tonne pronounced “tun”
n.
a metric ton; 1,000 kg

tonsillitic - a useless adjective contrived from “tonsil”

tope 1
vt., vi.
toped, top4ing 5Fr toper, to accept the stakes in gambling (prob. < ODu topp, touch): E meaning given here is prob. from the custom of drinking to the conclusion of the wager6 [Archaic] to drink (alcoholic liquor) in large amounts and often

tope 2
n.
5Hindi top, ult. < Sans stdpa, a mound, tope6 a Buddhist shrine in the form of a dome with a cupola

tope3 7tbp8
n.
5< ? Cornish6 a small, gray, European requiem shark (Galeorhinus galeus)

topgallant
adj.
1 designating or of a mast, sail, spar, etc. situated above the topmast and below the royal mast on a sailing ship
2 higher than the adjoining parts of the ship: said of a rail, deck, etc.
n.
a topgallant mast, sail, etc.

topiarist - a horticulturist specializing in shaping shrubbery into artistic shapes

topical
adj.
1 of a particular place; local
2 of, using, or arranged by topics, subjects, or headings
3 having to do with topics of the day; of current or local interest !topical allusions in literature"
4 Med. of or for a particular part of the body; esp., designating or by local application !a topical remedy"
top#i[cal4i[ty 73kal4! tc8
n.
top$i[cal[ly
adv.

topodeme - a word used by botanists in describing relationship of groups of plants
“to various groups of closely related plants (eg, gamodeme, topodeme, ecodeme) (Gilmour and ... arise that expose the uncertainties of the working-definition of the ...

topology
n.,
pl. 3gies 5< Gr topos, a place (see TOPIC) + 3LOGY6
1 a topographical study of a specific object, entity, place, etc. !the topology of the mind"
2 Math. the study of those properties of geometric figures that remain unchanged even when under distortion, so long as no surfaces are torn, as with a M;bius strip
3 Med. the topographic anatomy of a body region
top#o[log$ic or top[o[log[i[cal 7t9p#! l9j4i k!l8
adj.
top#o[log$i[cal[ly
adv.
to[pol$o[gist
n.

toponomastic - pertaining to place names

toponymic
adj.
1 of toponyms
2 having to do with toponymy Also top#o[nym$i[cal

topos
n.,
pl. to[poi 73p.8
1 a common or recurring topic, theme, subject, etc.
2 a literary convention or formula

torero - bullfighter

toreutic
adj.
5Gr toreutikos < toreuein, to work in relief, bore < IE base *ter3 > THROW6 designating or of work done in relief or intaglio, esp. on metal, as by embossing, chasing, or engraving

tormented

Potentilla erecta (L)
Synonyms: Potentilla tormentilla, common tormentil, bloodroot, septfoil, thormantle, biscuits, shepherd's knapperty, shepherd's knot, English sarsaparilla, red root

tormentor

torpid - sleepy

torpidity

Torquemada To[m;s de Sp. Dominican monk: first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition
a jolly fellow who enjoyed seeing people being burned at the stake

torr - a physics unit, eponymic of Torricelli, reating to measure of barometric pressure

torridity, torture, totally, totem, tottered,

toucanet - a tropical bird

toupee = a wig

towereing

towser - formerly a common name for a dog

toxicant - a poison

trabant = an East German vehicle of the 50s, not worth the powder to blow it to hell

trabeated - having horizontal beams or lintels instead of arches

tracer, traceried, tracheitis

tractrix - a mathematical curve unknown to my dictionary.. Here’s URL if you want to see it: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tractrix.html

'tonne' pronounced 'tun'--and we've talked a little about this.

Faldage recently observed to me that a ton was only 40 bags of 50-pound dogfood, or something like that, when I looked at the small amount of gravel my uncle had left in the lane--two tons, in fact, not one. It just didn't look like very much gravel. But 80 bags of 50-pound dogfood really wouldn't have been very much...gravel, if you follow my thinking.

Dear WW: You'd think a tonne was a lot if you tried to do what Darwin says the Indians in mines of Chile were doing. They had to carry over two hundred pounds of ore up 800 feet, with only notches in beams for foot holds, and do a dozen loads a day.

The reality of a ton came to me at a baseball game. It was the final game of a championship series of a summer collegiate league. There was no chance of postponing the game; the kids had to get back to school. A brief but torrential rain came through and left the field a mess so they dragged out what I tend to call kitty litter, but which goes by a variety of brand names; a water absorbing granulated clay mixture. It came in 50-lb bags and they dumped 40 of them on the field. I did the math.

Oh, funny, Faldage, and not surprising, that I changed your bagged material in my mind from kitty litter to dog food! Ha! So terribly, horribly typical of me.

wwh:

200 pounds straight up? Omigosh. That's really unbelievable. It makes me think of the opening scene in "The Hours" in which we see Virginia Woolf put that big stone into her coat pocket--and I assume she'd put others there--before moving on out deeply into the falling off riverbed.

carry over two hundred pounds of ore up 800 feet

Bet they had oreful blisters

Dear Musick: I'll bet they had calluses as thick as my moccasin soles. In English mines they often had the shafts
sufficiently vertical to use a hoist, in the beginning with horses as motive power. That's why autos are rated by horsepower.(550 foot pounds per second) So the Indians were lifting
about a third of a horsepower. I figure that the mines in Chile just didn't have a vertical shaft, so a hoist couldn't be used.

