Momma's Word of the Day (check first post every day!)

[momma]

I thought killing one's sister was sororicide? Fratricide I thought was just killing your brother. I could be wrong though... :tooth:

 

I meant to go back and fix that definition after I found sororicide but I completly spaced it. Thanks boywander for proving I did put it there though .

[momma]

218.June 3rd, 2007ca·boose, n.- 1. The last car on a freight train, having kitchen and sleeping facilities for the train crew.

 

2. Obsolete.

a. A ship's galley.

b. Any of various cast-iron cooking ranges used in such galleys during the early 19th century.

c. An outdoor oven or fireplace.

 

-The first written evidence of the usage of caboose in a railroad context appeared in 1859 (not 1861, as cited by the the Online Etymology Dictionary), as part of court records in conjunction with a lawsuit filed against the New York and Harlem Railway. This suggests that caboose was probably in circulation among North American railroaders well before the mid-nineteenth century.

 

The railroad historian, David L. Joslyn (a retired Southern Pacific Railroad draftsman), has connected caboose to kabhuis, a Middle Dutch word referring to the compartment on a sailing ship's main deck in which meals were prepared. Kabhuis is believed to have entered the Dutch language circa 1747 as a derivation of the obsolete Low German word kabhuse, which also described a cabin erected on a ship's main deck. However, further research indicates that this relationship was more indirect than that described by Joslyn.

 

Eighteenth century French naval records make reference to a cambose or camboose, which term described the food preparation cabin on a ship's main deck, as well as the range within. The latter sense apparently entered American naval terminology around time of the construction of the USS Constitution, whose wood-burning food preparation stove is officially referred to as the camboose. These nautical usages are now obsolete: camboose and kabhuis became the galley when meal preparation was moved below deck, camboose the stove became the galley range, and kabuis the cookshack morphed into kombuis, which means kitchen in Afrikaans.

 

It is likely that camboose was borrowed by American sailors who had come into contact with their French counterparts during the American Revolution (recall that France was an ally and provided crucial naval support during the conflict). A New English Dictionary citation from the 1940s indicates that camboose entered English language literature in a New York Chronicle article from 1805 describing a New England shipwreck, in which it was reported that "...[survivor] William Duncan drifted aboard the canboose." From this it could be concluded that camboose was part of American English by the time the first railroads were constructed. As the first cabooses were wooden shanties erected on flatcars (as early as the 1830s they would have resembled the cookshack on the (relatively flat) deck of a ship, explaining the adoption and subsequent corruption of the nautical term.

 

There is some disagreement on what constitutes the proper plural form of the word "caboose". Similar words, like goose (pluralized as "geese"), and moose (pluralized as "moose", no change) point to the reason for the difficulty in coming to a consensus. The most common pluralization of caboose is "cabooses," with some arguing that this is incorrect, and, as with the word moose, it should stay the same in plural form—that is, "caboose" should represent one or many. A less-seriously used pluralization of the word is "cabeese," following the pluralization rule for the word goose, which is "geese." This particular form is almost universally used in an attempt at humor (as, presumably, is "cabice").

 

It was common for railroads to officially refer to cabooses as "cabin cars".

 

-Preservation and reuse of cabooses

 

Although the caboose has largely fallen out of use, some are still retained by railroads in a reserve capacity. These cabooses are typically used in and around railyards. Other uses for the caboose include "special" trains, where the train is involved in some sort of railway maintence, or as part of survey trains that inspect remote rail lines after natural disasters to check for damage. Others have been modified for use in research roles to investigate complaints from residents or business owners regarding trains in certain locations. Finally, some are coupled to trains for special events, including historical tours.

 

Cabooses have also become popular for collection by railroad museums and for city parks and other civic uses, such as visitor centers. Several railroad museums roster large numbers of cabooses, including the Illinois Railway Museum with nineteen examples and the Western Pacific Railroad Museum at Portola, California with seventeen. Many shortline railroads still use cabooses today. Large railroads also use cabooses as "shoving platforms" or in switching service where it is convenient to have crew at the rear of the train.

 

Cabooses have been re-used as garden offices in private residences, and as portions of restaurants. Also, caboose motels have appeared, with the old cars being reborn as cabins.

[momma]

219.June 4th, 2007dunk, n. or v.-

v.tr.

 

1. To plunge into liquid; immerse.

 

2. To dip (food) into a liquid food, such as a beverage or sauce, prior to eating.

 

3. Basketball. To slam (a ball) through the basket from above.

 

v.intr.

 

1. To submerge oneself briefly in water.

 

2. Basketball. To slam a ball through the basket from above.

 

n.

