Wednesday 31 January 2018

Bosky

Bosky means wooded or bushy. One multistemmed tree would be slightly bosky, a dozen would be boskier and a whole forest is the boskiest of all.

Where's your favourite bosky place?


Wednesday 24 January 2018

Thermotaxis

Thermotaxis is the regulation of heat in warm-blooded animals.

When it's hot, I like to cool down in the sea. Does that make me thermotaxic? I'm not a good swimmer, but in the UK that doesn't matter as the sea is generally so cold that a quick paddle is more than enough to do the job.

A thermotactic reaction is movement in a living organism as a response to temperature. If you watch a litter of puppies or piglets, you'll see that if it's warm they spread out more. When the temperature drops, they snuggle up together.

Wednesday 17 January 2018

Rebutter

Rebutter, surprisingly isn't something you do to bread when you consider it's not been spread with a liberal enough amount of dairy goodness. 

It's actually a refutation (a word which probably deserves its own WWof theW post) or 'a defendent's reply to the plaintiff's surrejoinder'.



Sometimes I'm no help at all, am I?

Wednesday 10 January 2018

Tidemark

My dictionary gives three definitions for the word tidemark

It can be the line on a beach at the high water point, the scummy ring around the bath at the level the water reached, or a line on a person's body revealing they didn't have a bath and just washed the bits they thought would show.

I'd like to suggest a fourth – the patterns left on sand as the tide recedes. Don't you think this tidemark is beautiful?