishes are ones that look good and are pleasant to eat.
Although we now mostly garnish food, the general application of the "decorate" meaning is older. The link between embellishing an object or space and adding a little parsley to a plate isn't too hard to see, but how does the verb's sense of "garnishee," which refers to the taking of debtors' wages, fit in? The answer lies in the word's Anglo-French root, garnir, which means "to give notice, warning, or legal summons" in addition to "to equip or decorate." Before wages were garnished, the debtor would be served with a legal summons or warning. The legal sense of garnish now chiefly implies the taking of the wages, but it is rooted in the action of furnishing the warning.
Examples
"[Mariah] Carey pioneered featuring rappers on pop hits, and to date she has garnished 56 of her tracks with guest verses." — Billboard.com, 25 Apr. 2019
"Every day, problems that have fundamentally legal solutions—like a debt collector wrongfully garnishing hard-earned wages—derail the lives of people who are already struggling to make ends meet." — David Zapolsky, Fortune, 18 June 2019
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Word of the Day : Promulgate
To promulgate is to officially put a law into effect. ... Laws aren't the only things you can promulgate. The word promulgate comes from the Latin word promulgatus, meaning "make publicly known." Someone can promulgate values, belief systems, and philosophies — it just means they're promoted or made public.
: to put (a law or rule) into action or force
Did You Know?
The origin of promulgate is a bit murky, or perhaps we should say "milky." It comes from Latin promulgatus, which in turn derives from pro-, meaning "forward," and -mulgare, a form that is probably related to the verb mulgēre, meaning "to milk" or "to extract." Mulgēre is an ancestor of the English word emulsion ("mixture of mutually insoluble liquids"), and it is also related to the Old English word that became milk itself. Like its synonyms declare, announce, and proclaim, promulgate means "to make known publicly." It particularly implies the proclaiming of a dogma, doctrine, or law.
Eamples:
"Gov. John Bel Edwards signed two bills into law June 26 allowing alcohol delivery in Louisiana, but retailers and third-party delivery companies must first secure permits issued by ATC [Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control] to deliver the goods. The state agency is charged with promulgating the rules surrounding alcohol delivery." — Annie Ourso Landry, The Greater Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Business Report, 2 July 2019
"It was not until the 'common school' movement gathered momentum, in the eighteen-thirties and forties, that public education began, gradually, to take hold. The movement's ideals were most famously promulgated by the Massachusetts reformer Horace Mann, who believed that education could be 'the great equalizer of the conditions of men.
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Mind blowing facts : Mountian Dew
Today, Mountain Dew's name might seem like it is supposed to evoke pristine alpine conditions where the soda fuels feats of extreme athletic prowess, but its original meaning was intended to reference something very different. The phrase "mountain dew" was actually slang for mountain-brewed moonshine, write Tabitha Waggoner and Jessica Davis for the Tennessean. The caffeinated, florescent-yellow soda's name does make sense, when you consider its origin story: Brothers Barney and Ally Hartman began bottling a lemon-lime soda as a whiskey chaser in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1932, writes Doug Mason for Knoxnews. To play up the intended use of the drink, they dubbed their drink, "Mountain Dew."Mountain Dew is now a subsidiary of PepsiCo, and last year the company decided to stir up nostalgia for the soda's origins with Mountain Dew's "DEWshine," a clear version of the citrus-flavored drink sweetened with cane sugar rather than corn syrup. The product incorporates an old-fashioned-looking label, and also brings back Mountain Dew's original mascot, Willy the Hillbilly, along with the memorable tagline, "It'll tickle yore innards.""Dewshine" recently cropped up in the headlines for a tragic reason—the name also stands for a combination of the Hartman's original whiskey chaser mixed with a methanol-based racing fuel, which may have caused the deaths of two Tennessee teens.
Chandler Friedman and Steve Almasy report for CNN that four teenage boys mixed the drink at a party. Two were hospitalized, treated and released. The other two died. For much safer consumption, try mixing Mountain Dew with properly distilled whiskey. The original formulation has changed, however so the drink may not be the same as that quaffed by the Hartman brothers. On his blog, "Broken Secrets," Chad Upton writes that Mountain Dew with whiskey, perhaps punched up with a little lime juice, tastes a little like a whiskey sour.
