The words universe and atom originally had very specific abstract meanings. Universe referred to “everything that exists” while atom referred to the “smallest indivisible constituent of matter” (from the Greek philosophy of Atomism).  Over time these abstractions became concrete in their meanings.

As the science of physics progressed people came to have assumptions as to how big the universe or the atom would prove to be. When they thought this limit was reached, they began using the abstraction to express the concrete. Of course, science proved those limits to be wrong; today, an atom refers to a concrete piece of matter that is hardly the smallest, and universe has come to refer to an object which is “expanding” and therefore can hardly include all of existence. The word universe has even spawned terms such as “multiverse” or “parallel universe” which are clearly in contradiction with the original abstraction.

The best way to keep these equivocations clear is to ask yourself this question whenever they appear in an argument: does this person intend to express an abstraction or a concrete “real-world” object? You may find that the person making the argument isn’t clear on it himself.

A polymath is defined as a person of great or varied learning.

The first person that comes to my mind when I hear this word is Ben Franklin – because the word evokes for me specifically a person who’s knowledge is both deep and varied – in essence a generalist. One might say that Franklin “dabbled” in everything – but in fact “dabbled” seems an inappropriate word, since it implies someone who never looks beyond the surface.

Wikipedia lists similar terms such as Renaissance Man, Generalist, and Homo universalis and also includes a list of noted polymaths including Imhotep, Aristotle, Cicero, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and of course Ben Franklin. Good company to aspire to, I think!

To many Americans the first thing that will come to mind when they hear this word is the cloudy object that sometimes develops in the eyes of older people and usually has to be removed. But there is another meaning for this word that you might not be so familiar with: it is another name for a waterfall.

To American ears, waterfall probably sounds much nicer, but most likely that’s due to the association in our minds with a pathology of the eye. The word cataract comes from the French word cataracte, which means waterfall and according to a few sources, its origin is probably the Greek word katarassein which means to “dash down”. I have yet to discover how the word came to mean a clouding of the eye.

Lately, as you may have noticed, I am particularly interested in geology and geological terms. This one came up as I was investigating the history of Niagara Falls – the 2nd widest continuous cataract in the world after Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. To give you some idea about the sizes of these landforms, Victoria Falls is a whopping mile wide and about 360 or so feet tall. Niagara is about 170 feet tall with the Canadian Horseshoe being about half a mile wide, and the American Falls adding about a quarter mile to that.

If you click on the links above they will take you to the Wikimapia satellite view. This can be a fun way to become acquainted a famous geographical location and it has gotten a lot easier to do lately. Wikipedia now includes a link to GeoHack, a program that creates a list of known internet map resources with links centered on the location of interest. For example, check out this Wikipedia entry for Victoria Falls. At the top on the right, you will see the geographical coordinates for the Falls. Clicking on that link will take you to the list of maps. Just find your favorite map and click to go to that map centered on Falls. Easy, and it helps to put a location in perspective, especially if you intend to travel there at some point. Wikimapia is my particular favorite because locals can label places of interest right on the map for you.

If you’re a “cataract” buff, then you will probably like the World Waterfall Database which looks to be the pet project of a couple of guys who really like waterfalls. I must admit, it’s a very cool site and a great place to quickly obtain statistics on a number of waterfalls, including some of the lesser known ones – like this one:

Great Falls, Paterson, NJ

The Great Falls in Paterson, NJ are a lot smaller than Victoria or Niagara, but they are rich in history and for me, fairly close to home.

Here are some cool pictures of cataracts from various locations on the web:

Particularly beautiful shot of Niagara Falls from above

Particularly beautiful shot of Victoria Falls from above (note: GeoEye has a lot of beautiful satellite images in their gallery for download)

Iguaçu Falls in Brazil from above

Angel Falls (Highest Waterfall at 3,212 ft) in Venezuela

For years I had seen this particular word in print and never bothered to look it up. Basically, in French it means “pinch nose”. Makes sense, right?

From The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words:

a pair of eyeglasses with a nose clip instead of ear pieces

From A Passage to India By E M Forster:

He pointed to the dusky line beyond the court, and here and there it flashed a pince-nez or shuffled a shoe, as if aware that he was despising it. European costume had lighted like a leprosy. Few had yielded entirely, but none were untouched.

E M Forster’s writing style is very British and can be difficult to follow. Nevertheless I found this novel interesting from a historical perpective and therefore worth a read. The word pince-nez appears a number of times. Apparently this style of glasses was particularly popular in the 20’s around the time in which the novel is set.

Also, it was just pointed out to me that Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne’s character in The Matrix wears a pair. And with that, I’m sure I will never forget what this word means!

From The Free Dictionary:

A vast semiarid grass-covered plain, as found in southeast Europe, Siberia, and central North America.

I wanted to do this word because, quite frankly, though I have had a number of ecology classes over the years, I never really felt like I grasped the meaning. Numerous sources, including wikipedia, have mentioned that a steppe is a place with a climate that is too dry for a forest, but not quite dry enough to qualify as a desert and therefore the plant life it supports is usually in the form or grasses or shrubs. A similar concept, tundra is also unable to support trees but in this case the dryness results because the ground is permanently frozen (this is known as permafrost).

I became interested in steppe ecology after seeing some very interesting documentaries about Mongolian nomads and their amazing horses. These people have an amazing way of life and despite the fact that they are nomadic they seem to be surprisingly wealthy. If you get a chance, watch a little bit of this video from National Geographic.

