Monday, May 20, 2013

word of the day: fer-de-lance

The word of the day is fer-de-lance:


fer-de-lance, any of several extremely venomous snakes of the viper family (Viperidae) found in diverse habitats from cultivated lands to forests throughout tropical America and tropical Asia. (Britannica)


"The rain forests of Mosquitia, which span more than thirty-two thousand square miles of Honduras and Nicaragua, are among the densest and most inhospitable in the world.  'It's mountainous', Chris Begley, an archaeologist and expert on Honduras, told me recently.  'There's white water.  There are jumping vipers, coral snakes, fer-de-lance, stinging plants, and biting insects.  And then there are the illnesses - malaria, dengue fever, leishmaniasis, Chagas'."

 - Douglas Preston, "The El Dorado machine: a new scanner's rain-forest discoveries", 6 May 2013 The New Yorker


Shouldn't that be "fers-de-lance"?

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