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Mind blowing facts: Hansel and Gretel
Dark as it is, the story features child abandonment, attempted cannibalism, enslavement, and murder. Unfortunately, the origins of the story are equally — if not more — horrifying.
Modern readers know Hansel and Gretel from the works of German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The brothers were inseparable scholars, medievalists who had a passion for collecting German folklore.
Between 1812 and 1857, the brothers published over 200 stories in seven different editions of what has since become known in English as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm never intended that their stories be for children per se, but rather the brothers sought to preserve Germanic folklore in a region whose culture was being overrun by France during the Napoleonic Wars.
In fact, the early editions of the Grimm brothers’ work published as Kinder und Hausmärchen, or Children’s and Household Tales, lacked illustrations. Scholarly footnotes abounded. The stories were dark and filled with murder and mayhem.
The true story of Hansel and Gretel goes back to a cohort of tales that originated in the Baltic regions during the Great Famine of 1314 to 1322. Volcanic activity in southeast Asia and New Zealand ushered in a period of prolonged climate change that led to crop failures and massive starvation across the globe.
In Europe, the situation was particularly dire since the food supply was already scarce. When the Great Famine struck, the results were devastating. One scholar estimated that the Great Famine impacted 400,000 square miles of Europe, 30 million people, and may have killed off up to 25 percent of the population in certain areas.
In the process, elderly people chose voluntarily to starve to death to allow the young to live. Others committed infanticide or abandoned their children. There is also evidence of cannibalism. William Rosen in his book, The Third Horseman, cites an Estonian chronicle which states that in 1315 “mothers were fed their children.”
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Word of the Day : Arboreal
Did You Know?
Arbor, the Latin word for "tree," has been a rich source of tree-related words in English, though a few are fairly rare. Some arbor descendants are generally synonymous with arboreal: arboraceous, arborary, arboreous, and arborous. Others are primarily synonymous with arboreal in the sense of "relating to or resembling a tree": arborescent, arboresque, arborical, and arboriform. And one, arboricole, is a synonym of arboreal in its sense of "inhabiting trees." The verb arborize means "to branch freely," and arborvitae is the name of a shrub that means literally "tree of life." There's also arboretum, a place where trees are cultivated, and arboriculture, the cultivation of trees. And we can't forget Arbor Day, which since 1872 has named a day set aside by various states (and the national government) for planting trees. Despite its spelling, however, the English word arbor, in the sense of a "bower," does not have its roots in the Latin arbor. Instead, it arises by way of the Anglo-French herbe from the Latin herba, meaning "herb" or "grass."
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Examples
"[The hammocks] are relatively indestructible, mimic the arboreal nests used by orangutans, and provide a resting area for the gibbons as they swing among the treetops." — Jim Redden, The Portland (Oregon) Tribune, 25 Aug. 2014
"In the wild, they're arboreal and live in tropical rainforests. And as their name implies, sloths move slowly. So slowly, in fact, that they have a metabolic rate of about 40 percent to 45 percent of 'what would be expected for their body weight,' according to zoo experts." — Dana Hedgpeth, The Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2019
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Mind Blowing Facts: Shrinking Brain
Call it the ultimate brain freeze.
Researchers have discovered that living at a lonely research outpost in Antarctica for more than a year shrinks the human brain.
It's not the temperatures as low as minus 58 degrees that do it, though. The study's lead author says it's actually the social isolation of living with just eight co-workers, and the day-to-day monotony of being surrounded by miles and miles of whiteness.
"Communication with the outside world is extremely limited. While there is an internet connection, this runs via satellite and bandwidth is very low," study lead Alexander Stahn, of the Institute of Physiology at Berlin's medical university and an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a video.
"There is hardly any privacy, no escape from the daily reality of life in the Antarctic. Even emergency evacuations are limited to certain times of the year and are nearly impossible during approximately eight months which make up the Antarctic winter”.
Stahn and his colleagues studied the brains of nine people who spent 14 months at Neumayer-Station III, a German center that focuses on climate research and other related topics.
Through imaging, cognitive tests and other benchmarks taken before and after the team's stint at the station, the scientists found that one part of the team members' brains had shrunk an average of 7.2%. The effects were shown in an area of the hippocampus responsible for spatial thinking and memory.