 

1. The act or an instance of dunking.

 

2. A liquid or creamy food into which other foods are dunked.

 

3. Basketball. A dunk shot.

 

-Synonyms: dip, douse, duck, immerge, immerse, souse, submerge, submerse

 

-This word originated in United States

 

We are a nation of dunkers. What would a doughnut be without coffee, or maybe milk, to dunk it in? Who would buy biscotti without a mocha or latte for dunking? And where would basketball be without the slam-dunk? Thanks to a small, serious band of immigrants who came to North America more than two centuries ago, we don't have to worry about those questions.

 

These immigrants were members of the eighteenth-century Brethren movement who fled persecution in Germany and settled in William Penn's tolerant colony of Pennsylvania. There, unmolested, they could practice their back-to-the-Bible, New Testament-centered religion. There are still Brethren churches today, one of their associations having the motto "The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible."

 

The German word tunken means "immerse," and the Brethren were known as Tunker because they took baptism seriously and insisted on complete immersion. And proper baptism required not just one but three dunkings, one for each of the persons of the Trinity. The Tunker baptized only adults because they wanted them to understand the significance of the ceremony.

 

In the distinctive variety of German that these Tunkers developed in Pennsylvania, the T became a D, and they became Dunkers of souls. There is an English-language reference to Dunkers as early as 1744. The name remained unchanged for nearly two more centuries, but in the twentieth century it dipped into everyday use. A 1919 magazine article titled "Some Notes on Dunking" includes the remark, "It should be remembered that the really fastidious dunker never burns his thumb." Today there is nothing sacred about dunk.

 

The language the Dunkers spoke became part of what we call Pennsylvania German. It is an offshoot of the German language, a mixture of dialects of Rhenish Palatinate Low German with High German and some English, so that it does not sound like anything spoken in Germany and indeed is hard for a German to understand. Today about 85,000 people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and a number of other states speak one of the several dialects of Pennsylvania German. Like German and English, it belongs to the Germanic branch of our Indo-European language family.

 

Other words English has acquired from Pennsylvania German include hex (1830), spritz (1902), and snollygoster (1860), a name for a self-seeking politician. Pennsylvania German is also the source of some words in Pennsylvania regional English, including smearcase (1829), another name for cottage cheese, and gumband (1959), another name for rubber band.

[momma]

Sorry there was no word of the day yesterday, our internet was out most of the day .

 

220.June 6th, 2007ed·i·to·ri·al, n. or adj.- 1. An article in a publication expressing the opinion of its editors or publishers.

 

2. A commentary on television or radio expressing the opinion of the station or network.

 

adj.

 

1. Of or relating to an editor or editing: an editorial position with a publishing company; an editorial policy prohibiting the use of unnamed sources.

 

2. Of or resembling an editorial, especially in expressing an opinion: an editorial comment.

 

Origin: 1830

 

The newspaper is not an American invention, nor is the magazine, but we can claim credit for an important step in the development of both: the editorial. This is not to say that Americans were the first to think of letting the editor's opinion appear in print. Quite the opposite: until the advent of the editorial, the editor's opinion permeated the publication, mixing inextricably with the news. Journals of the day did indeed report news, but they did so in the service of propaganda for a particular party or policy. In that way they were like most present-day newsletters.

 

Early in the nineteenth century, however, Americans began to develop the notion of journalistic objectivity. It was not only possible, but perhaps advantageous, to separate the news from the editor's opinion. There were idealistic reasons for this: the reader would get the news without fear or favor, and opinion would be labeled as such. But there were also practical reasons, without which the idealistic could not have prevailed. To present the news as plain fact makes it of interest even to those who do not share the editor's opinion. And, as we in the "information age" know well, it is information that people will pay for, not opinion. The labeling of opinion to separate it from news is now so ingrained in American Media (1921) that lapses are targets for criticism.

 

Editorial was the label we used as long ago as 1830 to designate a statement of the editor's opinion. "The great green table in the centre groaning under the weight of editorials, and friendly correspondence," was mentioned in the Collegian of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1830. Even earlier, in 1802, we find reference to "the editorial part of the paper."

 

By the turn of the twentieth century, newspapers had designated a separate editorial page for editorials and letters to the editor. Even the location of the editorial page is distinctive: it is always a left-hand page, usually in the front section. Modern newspapers have expanded this space by using the facing page for lengthier opinions by columnists and guest writers. They call this op-ed, that is, opposite the editorial page, a feature introduced by Herbert Bayard Swope in the New York World of the 1920s.

[momma]

221.June 8th, 2007gin·ger, n. or v.- 1. A plant (Zingiber officinale) of tropical southeast Asia having yellowish-green flowers and a pungent aromatic rhizome.

