Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a cannabinoid of supreme joy; a cricket on steroids; and hikers who get annoyed.

anandamide

“The lab also has studied how the chemicals in cannabis, as well as cannabinoids like the anandamide produced by our bodies, protect our brains against various types of insults, such as physical and emotional trauma.”

Hampton Sides, “Science Seeks to Unlock Marijuana’s Secrets,” National Geographic, June 2015

In 1992, an organic chemist in Israel named Raphael Mechoulam and his colleagues “isolated the chemical made by the human body that binds to the same receptor in the brain that THC does.” Mechoulam named the chemical anandamide, which comes from the Sanskrit word for “supreme joy.”

giant weta

“Giant weta, for their monstrous size, are actually quite sweet. Not like cuddly sweet, though you’re welcome to try, but sweet nonetheless.”

Matt Simon, “Absurd Creature of the Week: This Bug Is as Big as a Gerbil. Fortunately It Loves Carrots,” WIRED, June 5, 2015

Giant weta, at 2.5 ounces, are the heavyweights of the insect world. There are about 70 known species of the cricket-like creature, ranging from extra-large, like the giant weta, to medium and small, like the tree, cave, and ground weta.

New Zealand’s signature bug, the weta is so entrenched in Kiwi-culture that Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson named his Wellington-based special effects and props company the Weta Workshop.

The word weta is Maori in origin.

ICU psychosis

“As a young doctor in the 1980s, Inouye pioneered efforts to diagnose and prevent the condition, which was then called ‘ICU psychosis.’”

Sandra G. Boodman, “The Overlooked Danger of Delirium in Hospitals,” The Atlantic, June 7, 2015

ICU psychosis is an old name for a type of delirium experienced by patients in intensive-care units, and characterized by “vivid hallucinations, delusions, and an inability to focus.” In older patients such delirium is sometimes misdiagnosed as dementia. Some studies say up to 85 percent of ICU patients experience it, even for months after discharge.

The word delirium comes from the Latin delirare, which means “be crazy, rave” and is translated literally as “go off the furrow.”

kill chain

“In the event of a war, China’s kill chain could locate, identify, and track enemy ships — especially big ones like aircraft carriers — and proceed to sink them.”

Kyle Mizokami, “How China stealthily built a ‘kill chain’ in the South China Sea,” The Week, May 21, 2015

Kill chain is a military term for a “web of sensors on manned and unmanned aircraft, spy satellites, surface ships, and submarines,” used to track and destroy enemy crafts. China’s kill chain is made up of island outposts that stretch from the South China Sea “all the way back to Beijing.”

‘Wild’ effect

“‘People are definitely worried about the ‘Wild’ effect, though we can’t really figure out what it is yet,’ said Dan Moe, a baker from Portland, Oregon who’s hiking this year.”

Claire Trageser, “The ‘Wild’ effect,” Mashable, May 17, 2015

The ‘Wild’ effect describes the surge in popularity of the Pacific Crest Trail after the publication of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir based on her experience of hiking the trail and the release of the film version of the book.

Other places that have enjoyed a tourism boom from movies or TV shows include Bruges, Belgium (In Bruges), Forks, Washington (Twilight), and Cardiff, Wales (Doctor Who and Torchwood).

[Photo via Flickr: “Cook Strait Giant Weta,” CC BY 2.0 by Sid Mosdell]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a Harry Potter-esque wasp; the Jetsons meets the ‘50s; and losing your sympathy.

dementor wasp

“It’s no wonder that when given the chance to name the yet unnamed insect, visitors to Berlin’s natural history museum voted to call it Ampulex dementor, after the soul-sucking Dementor spirits of the ‘Harry Potter’ series.”

Amanda Schupak, “Meet the soul-sucking ‘Dementor’ wasp,” CNET, May 28 2015

The Ampulex dementor, otherwise known as the dementor wasp, paralyzes its prey by injecting a poison, then drags it back to its nest for a zombie-fied feast.

Ampulex refers to a genus of wasps while dementor comes from the Late Latin dementare, “to drive out of one’s mind.”

