Here, just as I received them, are the definitions I received. I also added somewhere in the list the real definition and a couple I added just to spice things up. I'm going to be away from 12/28 through 1/11, so I am giving the whole three weeks for voting. I am absolutely amazed at the inventiveness of the people who put in entries. I know which one is correct, and a couple of the bluff definitions are so good they even fooled me!!!
1. sedgwick n. a remorphemization of sedgewidgeon (Anas acicularis), a common surface feeding duck that nests in the region of the lower Danube.
2. A certain type of golf club.
3. [obs] a derisory term which was applied to a district over which a petty official's jurisdiction extended that to all appearances was merely swampland.
4. A small wooden bolt, usually with right-hand threads, commonly used to fasten a knob to a drawer front. Most often found with a slotted head that accepts a regular screwdriver, though occasionally found with slots for a Phillips screwdriver.
5. The one atom that is the exact center of the earth's core.
6. This is not a "real" word, but a made up one, taken from a manufacturer's catalogue. w-i-k (most certainly without a "c") stands for "water injection kit" and the Sedgwik is a well-known (within the trade, that is) device for promoting the growth of sedge reeds in and around ponds where sewage is recycled. In wet areas, such a device is unnecessary, of course, but the process of natural, environmentally sound purification of water is now being extended to places with low rainfall - in particular, some of the areas of Scandinavia where the majority of water falls as snow. It is in these (and parts of Turkey, I believe) that the Sedgewik is in use.
7. A small African antelope, named for the Dutch naturalist who first described it, Jan Sedgwik (1820-1892).
8. Sedgwik: a moss which grows chiefly on rocky or barren spots.
9. a new born, often translucent, tadpole
10. The only hybrid crop hardy enough to survive cultivation in the Earth's depleted soil supply; from the Samuel Butler's classic 1872 social satire, Erewhon.
11. Sedgwik: A mocking reference in CIA circles to the heavy handed and clumsy bulgarian spies planted in the states during the cold war. The Bulgarian spies were all identified and bugged but the CIA couldn't decipher their continual use of the phrase "I must call Sedgwik". Finally an agent dialed SEDGWIK,(733-4945)on his touch tone phone and reached the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington DC. Tom Clancy used the phrase in his book "The Hunt For Red October"
12. A specific computer error from the early days of computing, created when one end of a wire on a breadboard was erroneously plugged into a socket too close to the other end, resulting in garbled information that one IBM engineer said reminded him of the maunderings of his mother-in-law, Irenia Sedgwik.
13. A plumbing device that limits the amount of water consumed during a flushing of a toilet or urinal; not commonly used in the home, but most commonly found in commercial use in areas where water is so expensive that the use of the Sedgwik is cost-effective.