Ok, someone recently asked me about this, so I decided a Weekly Word on it might not be a bad idea. A mallard is a species of duck, specifically Anas platyrhynchos. It is the most common species of duck and tends to live in close proximity to man, so if you’ve seen a duck, in all likelihood it was a mallard. The male mallard (known as a drake) has a gray back, a brown chest patch, an iridescent green head and a yellow beak. The female (known as a hen) is a mottled brown with a dark mottled beak. Both have bright orange legs. During molting (when the birds shed and replace their feathers) the male mallard can look somewhat like the female. When this happens the male is said to be in eclipse plumage.

Most domestic ducks, the kind you see on farms, are descended from the mallard. Domestic ducks tend to be much larger than their wild relatives and are usually white. Sometimes domestic ducks escape into the wild and you will see them alongside the wild ducks in your local park. They’re easy to spot because they are usually much larger and if not white they will have white patches here and there. This coloration is known as piebald. Domestics sometimes breed with their wild counterparts producing smaller piebald ducks.

There is another rarer duck known as the American Black Duck (Anas rubripes) which you may see alongside the mallards in your local park. These ducks look so much like mallards that you might be surprised to find that they are in fact a distinct species. The male American Black Duck looks much like a female mallard only darker and with a yellow beak. The female American Black Duck looks like a darker version of the mallard female. Both mallards and blacks have a purple/blue patch on their wings, but the mallard’s is edged in white, while the black duck’s is not. The American Black Duck does hybridize with the mallard but the tendency for hybrid females to be less fertile is threatening the Black Duck population.

The following photos were taken in a park near where I live in New Jersey.

Mallard female

Mallard male

Mallard male in eclipse plumage

This mallard female is most likely the result of a cross between a wild duck and a domestic duck

Male American Black Duck (note the yellow beak)

Because the American Black Duck is becoming rarer, researchers who study the species will place identifying bands on them in order to track them.

We have all heard the word, but do we really know what it means? It certainly has a negative connotation, but for me this word was a little fuzzy – so I looked it up in my trusty Dictionary of Difficult Words.

Here is what I think is the typical use of the word with it’s negative connotation:

excessively complicated administrative system

but there is another meaning, probably less known:

a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by appointed or career officials rather than by elected representatives.

Below is the passage from Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley.

“The landed oligarchy which arose in England differed from the landed aristocracy of continental Europe in the three points already mentioned: (1) it got control of the government; (2) it was not opposed by a professional army, a bureaucracy, or a professional judicial system, but, on the contrary, it took over the control of these adjuncts of government itself, generally serving without pay, and making access to these positions difficult for outsiders by making such access expensive; and (3) it obtained complete control of the land as well as political, religious, and social control of the villages.“

Most people will be familiar with definition #1 of this word (from The Free Online Dictionary :

a. A building or complex in which units of property, such as apartments, are owned by individuals and common parts of the property, such as the grounds and building structure, are owned jointly by the unit owners.

b. A unit in such a complex.

But in my studies of history, I have also come across another meaning, which is less known, but very useful conceptually. It is definition #2 of this word:

a. Joint sovereignty, especially joint rule of territory by two or more nations, or a plan to achieve it: “The allies would fear that they were pawns in a superpower condominium” New Republic.

b. A politically dependent territory.

Below is the passage from Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley, where I first encountered this word used this way.

“The extravagances of the Khedive Ismail (1863-1879), which had compelled the sale of his Suez Canal shares, led ultimately to the creation of an Anglo-French condominium to manage the Egyptian foreign debt and to the deposition of the khedive by his suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey. The condominium led to disputes and finally to open fighting between Egyptian nationalists and Anglo-French forces. When the French refused to join the British in a joint bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, the condominium was broken, and Britain reorganized the country in such a fashion that, while all public positions were held by Egyptians, a British army was in occupation, British “advisers” controlled all the chief governmental posts, and a British “resident,” Sir Evelyn Baring (known as Lord Cromer after 1892), controlled all finances and really ruled the country until 1907.”

From The Free Online Dictionary:

1. One of a row of upright pointed sticks forming a fence; a pale.
2. Pointed sticks used in making fences; pales.
3. A fence made of pales or pickets.

From Asimov’s Chronology of the World:

The English established themselves at first only about the area of Dublin. Other parts of Ireland remained outside the English orbit for a long time. Indeed, eventually, the Dublin area was fenced in with palings to keep out the unsubdued Irish. It is from this that the expression arose ‘beyond the pale,’ meaning ‘outside the accepted limits of polite society.’

Although I easily guessed this word from the context in which it appeared, and would perhaps recognize it in many contexts, I cannot say I would be able to recall it while writing. Notice the irony of the word’s double meaning.

From Oxford American Dictionaries:

1. An even toed ungulate mammal that chews the cud regurgitated from its rumen. The ruminants comprise the cattle, sheep, antelope, deer, giraffes, and their relatives.
2. A contemplative person; a person given to meditation.

From George Orwell’s 1984:

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless.

In my studies I often come across words that I have heard before but I do not know the precise definition of. In many cases, the context gives me a good idea, but I find that even with words that I am very familiar with and use in my own speech, it’s worth looking up the definition, especially when the word is used in an unfamiliar context. For that reason, I started a little notebook into which I put these new words. I also bought a small dictionary called The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words that I carry in my pack with me. It doesn’t have every word that I look for, but it has most of them and it’s relatively small for carrying.

It occurred to me that if I don’t know these words, probably there are others who don’t too. So I’m going to share my new words, including a sentence or so from the book I’m reading, probably about once a week. I hope you enjoy this new series. By all means, if you have other examples, please post them in the comments section.