Wednesday, November 2, 2011

GLOSSARY, or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Words

Click through to view the glossary. Items are currently arranged roughly in the order they're encountered in the script. To search for a term, press CTRL+F and type in the word or phrase. I'll be modifying this page as I determine a better way to present and enrich this information, so please send me feedback to help make this glossary work for you! -BF



  • isthmus a narrow strip of land, bordered on both sides by water, connecting two larger bodies of land
  • archipelago a large group or chain of islands
  • embarcadero a pier, wharf, or landing place
  • Antipodes places diametrically opposite each other on the globe, usually referring to New Zealand/Australia
  • latitude the angular distance north or south from the equator of a point on the earth's surface
  • longitude angular distance east or west on the earth's surface measured from the prime meridian (Greenwich, England)
  • Terra Incognita an unknown or unexplored land, region, or subject
  • avuncular resembling an uncle; friendly; helpful
  • peregrinations travels from one place to another, especially on foot.
  • sartorial of or pertaining to clothing or style or manner of dress, tailoring
  • pro forma cuppa pro forma: as if (circumstances were understood to be different) cuppa: cup of tea (or coffee)
  • sherpa a Tibetan porter on mountain-climbing expeditions in the Nepalese Himalayas
  • machete a large heavy knife used for clearing underbrush and as a weapon
  • en route French -- on the way
  • clairvoyant having the power of seeing objects or actions beyond the range of natural vision, beyond time
  • fauna animal life, as opposed to flora (plant life)
  • cartography Map making
  • sherry a fortified, amber-colored wine of southern Spain or any of various similar wines made elsewhere
  • patent medicine a medicine sold without a prescription in drugstores or by sales representatives; snake oil
  • Shepherd's pie a baked dish of ground or diced meat with a crust of mashed potatoes
  • origami the Japanese art of folding paper into different shapes such as cranes
  • Lhasa a holy city and the capital of Tibet, Pop. 175,000; about 12,000 feet (3650 meters) above sea level
  • Potala Palace, chief residence of the Dalai Lama in Tibet until Chinese takeover in 1959
  • Dalai Lama Tibetan spiritual leader
  • yak butter butter made from yak's milk; a yak is a big, shaggy-haired ox with horns native to Tibet
  • metaphysician a philosopher concerned with such fundamental principles as knowing, being, time, or substance
  • Terre Haute town in Indiana, USA whose name means "High Ground"
  • truculent fierce; cruel; savagely brutal
  • vertiginous whirling; spinning; rotary, causing vertigo
  • Malaya the Malay Peninsula in South East Asia
  • Punji sticks sharp bamboo stake concealed in high grass at an angle so as to gash the feet and legs of enemy soldiers and often coated with excrement so as to cause an infected wound.
  • de rigueur French -- a matter of course; strictly required, as by etiquette, usage, or fashion
  • Allons! French -- Let's go!
  • Putamayo a river in South America, flowing SE from Colombia into the Amazon, 900 miles (1450 km) long
  • Sahara a desert in N Africa, extending from the Atlantic to the Nile valley and covering about 3,500,000 sq. mi.
  • sans French -- without
  • metier a field of work or other activity in which one has special ability or training; forte
  • Silurian noting or pertaining to a period of the Paleozoic Era, occurring from 425 to 405 million years ago, notable for the advent of air-breathing animals and terrestrial plants; crocodiles are ancient beasts!
  • recalcitrant resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant
  • pith helmets a hat made of dried pith (a plant-stalk material) or cork covered with cloth, worn in the tropics
  • pith the important or essential part; essence; core; heart
  • palaver a long parley, especially one between primitive natives and European traders, explorers, colonial officials, etc.
  • pasha a title, placed after the name, formerly held by high officials in countries under Turkish rule
  • tonsorial of or pertaining to a barber or barbering
  • silver nitrate substance used in making photographic emulsions; “captures” the light of the image
  • qu'est-ce que c'est French-- What is that?
