Category Archives: Word of the Day

Uncle’s link to The Floppy Disk means Save, and 14 other old people Icons that don’t make sense anymore led me to this word. From Wikipedia: A skeuomorph  /ˈskjuːəmɔrf/ SKEW-ə-morf, or skeuomorphism (Greek: skeuos—vessel or tool, morphe—shape),[1] is a derivative … Continue reading →

Not Skittlebrau, but beer and skittles: Meaning ‘Beer and skittles’ is shorthand for a life of indulgence spent in the pub. Origin Skittles, also known as Ninepins, which was the pre-cursor to ten-pin bowling, has been a popular English pub … Continue reading →

Witch’s Broom in an Eastern White Pine. Photo by Jason Graf. Used with permission. My friend Jason Graf posted this photo on Facebook, wondering what kind of animal made this nest. I didn’t know, so I shared it on my … Continue reading →

A good Word of the Day, over at Linoge’s. Previous WOTD – Pu Erhs (Tea)

Ninja Rocks video: Wikipedia: Ninja rocks are broken shards of spark plugs. Since they can quickly and almost silently[1][2] fracture the glass windows on most cars, ninja rocks are increasingly the tool of choice in “smash-and-grab” auto burglaries.[3][4][5] They have … Continue reading →

Wikipedia: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which the unskilled suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.[1] Actual … Continue reading →

From Wikipedia: The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma, and sometimes referred to as the series comma) is the comma used immediately before a coordinating conjunction (usually and or or, and sometimes nor) preceding the … Continue reading →

From the Haint Blue Flickr Pool (which has lots of pictures): Commonly found on houses in the American South, Haint Blue is a paint color used on porch ceilings and door and window trim. Tradition holds that it orginated in … Continue reading →

From Wikipedia: Rabbit starvation, also referred to as protein poisoning or mal de caribou, is a form of acute malnutrition caused by excess consumption of any lean meat (e.g., rabbit) coupled with a lack of other sources of nutrients usually … Continue reading →

From Wikipedia: Major non-NATO ally (MNNA) is a designation given by the United States government to close allies who have strategic working relationships with US armed forces but are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While the MNNA … Continue reading →

Via Sebastian: It’s a common theme on Scott Adams blog, the notion that many companies, in order to avoid competing on price, creating buying structures that are impossible to understand, thus hiding true cost. I immediately thought of a company … Continue reading →

From Seth Roberts, who named it after his friend Carl Willat. Willat Effect Experiments With Tea: The Willat Effect is the hedonic change caused by side-by-side comparison of similar things. Your hedonic response to the things compared (e.g., two or … Continue reading →

I was typing “estimate” and wrote “estimage.” That should totally be a word, in my estimage. Previous WOTD – Triffin Dilemma