An 'ologist' reference? No. Palynology is an existing word, a branch of palaeobotany; the others are just coined in the Greek words (konis 'dust' had me racking my brains for a few minutes then came to me).
I emailed USGS Center for Coastal Geology scientist Gene Shinn, and received this response:
"People usually talk about aerosols, which would cover dust but true aerosols can change from being liquid, like salt dissolved in water or rain but then turns to salt crystals when the water evaporates. So we came up with a word "aeropolvology"; polvo is spanish for dust so we assume it is probably also latin. You know this cold stick and you can say you had a part in it!! Have fun and check the 4 page info sheet on dust in the website below. Gene
Forgive me if I am hijacking this thread prematurely, but I think there are quite a few words for winds of different seasons in many parts of the world. For instance "Föhn". You could look it up. Allegedly it is associated with serious emotional disturbances.
I think there are quite a few words for winds of different seasons in many parts of the world.
Not to blow hot and cold, but.
I understand there is a southern wind in France called the mistral and that jurys tend to be more lenient for crimes of passion committed during "La Mistral."
In Hawaii, the Kona wind in October also sets people on edge and much testiness is forgiven when attributed to the "Kona Winds." Any other local contribution folks?
In Calgary and SW Alberta, there's a wind (or maybe more like a mass of warm air) which comes over the Rockies and warms the place up in the dead of winter. It was +20C on Christmas there one year. It's called a "Chinook" which is, I believe, a Native word. When the chinook comes, it pushes the clouds back in the sky and this is called a chinook arch. (Here's a great photo: http://www.nucleus.com/~cowboy/Misc/Chinooks.html)
Harken back to the discussion of how an air conditioner or refrigerator works. When cold wind comes down a mountainside it compresses. When it compresses the heat energy that was in it at the top of the mountain is more concentrated. Hence the air is warmer. Chinooks are quite common in the Denver area as we are on the lee side of the Rockies. Chinook means snow-eater in some Indian language.
The opposite wind, one blowing up the hill, turns very cold because the air is expanding as it goes uphill. The dreaded upslope in the wintertime in Denver often leads to huge snowfalls since the expanding air is less able to hold water so it falls out of the sky as snow. This happens a couple of times a winter when a low pressure mass moves across the Rockies down around the Colorado NM state line. The counterclockwise swirl of the low pushes warm moist wind up the slope out to the east of us and the air turns cold and dumps huge blizzards on us. I remember one on Christmas day 20 years ago that dumped more than an inch an hour on us for almost two days.
Thank God most of our electric lines are underground, so loss of electric power is not a huge problem.
This particular snowfall led directly to the Denver mayor's losing the election the next fall because he couldn't get the streets cleaned of snow.
This particular snowfall led directly to the Denver mayor's losing the election the next fall because he couldn't get the streets cleaned of snow.
The same happened to Chicago's Mayor Bilandic (successor to Boss Daley), following the New Year's snowstorm of 12/31/78 to 1/1/79. Largest single snowstorm in the city's history, I believe, subject to LIU.
NYC will sometimes be hit with a big snow storm when cold canadian winds hit warm tropical storms come up the east coast-- and in 1968 Mayor Lindsey lost his bid for re-election after he decided it was OK to postpone digging out queens-- forgetting that Manhattan might have the most money, but queens has the most voters.. (high percentage of registered voter, and generally highest percentage of turnout.)
Should we have a sub thread on mayor who lost elections because of snow storms?
New England has only one wind worth mentioning, and it does not have an impressive name. But some terrible blizzards start that way, and in old days caused tragic ship-wrecks. Some of the old-timers swore it made their arthritis flare up. One such would not get out of bed if his weather vane visible from his bed indicated wind from north east. Some kids hitched a string to it, and he stayed in bed for two weeks, until bright sunshine convinced him of a deception.
Went to a quiz night the other night and learnt that "sirocco" was also a wind. This came about in the "Guess The Jumbled Place Names" round - clue being Sirocco cured pork meat. (Wyndham - in the far north of Western Australia)
Oh - and the quiz itself....we led for a few rounds but fell at the post due to our lack of knowledge of classical music. (well, I WAS sure that Beethoven wrote the William Tell overture. - Who's this Rossini guy anyway - what'd he ever do?) Our team had to console themselves with prizes that consisted of bottles of red wine, packets of popcorn and a video shop voucher. Sounds like a good night in the making!
Quiz nights are a very popular form of fundraising in W.A. but hardly heard of in the eastern parts of Oz. What about where you are?
Returning to winds: the Fremantle Doctor is a common occurrence during a cricket match at the WACA (Western Australian Cricket Association ground). Then there's kamikaze. And ... nah, that'll do.
Went to a quiz night the other night and learnt that "sirocco" was also a wind.
Nonsense! It's a coffee bar that stays open late at night. It's situated at the bottom of Dowling Street in Dunedin and is currently owned by a very nice Dutch couple ...
Quiz nights are very popular in Zild. Damned near every pub runs one at some time or another. The New Zealand Computer Society used to have a fair number of them as fund-raisers. I usually got roped into coming up with the questions and answers. As I am reminded every time I watch "The Weakest Link", people are so damned igorant about such basic things .... !
snowfall led directly to the Denver mayor's losing the election the next fall because he couldn't get the streets cleaned of snow.
MAny years ago the mayor of Cambridge was taken to task for doing nothing to get rid of the very deep icy ruts in the city's street. His response :"God put it here and God will take it away." And sure enough He did ... in April! And the Mayor was re-lected ... go figure!