The results were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Similar results were previously observed in mice, Stahn said. The study was conducted to see how the isolation of space travel could affect the human brain, and the Neumayer station provided the perfect conditions. He cautioned that the study group was small, so more research is needed.
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Word of the Day : Colloquy
Did You Know?
Colloquy may make you think of colloquial, and there is indeed a connection between the two words. As a matter of fact, colloquy is the parent word from which colloquial was coined in the mid-18th century. Colloquy itself, though now the less common of the two words, has been a part of the English language since the 15th century. It is a descendant of Latin loquī, meaning "to speak." Other descendants of loquī in English include eloquent, loquacious, ventriloquism, and soliloquy, as well as elocution and interlocutor.
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Examples
The company's employees worried and speculated as the executive team remained closeted in an intense colloquy for the entire morning.
"He has a pitch-perfect ear for the cutesy euphemisms parents devise for their little kids ('Don't be a pane of glass') and for their snarky colloquies with precocious teenagers ('That's not the tone you take with your grandmother.' 'I'm not taking a tone, I'm making an argument.' 'Your argument has a tone')." — Rand Richards Cooper, The New York Times, 14 Nov. 2019
colloquy (countable and uncountable, plural colloquies)
A conversation or dialogue. [from 16th c.]
(obsolete) A formal conference. [16th-17th c.]
(Christianity) A church court held by certain Reformed denominations. [from 17th c.]
A written discourse. [from 18th c.]
(law) A discussion during a trial in which a judge ensures that the defendant understands what is taking place in the trial and what their rights are
Etymology
From Latin colloquium (“conversation”),[1] from com- (“together, with”) (English com-) + form of loquor (“speak”) (from which English locution and other words).[2] Doublet of colloquium.
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Word of the Day: Peccant
Did You Know?
Peccant comes from the Latin verb peccare, which means "to sin," "to commit a fault," or "to stumble," and is related to the better-known English word peccadillo ("a slight offense"). Etymologists have suggested that peccare might be related to Latin ped- or pes, meaning "foot," by way of an unattested adjective, peccus, which may have been used to mean "having an injured foot" or "stumbling." Whether or not a connection truly exists between peccant and peccus, peccant itself involves stumbling of a figurative kind—making errors, for example, or falling into immoral, corrupt, or sinful behavior.
Examples
"Cavil at Dylan Thomas's overdoings; praise this bit and dispraise that bit; but there he was, there he is, an emblem of poetry, which is Being itself…. And the world honored him for it, while chopping him to pieces…. It's the loony, peccant villagers of Under Milk Wood…. It’s Auntie Hannah in 'A Child's Christmas in Wales,' who liked port, and who stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush.'" — James Parker, The Atlantic, December 2014
"The book stands for all the right things, and is peccant only in two minor but irritating ways. That there are occasional errors—'deprecatingly' for 'depreciatingly,' 'a bookstore which' for 'a bookstore that,' a couple of faulty agreements and a captious attack on the useful word 'demythify'—is not so much Newman as human." — John Simon, Paradigms Lost, 1980
But there is one touchstone by which the peccant element in them may be at once detected.
This idea had occurred to Joe from his remembrance of a peccant hound in the grasp of a tyrant whip.
That the peccant material is to be eliminated gradually by mild remedies, just as it accumulated by degrees.
Maisie looked at the peccant places; there were moments when it was a relief to her to drop her eyes even on anything so sordid.
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Mind Blowing Facts : Kangaroo Mouse
Kangaroo rats are four-toed heteromyid rodents with big hind legs, small front legs and relatively large heads. Adults typically weigh between 70 and 170 g.[2] The tails of kangaroo rats are longer than both their bodies and their heads. Another notable feature of kangaroo rats are their fur-lined cheek pouches, which are used for storing food. The coloration of kangaroo rats varies from cinnamon buff to dark gray, depending on the species.[3] There is also some variation in length with one of the largest species, the banner-tailed kangaroo rat being six inches in body length and a tail length of eight inches.[3] Sexual dimorphism exists in all species, with males being larger than females.