 

2. The rhizome of this plant, often dried and powdered and used as a spice. Also called gingerroot.

 

3a. Any of several related plants having variously colored, often fragrant flowers.

b. Wild ginger.

 

4. A strong brown.

 

5. Informal. Spirit and liveliness; vigor.

 

V.

 

1. To spice with ginger.

 

2. Informal. To make lively: A steel drum band gingered up the party.

 

-This word originated in India

 

What's life without ginger? Not very spicy. Consider Ginger Spice, the former Spice Girl who once was "naughty, bossy, totally independent, excellent fun," not to mention the subject of provocative nude photos. After she left the group in 1998 to became plain Geri Haliwell again (and a United Nations "ambassador for good will"), you could find the BBC describing her as "demure." Allure magazine admiringly said she "looks like a schoolgirl."

 

And what would the English language be without the spice of ginger? Fortunately, for the past millennium that has been only a hypothetical question. You can read about ginger in English medical treatises of about the year 1000. Here's one prescription: Take white gum, aloe, myrrh, ginger, and cumin; grind them together and add honey, as much as needed. Put this on a cloth, fasten it over your stomach, and your weariness will go away. Or, if you really really want a cure for a pain in the thigh, mix a drink of ginger spiced with appletree, thornbush, ash, aspen, thistle, elecampane, bishop's wort, ivy, betony, ribwort, radish, alder, white gum, costmary, nettle, and a couple of other plants which we can't identify today. By the time you find all those, your pain will likely be gone.

 

Not many cures involved ginger, since it had to be imported from warmer climes. In those days, a pound of ginger would cost you the price of a sheep. Much later, we learned to speak gingerly (1519), a word that seems to come from an unrelated French source meaning "delicate" but which took its English shape and spelling from the well-known spice.

 

Ginger now is grown around the world in tropical and subtropical areas. Its slightly sweet, slightly sharp, slightly citrusy rhizome is packed with nutrients, and ginger is used as a remedy for fever, nausea, arthritis, heart problems, and ulcers.

 

Like ginger itself, our word for it came from India. We can trace it back from English to French, from French to Latin, and from Latin to Greek, which got it from one of the ancient Indo-Iranian languages of our Indo-European language family, which in turn seems to have obtained it from a non-Indo-European language of the Dravidian family. Of the many languages in this chain, we will allow credit here to Pali, an Indo-Iranian descendant of Sanskrit which is still used in India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka for Buddhist scriptures but is otherwise no longer spoken. Also possibly from Pali are the gem beryl (1305) and the palanquin (1588) for transportation.

 

-An important spice or condiment; also the plant from which it is obtained, Zingiber officinale, of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae). The plant is a native of southeastern Asia. It is an erect perennial herb having thick, scaly, branched rhizomes which contain starch, gums, an oleoresin (gingerin) responsible for the pungent taste, and an essential oil which imparts the aroma. Ginger is used in medicine, in culinary preparations, and for flavoring beverages such as ginger ale and ginger beer. The plant is grown in China, Japan, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, Australia (Queensland), and Indonesia.

 

-Ginger may cause heartburn.

 

-Synonyms: animation, bounce, brio, dash, élan, esprit, life, liveliness, pertness, sparkle, spirit, verve, vigor, vim, vivaciousness, vivacity, zip.

[momma]

222.June 9th, 2007ham·burg·er, n.- 1a. Ground meat, usually beef.

b. A patty of such meat.

 

2. A sandwich made with a patty of ground meat usually in a roll or bun.

 

-Origin: 1884

 

From the city of Hamburg, Germany, in the late 1800s Americans learned the fine art of grinding or chopping beef into tiny pieces and forming the pieces into a patty for cooking like a steak. At first it was simply called a Hamburg steak. But frequently there was an -er at the end of Hamburg because that was the way the Germans would say it; they add -er to the name of a city to indicate something or someone belonging to it. Thus the kind of sausage used in a hot dog was called a frankfurter (1894) after the city of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from which it came, and thus President John Kennedy in 1963 said to the citizens of divided Berlin, ">"Ich bin ein Berliner."" (Contrary to legend, his words did not mean "I am a creampuff," any more than "I am a New Yorker" would mean "I am an issue of a well-known weekly magazine.")

 

The nutritional value of the hamburger steak was promoted in the early 1900s by a Dr. Salisbury, from whom it acquired the more elegant name of Salisbury steak. But the popularity of hamburger really soared when the convenient practice of putting it in a bun became widespread. This was at first called the hamburger sandwich, but when it became the usual way of serving ground beef it was simply called the hamburger, and the bunless version had to be distinguished by terms like hamburger meat or hamburger patty.