  • Himalayas the world's highest mountain range, between India and Tibet extending about 1500 miles (2400 km)
  • Ladakh a region in Kashmir on the borders of Tibet and Pakistan
  • quotidian usual or customary; everyday
  • sit lotus to sit cross-legged with the feet resting on top of the legs; the Lotus position
  • Bon shaman a shaman of the Bon tradition, an indigenous Tibetan religion with strongly animistic elements
  • Orinoco a 1600 mile long river in South America, flowing from Brazil to the Atlantic
  • marsupial any pouched mammal of the order Marsupialia like kangaroos, wombats, possums, and koalas
  • mucilagenous gluey, gooey, sticky and moist
  • manioc/cassava root-vegetables (tubers) that are widely cultivated as food
  • budgie an Australian parakeet, having greenish plumage with black and yellow markings, bred as a pet
  • prussic acid the weakly acidic but extremely poisonous aqueous solution of hydrogen cyanide
  • glacier an extended mass of ice formed over the years, moves very slowly
  • milieu surroundings, especially of a social or cultural nature
  • crevasse a fissure, or deep cleft, in glacial ice, the earth's surface, etc.
  • Astrakhan collar referring to the style of collars of closely curled black wool from Astrakhan lambs on the Volga River
  • Louis Quatorze In the style of Louis XIV, the King of France known as the Sun King
  • mousse A preparation of food that creates a light, airy texture (such as the chocolate mousse desert)
  • gnu a variety of wildebeest, a stocky ox-like antelope from South Africa
  • viscera the organs in the cavities of the body, especially those in the abdominal cavity
  • gorge a narrow cleft with steep, rocky walls, especially one through which a stream runs
  • sallies pl. sally - a clever, witty, or fanciful remark; a sortie or rushing forth, an outburst
  • effete lacking in wholesome vigor; degenerate; decadent
  • ubiquitous existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time; omnipresent
  • loofah the dried, fibrous interior of the loofah fruit, used as a sponge
  • benignity a kindness, the quality of being benign
  • McKinley, Cleveland, Garfield, Taft American presidents the late 19th and early 20th Centuries
  • muttonchops sideburns grown large; they take on the shape of a lambchop or porkchop held upside down
  • Masai a member of an African people inhabiting the highlands of Kenya and Tanzania and having a largely pastoral economy and a society based on the patrilineal clan.
  • Empress sleeves sleeves with a neat puff covering the shoulder
  • Kuala Lumpur the capital city of Malaysia
  • Seraglio the part of a Muslim (esp. Turkish) palace in which the wives and concubines are secluded; harem
  • Sultan sovereign of an Islamic country, particularly the former Ottoman Empire
  • escarpments steep sloping separating two relatively level areas of land; ditch or furrows
  • rattan any of the climbing palms of the genus Calamus and related genera, having tough stems used for wickerwork and canes
  • exoskeleton the protective or supporting structure covering the outside of the body of many animals like lobsters
  • juju an object venerated superstitiously and used as a fetish or amulet by tribal peoples of West Africa
  • mein, nein German words for “mine” as in possession and “no” as in negation
  • Alsace-Lorraine A historically-disputed area in northeastern France along the border with Germany
  • Sprechen sie deutsche German for “do you speak German?”
  • S'il vous plait French for “if you please”
  • Indian Territory the territory established in the early 19th century in present-day Oklahoma, where Indians were forced to settle by the US government. The last remnant was integrated into the new state of Oklahoma in 1907
  • anthropologist a researcher engaged in the study of humans, their origins, physical characteristics, institutions, religious beliefs, social relationships
  • Indigos people of the East Indies; indigo dye was a major import from India and lands eastward to Europe, particularly for the East India Company
  • anthropophagii cannibals; singular, anthropophagus
  • Free Mason a member of a widely distributed secret order, having for its object mutual assistance and the promotion of brotherly love among its members
  • dirigible a rigid-bodied airship such as the Zeppelin (as opposed to a soft-bodied blimp)
  • incipient just beginning to be or happen; on the verge
  • knackwurst a German variety of sausage
  • Burma Shave an American brushless shaving cream; its ad campaign pioneered using jingles and billboards
  • Vaya Con Dios “Go with God” in Spanish -- See also “Vaya Con Dios” (song)
  • auf wiedersehn German farewell
  • mein steam steam for “esteem” as in respect and affection, “a token of my esteem”
  • Social Darwinist adherent to the late 19th-Century theory that asserted societies behave according to the same principles as described by Darwin in his studies of animal reproduction and trait selection
  • Red Chinese China underwent a revolution in the late 1940s; Mao and his communists won in 1949
  • Irrawaddy Delta fertile delta of the Irrawaddy River in Burma; one of the prized colonial regions of the British Empire