Locomotion
Kangaroo rats move bipedally. Kangaroo rats often leap a distance of 6 feet,[4] and reportedly up to 9 feet (2.75 m)[5] at speeds up to almost 10 feet/sec, or 10 km/h (6 mph). They can quickly change direction between jumps.[6] The rapid locomotion of the banner-tailed kangaroo rat may minimize energy cost and predation risk. Its use of a "move-freeze" mode may also make it less conspicuous to nocturnal predators.
Ecology
Range and habitat
Kangaroo rats live in arid and semiarid areas, particularly on sandy or soft soils[3] which are suitable for burrowing. They can, however, vary in both geographic range and habitat. Their elevation range depends on the species; they are found from below sea level to at least 7,100 feet (the type locality of D. ordii priscus).[8] They are sensitive to extreme temperatures and remain in their burrows during rain storms and other forms of inclement weather.[3] Kangaroo rats are preyed on by coyotes, foxes, badgers, weasels, owls, and snakes.
For example, Merriam's kangaroo rats live in areas of low rainfall and humidity, and high summer temperature and evaporation rates.[9] They prefer areas of stony soils, including clays, gravel and rocks, which are harder than soils preferred by some other species (like banner-tailed kangaroo rats).[3] Because their habitats are hot and dry, they must conserve water.[10] They do this in part by lowering their metabolic rate, which reduces loss of water through their skin and respiratory system. Evaporation through the skin is the major route of loss.[11] Merriam's kangaroo rats obtain enough water from the metabolic oxidation of the seeds they eat to survive and do not need to drink water at all.[10] To help conserve water they produce very concentrated urine, via a process apparently associated with expression of aquaporin 1 along a longer than usual segment of the descending limb of the loop of Henle in the kidney.
In contrast, banner-tailed kangaroo rats have more specific habitat requirements for desert grasslands with scattered shrubs; this species is also more threatened because of the decline in these grasslands. These are also dry areas but they tend to have more water available to them than Merriam's kangaroo rats.
Food and foraging
Kangaroo rats are primarily seed eaters.[13] They will, however, eat vegetation occasionally, and at some times of the year, possibly insects as well.[3] They have been seen storing the seeds of mesquite, creosote bush, purslane, ocotillo and grama grass in their cheek pouches. Kangaroo rats will store extra seeds in seed caches.[9] This caching behavior affects the range-land and croplands where the animals live.[3] Kangaroo rats must harvest as much seed as possible in as little time as possible.[13] To conserve energy and water, they minimize their time away from their cool, dry burrows. In addition, maximizing time in their burrows minimizes their exposure to predators.
When on foraging trips, kangaroo rats hoard the seeds that they find. It is important for a kangaroo rat to encounter more food items than are consumed, at least at one point in the year, as well as defend or rediscover food caches and remain within the same areas long enough to utilize food resources.[7] Different species of kangaroo rat may have different seed caching strategies to coexist with each other, as is the case for the banner-tailed kangaroo rat and Merriam's kangaroo rat which have overlapping ranges.[2] Merriam's kangaroo rats scatterhoard small caches of seeds in numerous small, shallow holes they dig.[14] This is initially done close to the food source, maximizing harvest rates and reducing travel costs, but later redistributed more widely, minimizing theft by other rodents.[14] Banner-tailed kangaroo rats larderhoard a sizable cache of seeds within the large mounds they occupy. This could decrease their time and energy expenses; they also spend less time on the surface digging holes, reducing risk of predation. Being larger and more sedentary, they are better able to defend these larders from depredations by other rodents.[14]
Lifestyle
Kangaroo rats inhabit overlapping home ranges. These home ranges tend to be small with most activities within 200–300 ft and rarely 600 ft.[3] Home range size can vary within species with Merriam's kangaroo rats having larger home ranges than banner-tailed kangaroo rats. Recently weaned kangaroo rats move into new areas not occupied by adults. Within its home range, a kangaroo rat has a defended territory consisting of its burrowing system.
