Birding and other pleasures and aggravations, in Berkeley and beyond, by Ron Sullivan.
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Over the last few weeks, I’ve picked up a couple of delightful English words. One was at Pharyngula, where a poster remarked upon reasonable arguments becoming “immerded” by large quantities of verbal, well, shit.
The other’s more pleasant, and sounds lovely too. Our native soaproot blooms in the evening, between sunset and about 1 AM, and is therefore vesperine.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan
2 | By: Ron on May 24, 2005 at 06:37 AM
I suppose “subfield” would be a fair description of the backyard the soaproot was in, yes. It was sure as hell biological. The garedner is working on making a patch of the deep-soil East Bay flatlands as they might have been before cities and farms and tons of people.The soaproot in question was taller than I am. The ones in the hills—where most backyard resto seems to be taking place—are more usually about waist-high at most.
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1 | By: murky on May 23, 2005 at 11:01 PM
The common word is “vesperal.” Vespirine must be the argot of some biological subfield. I wouldn’t expect it in the AP Stylebook any time soon. “Immerded”...hmmm. I’m assuming it’s from the French word for “shit,” so in this era of freedom fries, I’m going to bet against that one taking off. ..although I don’t know about the UK.