Category Archives: words

natural history, science, words

Words: Xylem and Phloem

At last a pair of botanical words!
Xylem and Phloem are the two types of tissue in plants which transport food and water around the plant.
Xylem [z-eye-lem]
The supporting and water-conducting tissue of vascular plants; woody tissue.
This is the network of tubes through which the plants move water from bottom to top. It also forms a large part of the woody (supportive) structure of the plant. It is concentrated in the centre of the stem.
As might be expected the derivation is from the Greek ξύλον, wood.


Phloem [flo-em]
The food-conducting tissue of vascular plants.
The network which transports food (mostly sugars) from the leaves where they are produced by photosynthesis to the growing tissue.
The phloem is softer tissue that the xylem and occurs mostly in the layer just under the bark where the latest “tree ring” is growing.
Again derived from the Greek: ϕλόος = ϕλοιός, bark + -ηµα (passive suffix).
All (vascular) plants, ie. the vast majority we meet in daily life, conform to this basic model even if they appear to be soft rather than woody. However as you would expect the reality is a lot more complex than the above explanation!

words

Word: Glabella

Glabella
1. The small smooth area on the human forehead between the eyebrows just above the nose.
Also …
2. The smooth median portion of the cephalic shield of a Trilobite.


Being an anatomical term the word is needless to say derived from the Latin. The OED records the first use in 1598.

words

Word: Glabrous

Glabrous
Free from hair, down, projections or pubescence; having a smooth skin or surface.
And hence used jocularly for anything smooth.
Now used only as a scientific term.
The origin in the Latin glaber, without hair, smooth, bald.
The OED records the first usage by Wilkins in 1640 who applied it to the orb of the Moon.

amusements, words

Word: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch
A fleet, furious, fuming, fabulous creature of dangerous propensities, immune to bribery and too fast to flee from. Later used vaguely to suggest any creature with such qualities.
The word was invented by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) and it makes its first appearance in Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871). The OED suggests the name is a portmanteau word like its stock epithet frumious.
Needless to say this beast has never been photographed.

words

Word: Tintinnabulation

Tintinnabulation
bellsA ringing of a bell or bells, bell-ringing; the sound or music so produced. The lingering sound that occurs after a bell has been struck.
The OED gives the first recorded use as late as 1831 and is ascribed to Edgar Allen Poe in his poem The Bells.
Oh and the word derives from the Latin tintinnābulum, a bell.
Isn’t it just a wonderful onomatopoeic word?

words

Word: Offing

Offing
Yes, offing is a responsible, adult word! And not just in the phrase “in the offing” which is now perhaps its most common usage. It is actually a nautical term …
1. The part of the visible sea distant from the shore or beyond the anchoring ground.
2. A position at a distance off the shore.


Hence, by analogy to a ship some way off shore but visible, that phrase “in the offing” meaning something that is close-ish to hand and yet some way distant.
The OED gives the first recorded use in 1627.

words

Word: Varmint

Varmint
1. Vermin. An animal of a noxious or objectionable kind.
  
2. An objectionable or troublesome person; a mischievous boy or child.
3. Knowing, clever, cunning.
Also, 4. A sporting amateur with the knowledge or skill of a professional.


The OED gives the derivation for meanings 1 & 2 as a variant of vermin with excrescent. Although the first recorded use is in 1539 the word is said to be rare before about 1825. There is apparently no obvious connection between the word as used in meanings 1 & 2 and that of meanings 3 & 4, which I find hard to believe.

words

Obsolete Words

Earlier in the week I came across a wonderful list of 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style.
They’re all wonderful, but here’s a selection …
Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance.
Pussyvan: A flurry, temper.
Wonder-wench: A sweetheart.


Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger.
Tyromancy: Divining by the coagulation of cheese.
Beef-witted: Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef.
Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behaviour shown by inanimate objects.
Bookwright: A writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt.

And I think my favourite of all …
With squirrel: Pregnant.
English is such a wonderful language!

words

Word: Chatoyant

Chatoyant
Having a changeable, undulating, or floating lustre, like that of a cat’s eye in the dark.
Hence also a chatoyant stone or gemstone, such as the cat’s-eye.


From the French present participle of chatoyer, to shimmer like cats’ eyes; from chat, cat.
The OED records the first use in 1798 in a scientific description of crystals.

words

Word: Hallux

Hallux, plural halluces.
1. The innermost or first digit on the hind foot of certain mammals. In humans the hallux is the big toe.
2. The equivalent digit of a bird, reptile or amphibian. In birds it is often directed backward.


The hallux corresponds to the pollex, or thumb, of the fore limb.
According to the OED the first recorded use was in an anatomy book of 1831.
The suggestion is that it is a medieval Latin blend of allus, hallus (thumb) and hallex (big toe).