Googie architecture

“A Los Angeles diner celebrated as a classic example of mid-20th century Space Age-style Googie architecture was granted historic monument status by city officials on Wednesday, protecting it from the threat of demolition.”

Daina Beth Solomon, “L.A. diner famed for ‘Googie’ architecture saved from threat of demolition,” Reuters, May 21, 2015

Pseudo-futuristic Googie architecture originated in 1949 with Googie’s, a coffee shop in West Hollywood designed by John Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Another famous example of Googie architecture is the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign designed by graphic designer Betty Willis, who passed away this April at 91.

protodog

“Caspin ranks as a Protodog, a spontaneous pooch that bonds easily and can solve problems on its own or with people, according to dog intelligence measures created by scientists and trainers.”

Sue Manning, “Don’t let the slobber fool you, your dog could be a brainiac,” AP, May 13, 2015

HowStuffWorks defines the protodog as the “original dog type,” which “evolved from wolves to take advantage of the niche that humans provide.” The Dognition Assessment‘s Protodog, capitalized, is a pooch profile determined through 20 games that measure a dog’s “level of empathy, communication, cunning, memory and reasoning.”

Other profiles include the Ace, a problem-solver that is “socially elite,” bonds well, and is “good at almost everything,” and the Einstein, a dog that’s smart but socially awkward.

The prefix proto– comes from the Greek protos, “first.”

sneakernet

“In the not-so-distant past, when even medium-sized files could tax a network, many organizations resorted to ‘sneakernet’ — manually walking a disk, or later a thumb drive, from one computer to the next.”

Amanda Ziadeh, “Steering clear of ‘sneakernet’ at big data scale,” GCN, May 27, 2015

The term snearkernet originated around 1984, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

sympathectomy

“There is something Elna can think and do according to Dr. Drott, the surgeon– rather, something she could not do. It’s the simplest thing, and possibly more effective than the sympathectomy or drugs or anything else.”

Sean Cole, “Game Face: Frankly, Miss Scarlet,” This American Life, May 29, 2015

The sympathectomy, more formally known as Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy, or ETS, is a surgery used to treat excessive sweating in the palms and face, as well as excessive blushing. The surgery involves the cutting of the sympathetic nerves that control those actions.

The OED’s earliest citation for sympathectomy is from 1900, and seems to have been used to treat glaucoma and Graves’ disease, and to “dilate arteries that have been stopped.”

The  –ectomy of sympathectomy comes from the Greek ektemnein, “to cut out.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas,” CC BY 2.0 by ADTeasdale]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: the sartorial lives of motorcycle gangs; a quiverful of scary; and Glam SAHM shenanigans.

aloha

“Some Native Hawaiians disapprove of the name of a movie filmed and set in Hawaii, saying that titling it ‘Aloha’ is a disrespectful misappropriation of culture and simplifies a word that’s rich with meaning.”

Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, “Some Native Hawaiians disapprove of ‘Aloha’ movie title,” AP, May 25, 2015

In simplest terms, aloha is a “traditional greeting or farewell” mostly used in Hawaii. However, according to Janet Mock, MSNBC show host and native Hawaiian, the word is more complicated than that.

Aloha comes from two Hawaiian words: alo, “which means the front of a person, the part of our bodies that we share and take in people,” and ha, the breath. “When we are in each other’s presence with the front of our bodies,” Mock says, “we are exchanging the breath of life.”

bottom rocker

“So they decided that they were going to wear the Texas bottom rocker—which is telling the Bandidos that they believe that this is their territory, and they’re willing to die for that claim.”

Leon Neyfahk, “A Former Informant Describes the Violent and Sartorially Complicated World of Biker Gangs,” Slate, May 18, 2015

A bottom rocker is a patch on the bottom back of a motorcycle gang vest that denotes the state to which the gang is claiming territory. The name might come from the shape of some of the patches and their resemblance to the “curved pieces upon which a cradle, rocking chair, or similar device rocks.”

kayaktivist

“They call themselves kayaktivists. They’re concerned about global climate change and the risk of an oil spill in the remote and icy Arctic Ocean. “

John Ryan, “Hundreds Of ‘Kayaktivists’ In Seattle Protest Shell’s Arctic Drilling,” NPR, May 18, 2015

Kayaktivists are activists in kayaks, canoes, and paddleboards who have who have gone after “a floating oil rig that Shell is taking to the waters off Alaska’s coast.”