Burrow system
Kangaroo rats live in complex burrow systems. The burrows have separate chambers used for specific purposes like sleeping, living and food storage.[3] The spacing of the burrows depends on the number of kangaroo rats and the abundance of food. Kangaroo rats also live in colonies that range from six to several hundred dens.[9] The burrow of a kangaroo rat is important in providing protection from the harsh desert environment. To maintain a constant temperature and relative humidity in their burrows, kangaroo rats plug the entrances with soil during the day.[3] When the outside temperature is too hot, a kangaroo rat stays in its cool, humid burrow and leaves it only at night.[10] To reduce loss of moisture through respiration when sleeping, a kangaroo rat buries its nose in its fur to accumulate a small pocket of moist air.[10] The burrows of Merriam's kangaroo rats are simpler and shallower than those of banner-tailed kangaroo rats. Banner-tailed kangaroo rats also mate in their burrows, unlike Merriam's kangaroo rats.
Social interactions
Kangaroo rats are generally solitary animals with little social organization. Kangaroo rats communicate during competitive interactions and courtship.They do cluster together in some feeding situations. Groups of kangaroo rats that exist are aggregations and colonies.[3] There appears to be a dominance hierarchy among male kangaroo rats in competition for access to females.[16] Male kangaroo rats are generally more aggressive than females and are more dominant over them. Females are more tolerant of each other than males are and have more non-aggressive interactions. This is likely in part because the home ranges of females overlap less than the home ranges of males. Linear dominance hierarchies appear to exist among males but it is not known if this is the case for females. Winners of aggressive encounters appear to be the most active individuals.
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Word of the Day : Alienist
Did You Know?
Alienist looks and sounds like it should mean "someone who studies aliens," and in fact alienist and alien are related—both are ultimately derived from the Latin word alius, meaning "other." In the case of alienist, the etymological trail leads from Latin to the French noun aliéniste, which refers to a doctor who treats the mentally ill. Alienist first appeared in print in English about mid-19th century. It was preceded by the other alius descendants, alien (14th century) and alienate (used as a verb since the 15th century). Alienist is much rarer than psychiatrist these days, but at one time it was a common term.
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Examples
"Enter two protagonists, also historical figures. One is the novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, 'the most famous Spanish writer whom many English-speaking readers may not know by name or reputation.' The other is the eminent alienist (as psychiatrists were then called) Luis Simarro." — The Kirkus Reviews, 6 Mar. 2020
"Medical professionals (the kind known as 'alienists' in the 1930s) have tried to improve the level of sunshine in M. Kinsler's life with one miracle cure or another. There are anti-depressants, and mood elevators, and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, and all have side-effects." — Mark Kinsler, The Lancaster (Ohio) Eagle Gazette, 6 Oct. 2019
Alienist is an archaic term for a psychiatrist or psychologist. Despite falling out of favor by the middle of the twentieth century, it received renewed attention when used in the title of Caleb Carr's novel The Alienist (1994), and in the 2018 television series of the same name based on the novel. Although currently not often used in common parlance, the term "alienist" is still employed in psychiatric hospitals to describe those mental health professionals
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Mind Blowing Facts: Disney
Walt Disney World is a big place, but Canada is way bigger. In fact, the nation up north is so massive (9.984 million square kilometers to be exact), that it's the second-largest country in the world, coming after Russia (17.1 million square kilometers) and before the United States (9.83 million square kilometers). That's why the beloved theme park could fit inside of Canada 81,975 times.
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Word of the Day : Regurgitate
Did You Know?
Something regurgitated has typically been taken in, at least partially digested, and then spit back out—either literally or figuratively. The word often appears in biological contexts (e.g., in describing how some birds feed their chicks by regurgitating incompletely digested food) or in references to ideas or information that has been acquired and restated. A student, for example, might be expected to learn information from a textbook or a teacher and then regurgitate it for a test. Regurgitate, which entered the English vocabulary in the latter half of the 16th century, is of Latin origin and traces back to the Latin word for "whirlpool," which is gurges.
