No, we are not in a time warp. I brought this thread, which contains my very first post, back up as a celebration of my board anniversary. And as a way to say hello to everyone, since I haven't been posting much lately. It seems that every time I've been here, I've been trying desperately to catch up on things and don't have any time to post anything myself. Whew! Things should be slowing down again soon, I hope.
I was brought up in the warp-vs.-woof school too, but have encountered the weft along the way. I think I concluded it was a Britishism, but have no particular reason for thinking so, just an impression.
It brings to mind (for particular reason) another favorite w-word, which is "woots." I find it irresistable because it's part of the definition of an even more obscure word, to wit:
"Ooly is woots"
(If you don't want to look them up, ooly is an ore derived from oolite [with a diacritical mark above the first o], a kind of iron found in meteorites, and woots is a kind of steel fabricated in old-time India, as of course the metallurgists among us will immediately recognize. To the best of my knowledge. I haven't looked them up lately either. )
an oolite was described as a spherical concretion of calcium carbonate (calcite) precipitated in shallow, warm, tropical seas.
I second that, Stales-- i saw some back in October-- when Simon Winchester gave a lecture on The Map that Changed the World he had a handful of rocks with him.. including an Oolite.. oolite is the stuff they made English Georgian houses out of-- all white and gleaming.. here in NY the same style house is a "Brownstone" since we use a local sandstone that is a rich chocolate brown...
Who says i am an geologist? I am a generalist! i just happen to live in a place with interesting geology. You do, too, CK. some places are more geologically intereresting..
and an oologist (a word that has come up as a W of the day,) could be a geologist/palentologist who was studying the mircoscopic life forms that left egg like remains oolite!
darn, i did a "Search", hoping that oolites hadn't been discussed here on the Board yet ~ but at least this discussion turned out to be fairly recent (shows how far behind i am on the board, though).
i read a wonderful passage in a John McPhee novel, and wanted to share it since it deals with intriguing etymology:
"Just as raindrops are created around motes of dust, oolites form around bits of rock so tiny that in wave-tossed water they will stir up and move. They move, and settle, move, and settle. And while they are up in the water calcium carbonate forms around them in layer after layer, building something like a pearl. Slice one in half with a diamond saw and you reveal a perfect bull's-eye, or, as its namer obviously imagined it, a stone egg, white and yolk--an oolite."
_Annals of the Former World_, John McPhee - Farrar, Straiss and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-51873-4
fabulous read, BTW... an immense geologic survey of the whole of Northern America around the 40th parallel ~ brilliantly researched and written.
cara, have you read McPhee's Coming into the Country? he's a favorite writer of mine, and that's my favorite of his. (it's about Alaska... no, wait... it's more about people who choose to live in Alaska.)
Dear Caradea: The thing I like best about Annals of the Former World was the way he did his research - by spending many months in the field with working geologists. And his wonderful pictures of people e.g. the mother of Love (can't remember his first name.)
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