Nidiculous. Refers to chicks that remain in the nest after hatching. Chicks that leave the nest shortly after hatching are referred to as nidifugous. This distinction is crucial when the chicks reach 18 years of age and ought to be off to university or perhaps to the Marines.
these are both words that I have never heard, although OneLook has a different spelling for nidicolous. makes it not so ridiculous... <smile>
and the Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't have either word at all. what's the take on nidi?
eta, so you want the nidi-gritty, eh?
heh.
well, if I'd read one more tab on my browser, I would have seen that nidi=nidus=nest.
tweet.
Latin nidi- (from nidus nest) + English -fugous (as in lucifugous) M-W
fugere means to flee, of course
colere, to inhabit (nidicolous is the correct spelling)
so, a telescope would be lucicolous?
... I got the whole thing from Johnnie Godwin on another thread.
There is also cavernicolous (cave-dweller), from the Lat. "caverna", terricolous (living on the ground or in the soil) from the Lat. "terra" (soil or Earth), arenicolous (living in the sand), from Lat. "arena" (sand) and my personal favourite arboricolous (tree-dwelling).
-colous terms are often used in biology to describe the habitats where certain creatures can be found, or their living quarters: the most heat-resistant creature on earth is thought to be a tubicolous polychaete worm called "Pompeii worm" found in the deep-sea hydrothermal vents of the Pacific Ocean. It lives in a calcareous tube, hence the name.
Marianna has just revealed to me that I am condominicolous.
> condominicolous
yikes! is she a prophyt?
so literal-- i would have said celulocolous..
i live in co-op not a condo.. but all apartments (well maybe not delux luxury ones) are like cells.. little boxes, (connected) but more like cells than anything else.
i would distingues between a renter, an owner, or a shareholder.
Nidicolous is a contented guest
Who has become a household pest.
"Nidifuguous, please be.
Our hospitality flee!"
Said the hostess, reclaiming her nest.
per tsuwm:
Latin nidi- (from nidus nest) + English -fugous (as in lucifugous) M-W
fugere means to flee, of course
colere, to inhabit
Just returned from seeing "The March of the Penguins" (French, 2005) after church ... not that they march after church but that we saw the movie after church.
The Emporer Penguin, about which the movie was made, are classified as nidicolous but there is no nest in which they might remain. The male carries the egg around on top of its feet, covered by a fleshy feathered flap, until birth. Thereafter the chick rides around on dad, and then mom, in the same place the egg was kept. No nest, as the adults simply clump together in a large group on the ice in the breeding "ground".
there is no nest in which they might remain
Yes, quite true, Father Steve, and in this they are quite different from other nesting birds.
But they have nesting areas which they return to every breeding season like salmon, always returning to the same area, generation after generation.
It is ironic that what is best about this breeding ground is also what is worst about it.
The breeding ground is in the center of the ice pack where the winters are the most severe and most perilous, for penquins and their eggs alike.
But here the ice is deepest, and the danger of losing their eggs to melting ice in the Spring is least.
How cruel this blessing. As cruel as chemotherapy must be to a cancer patient.
I am condominicolous
You're living in it?
Reminds me of an old joke about an execution ...