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Aug 13, 2010
This week's themeGlacial landforms This week's words drumlin moraine esker fjord cirque 
Cirque de Gavarnie, France
Photo: Jean-Christophe Benoist
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with Anu Gargcirque
PRONUNCIATION:
(suhrk)
MEANING:
noun:1. A bowl-shaped semicircular mountain basin carved by glacial erosion. Also called cwm. 2. A ring; a circle. ETYMOLOGY:
Via French from Latin circus (circle). Ultimately from the Indo-European root
sker- (to turn or bend) which is also the source of other words such as ranch,
rank, shrink, circle, crisp, search, ring, curb, ridge, curve, and circa.
USAGE:
"In the Snowies, cirques only occur on sheltered mountain faces where the
snow first fell and slowly compacted into glacial ice."Peter Veness; Australia: Peak-Time Perfection Just Across the Ditch; The New Zealand Herald (Auckland); Feb 22, 2009. See more usage examples of cirque in Vocabulary.com's dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe. -Ed Krebs, photographer (b. 1951)
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