Word of the day: blesbok

The word of the day is blesbok:

1. a large antelope, Damaliscus albifrons, of southern Africa, having a blaze on the face.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blesbok)

"The high veldt rolled away, in shades of coffee and wheat.  We passed blesbok, oryx, wildebeest."

 - Paige Williams, "Digging for glory", 27 June 2016 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/lee-berger-digs-for-bones-and-glory)

Word of the day: fossorial

The word of the day is fossorial:

1. digging or burrowing.
2. adapted for digging, as the hands, feet, and bone structure of moles, armadillos, and aardvarks.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fossorial)

"A new kind of tadpole belonging to the Indian dancing frog family has surprised researchers because it burrows through and swallows sand, according to findings published in PLOS ONE.  'These tadpoles probably remained unnoticed all these years because of their fossorial nature, which in itself is a rare occurrence in the amphibian world,' said SD Biju, a study author."

 - 31 March 2016 Sigma Xi SmartBrief

Word of the day: limpet

The word of the day is limpet:

1. any of various marine gastropods with a low conical shell open beneath, often browsing on rocks at the shoreline and adhering when disturbed. 

O.E. lempedu, from M.L. lampreda"limpet" (see lamprey) (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/limpet)

"The limpet Patella caerula is shaped like a Chinese straw hat."

 - Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History

Word of the day: skua

The word of the day is skua:

Also called bonxie. any of severallarge brown gull-like predatory birdsof the genus Catharacta, related to jaegers, especially C. skua (greatskua) of colder waters of bothnorthern and southern seas. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skua)

"The apparatus responds to his attention: the glass gleams, the brass shines, and the light rotates on its bath of mercury as smoothly as a skua gliding on currents of air."

 - M. L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans (2012)

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"?