Word of the Day

[Kersus]

Vitriolic

adjective

[vick-tree-ol-ik]

Bitterly, scathing, caustic....

"It was vitriolic criticism"

[rredmond]

slake

verb

[slāk]

1. quench or satisfy (one's thirst).
"we longed for a mountain spring to slake our thirst"

2. satisfy (desires).
"restaurants worked to slake the Italian obsession with food"

3. combine (quicklime) with water to produce calcium hydroxide.

I wanted to post this one because I came home to my wife, my 12yo and 10yo girls (the 3yo wasn't involved ) sitting about chuckling because they swore my 7yo had made up a word. The 7yo and I laughed even harder when we proved slake is a word... good times!

[Oedipussy Rex]

zoonosis noun \ˌzō-ə-ˈnō-səs, zō-ˈän-ə-səs\
plural zoonoses
a disease communicable from animals to humans under natural conditions

A good Scrabble word

[Oedipussy Rex]

Spot

Three-headed guardian of Hades' dominion.

Cerberus is Latin for the Greek kerberos, which means "spotted", thus Hades named his dog Spot.

[rredmond]

Nice!

[Oedipussy Rex]

Retard

To slow down or hinder. Anyone who thinks it's a derogatory word is a retard.

A healthy lifestyle will help retard the aging process.

[rredmond]

Well "retarded" can be used as slur. Then that's not cool.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinio....html?_r=0
http://www.r-word.org/r-word-not-acceptable-psa.aspx

Funny though I used the word probably into my 20's. I grew up with a cousin who had Down's Syndrome (literally, my aunt and cousins lived with us for a long while) and have been working in the field serving folks with developmental disabilities for over 20 years. But my sister and I would say "that's retarded" or the like when we were younger. I didn't stop using it until, after being promoted to Assistant Manager in the Group Home I'd been working in after a couple months, one of the folks who lived there responded to me (and I don't even remember what I said), a nice guy with some cognitive limitations, he said: "You're right Ron, that is retarded." Now I don't really use the word, even though I wasn't really ever using it as a derogatory term.

But yeah, it is a real word meaning "slow down or hinder" so it's all good!

[Kersus]

"1984. Sometime in the spring. I went from retard to mentally handicapped. And then in 1987-88, I went from handicapped to challenged. I changed again. I'm probably changing right now. Who knows what I'll be next?"
~House of D

I also worked in a mentally challenged institution. It was quite rewarding but the political mumbo jumbo of changing terms could be a pain. Ultimately, internally, they were almost always referred to as "tards" but there was often a loving tone to it. Admittedly, some workers also weren't respectful.

[Oedipussy Rex]

I grew up with "mentally retarded" (formal) or simply "retarded" (informal and/or insult). I didn't encounter "retard" and "'tard" as derogatory words until (relatively) recently.

Anyway,

Pussy noun \ˈpu̇-sē\

The small billet of wood used in Tip-Cat. (colloquial)

No one is a better striker than Billy. He can hit the pussy fifty feet easily.

[rredmond]

Heh, until the 1960's (I think) "idiot" "moron" and "imbecile" were diagnoses for levels of cognitive functioning.
Fun stuff.