Uncle Mary
An "Uncle Mary" is, I gather, a gay man who works against the cause of gay rights, or who's seen as kowtowing to an anti-gay agenda. Wayne Besen's column/blog entry...
promession
Promession is a new approach to the old issue of what to do with a corpse: it involves freezing the body in liquid nitrogen, then "placing it on a vibrating...
nit
I thought I knew what a nit was (it's one of those things I'm always picking, right?), but it turns out there's another meaning: it's a unit of brightness, equal...
cushy
I'm always a little surprised to find that a common English word that I don't associate with Asia derives directly from an East Asian or South Asian root. I've known...
cran
I mentioned this in a comment in my main journal, but I figure it's worth recording here as well. The Clancy Brothers recorded an Ewan MacColl song, "Shoals of Herring,"...
snook, brouching, scraling
I usually post words here after I find out what they mean, but I just encountered three words that I can't find relevant definitions for, so I'm gonna post 'em...
scoria
Seen in a submission. "Scoria" (derived eventually from Greek "skōr," meaning "excrement") means "slag." Emphasis on first syllable. Amusingly, MW11 defines "scoria" as "slag," and defines "slag" as "the dross...
chyme
As food travels through the digestive system, it spends some time in the stomach, where it's turned into a "semifluid mass" (says MW11) called "chyme." See The Digestive System for...
pyroclastic
Another one from a submission: "pyroclastic" refers to fragmenting due to volcanic action. In the story, I think it was being used as a synonym for "volcanic," but I'm not...
dooley
A submission referred to "Ford dooleys," obviously (from context) a kind of vehicle. I spent a while poking around online trying to find out more; encountered the spellings "doolie," "duelly,"...