  • dacoits pronounced duh-koits / dəˈkɔɪts / an Anglicized Hindi word referring to armed bandits, particularly during colonial rule of India, Burma in the 1800s
  • Kali a name of Devi, the Hindu mother-goddess, in her death-goddess aspect
  • Lamdo a village in Tibet east of Lhasa along the passage to western China's Szechuan province
  • millet a cereal grass, Setaria italica, cultivated for grain and animal fodder
  • catarrh inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the respiratory tract, accompanied by excessive secretions; the resulting mucous
  • talking drums an hourglass-shaped drum of West African origin; used by tribes to communicate over long distances
  • Neolithic man Stone Age man; the caveman
  • Penny-dreadful a term from the 1870s for a cheap, sensational novel of adventure, crime, or violence; dime novel
  • Blue-sky ventures overly-optimistic business gambles; the phrase alludes to the Irving Berlin song "Blue Skies" of 1929, popular with Wall Street brokers; ironic prelude to the crash of the stock market, whose value was artificially inflated by such ventures
  • hermetic hidden or protected from the outside world, sealed (as if by Hermes' magic); relating to alchemy
  • Arbor Day An American holiday dating from the 1870s set aside for planting trees
  • somnambulist a sleepwalker
  • cacophonous having a harsh or discordant sound; jarring and noisy
  • echolalia the often pathological repetition of what is said by other people as if echoing
  • indigene an indigenous person, animal, or thing; native
  • Comanchero an Indian trader in the U.S. Southwest, especially in the 19th Century
  • Lichtenstein a tiny principality nestled in the Alps between Switzerland and Austria
  • Baluchistan an arid, mountainous region in the Iranian plateau in Southwest Asia
  • Bebe Bwana Central African appellation (“woman master”) for 19th-Century American explorer Mary Sheldon
  • gyro an apparatus consisting of a rotating wheel so mounted that its axis can turn freely in certain or all directions, and capable of maintaining the same absolute direction in space in spite of movements of the mountings and surrounding parts: used to maintain equilibrium, determine direction, navigate.
  • cerulean sky blue, azure
  • silkie chickens with fur-like plumage; mentioned by Marco Polo in his Asian travelogues in the 13th century
  • Andean breaths the Andes mountains are tall: oxygen is scarce, so breathing requires deeper, more frequent breaths
  • antediluvian lit. “before the flood” of the Bible; antiquated or old fashioned
  • tribadism until the 20th Century, used to refer to lesbian sexual practices in general
  • rites formal or ceremonial act or procedure, as in a religious practice
  • Flying Dutchman a legendary Dutch ghost ship supposed to be seen at sea, especially near the Cape of Good Hope; the Captain was doomed to sail forever
  • Madagascar an island and former French colony off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean
  • fetish an object believed in certain cultures to be the embodiment or habitation of a spirit or magical powers
  • Annapolis the capital of Maryland, a city on Chesapeake Bay
  • Xanadu Samuel Taylor Coleridge's modification, in the poem “Kubla Khan” (1797), of Xandu (17th century spelling), modern Shangtu, the site of Kublai Khan's summer residence in SE Mongolia; a place of great beauty, luxury, and contentment
  • Kubla Khan grandson of Genghis Khan, he ruled China in the 13th century; hosted Marco Polo in Beijing
  • Swahili the Bantu language of the Swahili people, used also as the lingua franca in Tanzania, Kenya, and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • patois an unwritten regional dialect of a language, usually considered substandard
  • terra firma “firm earth” -- on the land, as opposed to being at sea
  • troll typically portrayed as large, dull, particularly ugly creatures that live in caves or other subterranean dwellings; the classic bridge troll comes from the Norwegian fairy tale of The Three Billy Goats Gruff
  • Robert Lowell 1917-1977, an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement
  • baksheesh a gratuity; certain forms of political corruption and bribery in the Middle East and South Asia, kickbacks
  • Congreve William; an English Restoration playwright specializing in high-brow, sexual comedies of manners
  • chopper a chopper is a type of motorcycle that was either modified from an original motorcycle design ("chopped") or built from scratch to have a long, low look; Easy Rider
  • Lingua Franca a language used for communication among people of different mother tongues;
  • polytopian a traveler of “many spaces” - polytopia
  • Victor Herbert 1859-1924, composer of Broadway operettas as Babes in Toyland
  • mole people underground tunnel dwellers perhaps like the Morlocks from H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
  • Herald-Tribune one of seven mid-century New York daily newspapers; with a modern look, aggressive reporting, provocative columnists and lively writing, the NYHT rivaled the NY Times in the 1930s and 40s before closing its offices in the 1960s