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.Examples
"When [Kawhi] Leonard says, 'The youth is the future, and good education, they need it,' like he did Wednesday night in Phoenix, he's not just regurgitating a cliché. It's a sincere belief. After signing with the Clippers, the team's community relations team brought a number of service ideas to Leonard, with the team's superstar immediately zeroing in on efforts in public schools, in Moreno Valley, where he grew up, and in Los Angeles." — Dan Woike, The Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2020
"Not only do wolves eat berries—something researchers were already aware of—but adult wolves also regurgitate them to feed their pups." — Pam Louwagie, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 22 Feb. 2020
Regurgitation happens when digestive fluids and undigested food rise from the esophagus into the mouth. In adults, involuntary regurgitation is a symptom of conditions such as acid reflux, GERD, and rumination syndrome. In infants, frequent regurgitation is a common symptom of functional infant regurgitation and GERD
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Mind blowing facts : Golf insurance
If you think that you take sports seriously, consider that an estimated four million golfers in Japan make sure that they have hole-in-one insurance before they take a swing, and have been doing so since the first such policy was offered in 1982. Amateur players pay a premium of $65 a year for $3,500 in coverage. The extra cash comes in handy if a golfer nails the impressive feat and is then expected to celebrate by paying for food, drinks, and gifts, which can cost quite a bit.
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Word of the day Vanilla
Did You Know?
How did vanilla get such a bad rap? The flavor with that name certainly has enough fans, with the bean of the Vanilla genus of orchids finding its way into products ranging from ice cream to coffee to perfumes to air fresheners. Vanilla's unfortunate reputation arose due to its being regarded as the "basic" flavor among ice-cream selections, particularly as more complex flavors emerged on the market. (Its somewhat beigey color probably didn't help.) From there, people began using the adjective to describe anything plain, ordinary, or conventional.
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Examples
"Training for sales, marketing and installation staff takes place in a series of small conference rooms on one side of the floor.… They're rather vanilla, but the company plans to enliven them by hiring graffiti artists to paint colorful murals on the parapet wall outside the windows." — Sandy Smith, Philadelphia Magazine, 14 Feb. 2019
"Joanna is frustrated that she's forbidden from sending more personal replies and breaks the rules at a certain point, with unexpected consequences. But apart from this tiny transgression, she's too vanilla to be a very compelling character." — Peter DeBruge, Variety, 20 Feb. 2020
Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla (V. planifolia). The word vanilla, derived from vainilla, the diminutive of the Spanish word vaina (vaina itself meaning a sheath or a pod), is translated simply as "little pod". Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people cultivated the vine of the vanilla orchid, called tlīlxochitl by the Aztecs.
Pollination is required to make the plants produce the fruit from which the vanilla flavoring is obtained. In 1837, Belgian botanist Charles François Antoine Morren discovered this fact and pioneered a method of artificially pollinating the plant. The method proved financially unworkable and was not deployed commercially.
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Mind Blowing Facts : Cucamelons
Melothria scabra, also known as the cucamelon, is a vine grown for its edible fruit. Fruits are about the size of grapes and taste like cucumbers with a tinge of sourness. Vernacular names include mouse melon, Mexican sour gherkin, cucamelon, Mexican miniature watermelon, Mexican sour cucumber and pepquinos.
This plant is native to Mexico and Central America,[3] where it is called sandita (little watermelon). It is believed to have been a domesticated crop before Western colonization of the Americas began.
These plants are slow-growing when they are establishing themselves, but can eventually grow up to ten feet under proper conditions. They are drought resistant and pest-resistant relative to other cucumbers.[4] Similar to the cucumber, these plants are monoecious, producing both male and female flowers on the same plant. These plants can pollinate themselves, but the individual flowers are not self-fertile. Flowers are small and yellow, about four millimeters in diameter. Fruits develop at the base of the female flower.
Not only do cucumelons look like adorable tiny watermelons, they also are packed with antioxidants, vitamins, and fiber. Check out how you can grow your own cucamelons.
Also known as a mouse melon, the Mexican sour gherkin, or by its Spanish name, sandiita (little watermelon), a cucamelon is the fruit of the Melothria scabra vine and is about the size of a grape. But despite the name, they're not actually a hybrid of watermelons and cucumbers. They do have a semi-hard rind with markings like a watermelon, but the entire thing is totally edible so you can pop them in your mouth for a burst of cucumber flavor with a sour twist. Think a cucumber and lime mashup. They're packed with nutrients making them both fun to look at and functional, and while they're native to Central America, they can easily be grown in most parts of the U.S.