And Dr. Bill : those snows that can dump two to four feet of snow on Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts in 24 hours is a Nor'easter (a/k/a "The Montreal Express.") (And this Northern New Englander ain't lookin' forward to any this winter lemme tell ya'.)
fwiw, there are approx. 900 -ologys in OED2, discounting mob psychology and the like. none of these seem to have anything to do with dust (based on the reliability of the search engine).
[it would be fairly easy to list them all; not so easy to define them...]
p.s. - in addition to khamsin itself, there are several entries which mention it; e.g.,
Strong southerly winds are specially hot and unpleasant, and they are distinguished everywhere by local names such as sirocco, chili, khamsin. {from chili, An oppressive hot southerly wind which blows in Tunisia.}
Her steadfastly sunny outlook even in the middle of a ghibli (khamsin or sirocco, by any other name as blinding and painful). {from gibli, A local name in Libya for the sirocco.}
The Mediterranean area also is the home of a hot, searing, dust-laden wind off the Sahara, known in various localities as sirocco, khamsin, leveche, or samiel. {from leveche, A hot, dry, more or less southerly wind of south-eastern Spain, the local counterpart of the sirocco.}
Thanks, tsuwm, for your seemingly unending will to research. I had heard of some of the winds you listed, but a couple were new to me: the chile and leveche. What made the chile interesting was the fact that it is a wind of Tunisia--and I know of no strong Spanish presence in Tunisia, which is northern Africa. Do the Spanish heavily populate Tunisia, I wonder? (I'm not asking you tsuwm to research any further!! You've done a great deal already--I'm just curious about the Spanish presence in Tunisia.)
Well, until there's a better word, I heard from a professor at the University of Miami who wrote about what to call those who study dust, so I thought I'd wipe the dust off this old question from last week. Here's what Dr. Prospero writes:
People who study dust are usually scientists whose research focuses on the properties of suspended particles in the atmosphere. They are typically refered to as "aerosol scientists", an aerosol being a fine suspended particle in the atmosphere.
Thanks for the memories, Consuelo. "Mrs. Mike" was one of my favorite books (when I was a great deal younger) but I haven't thought of it in years. Have a feeling if I look hard enough I could find my much-read, brittle-paged, taped-together paperback somewhere in the attic. Would be interesting to read it again from my current vantage point in life.
But a person who studies winds is probably a meteorologist.
Aw, TEd, you got it wrong; a meaty urologist is a corpulent physician.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned the four winds of ancient times, i.e. Boreas, Auster, Euros, and Zehpyros? We've been anthropomorphising winds for some time, it seems, and it gets really personal when we realise that the air is more turbulent around state capitols - at least in the US!
One more wind: The Santa Anna, a dry east wind off the Mojave Desert that blows into Southern California..
Here's a list of the dust and winds we've mentioned:
from Mrs. Byrne khamsin n. -- an Egyptian dust storm
from Geoff: Boreas Auster Euros Zehpyros The Santa Anna Edit: Santa Ana Thanks, Bill = a dry east wind off the Mojave Desert that blows into Southern California..
from Dr. Propsero aerosol scientists = scientists who study dust & aerosols
from Gene Shinn via Gymkhana aeropolvology = coined word for study of aerosols and dust
from wwh Föhn". = a wind causing emotional problems
from wow La Mistral = southern wind in France Kona winds = October winds in Hawaii
from Bean Chinook = winds in Calgary and S Alberta Chinook arch = black clouds in an arch
from Keiva The Hawk = biting winter wind off Lake Michigan
from Stales sirocco = cures pork
from wow The Montreal Express, the Nor'Easter = New England
from tsuwm (some repetition) sirocco = hot southerly wind which blows in Tunisia chili khamsin = these first three from tsuwm he describes as being strong southerly winds leveche samiel = strong, southerly, hot, dust-lade winds of southeastern Spain
from Stales "The Fremantle Doctor" = a strong sea breeze we get in Perth in summer
Wordwind = a sometimes northerly, sometimes southerly, often multi-directional body of sometimes hot, sometimes cold, usually phlegmatic wind of random words batting each other in patterns that completely defy all known studies of thermodynamics. This wind, which emanates from Rocky Run, VA, USA, often brings symptoms of mania and/or depression in the human beings and other unfortunate creatures it encounters. Acts of rage resulting from contact with this wind are never litigated.
Forgive me, but "Santa Anna" should read "Santa Ana" The Santa Ana is a hot, dry, dusty wind in southwestern California that blows westward through the canyons toward the coastal areas during spring and late fall. The wind has its origin in the relatively stable, high-pressure weather system called the Great Basin High that usually exists over southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and eastern California. The Great Basin High is characterized by a slow but giant clockwise flow of air that is prevented from expanding eastward by the Rockies and westward by the Sierras.
"Offshore" flow occurs when the pressure is higher over the land than over the ocean, often resulting in north-east winds over Southern California. This is also referred to as the Santa Ana effect, or the Santa Ana winds. The terrain here often enhances the offshore breezes because as the winds are forced through the narrow canyons, they increase in speed. This is referred to as the Bernoulli effect. This is why during Santa Ana's, some places will have winds exceeding 50 mph and others will have almost nothing
The pressure is lower in a moving fluid than in a stationary fluid. This effect is called the Bernoulli effect. If you put the convex side of a spoon into a smooth stream of water from the faucet, you will feel the spoon pulled into the stream. The higher pressure outside the moving fluid pushes the spoon into the lower pressure water.
A ball balances in a stream of air from a blower. The ball is strongly held in the lower pressure stream of air.
Disclaimer: Wordsmith.org is not responsible for views expressed on this site.
Use of this forum is at your own risk and liability - you agree to
hold Wordsmith.org and its associates harmless as a condition of using it.
)thanks A!!
