Word of the Day
atoll
noun
a ring-shaped coral reef or a string of closely spaced small coral islands, enclosing or nearly enclosing a shallow lagoon.
More about atoll
Atoll “a ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a shallow lagoon” is an adaptation by way of French from Divehi atoḷu. Divehi is the official language of the Maldives, an archipelago country in the northern Indian Ocean comprising more than two dozen atolls, and belongs to the Indic group of Indo-European languages. Atoḷu may derive from Sanskrit ántara “within,” a distant cognate of interior (via Latin) and entero- “inside” (via Ancient Greek). An alternative theory is that atoḷu derives from aḍal “a sinking reef,” which is a term from Malayalam, a Dravidian language unrelated to the Indo-European language family. Atoll was first recorded in English circa 1620.
how is atoll used?
For the Marshall Islands, climate change isn’t some distant, future danger: It is already wreaking havoc across the Pacific country’s more than 1,100 low-lying atolls …. As sea levels rise around the islands, bigger waves will flood farther inland than ever before. If enough of these waves hit in succession, flooded saltwater will irreparably taint the islands’ freshwater supplies …. one of the Marshall Islands’ atolls—and potentially thousands of other islands—could become uninhabitable when sea levels rise by 16 inches, which could happen as soon as midcentury.
In the film “The Island of the Colorblind,” Sacks tells this story while visiting the small Micronesian atoll of Pingelap, where an unusually large portion of the population is affected by complete achromatopsia, or total color blindness. Whereas an estimated one in forty thousand people worldwide are afflicted with this condition, among the Pingelapese, by some estimates, it’s closer to one in ten—a contained community of people who see the world in shades of gray.
neurodiversity
noun
the variation and differences in neurological structure and function that exist among human beings, especially when viewed as being normal and natural rather than pathological.
More about neurodiversity
Neurodiversity “the variation in neurological structure and function among human beings” is a recent coinage based on the combining form neuro- and the noun diversity. Neuro- “nerve” derives from Ancient Greek neûron “tendon, nerve,” which is distantly related to Latin nervus “tendon” and may be related to English sinew. Diversity comes from Latin dīversitās “difference,” from the verb dīvertere “to divert.” The ultimate source of dīvertere is the same as that for the recent Word of the Day selection verst: the Proto-Indo-European root wert- “to turn.” Neurodiversity was first recorded in English in the late 1990s.
how is neurodiversity used?
Respecting neurodiversity means challenging assumptions about what intelligence is and how to measure it. It means reminding ourselves that just because a person can’t speak doesn’t mean they aren’t listening. It means not asking someone to prove their intelligence before talking to them in an age-appropriate way or offering them intellectually stimulating opportunities. It means remembering that there can be a huge disconnect between mind and body, and that a person’s actions may not reflect their intentions, especially when they are overwhelmed or upset.
While diversity metrics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability are widely tracked among law firms and legal departments, the use of neurodiversity metrics as part of their DEI initiatives currently lags far behind …. It would behoove employers to implement more neurodiversity tracking. Neurodiverse employees often perform better and more efficiently at certain mathematical and computer tasks, which could be beneficial regarding legal tech usage. They can voice creative ideas at meetings and present new ways to approach problem-solving that their neurotypical counterparts may have overlooked. To achieve true diversity, tracking this important metric is essential.
evanesce
verb (used without object)
to disappear gradually; vanish; fade away.
More about evanesce
Evanesce “to disappear gradually” comes from the Latin verb ēvānēscere “to disappear,” from the prefix ex- (also ē-) “out of, from” and the verb vānēscere “to fade away.” We already learned about the prefix ex- as part of the recent Word of the Day selection eradicate, while vānēscere derives from the adjective vānus “empty, vain” and the inchoative suffix -ēscere. Vānus is also the source of words such as vanity and vanish, and -ēscere roughly means “to become, start to be,” as we learned from recent Word of the Day selections deliquesce and iridescent, both of which are based on this suffix. Evanesce was first recorded in English circa 1820.
how is evanesce used?
She disappears into the morning air, over a single hill on the far end of Main Street—over the hill, getting consumed by the large homes and the enormous trees that fill that part of town, swallowed up and digested, so that before I know it, as I stand, feet frozen to concrete in the middle of the street, she’s no longer there .… [I] watch as the woman goes, watch as she evanesces over the hill and into the morning’s fog.
Kramer’s book was the source for some of the feeling that the new wave of antidepressants might turn us into other people, people whom we might not want to be. This was the crude set of questions now posed: if Prozac and the other SSRIs did away with ordinary unease, what was left of you per se? What else might evanesce along with sadness? Realism? Profundity? Scepticism? Irony? The milder, more productive kinds of melancholy? The very need to think or write or make art?