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Word of the Day : Deflagrate
Did You Know that the word Deflagrate combines the Latin verb flagrare, meaning "to burn," with the Latin prefix de-, meaning "down" or "away." Flagrare is also an ancestor of such words as conflagration and flagrant and is distantly related to fulgent and flame. In the field of explosives, deflagrate is used to describe the burning of fuel accelerated by the expansion of gasses under the pressure of containment, which causes the containing vessel to break apart. In comparison, the term detonate (from the Latin tonare, meaning "to thunder") refers to an instant, violent explosion that results when shock waves pass through molecules and displace them at supersonic speed. Deflagrate has been making sparks in English since about 1727, and detonate burst onto the scene at around the same time.
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Examples
Certain materials, such as black powder, will deflagrate rather than cause a violent explosion when they are ignited.
"Classification of substances by their sensitivity to impact and friction is particularly important for the handling of explosives. Some explosives are known to detonate on impact, whereas others will only deflagrate." — Jacqueline Akhavan, The Chemistry of Explosives, 2004
A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication — listening, speaking, reading and writing. It Improves Reading Comprehension. It’s Important to Language Development and Communicating Ideas.
4 Expressing Yourself in Writing and Having a good vocabulary to draw from can help you write more effectively. Students need to use a more formal tone when writing – not conversational language – and to do that, they need a richer vocabulary to tap into those words we don’t use when we speak provides Occupational Success in your affairs.
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Word of the Day : Pandiculation
Did You Know?
Cat and dog owners who witness daily their pets' methodical body stretching upon awakening might wonder if there is a word to describe their routine—and there is: pandiculation. Pandiculation (which applies to humans too) is the medical term for the stretching and stiffening of the trunk and extremities, often accompanied by yawning, to arouse the body when fatigued or drowsy. The word comes from Latin pandiculatus, the past participle of pandiculari ("to stretch oneself"), and is ultimately derived from pandere, meaning "to spread." Pandere is also the source of expand.
Examples would be...
"And finally pandiculation, a brain reflex action pattern similar to how a dog gets up from rest, putting his front paws out and lengthening his back as he relaxes his belly. Pandiculation can wake up the muscular system at the brain level and provide deep relaxation." — Jennifer Nelson, Mother Nature Network, 18 Sept. 2017
"Yawning is often accompanied by stretching of the body. This is called pandiculation. Humans yawn and so do animals, like dogs, chimpanzees, baboons and horses." — The Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, New York), 26 Apr. 2015
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What is the meaning of word of the day?
The term "word of the day" is used in periodicals (news papers, magazines) desk calendars, or even on the internet to describe a selected and promoted word for education and fun. Ususally it will be an obscure or little-known word, or a word commonly misspelt, mispronounced or misued.
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Word of the Day : PREMEATE
Did You Know? Well You will now. It's no surprise that permeate means "to pass through something"—it was borrowed into English in the 17th century from Latin permeatus, which comes from the prefix per- ("through") and the verb meare, meaning "to go" or "to pass." Meare itself comes from an ancient root that may have also led to Middle Welsh and Czech words meaning "to go" and "to pass," respectively. Other descendants of meare in English include permeative, permeable, meatus ("a natural body passage"), and the relatively rare irremeable ("offering no possibility of return").
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What is the meaning of word of the day?
The term "word of the day" is used in periodicals (news papers, magazines) desk calendars, or even on the internet to describe a selected and promoted word for education and fun. Ususally it will be an obscure or little-known word, or a word commonly misspelt, mispronounced or misued.
Examples of this word would be...
"As social media continues to permeate daily life, artists are also met with increasing demand from fans for content. Their enthusiasm is good for artists—but also challenging to satisfy." — Tatiana Cirisano, Billboard, 15 Mar. 2019
"Anna Talvi … has constructed her flesh-hugging clothing to act as a sort of 'wearable gym' to counter the muscle-wasting and bone loss caused by living in low gravity. She has also tried to tackle the serious psychological challenges of space exploration by permeating her fabrics with comforting scents." — Simon Ings, New Scientist, 18 Oct. 2019
Grammar is important because it provides information that helps the reader's comprehension. It is the structure that conveys precise meaning from the writer to the audience. Eliminate grammatical errors from your writing, and reward your readers with clear communication.
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