Word of the Day
disjecta membra
plural noun
scattered members; disjointed portions or parts.
More about disjecta membra
Disjecta membra “disjointed portions or parts” is a term from Latin that is altered from the phrase disjectī membra poētae “limbs of a dismembered poet,” which appears in the writings of Horace (known to his Roman contemporaries as Quintus Horatius Flaccus). The reason for the spelling change is simple grammar: in the original Latin, the possessive adjective disjectī “dismembered” matches the possessive noun poētae “of a poet.” The endings are different because poētae is irregular; though it looks feminine with its -ae ending, it is in fact a masculine noun. With poētae removed from the phrase, disjectī changes to match the neuter subject noun membra, becoming disjecta. Even in modern Spanish, the feminine-looking noun poeta “poet” is still masculine, and typical masculine -o adjectives modify it. Disjecta membra was first recorded in English in the early 18th century.
how is disjecta membra used?
One gets the notion that these boys are starting again from the beginning, with the separate tone and the separate sonority. Notes are strewn about like disjecta membra; there is an end to continuity in the old sense and an end of thematic relationships. In this music one waits to hear what will happen next without the slightest idea what will happen, or why what happened did happen once it has happened.
As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the disjecta membra of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
paludal
adjective
of or relating to marshes.
More about paludal
Paludal “of or relating to marshes” is based on Latin palūs (stem palūd-) “swamp, marsh,” plus the adjectival suffix -al. Palūs has one of several possible origins, inspiring significant debate among linguists. One common hypothesis is that palūs originally meant “submerged, filled (with water)” and derives from an Indo-European root meaning “to fill; many,” which would make it related to Latin plēnus “full” (as in plenty) and plēre “to fill” (as in complete) as well as cognate to English fill because of Grimm’s law; learn more from the recent Words of the Day pruinose and cordiform. Alternatively, palūs could be connected to terms related to movement of water, from Latin pluere “to rain” (compare French pleuvoir and Spanish llover) and Latin plōrāre “to weep” (compare French pleurer and Spanish llorar) to English fleet, float, flood, flotsam, and flow. Paludal was first recorded in English in the 1810s.
how is paludal used?
A church, an ancient heap of flints, rises up, cavernous, through mist and marshes. The “Cathedral of the Marshes,” they call it. This is Blythburgh on England’s windswept Suffolk coast. The landscape here is oppressive, bleak. And what man once made is quickly being lost to nature: sea erodes land …. Victorian antiquaries restored the place to something of its former glory. But today, few come to worship in Blythburgh’s paludal “cathedral.”
The land we were standing on was a project technically known as BA-39 …. BA-39 had proved, not that further proof was really necessary, what enough pipes and pumps and diesel fuel can accomplish. Nearly a million cubic yards of sediment had made the five-mile journey, resulting in the creation—or, to be more accurate, the re-creation—of a hundred and eighty-six paludal acres. Here were all the benefits of flooding without the messy side effects…
euxinia
noun
anoxia, or depletion of oxygen, in a body of water, along with a high level of hydrogen sulfide, a condition toxic to aquatic organisms.
More about euxinia
Euxinia “anoxia in a body of water” is the namesake of the Latin term Pontus Euxīnus “the Black Sea,” where euxinia is often found in the deeper water. The Latin name is adapted from Ancient Greek Pontos Euxeînos, literally “hospitable sea,” but the story does not end there. It appears that the euxeînos portion, meaning “hospitable” and composed of eu- “good” and xeînos “foreign” (a variant of xénos; compare English xeno-), was originally a euphemism for Pontos Axeînos “inhospitable sea.” Alternatively, the meaning of the axeînos element could be folk etymology, that is, incorrectly derived from an unrelated term; the name for the Black Sea in Avestan, an ancient Indo-European language of the Iranian plateau, contained the element axšaēna- “blue, dark,” and speakers of Ancient Greek could have misinterpreted this word as their own axeînos. Euxinia was first recorded in English in the early 1950s.
how is euxinia used?
The result is that euxinia may be more widespread in the present-day oceans than previously thought …. The midwater oceanic oxygen minimum layers become especially important where they intersect the continental slope. The combination of suboxic overlying water and sulfide-producing sediments could result, in itself, in the development of extensive areas of oceanic euxinia. This does not seem to be happening at present, although it may have occurred in the past and, if the current global warming trends continue, may occur in the near future.
“After oxygen in the ocean was used up to decompose organic material, microbes started to ‘breathe’ sulfate and produced hydrogen sulfide, a gas that smells like rotten eggs and is poisonous to animals,” said UC Riverside Earth system modeler Dominik Hülse. As ocean photosynthesizers—the microbes and plants that form the base of the food chain—rotted, other microbes quickly consumed the oxygen and left little of it for larger organisms. In the absence of oxygen, microbes consumed sulfate then expelled toxic, reeking hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, creating an even more extreme condition called euxinia.