 

As the hamburger gained in popularity, variations were invented. In the 1930s, someone who added cheese invented the name cheeseburger. That hybrid ended the patty's association with the city of Hamburg. Nowadays the hamburger is one of America's favorite fast foods, and plain burger is the usual term for it. A prefix can be added to call attention to a topping, ingredient, or style. The results have included names for chiliburgers, frankburgers, pickleburgers, and oliveburgers; lamburgers, hashburgers, nutburgers, and veggieburgers; California burgers, bar-b-burgers, twinburgers, and circus burgers.

 

-The invention of the twentieth-century hamburger sandwich is the result of long developmental processes. Beginning in the fifteenth century, minced beef was a valued delicacy throughout Europe. In northern Germany, lightly fried chopped meat was called Frikadelle. Similar words are found in other European languages, and the root may be "farce," deriving from Latin farcere (to stuff). In English the term "forcemeat" was defined by Randle Holme in "The Academy of Armory" (Chester, 1688) as "meat with a stuffing of herbs, or other things made to that purpose."

 

Hashed beef was made into sausage in several different regions of Europe. In places such as Bologna, Russia, and Hamburg, beef was often combined with other meats and other ingredients. The German city of Hamburg was known for its beef sausage, which migrated to England by the mid-eighteenth century. One recipe, titled "Hamburgh Sausage," appeared in Hannah Glasse's 1758 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. It consisted of chopped beef, suet, and spices. Although the author recommended that this sausage be served with toasted bread, no evidence suggests that the sausage was served as a sandwich.

 

Hannah Glasse's cookbook was also among the most common in Colonial America, although it was not published in the United States until 1805. This American edition did contain the "Hamburgh Sausage" recipe with slight revisions.

 

The frequently cited "Hamburg Steak" on the Delmonico's restaurant menu dated 1834 was neither served as a sandwich nor composed of ground beef. With the popularization of the meat grinder in America about 1850, ground beef became a possibility.

 

-The Nutritional Value for: hamburger

 

4oz patty 1 sandwich 445 calories 38 carbs 25 protein 71 cholesterol 21 fat 7.1 sat. fat

 

-Ingredients of the meat of the hamburger

 

In most countries, a commercial hamburger usually contains no ham or other pork product. It is made primarily of ground beef, although it may also contain spices and other ingredients. (In the 1930s ground liver was sometimes added to the mixture). This is also known as a beef hamburger or a "beefburger." A beef hamburger that contains no other ingredients besides the beef itself is often referred to as an "all beef hamburger" or "all beef patties." Some prepare their patties with egg, bread crumbs, onions or onion soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, parsley or other ingredients.

 

Recent years have seen the increasing popularity of new types of "burgers" in which alternatives to ground beef are used as the primary ingredient. For example, a turkey burger uses ground turkey meat, a chicken burger uses either ground chicken meat or chicken filets. A buffalo burger uses ground meat from a bison and some mix cow and buffalo meat, thus creating a "Beefalo burger" and an ostrich burger is made from ground seasoned ostrich meat. A bambi burger uses ground venison from deer.

 

-Veggie Burgers

 

A veggie burger, garden burger, or tofu burger uses a meat analogue, a meat substitute such as tofu, TVP, seitan (wheat gluten), quorn or an assortment of vegetables, ground up and mashed into patties. In the last several years Chili's and several frozen food distributors have created a burger made up of black beans that closely replicates the smokey flavor of beef,

 

Many of these types of burgers are lower in saturated fat or calories than traditional hamburgers.

 

-Reading Fast Food Nation will give you a whole new perspective on hamburgers.

[General Septem]

"Hamburgers! The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast. What kind are they?"

 

"They're, uh, cheeseburgers."

 

"No, where'd you get them? McDonald's, Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box...?"

 

"Um, Big Kahuna Burger."

 

"Big Kahuna Burger! I ain't never had one of those but I hear they're mighty tasty. Can I have a bite of yours?"

 

"Go right ahead."

 

"Mmm, this is a tasty burger!"

[AnUnknownSource]

Some prepare their patties with egg, bread crumbs, onions or onion soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, parsley or other ingredients

 

Then it's not a hamburger, it's Frikadelle isn't it?

[boywander]

^^ Who hasn't seen that by now?

 

We make them from beef mince. Onion, Worcestershire sauce, seasoning, maybe tomato puree, and egg yolk to bind it are common.

[momma]

223.June 10th, 2007dé·jà vu, n.- 1. Psychology. The illusion of having already experienced something actually being experienced for the first time.

