While reading an interesting post on Babel’s Dawn today, I came across the word spandrel. I have heard it before but wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.

According to Wikipedia, a spandrel is “the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure”. The word spandrel is also used in the theory of evolution to describe a non-adaptive trait formed as a side effect to an adaptive one, which the context in which it was used on Babel’s Dawn.

The information about spandrels also mentions a related architectural term: squinch, which is a “piece of construction used for filling in the upper angles of a square room so as to form a proper base to receive an octagonal or spherical dome”.

Another definition tells us that a squinch is an arch, or a system of concentrically wider and gradually projecting arches, placed at the corners of a square base to act as the transition to a circular dome placed on the base.

The etymology of spandrel is somewhat uncertain, but it’s thought to come from the Latin word expandre, to expand, via the French espandre, to expand, extend.

Squinch is an alternative form of scuncheon, from the Middle English sconchon, from the Old French escoinson, from the Latin ex, out, plus cuneus, wedge.

Here’s an illustration to help you tell the difference between spandrels and squinches.

When reading this blog today, I noticed a interesting word in the comments on one of the posts – computarded. It was used in the following sentence: “I made it up to the basic internet skills era (email! google search! social network site! PubMed! etc…) and beyond that I’m computarded.”

This is an example of a portmanteau word or blend. It works better than computer illiterate, I think, though only if you’re talking about yourself. If you used it to describe someone else, it might be considered pejorative.

A possible antonym is compudextrous. Can you think of any others?

A text corpus (pl. corpora) is a large and structured set of texts usually stored, processed and analysed electronically. They are used to do statistical analysis, checking occurrences or validating linguistic rules. They are also used by dictionary makers to find definitions of words. The word corpus comes from the Latin for body.

According to an article in the New York Times on this topic that I found today, the verb migrate is used much more frequently with the direction south than with north. Pink things tend to be fluffy, while green things are more likely to be fuzzy. We tend to chide ourselves but we are more likely to lambaste others. The word fake is most commonly associated with smiles, tans, IDs, passports, fur and boobs.

The article contains many other interesting examples, all taken from the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a 1.8-billion-word database of written and spoken English.

I found another corpus of English today that’s accessible online: the British National Corpus – it’s smaller than the OEC – only 100 million words – and covers mainly British English.

Do you know of similar corpora for other languages?

Two words I came across recently that left me puzzled were dux and testamur. After some investigation, I discovered that dux is the title given to the top academic student in a graduating class of a school, and that it’s used in Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and Iceland. I understand that the US equivalent is valedictorian. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent in England or Wales.

Dux comes from the Latin word for leader, via the verb ducere, to lead, and is also the root of the English word duke, the French duc, the Italian duce, and the Venetian doge.

A testamur or testimonium is a certificate issued by a university to signify that a student has satisfied the requirements of a particular course and has graduated, according to this site. It’s used mainly in Australia. Elsewhere I believe such documents are usually called diplomas.

Testamur comes from the Latin Ita testamur, meaning “We testify/certify” – the words used to begin such certificiates, according to Wikipedia.

Today’s word, bowser, has been mentioned a lot on the radio and on TV here recently. In the UK a bowser is a mobile water tank used to supply fresh water in emergency situations, such as the recent/current floods, where normal supplies have broken down or are insufficient.

You can see some examples of water bowsers here.

Bowsers got their name from Sylvanus Bowser, an early designer of petrol pumps in Australia who founded the the company, S.F. Bowser, Inc., a pioneer in the production of fuel handling and oil purification equipment. Bowser is used as a trade name for petrol pumps in Australia and Canada, and the word’s meaning has expanded to cover other kinds of pumps, and also water tanks and fuel tanks.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowser