My family is fostering a 5-week-old kitten this week, and the adorable little thing got me thinking about the two uses for the word "litter" as it relates to the feline set. First, it refers to the set of kittens that the momma cat births: "Rum-Tum-Tugger was part of a litter of five kittens". Also, it is used to refer to the sandy/clayey material in which those kittens (even at the age of five weeks!) deposit their leavings (usually used in the compund form "kitty litter" or "cat litter").
Are those two terms used worldwide? And are they etymologically related?
I'll just sit here tending to my gnawed ankles until you respond...
Quite apart from the cat connection: I often hesitate about spelling literature with double "t" - as is correct in French. And then I start to reflect on connections between litter and certain "literature".
Good One!
Unless you're going for the play on words…
The children's books genre?
Never being one to let a geological thread go past....
The "sandy/clayey material" to which you refer is attapulgite - a clay which, by benefit of its molecular / structural arrangement, has superlative water adsorption qualities. Not only handy for feline effluent, but a common curative for diarrhoea in humans.
stales
cure for the effect (i.e., used externally) or for the condition (internally) ??
They are certainly used in Britain - for both senses.
re:cure for the effect (i.e., used externally) or for the condition (internally) ??
having a senior moment Rhuby? i remember we had a discussion on kaolin:
Main Entry: ka·o·lin
Pronunciation: 'kA-&-l&n
Function: noun
Etymology: French kaolin, from Gaoling hill in China
: a fine usually white clay that is used in ceramics and refractories, as a filler or extender, and in medicine especially as an adsorbent in the treatment of diarrhea
the Kao (in kaopectate-- a common over the counter cure for diarrhea.) the other half Pectin, is an fruit gum, (commonest in apples). Pectin can be purchased in US grocery stores under the brand name 'Sure-Jel'. its used by home 'canners' to make sure their fruit jellies and Jams 'set up'
of course, stales confused the hell out the situation by using another name for kaolin --but his description, a clay that absorbs water, and is used as a medicine for diarrhea, fits kaolin!
maybe he can elaborate on all the differnt clay compound used this way..
(eating dirt, can sometimes be a pica-or sometimes a sound medical practice!)
ALL my moments are senior, these days, helen
I was, of course, being faecetious
ALL my moments are senior, these days, helen
Beats the hell out of the alternative Rhuby!
Helen:
During that discussion did we touch upon the irony of the huge deposits of kaolin clay underneath the site of the infamous Andersonville Prison in Tennessee?
For you non-USners:
Andersonville was a POW camp for Union soldiers unlucky enough to have been captured within its catchment area. Most of the inmates died of various diseases, principally diarrhea. And all this while sitting directly on top of a mineral which could have saved most of their lives.
The Confederate officer in charge of the prison was convicted of war crimes after the war and was hanged. So far as I know he was the only Confederate to suffer that fate, though Cantrell and Mosby and pretty much all of the Kansas terrorists and a few others probably deserved it.
The people of Andersonville, anxious to put the Civil War behind them (not!) have a ceremony on the anniversary of the officer's birthday, during which they do their level worst to continue the cultural division between North and South.
TEd
no that factoid didn't come up. my children's great great grandfather survived andersonville, (he lost a leg to gangrene, but was luckier than most and did die from it!)
he returned to northern NH-Coos county --about an hours drive north of MT Washington-- North of the city of Berlin (BUR-lin) North enough to be the last incorporated township in NH--where he had a half dozen more kids while eking a living out a a farmer!
his youngest daughter, Bertha, was my kids great grandmother, and she was alive (till 103) but only healthy till 98--but long enough that my kids were becoming teens!
they listened to her talk about her childhood and her father.. and for them the civil war as real.. (even though she never told war stories, she just would remind them that he had only one leg, cause he lost his leg in the war.)
i sometimes resented that all of our family vacations were to see relatives in Northern NH (all the time) but i do admit, coming from a family that is filled with generation after generation of wander lust on my material grandmothers side, it was good for kids to learn about their fathers mothers family..
(a family that shared a name with a regular contributor here.. so my kids and her kids, are at some level, cousins! its likely to be 20th cousins, several times removed.. but still, its a small world!)
And did anyone in charge at Hellmira get prosecuted for war crimes?
faecetious
Is that Brit spelling or felicitous typo, Rhuby? *ahem*
PS My 79-year-old mother likes to refer to senior moments as "intellectual interludes."
Even though, as a newcomer I've already posted a couple of
typos--Can't help asking if Helen's mama's mama was always a
material girl?
Jo, mama!--she must have been! i had to back and look and didn't see it the first time anyway. maternal grandmother..
maternal grandmother.. (now my mother was a material girl.. a seamstress, and a clothes horse in one!
The Confederate officer in charge of the prison was convicted of war crimes after the war and was hanged. So far as I know he was the only Confederate to suffer that fate, though Cantrell and Mosby and pretty much all of the Kansas terrorists and a few others probably deserved it.
There were a lot - North and South - who committed crimes similar to those which the Americans (sorry, the International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremburg) gleefully hanged Germans for between 1946 and 1948.
Wirz was actually Swiss. His sense of duty kept him at Andersonville after the rest of the guards - mostly very young boys and superannuated old soldiers - had fled, knowing perfectly well that they would not be smiled upon by the advancing Unionists. It was, at least in part, a bum rap. Wirz had had nothing to work with. There is a lot of evidence that he pleaded repeatedly with Richmond both for them to stop sending prisoners and to provide more resources for the prisoners who were already there. But Richmond had its own problems and, as we all know, the conditions at Andersonville were probably no worse than conditions for the vast majority of Confederate solders in the field in the latter stages of the war. By 1865 there were absolutely no resources to be had: the Confederacy was plumb tuckered out (see, the original meaning!).
The Unionist officer in charge of the execution said to Wirz on the scaffold: "Sir, this is the worst duty I have ever had to perform". Wirz replied that he didn't think it was all that great, either. As well he might.
Talk about picking up trivia!
[Edit: Memory recovery!] Actually Wirz said something like "I am being killed for doing my duty". Can't remember the exact words, but you can see how he might have been a bit upset by it all ...
faecetious
Is that Brit spelling or felicitous typo, Rhuby? *ahem*Neither
(and my "interludes" are not prezactly what I'd call "intellectual" !!!)
"...of course, stales confused the hell out the situation by using another name for kaolin --but his description, a clay that absorbs water, and is used as a medicine for diarrhea, fits kaolin!
Helen, Helen, Helen....
Kaolinite ain't Attapulgite (Kitty Litter).
And Attapulgite ain't Kaolinite.
They are both clays - and hence they are both silicates.
However, Kaolinite is aluminium silicate hydroxide and Attapulgite is a hydrated magnesium silicate.
Kaolinite the mineral lends its name to a group of 3 minerals with the same chemistry, but different moecular structure. The others are Dickite and Nacrite.
So now ya know!!
stales
Ok--However, Kaolinite is aluminium silicate hydroxide and Attapulgite is a hydrated magnesium silicate.
thanks for the clarification.. now, since you mentioned its (attapulgite) is use internally for medicinal purposes.. WHere? kaopectite is pretty common in US (and i think the same stuff is sold in UK.. is attapulgite used in OTC remedies, or just in prescription stuff? is a more absorbent? or less..
and since this is a once again active topic, i got to tell you, i was disappointed no one picked up on pica.
i knew the word, and i thought most here would too, --but as i typed it, i wondered about it. why is eating dirt (or ice, a pica i have) called a pica? what has eating dirt have to do with a type font?
well YCLIU, i did..
Well, do tell. I'm sure we will devour every word of your explanation!
I think "pica" refers to an unusual pattern of eating anything that isn't a food; ice chips, most characteristically. Supposed to be a clue to iron-deficiency anemia, which in some wisdom-of-the-body-ish way might explain a craving for clay or dirt (although it says nothing about why ice chips). Had your blood count checked lately? Oh well. Another good theory shot to pieces...
yes wofa, a pica is any 'abnormal' eating habit, and the most common one is dirt, but why a pica?
its from the latin name for a blackbird/magpie-- who eat (or at least pick up in their mouth and carry away) many sorts of things.. so a pica is to eat like a blackbird/magpie, and to eat non-food items!
i didn't bother to look up pica as type font.. perhaps someone else will.
sometimes its seems we have discussed every word there is.. but then, sometimes we are just jaded.. most of us here knew the term pica (as an abnormal eating habit) and we let it slide by..we have to open our eyes, and find new and interesting words..
Pica as a type size is from what purports to be the same Latin word but something to do with the mass, apparently because that part of the mass used that size type. Or something like that.
Not being an adept "Make A Shorter Link" AWADer, I trust the following doesn't create too much mayhem:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/uspdi/202076.html#BrandsAnyways, here is the answer re Attapulgite for human oral ingestion. Everything you want to know. Including the brand names which, out of respect for those that don't like commercial references in AWAD posts, I will encourage you to seek for yourselves. Helen did however mention Kaopectate....well, that's on the list. Both the Advanced Formula and Maximum Strength!! Why, I dunno. I just assume it's also got Kaolinite in it - or that they are being free n easy with the use of "kao" (if nothing else, it's use in the product name ["KO" praps?] has more impact than "atta").
stales
It was the orders of service which you refer to in terms of pica. The "pica" was the size of the initial capital, standardised on 1/6th of an inch (or thereabouts). It was purely arbitrary until type was "standardised" for newspapers. Now, a pica is a standard size. I still have a pica ruler from my 15 years as a printer ... sad bastard, aren't I?
sad bastard
Hey, Pfranz. I have a slide rule. And the batteries are still good.
Whit were th' battries fer, Faldo?
Th' battries were fer ironic counterpoint, Pfranz.