 

2a. An impression of having seen or experienced something before: Old-timers watched the stock-market crash with a distinct sense of déjà vu.

b. Dull familiarity; monotony: the déjà vu of the tabloid headlines.

 

-The term first appeared in a French translation of the Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b) as part of the discussion of the superstition that can be associated with this mysterious feeling. Its from the French words déjà, already + vu, seen. Freud quotes certain "psychologists," without specifying who they are. The concept falls squarely within the framework of the paramnesia extensively described by psychiatrists in France, primarily Wigan (1844) and Valentin Magnan (1893), who described systematic delirium accompanied by the illusion of doppelgängers, J. Capgras (1923), who described the illusion of doppelgangers, and Pierre Janet (1905), who described cases of false recognition.

 

-More recently, déjà vu has been connected to experiences of reincarnation, when a feeling of prior knowledge is so strong that people feel sure it must have come from a former incarnation. In a celebrated case in India, a little girl named Shanti Devi, born in Delhi in 1926, claimed that she had lived elsewhere in a former birth, and even named the city. When taken there, she correctly identified the house, family, and other circumstantial details.

 

-U.S. researchers have identified the part of the brain responsible for this sensation, and they think it may lead to new treatments for memory-related problems. They said neurons in a memory center of the brain called the hippocampus make a mental map of new places and experiences, then store them away for future use. But when two experiences begin to seem very much alike, these mental maps overlap and start to blur. It is really just a malfunction in the brain's ability to sort through new information, something called episodic memory.

 

-From the article "Brain mechanism explains sense of deja vu" Posted Thu Jun 7, 8:14 PM ET on Reuters.

[General Septem]

Interesting you should post this today because I was just thinking about how I seem to get deja vu all the time. Another phenomenon I get sometimes is jamais vu, which is the exact opposite, when you know you know something but it seems eerily unfamiliar.

[momma]

224.June 11th, 2007ja·va, n.-Brewed coffee

 

-This word originated in Indonesia

 

There is coffee, and then there is java. Since 1850, java has been the nickname for the real thing, as opposed to the substitutes that sometimes go by the name of coffee. We find it that year in a book by Lewis Garrard called Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail:. "To secure the good will and robes of the sensitive men, we had to offer our dear-bought Java at meal time." A character in a Harper's Magazine story of 1886 remarks, "I should admire to know what your coffee is made of. Reel old Javy don't make no brown stain."

 

Not that every cup of java is premium coffee. The nickname is widely applied to coffee of any sort, sometimes ironically. But it is always a reminder of the highly regarded coffee grown on the island of Java in Indonesia.

 

Coffee has its origin on the other side of the world from Indonesia, in Ethiopia, where the beans were mixed with fat as a day's meal for nomads a thousand years ago, and in Arabia, where coffee roasting was invented. But it was the Dutch in the seventeenth century who brought coffee to Indonesia because of its ideal climate: high altitudes, rainfall, and lack of frost. The coffees of Java became renowned the world over for their earthy, full-bodied taste.

 

Centuries later, in the computer age, Java and the reputation that comes with it were borrowed to name an innovative programming language.

 

Javanese, from which java comes, is one of the world's major languages. It is spoken by seventy-five million people in Indonesia, most of them on the island of Java. Javanese belongs to the Western Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. Other words that have immigrated to English from Javanese include junk (ship, 1555), palanquin (1588), gong (1600), and batik (1880).

 

-Java (Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese: Jawa) is an island of Indonesia and the site of its capital city, Jakarta. Once the centre of powerful Hindu kingdoms and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies, Java now plays a dominant role in the economic and political life of Indonesia. With a population of 124 million, it is the most populous island in the world; it is also one of the most densely populated regions on Earth.

 

Formed mostly as the result of volcanic events Java is the 13th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island of Indonesia. A chain of volcanic mountains form an east-west spine along the island. It has three main languages, and most residents are bilingual, with Indonesian as their second language. While the majority of Javanese are Muslim, Java has a diverse mixture of religious beliefs and cultures.

 

-Etymology

 

The origins of the name 'Java' is not clear. One possibility is early colonists from India named the island after the jáwa-wut plant, which was said to be common in the island during the time, and that prior to colonization the island had different names. There are other possible sources: the word jaú and its variations mean "beyond" or "distant". and in Sanskrit yava means barley, a plant for which the island was famous.

 

Outsiders often refer to Java and the neighboring islands by the same name, or use names inconsistently for different islands. For example, Marco Polo refers Sumatra as "little Java" and Ptolemy refers to Sumatra as Jaba-diu.