#97211
02/28/2003 10:30 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Late opening this morning, so I'm searching all I can learn about the word oblique on Onelook.com (now hosting over 800 dictionaries!)
Anyway, besides reading more than I need to know about all the applications of oblique, I read on a botanical site a pretty cool word operculum. Would have made a good Hogwash word.
And I read the definition: "the lid of a pitcher"...
Even though on a botanical site via Onelook, I immediately imagined just that: a lid on a water pitcher. 'Course, I'd just call such a lid a lid. Then I shook myself awake and said to myself, "Theresa! This is a botanical site! That pitcher is a pitcher plant, you goofball!"
Anyway, I post operculum here for several reasons: One, you might ask yourself one day what is the lid on a pitcher plant properly called [Fat chance, huh?]; two, my story is still another example of "Know your audience" [First rule of rhetoric re-emphasized]; three, this is not a sports thread.
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#97212
02/28/2003 12:51 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
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#97213
02/28/2003 2:18 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027 |
Hi,
from your amazement I conclude that operculophiles are not something that has come to us from U.S. Over here this is a part of the general population distinguishing themselves by collecting lids of those coffee-cream portion gobelets, which are decorated by various motives.
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#97214
02/28/2003 2:41 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
I haven't heard the word "operculum" for a long time. I remember it being used tor gill cover
in fishes and the flexible part of box turtle shell that closes when turtle is alarmed.
Part of brain between the frontal and temporal lobes
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#97215
02/28/2003 2:45 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
They collect the lids from creamers, but not the vessels? How bizarre!
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#97216
02/28/2003 6:15 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 11,302 Likes: 2
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 11,302 Likes: 2 |
I dredge up from the depths that the three varieties of Schistosomes (mansoni, japonicum, haematobium) are differentiated in part by the flat disc-like end part, which is called the operculum. Never saw it used in any other context, or questioned where the word came from -- just another medical Latinism. "Pitcher-lid" is a very appropriate description.
(Schistosomes aren't very well-known in the US, but world-wide they cause a huge number of infections and are truly a public health problem. The life cycle is ridiculously intricate, involving as I recall snails to propogate one stage. In between, humans get "swimmer's itch" from bathing in schistosome-infested waters.) (Did I leave out anything material, Bill?)
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#97217
02/28/2003 7:02 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Schistosomes are a terrible scourge in Egypt, for just one example. As far as I can tell the
Egyptians h;ave been unable to persuade the people out in the boonies to stop relieving
themselves in way that lets worm eggs get into the water. The eggs hatch, the larva forget
techinical term) parasitize a snail, then new form emerges, that can penetrate skin of anybody
wading in the water, shich the poor people cannot avoid. The effect of the parasite are very
serious, and incapacitating. The economic loss to Egypt is very considerable.
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#97218
03/01/2003 1:04 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 11,302 Likes: 2
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 11,302 Likes: 2 |
It's a little dense, but this page details the life cycle and you can see how intricate it is. Not to say elegant, in its way. For a portal to an exhaustive discussion of schistosomes, here is http://www.path.cam.ac.uk/~schisto/intro.html. To extract: ...Infection occurs through contact with fresh water that contains infective cercariae released from an intermediate host snail. The cercaria penetrates intact human skin and transforms into the...larva, that migrates through the bloodstream to the [liver] to complete the parasite's lifecycle...
Penetration of the skin by the cercaria...may result in a form of dermatitis, cercarial dermatitis ["swimmers' itch"], though this is not as important in terms of pathology as egg-induced pathology, (see below)...
Male and female worms differentiate, pair and migrate into the small [veins] draining the intestine (S. mansoni, S. japonicum) or the bladder (S. haematobium). In these sites, and fully exposed to the host immune system, adult worms live for 3 to 8 years, although cases have been reported of individuals still excreting parasite eggs 30 years after leaving a schistosome endemic area...
Eggs pass into the lumen of the intestine or bladder and, if deposited in fresh water, hatch to release ciliated miracidia that infect the snail... However, many eggs also lodge in the definitive host's liver and intestine or bladder, where they cause the pathology associated with schistosomiasis...Google is a wonderful tool. This (and much more) came out of "schistosome larvae"
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