Words to Die By

from HERE

WORDS TO KNOW

Difference between a coffin and a casket. 

Difference between a cemetery and a graveyard. 

Camouflage

According to Google the etymology of this word is as such:
First World War: from French, from camoufler ‘to disguise’ (originally thieves' slang), from Italian camuffare ‘disguise, deceive’, perhaps by association with French camouflet ‘whiff of smoke in the face’.

This story from the Guardian on new camouflage studies gives a basic introduction on how we can use camouflage studies for other purposes, whether for safety or disguise.

Another article, this one from the New York Times, chronicles a very interesting ancillary topic--translucence and "mirroring" in animals. And there's a little bioluminescence in there to boot!

And here's a great video of blanching, or the act of a normally transparent animal making themselves opaque: http://nyti.ms/1pjCUm3

Words to Offend

The first instance of the word "fuck":

Excerpts from Salon's Modern History of Swearing:

Other wonderful words that may be unfamiliar to you include godemiche, another French import, meaning “dildo.” A dildo,  Grose  [In his 1785 “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue”] helpfully explains, is “an implement resembling the virile member, for which it is said to be substituted, by nuns, boarding school misses, and others obliged to celibacy, or fearful of pregnancy. Dildoes are made of wax, horn, leather, and diverse other substances, and if fame does not lie more than usually, are to be had at many of our great toy shops and nick nackatories.” Grose is wonderfully able to describe what a dildo is while denying any firsthand knowledge of them. Lobcock is “a large relaxed penis, also a dull inanimate fellow.” A rantallion is “one whose scrotum is so relaxed as to be longer than his penis, i.e. whose shot pouch is longer than the barrel of his piece.” Fartleberries are “excrement hanging to the hairs about the anus, &c, of a man or woman.” (Here &c, “et cetera,” is back to being slang for the private parts.) And then there is burning shame, “a lighted candle stuck into the parts of a woman, certainly not intended by nature for a candlestick.” Why this lascivious practice bears mention when larking and huffling don’t is not completely clear. Grose defines cunt as “a nasty name for a nasty thing”; perhaps he was simply unable to deny himself the pleasure of the pun: burning shame is “terrible shame/shame (cunt) on fire.”

And to this I add a little poem all about dildos: The Dildoides by Samuel Butler, 1672.

Nurturing a Mimetic Vocabulary

Once upon a time, a friend and I would stay up late at the diner, drinking coffee, writing, and reading. Once we decided to find new words to use, looking through the dictionary until we found something interesting. My favorite find was "vermicular"--wormlike. I haven't used it much since, but I realized how functional and colorful descriptive words can be--especially in art history where mimesis is a key component preceding any argument.

The article 18 Fancy Words for Specific Shapes is a fantastic list of largely scientific words that can easily transcend their disciplinary confines.

"Kidney beans may be reniform, but actual kidneys are fabiform."

Action verbs provide another level of interest. Poetry and literature, of course, provide a parallel universe where nouns have been verbed since at least James Joyce. Billy Collins does not write that the dog jumps through the snow--he "porpoise[s]" through it.

The Etymology of the Genitals

from io9