  • Grand Tetons a north-south range of the Rocky Mountains on the Wyoming side of the state's border with Idaho, just south of Yellowstone National Park
  • Dickensian resembling or suggestive of conditions described in Dickens' novels, esp. squalid, impoverished
  • Roosevelt, Bully Bear, San Juan Hill Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, 26th US President; his famous 1902 bear hunt in Mississippi spawned commemorative “teddy” bears; he used the word “bully” for “grand” and called the Presidency the “bully pulpit” for its power to reach the American people over the heads of Congress; San Juan Hill was the site of his great victory leading the “Rough Riders” volunteer cavalry regiment in the Spanish-American War of 1898; preserved many of our National Parks and Forests
  • Herzog 1964 novel by Saul Bellow about the midlife crisis of a Jewish man Herzog told largely through letters
  • Mustard gas a chemical weapon that was used extensively in WWI; causes horrific blistering, irritation, and pain
  • osmosis the diffusion of fluids through membranes; gradual absorption of ideas, learning by contact/proximity
  • little red book, great leap forward, Yang-tze River, tractor operas Signifiers of the Communist Revolution in China; the book is Quotations from Chairman Mao, the "leap" was his plan to modernize the Chinese economy through industrialization, Mao took several famous swims in the mighty Yang-tze from 1956-66, and Soviet-inspired tractor operas aimed to replace Peking opera stories of Chinese emperors with more suitably revolutionary content
  • running dogs In Chinese Communist propaganda, a person or institution subservient to counterrevolutionary interests, a dupe of colonial/Western powers
  • pendejo pronounced “pen-deh-ho,” translates in most Spanish speaking countries more or less as "jackass”
  • flotsam material or refuse floating on water; floating ship wreckage
  • mash notes love letters of a certain intimate quality
  • fallout radioactive material in the atmosphere resulting from a nuclear explosion
  • National Review a magazine founded by the late William F. Buckley in 1955 in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion,” and was envisioned as a voice for views of the postwar American right
  • Bosco a brand of chocolate syrup first produced in 1928
  • calliope a musical instrument wherein a keyboard plays steam whistles of various pitches
  • empyrean the highest part of the (supposedly spherical) heavens, thought in ancient times to contain the pure element of fire and by early Christians to be the abode of God and the angels
  • vasty vast, immense
  • welkin the sky, the vault of heaven
  • parsnip an edible root vegetable
  • chronokinesis the manipulation of time by the power of mind or will
  • conglomerate anything composed of heterogeneous materials or elements; a corporation consisting of a number of subsidiary companies or divisions in a variety of unrelated industries, usually as a result of merger or acquisition
  • verity the quality or state of being true, real, or correct
  • "Iko Iko" (song) a much-covered New Orleans song that tells of a parade collision between two "tribes" of Mardi Gras revelers dressed as Indians
  • "Willy & the Hand Jive" (song) the hand jive is a dance particularly associated with rock and roll and rhythm and blues music of the 1950s; popularized by Johnny Otis' 1958 hit, “Willy and the Hand Jive"
  • aspirate to draw by suction or inhale; to produce a speech sound with an audible puff of breath (like h-sounds)
  • pit vipers any of numerous venomous snakes of the family Crotalidae, of the New World, Asia, and the Malay Archipelago, as the rattlesnake, water moccasin, and copperhead, having a heat-sensitive pit on each side of the head between the eye and nostril.
  • feckless having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy
  • cantering moving along at an easy galloping pace
  • Pony Express a system in the American West of carrying mail and express by relays of riders mounted on ponies
  • zeeroxen a conflation of Xerox and oxen (like musk --> muskoxen, a kind of hairy Arctic ox)
  • October 1929 on October 29, 1929, Wall Street stocks collapsed and began the Great Depression
  • Futures a financial arrangement where two parties agree today to a price for a future exchange of goods
  • A bien tot French farewell expressing hope/expectation to see the other person again soon
  • Bebe Rebozo Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a Florida banker; famously a friend and confidant of President Nixon and was routinely named as the primary recipient of covert payments on Nixon's behalf
  • prognostication predicting the future
  • lambent softly bright or radiant; lapping lightly over a surface
  • Karakoram a large mountain range spanning the boarders between Pakistan, India, and China; home of K2
  • callow immature, undeveloped
  • Hindu Kush a mountain range in Afghanistan extending west from the Himalayas
  • “Rock Around The Clock” (song) One of the early hits of rock & roll; popularized by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954
  • Esso an international trade name for ExxonMobil companies; from initials of the former Standard Oil, “S. O.”
