Word of the Day
More about ichnite
Ichnite “a fossil footprint” is a compound of the combining form ichno- “track, footstep” and the suffix -ite, which is often found in terms for minerals and fossils. Ichno- derives from Ancient Greek íchnos “track,” which is of uncertain origin, though hypotheses that lack wide acceptance include connections to Ancient Greek oíkhomai “to go away, leave, disappear,” to various Slavic words related to bodily wounds and cavities, and to Ancient Greek aikhmḗ “spear point.” Perhaps the best-known derivation of íchnos, for those of you with a passion for Ancient Greek literature, is Ichneutae, the name of a play by Sophocles that is also known variously as Searchers or Trackers in English. Ichnite was first recorded in English in the early 1850s.
how is ichnite used?
In most cases, a fossil footprint, also known as an ichnite, represents evidence that has not moved over time while a bone or tooth could have been transported to the site under study and therefore be out of context .… A footprint or ichnite can reflect the basic shape of the dinosaur’s foot, the number of toes, and to some extent, the mechanics of how the dinosaur carried its weight.
Just as trackways consisting of true footprints in many cases may end in a particular ichnite for reasons that are not obvious, … they may be so faint that the researcher has difficulties drawing accurate print outlines …. The basic features of the ichnites in La Rioja are simple. Tetrapod footprints made by turtles, pterosaurs, crocodiles, and dinosaurs have been found.
pinyin
noun
a system for transliterating Chinese into the Latin alphabet: introduced in 1958 and adopted as the official system of romanization by the People's Republic of China in 1979.
More about pinyin
Pinyin “a system for transliterating Chinese into the Latin alphabet” is a borrowing from Mandarin Chinese pīnyīn, a compound of pīn “to arrange, classify” and yīn “sound, pronunciation.” Because Chinese uses a writing system that is logographic (using symbols to indicate words) there are numerous methods that linguists have developed to romanize Chinese, that is, to transliterate the language into the Roman alphabet. While pinyin is the most popular today, the Wade–Giles and Yale systems were widespread in China throughout the 20th century. With place names specifically, the so-called “postal spellings” were used to render names such as Peking and Nanking into English. After pinyin’s adoption as the official standard of romanization in 1979, a wave of transliteration swept through China, and the most recognizable effects were the changes in place names, such as the switch from Peking and Nanking to their pinyin versions Běijīng and Nánjīng. Pinyin was first recorded in English in the mid-20th century.
how is pinyin used?
Pinyin, which was adopted by China in 1958, gave readers unfamiliar with Chinese characters a crucial tool to understand how to pronounce them. These characters do not readily disclose information on how to say them aloud—but with such a system as Pinyin, those characters more easily and clearly yield their meaning when converted into languages like English and Spanish, which use the Roman alphabet. While it was not the first system to Romanize Chinese, Pinyin has become the most widely accepted.
As Beijing welcomed 2022, residents in the Chinese capital noticed a subtle shift taking place in the city’s subway: on signs, the English word “station” has been replaced with “Zhan,” the pinyin, or romanized version, of the Chinese character. And in some cases, English station names such as Olympic Park and Terminal 2 of the Beijing airport have become “Aolinpike Gongyuan” and “2 Hao Hangzhanlou”—though the English translations are still displayed in brackets underneath.
telluric
adjective
of or proceeding from the earth or soil.
More about telluric
Telluric “of or relating to the earth” derives from the Latin noun tellūs (stem tellūr-) “earth.” Much as Latin had two words for “star”—sidus and stella, as featured in the etymology for recent Word of the Day circumstellar—Latin had two words as well for “earth”: tellūs and terra. Just as stella became the more productive of the two and is the source of modern Romance words for “star,” so was terra preferred over tellūs. While tellūs is the root of a few technical terms in English, such as the element tellurium, terra can be found today in English terms such as terrain, territory, and extraterrestrial as well as in French terre and Spanish tierra. Telluric was first recorded in English in the 1830s.
how is telluric used?
There came to me the cracked, halting voices of the water drawers as they returned from the river, laden, and I set down my books and listened to the broken rhythm of their gait, the thud of their walking sticks, the telluric drone of shifting plates of granite.