Words and their Definitions

[Doodoo]

Rev·e·nant

noun

1.
a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead:
"he was three hundred years old, a terrible living revenant"

[Doodoo]

padawan noun,
informal : a young person especially when regarded as naïve, inexperienced, etc.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Anyone who grows beans needs garden bumblebees. Large, furry, unkempt-looking creatures with long, horsey faces and white bums, their tongues, at up to 2cm, can pollinate species with deep corollas such as foxgloves, red campion, primroses and beans. (Studies show that even self-pollinating varieties do better if “nudged” by insects, but honey bees, with short tongues, will cheat by biting a hole in the tube.) Garden bumble queens emerge in spring and establish a nest, often in an old rodent burrow. They lay eggs fertilised the year before, provide them with pollen and, if the area has enough food, a colony of up to 120 female workers and queens is formed. Later, males are born, but only new queens will survive the winter.

[Doodoo]

simp,
verb,
informal :
to show excessive devotion to or longing for someone or something

[Laan Yaa Mo]

The low-growing bush vetch has a couple of fascinating features that allow it to thrive in meadows, unmown lawns, and roadside verges. Like all members of the pea clan, it can clamber up through the grass, hooking itself on to sturdier plants for support. This allows access to essential sunlight. Secondly, to protect itself from munching caterpillars and other insects, the vetch enlists the support of ants. As well as producing nectar in their purple flowers to attract pollinating bumblebees, bush vetch also produces the sugary liquid on its stem. These extrafloral nectaries draw in the sweet-toothed ants. In return for the reward, which is even sweeter than the floral nectar, the ants patrol the plants, picking off any unwanted hungry caterpillars.

Jonathan Tulloch

[Doodoo]

GOATED adjective, slang : considered to be the greatest of all time

[Doodoo]

Enfilade and defilade
are concepts in military tactics used to describe a military formation's exposure to enemy fire. A formation or position is "in enfilade" if weapon fire can be directed along its longest axis

[Laan Yaa Mo]

During April, four pairs of starlings began nesting in the roofs of a Yorkshire cul-de-sac. At the end of May, all four nests fledged together. This synchronised fledging is a starling tactic and enables the young to form feeding flocks. A week later, three of the pairs started a second brood. Searching in the adjacent churchyard, the males gathered yarrow foliage and cow parsley flowers for the new nests. Starlings often decorate their nests with such high-scented materials. Research shows that chicks raised on beds of fragrant herbs do better than those from nests made merely of grass and leaves. One possible explanation for this is that volatile herbs have a relaxing effect on the adults, making them more assiduous parents.
Jonathan Tulloch

[Doodoo]

bussin’ adjective,
African American English slang : extremely good : excellent; especially : delicious, tasty

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Funnin'

Having a crazy-ass time.

Why you trippin' bout dat neck-slap, son? I was just funnin'!

[Doodoo]

Mellifluous

Mel·lif·lu·ous

adjective

1.
(of a voice or words) sweet or musical; pleasant to hear:
"the voice was mellifluous and smooth"

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Perhaps it’s time to rethink our image of Ratty. When many of us picture a water vole, we immediately see the languid boatman of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, a riparian inhabitant who can only ever live by the river. But though water voles are semi-aquatic and perfectly adapted for riverside life, there is a growing population of these little mammals that live significant distances from water, at least a kilometre. Easterhouse in Glasgow is one of the best places to see Ratty in his new, dryland habitat. These animals are increasingly becoming fossorial, foraging above the ground but living in subterranean holes — more like Mole. Has the Glaswegian Ratty found a way of avoiding the American mink?

Jonathan Tulloch

[Doodoo]

pyr·rhic

adjective
(of a victory) won at too great a cost to have been worthwhile for the victor:
"the best they can hope for is a pyrrhic victory" · "there is concern that this legal victory for the record labels may prove pyrrhic"

[Doodoo]

swullocking

If you need a word describe a really hot, sultry, sweltering day, you can always call say it’s swullocking. In parts of England, the dialectal verb swullock means “to broil with heat.”

[Doodoo]

cromulent
adjective,

: ACCEPTABLE, SATISFACTORY
He's a perfectly cromulent quarterback. But … teams don't want cromulent quarterbacks. They want consummate ones.
—Ben Solak
The audio quality is best described as "perfectly cromulent"—it's unlikely to impress anyone, but it's plenty loud and reasonably listenable …
—Jim Salter
… the bodywash is actually a cromulent product that works pretty well.
—The Ipswich (Australia) Advertiser

[Laan Yaa Mo]

With its ball of tubular flowers and trifoliate leaves, clover is one of the flowers children can often name, alongside daisies and dandelions — perhaps because all three grow in lawns and parks and on sports pitches, where kids play. Wild clover comes in two varieties, white and red (actually a sort of dirty pink) and both are beloved of bees and other pollinators; they are both sometimes sown by farmers too, both as fodder for livestock and to improve the nitrogen content of the soil. Crimson, or Italian, clover is a souped-up version used as a cover crop, taller, redder and beefier than its wild cousin, while hop clover, also known as lesser trefoil, nonesuch and black medick, has tiny yellow flowers.

Melissa Harrison

[Doodoo]

bit rot :
the tendency for digital information to degrade or become unusable over time. This kind of data degradation or corruption can make images and audio recordings distort and documents impossible to read or open.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

A small, slender gray-and-white bird with angular wings, the Arctic Tern is well known for its long yearly migration. It travels from its Arctic breeding grounds to Antarctica where it enjoys the Antarctic summer, covering around 25,000 miles. Breeding birds sport a full black cap, short red legs, and a red bill. Arctic Terns are social birds, foraging in groups and nesting on the ground in colonies. They often rest on ice and fly on graceful and buoyant wings.

[Doodoo]

was·sail
verb
wassailing (present participle)
drink plentiful amounts of alcohol and enjoy oneself with others in a noisy, lively way:
"he feasted and wassailed with his warriors

[Laan Yaa Mo]

It’s easy to forget how profound the influence of geology is on nature. The position and chemical composition of the underlying rock determines the make-up of soil, and this, in turn, affects the plants and trees that are likely to thrive in a particular place, from acid-loving heathers to the specialist wildflowers of chalk downlands. Invertebrates often have a relationship to geology too, usually indirectly, through their preference for particular plant species, but sometimes directly. Both the edible or Roman snail and its tiny cousin the round-mouthed snail require high levels of calcium to construct an operculum or epiphragm, a sort of lid that allows them to shut themselves inside their shell and wait out periods of dry weather.

Melissa Harrison