  • flummoxed bewildered, confounded, confused
  • palanquin portable bed or couch, open or enclosed, that is mounted on two poles and carried at each end on the shoulders of porters or by animals
  • “Avoid fried foods, which angry up the blood” One of baseball great Satchel Paige's “Rules for Staying Young” -- see Satchel Paige entry
  • inscrutable incapable of being investigated, analyzed, or scrutinized; impenetrable
  • Marshall Dillon & Kitty, Gunsmoke US Marshall Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty of the Long Branch Saloon are the lead characters of Gunsmoke, a popular television Western drama series which ran from 1955-1975
  • Cimarron City a dot on the Oklahoma map; fictional setting for several television westerns
  • Bachelor Father show which followed the adventures of Bentley Gregg, a wealthy bachelor attorney living in Beverly Hills who assumes the responsibility of raising his niece, Kelly (Noreen Corcoran), after her parents die in an automobile accident; ran on all three TV networks from 1957-1962
  • prurient causing lasciviousness or lust; having a restless desire or longing
  • smut indecent language or publications; obscenity
  • The Series 1955 World Series between the then-Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees; Dodgers won for the first time since 1900, shortly before moving to Los Angeles
  • Ethnology the branch of anthropology that deals with races and peoples, their relations to one another, their origins, and their distinctive characteristics
  • chiclets a brand of candy-coated chewing gum
  • grease monkey vernacular for an auto mechanic
  • Ike Nickname for enormously popular 34th US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (two terms, '52, '56)
  • Chicago Egghead Adlai Stevenson (1900-65), Governor of Illinois; noted for his intellectual demeanor, eloquence, and baldness (hence, egghead); ran in '52 and '56
  • Apotheosis the elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god; deification, glorification, idealization
  • green stamps a brand of trading stamp; stamps had a certain value given as a premium by a retailer to a customer who would save up stamps to redeem for cash or merchandise
  • Peter Gunn theme Henry Mancini's memorable theme for the noir TV detective show Peter Gunn
  • mynah bird Starlings common to tropical Asia; some mynahs will imitate human song/speech in captivity
  • Big Band type of musical ensemble associated with jazz, swing popular from the 1920s through the 1950s
  • pulchritude physical beauty
  • “Vaya Con Dios” (song) Spanish farewell “Go with God;” song popularized by Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1953
  • “Bad Boy” (song) a 1957 hit for The Jive Bombers
  • feminality the female nature
  • Mamie Eisenhower (1896-979), wife of President Eisenhower and First Lady from 1953 to 1961
  • duffer a plodding, clumsy, incompetent person; a person inept or inexperienced at a specific sport, as golf
  • the Scottish game golf was invented in Scotland
  • float a check to write a check intending to take advantage of processing time to cover a lack of sufficient funds
  • Ute Indians (pronounced /ˈjuːt/ "yewt") are an American Indian people living primarily in Utah and Colorado
  • catatonic appearing to be in a daze or stupor; unresponsive
  • “There Goes My Baby” (song) a 1959 summer hit by the Drifters and producers Lieber and Stoller
  • kismet fate or destiny; Turkish origin from Arabic qisma meaning portion, lot
  • keen sharp, either as in having a fine edge or mental alertness; eager or enthusiastic
  • chopped Chevy a Chevy customized to have a lower roofline: http://tinyurl.com/3je4zne
  • High School Confidential a 1958 film staring Mamie Van Doren and Russ Tamblyn; Jerry Lee Lewis' title song
  • “Dual Highway” (song) a 1960 jazz tune by Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges
  • Daniel Boone cap a round, raccoon fur cap with the raccoon's ringed tail attached in the back, famously worn by Boone
  • pleasure dome a place of pleasurable entertainment -- Coleridge's Kubla Khan in “Xanadu” orders one built
  • prestidigitate to produce out of nowhere by sleight of hand; “presto!”
