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AWADmail Issue 646

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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

Bilingual Brains Better Equipped to Process Information
ScienceDaily
WebCite

Time Magazine's Silly Proposal to Ban the Word "Feminist"
The Washington Post

From: Howard Stafford (howard.stafford absa.co.za)
Subject: Tegular

Thank you for this word which prompted me to re-read the wikipedia articles on Penrose tiling and MC Escher and to wonder anew at the genius of these mathematically gifted men.

From: Timothy Ebert (tebert ufl.edu)
Subject: Tegular

What a great word. It sent me scurrying to my entomology books. Yea! The tegula is a small plate at the base of the wing in some insects. The relationship between the tegula and a part of the pronotum is a key character separating the bees from other Hymenoptera. What I couldn't figure out was why this plate is the tegula when the entire insect exoskeleton is tegular.

Tiling was one of the decorative arts in which the Moors and other Arab tribes excelled, as they were forbidden to portray human figures. (See Symmetry by Marcus du Sautoy, 2008, Harper Collins) There are 17 -- and ONLY seventeen -- different regular patterns in which an area can be tiled with symmetrical polygons without a residue All 17 can be found in the surfaces (walls, ceilings, floors, gates, courtyards, etc.) of the Alhambra.

From: Evan Hazard (eehazard paulbunyan.net)
Subject: tegular

Tegular (my spell check just said, "What?") could have been nicely illustrated with a close-up photo of an insect's eye. Probably loads of them on the web.

From: Eleanor Jackson (elej mindspring.com)
Subject: refection

I have encountered quite a few dining halls in colleges/seminaries that were termed "refectories" and never knew where that term came from. Now I know! Thanks for turning on the light bulb regarding this and many other fairly common word definitions/roots I've wondered about through the years but didn't bother to look up.

From: Dave Gellert (djgellert sherwin.com)
Subject: refection

There is an excellent restaurant in Columbus, Ohio named The Refectory. Now I know the origin of the name. Thanks.

From: Charles Kowalski (c_kowalski yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--refection

I can't see this word without recalling Robert Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", in which the narrator criticizes his fellow monk:

From: Bob Missing (landmanbob yahoo.com)
Subject: Refect

As a teenager I suffered through three years in a prep school -- never enough food to satisfy my hunger. Occasionally I was invited to join one of the kinder masters (nicknamed "Pepe La Mocho") in the refectory for a "seminar" at which we received cocoa and snacks, as much as we wished. On those occasions I went to bed happy.

From: Sr. Monica Seelman (bvmnewsdw aol.com)
Subject: refection

When I entered the BVM Congregation in 1958, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary. On our list of new words was the term for the community dining room: a refectory. All three meals were eaten here, not just light meals.

From: Wm. Roentgen (roentgen1 juno.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--refection

I tried to train my pet Lepus (Br. Harvey) not to engage in refection, but he remained ensconced in the refectory completely refractory to my admonishments.

From: Enita Torres (enitatorres gmail.com)
Subject: refection

Today's word spawned a poem and a chuckle:

While much of Nature deserves emulation
The rabbit's excepted, upon reflection,
for habits of copious copulation...
never mind a tendency to refection.

From: Arlan L Rosenbloom (rosenal peds.ufl.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--wonted

It says: "Oma und Opa wohnen hier" ("Grandma and grandpa live here"). The German origin of "wonen" should be noted.

From: Eric Shackle (ericshackle bigpond.com)
Subject: Spelling

Do you know you can spell every number from one without using a single B until you reach a billion?