25 to 50 Large Birds

Some interesting words for the weekend. miasma : "a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor" or more abstractly "an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere which surrounds or emanates from something." Originally, miasmas were thought to come from decomposing matter that caused bad smells and therefore caused disease. That particular miasma theory has been disproven, although the concept of diseases spreading through the air is something that does actually occur.  To protect oneself from covid-infested miasmas, stay away from crowded indoor places where people do not wear masks. Effective ventilation systems can help decrease miasmas indoors. When the corpse flower bloomed , it produced a miasma.   necro-tweeting : Tweeting something that is rather old or out of date, particularly without noting that it is not particularly current. Tweeting about something I wrote five years ago could be considered necro-tweeting.  pavement surgeon , street kintsugi : in refer...

These are turning out to be a bit more sporadic than I'd originally planned/hoped, but in any case, here are some more interesting words.  neologism : a newly invented word or expression. Some of the words featured in these posts are neologisms created by me. Skyrodemichor is a neologism to describe the smell of concrete after rain. petro-masculinity : "the relationship between fossil fuels and white patriarchal rule." How traditional ideas of masculinity are intertwined with fossil fuel's societal hegemony. The neighbor who drives an obnoxiously large and noise-polluting truck is demonstrating the concept of petro-masculinity. A tangential effect of petro-masculinity ( from this newsletter on the topic ) is how men are less likely to recycle because environmentalism is seen as feminine. He eschewed petro-masculinity by choosing to use a bicycle as a primary form of transportation.  palustrine : here we have another word that is somewhat related to water, as with allu...

I just read a highly interesting and very fascinating article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a man who used AI to simulate his dead fiancee in a chatbot. This happened to include multiple topics that interest me, such as epistolary formats and the concept of death mixed with AI in a slightly similar scenario to the movie Her , which is one of my favorites.  I suppose I might be an ideal candidate to create an AI chatbot out of because there would be a decent amount of source material to feed into it, so as to better simulate me. I imagine it would be more difficult to accurately capture the voice of someone who is less inclined to communicate at length via writing. Training the AI on text messages from someone who never texts more than fifteen words at a time might not result in  a particularly personalized AI chatbot. That's my theory, at least; though maybe I'm wrong?   Although not explicitly referred to in the article, it made me think about the possibilit...

Some of these words here are either not real words or slang terms that I found amusing, which is a slight change from the usual contents of past posts. alluvial, fluvial : These words both have to do with rivers. Alluvium is a type of soil/sediment that is deposited by rivers; it can consist of gravel, sand, clay and silt. Fluvial is just anything related to (found in, etc) a river or stream. When wading in the river, I sifted through alluvial deposits to find pebbles. The fluvial creatures scattered when I threw a rock into the stream.  panny [d] : slang for pandemic. Additional slang terms for pandemic include panini and pandy. When will the panny d finally be over? The wedding was postponed due to the panini.  tessera : the number 4 in Greek and/or a tile in a mosaic. The latter meaning presumably because those tiles have four sides, unless cut into some other shape. Plural is tesserae. The tesserae in the mosaic were arranged to spell out the store's name .  struggle ...

Posting more interesting words into the void... here is issue six. It means I have posted thirty interesting words by now!   interstitial : in general, existing in a small space between other things. Can be used metaphorically or literally. In architecture , it can specifically refer to space between the floors of a building where pipes and other mechanical systems go.  The time between ordering something online and receiving it in the mail could feel interstitial. A building's lobby and elevator are interstitial spaces in the physical world between outdoors and one's intended destination inside the building. [I used the more general sense of interstitial in that sentence although it is an architecture-related sentence]  peripatetic : wandering, itinerant; "traveling from place to place, in particular working or based in various places for relatively short periods." The work of a traveling salesperson would be peripatetic.   A portion of the book "Lolita" ta...

Your thoughts on any of the interesting words here or in other posts are welcome. Less prelude today because I don't have the energy or thoughts for it right now. Find back issues of interesting words  here .  epigenetic(s) : A scientific term that the CDC defines as "the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work." Epigenetic changes do not alter the underlying DNA sequence but do change how the genes are expressed. Epigenetic changes can be inherited but are also reversible. It took me a fairly decent amount of reading to somewhat adequately understand this concept as a layperson. Even so, I am not entirely sure if I've understood this word/concept properly, so if my explanation here is incorrect in some way, please inform me. It's an interesting concept and it makes me wonder what kind of epigenetic changes might currently be inflicted upon myself due to environmental factors. Further reading: one / two ...

As I am going from the beginning of my list, I am a little disappointed that I'm not getting to the most recently added words first, but then I remembered that regardless of which order I go through the words, they're all going to be novel to the audience.  Additionally, even though I may occasionally be tempted to churn out (or rather, pre-write for later publication) more than one issue of interesting words per day, I've decided that it's better to refrain from that urge and instead pace myself with these posts, as another intention of them is to instill a habit of writing regularly, rather than writing a lot on one day and then not again for the next week or who knows how long. I also think I will limit the posts to weekdays only and aim for at least three posts per week, not necessarily five. aguish : an archaic term describing an illness (ague; archaically it meant malaria specifically) that causes fever and chills. Basically a fancier and more esoteric synonym for...

I am going through the words from the beginning of my list, so these are older words, not the most recently added ones. I think I'll also use these posts as a way to get more in the habit (again) of writing for public consumption on a daily basis. monopsony : Economics term. It describes a market structure where a single buyer has significant control over the market. It is the opposite of a monopoly. It can be seen in labor markets, where companies buy the labor that workers sell. If there is only a single company to work for in a given location, a monopsony exists in the labor market there. Pure monopsonies are rare in real life; oligopsonies are more likely to exist. The military has a monopsony over soldiers . A public school district has a near-monopsony over the labor market of teachers (allowing for the existence of some private schools) . This link provides a couple of examples of monopsonies in product markets. Tangent: One of my history teachers in high school also taught...

There are a lot of words to get through. Here is the second set of five. It took me a while to think of a suitable way to number these posts. "Volume" is traditionally used to indicate the year in periodical publications, so didn't quite fit for these: they would all be part of volume one for the first year. In the interest of brevity, I decided to just call these individual posts  issues . Coming up with good example sentences is also a bit more difficult than I expected.  choropleth : (and bonus word, a related term: isochrone. These words describe types of maps) Greek etymology. A type of map where different colors are used to show data regarding specific areas. A map depicting vaccination rates by postal code would be a choropleth map. Isochrone maps show travel times from a given location. A map showing walkshed times and distances could be an isochrone map.  oneiric : resembling or pertaining to dreams. Greek etymology. I did not learn this one in my Greek and Latin...

In an effort to better retain the meanings and usages of the various interesting words I come across, I've decided to start a series of posts where I include definitions, example sentences and any other relevant notes about the words. As it stands, I don't think I'm retaining as many interesting words as I'd like.  Format : I figured five words per post seemed to be a reasonable amount, given that I will be including definitions, example sentences and notes about the words, so I will go through the existing words on the list in sets of five. After I finish that, I will make new posts every five words. References for definitions include Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster and Vocabulary.com.  sylvurban : A word I came up with . It describes areas where manmade structures and nature coexist in an interesting way, such as a natural area underneath a highway overpass. It is based on the word riparian, which describes things relating to the banks of rivers and streams.  skyrodemicho...