  • Cool Whip non-dairy imitation whipped cream introduced in 1967 by the Birds Eye division of General Foods
  • The Real McCoy an idiom meaning the genuine article, the actual subject sought
  • mohair fabric or yarn made wholly or in part of the long silky hair of the Angora goat
  • Noxzema skin cleanser sold in a blue jar since 1914 containing camphor, menthol, phenol and eucalyptus, among other ingredients, originally developed as a sunburn remedy
  • una tarjeta, en Espanol “a card, in Spanish”
  • run to ground, tree, and beard in hunting with dogs; chasing the prey to its home, confronting (bearding) it until caught
  • Poobah of the First Water an important chief of the highest rank
  • "WIPEOUT!" (song) 1963 instrumental by the Surfaris; featured a voice laughing, “Wipeout!” (falling off the surfboard) and zippy surf guitar riffs
  • “Whomp bop a lula” refers to Little Richard's 1955 song “Tutti Frutti” which doesn't mention wombats
  • wombat a stocky, burrowing marsupial of Australia about the size of a badger
  • Congo River a river in central Africa, flowing about 3000 miles long from the Congo to the Atlantic
  • Variety a weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in NYC, 1905; presents in-depth news, exclusive reports, trend stories, box office information and reviews
  • ecdysiastical of or related to the strip tease or stripteaser (ecdysiast)
  • vernal of or pertaining to spring
  • Sumatra a large island in the western part of Indonesia
  • salacious lecherous, obscene, having an excessive interest in sex
  • concupiscence intense desire, longing; lust
  • voluptuary a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury and sensual pleasure
  • parlance a way or manner of speaking; the contemporary vernacular
  • Byzantine complex or intricate; derived from the art and architecture of Byzantium, noted for its formal structure
  • gryphon the mythical winged monster with an eagle's head and wings and the body of a lion
  • mashed potato, the pony, the watusi Dance crazes from the 1960s; the Watusi took its name from an African tribe
  • terra cotta “cooked earth” - a hard, fired clay; brownish-red in color when unglazed; used for pottery, sculpture
  • Congoleum textured, “no-wax” vinyl floor tile (think linoleum) sold by the US Congoleum Corp., est. 1886; raw materials used in their original Congoleum from the 1920s were sourced from the Belgian Congo
  • ginchiest late-1950s slang meaning the most attractive, sexiest, and coolest
  • incarnadine flesh-colored
  • entre nous just “between us” -- French phrase suggesting a confidential conversation
  • agog impatiently excited; in a state of eager desire or anticipation
  • Andalusia southern Spain; from the Moorish name for the peninsula, al Andalus
  • apoplexy sudden impairment from bleeding in the brain (a stroke); taken to mean a paralyzing fit of anger
  • House O' Hits a record label
  • briquets a small block of compressed coal dust or charcoal used for fuel, especially in barbecuing
  • arcane known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric
  • germane relevant; pertinent, closely or significantly related
  • wanton “undisciplined, ill-reared;” without regard for what's right; a sexually unrestrained or lascivious woman
  • Polaroid instant cameras and self-developing film created by Polaroid debuted in 1948 and “Polaroid” became the name for such pictures and cameras
  • T-Bird the Ford Thunderbird debuted in 1955 as a more luxurious alternative to the Chevrolet Corvette
  • Satchel Paige Born in Mobile, AL, Paige was the greatest pitcher of the Negro Leagues and arguably would've been one of the greatest in the major leagues -- in 1929 he threw 176 strikeouts pitching for the Birmingham Black Barons; the June 13, 1953 issue of Collier's magazine printed Paige's “Rules for Staying Young,” the last of which is “And don't look back -- something might be gaining on you.” In 1971, he became the first player from the Negro Leagues inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
  • caravanserai a roadside inn, usually with a large courtyard, for the overnight accommodation of traders' caravans
  • parabola a geometrical shape consisting of a single bend and two lines going off to an infinite distance -- U
  • phenomenologist follower/practitioner of the philosophical movement founded by Husserl that concentrates on the detailed description of conscious experience, without recourse to explanation, metaphysical assumptions, and traditional philosophical questions
  • nautilus a sea creature related to squids and cuttlefish that lives in a spiral-shaped shell
  • quarks in the standard model of the atom, quarks are the building blocks of protons, neutrons, and electrons
  • quasars extremely luminous point-like astronomical phenomena known as quasi-stellar radio sources; now believed to be related to the supermassive black holes thought lurking at the centers of large galaxies

2 comments:

  1. You have saved me several hours of work and probably a week of processing. I Understand so many references better now.
    Thank You.

    ReplyDelete
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