Do people in the Americas and the top half of the world talk about doing a ton, meaning 100 mph?

Bingley

doing a ton, meaning 100 mph?

I don't believe I've heard it used specifically that way, no.

I goofed in my estimate of the Indian's horsepower. I fotgot to add his weight. So assuming he weighed at least
150 pounds. He would have been putting out 0.63 horsepower.

Dear Bingley: I have heard of "lead-footed" drivers, but not the expression you mentioned. When I was small, the expression for someone driving too fast was "forty miles an hour". For purposes of exaggeration "going like sixty".
You didn't expect anyone to believe that.
My father had a six cylinder Peerless, with one of the first broad bore, short stroking engines.I remember his going 96 mph on a long straight stretch, when I was perhaps ten years old. Some of the Stanley Steamers at that time could go faster, but I never had a ride in one. Allegedly the builder offered a cash reward to anyone who dared floor and hold the accelerator on one of those. No internal combustion engine of the time could match it. But it took several hours to get the steam pressure up, and you had to be sure you could get pure water for the boiler before you had gone very far.

In reply to:

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So the Indians were lifting
about a third of a horsepower.

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wwh, you know math bores me and that I'm entirely too laisez-faire in attitude toward math--but:

What about the 'per second' part of the equation and the Indian? We don't have any information, do we, about how rapidly these Indians hauled those loads up, do we? We know how many loads in a day--but we don't know exactly the amount of time, do we? I mean, we know loads per day, but we don't know exactly how long it took to get one load up, do we?

Dear WW: Imagine walking up stairs. A step per second is about right, I think. There is no advantage to doing it either much slower or much more rapidly. If you count "one thousand, two thousand, three thousand.." , the counts are pretty close to a count per second.
I think the Indians could go up a step each second, and each step could be a foot high. So two hundred pounds of ore, plus a hundred and fifty pounds of Indian, rising one foot per second is 350/550, or .63 horsepower. Hey Bean, where are you when we need you?

Down in the Grand Canyon of the Colorada in (of course) Arizona, there is a tale of some Havasupai, I believe, Indians who carried a piano down to the bottom and *ran back up afterwards.

regulareyly, a there is a contest/race to the top of empire state building.
the winner this year is a fireman (from somewhere, not NY) (again-firemen regularly win the contest) who went from floor 1 to 86 in 12 minutes. about 10 feet to a floor, and a few utility floors, (and the first floor has a triple height ceiling) too, so 900 feet or so. stairs are about 7.25 high each, but winner reguarly take them 2 at time..

Oh, of troy! What a terrific thing to know about NY! What a great and somehow very funny race to know about! This is as good as the Volvo Ballet, was it?

It really made the news big, a few years ago... there was a fireman(NYC) who had been injured on the job, and wanted to return to work, doing admnistrative work (actually doing fire safety inspections) but he keep being denied.. then he won the race up to the top of empire state building.. (he was fit, and could walk, he had injured his upper back and couldn't carry anything)...

well soon after winning the contest, he was back at work, instead of staying home collecting full salery on disablity.

everyone is always keen to cover stories about people who scam and cheat and abuse disability, this was memorable because he had to scheme to get off disability!

Dear WW: if a 150 lb firewman climbed 900 feet in 720 seconds, he had done 135,000 foot pounds of work in 720 seconds, or 187.5 foot pounds per second. 187.5 divided by 550 equals .34 horsepower.
Of course the Indians carrying 200 pounds almost certainly had to rest a couple times on the way up. But they did it twelve times a day, so it was still remarkable.

To both of troy and wwh:

These are truly amazing tales, both of them.

Specifically to wwh:

You speak of mathematics in such a terrific way that I wish you'd been all of my math teachers. I think I may have come one day to have worked calculations.

At least--at the very least--I do read what you write with interest although I'm not quite tempted enough to sit down with a pencil and paper and try what you naturally do myself. Many of the threads I read here I just pass over as being not-so-terribly interesting--but your mathematical observations I always pause over with real interest. You're a very good writer.

Dear WW: thank you for your excessively kind words. At math I'm just barely out of the dunce class. My older brother could do problems in his head almost instantly that took me five minutes on paper. I had a physics class with prof named Newton Henry Black (three physicists in one name)and we had a dozen such problems every day for a year. Enough repetition that dunce as I am at math, I can still do that kind of problem. But not in my head.

If you're just barely out of the dunce class in math, wwh, then someone's trying to locate me trying to locate the entrance to the class--and I'm not even close to the school.

Well, I did have a special motivation. I knew that I couldn't get into medical school without science courses with considerable math involved. The only thing i didn't have was statistics, and I sure wish I had had that.

In reply to:

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and I sure with I had had that.

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And that's the first time I've heard you do that, wwh!

Dear WW: I stopped lisping. and changed the first "with" to "without".