Quiverfull movement

“But the Duggars are different than your standard evangelical Christians—they’re followers of a particularly scary fundamentalist sect known as the Quiverfull movement, which adheres to a deeply patriarchal and highly authoritarian set of beliefs about gender and culture.”

Jennifer C. Martin, “Quiverfull of Shit: A Guide to the Duggars’ Scary Brand of Christianity,” Gawker, May 25, 2015

Quiverfull is an extremely conservative evangelical Christian movement that began in the 1980s. Their name comes from Psalm 127 that states “as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.”

wife bonus

“Further probing revealed that the annual wife bonus was not an uncommon practice in this tribe.”

Wednesday Martin, “Poor Little Rich Women,” The New York Times, May 16, 2015

In her observation of Upper East Side Glam SAHMs, writer and social researcher Wednesday Martin found that some received wife bonuses, or financial incentives dependent on “performance,” such was how well they managed the home budget and whether or not their children got into prestigious schools.

[Photo via Flickr: “San Marcos Alternatives,” CC BY 2.0 by Michael Witzel]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: arachnid royal handwriting; a short-term business model; and the internet of NSFW things.

black spider memos

“The move follows a 10-year battle by the Guardian to expose the heir to the throne’s so-called ‘black spider memos’ to public scrutiny.”

Robert Booth, “Prince Charles’s black spider memos to be published on Wednesday,” The Guardian, May 12, 2015

The black spider memos — named for Prince Charles’s “black inky scrawl”– are 27 letters that were sent between the prince and ministers in UK government departments in 2004 and 2005. They were also “the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Guardian journalist Rob Evans.”

The government has been trying to prevent the release of the letters due to their demonstration of “Charles’s ‘particularly frank’ interventions on public policy.”

drought shaming

“#droughtshaming is blowing up. And it’s shoving another of California’s problems—vast income inequality—into an uncomfortable spotlight.”

Maddie Stone, “California’s Wealthiest Are Being Drought Shamed on Social Media,” Gizmodo, May 17, 2015

Drought shaming is publicly shaming someone for using more than their fair share of water during California’s current drought and mandatory water restrictions.

Other types of public shaming include fat-shaming, slut-shaming, and drunk shaming.

dysfunctional expertise

“Dysfunctional expertise describes the ways a burglar thinks differently than a normal person.”

Bourree Lam, “The Mind of a Burglar,” The Atlantic, April 29, 2015

Dysfunctional expertise is like regular expertise but in something illegal or nefarious.

With practice, says The Atlantic, burglars refine their skill sets, such as learning “to automatically pick up cues in the environment that signify a successful burglary without even being aware of it.”

Hollywood model

“It’s probably not coincidental that the Hollywood model is ascendant at a time when telling stories, broadly speaking, is at the heart of American business.”

Adam Davidson, “What Hollywood Can Teach Us About the Future of Work,” The New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2015

The Hollywood model is a business model in which, according to The NY Times Magazine, “a project is identified; a team is assembled,” the team “works together for precisely as long as is needed to complete the task,” and “then the team disbands.”

In the more traditional corporate model, “capital is spent up front to build a business, which then hires workers for long-­term, open-­ended jobs that can last for years.” Then there’s the even shorter-term gig economy exemplified by Uber, in which “extremely short-­term tasks” are managed by one person, “typically in less than a day.”

teledildonics

“Once fringe products stuffed into dark corners of adult stores, teledildonics are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with social elements connecting couples and strangers alike.”

Molly McHugh, “Sex and love in the age of robots,” The Week, May 11, 2015

The internet of things has reached a whole new level. Teledildonics are remote-controlled, Wi-Fi-enabled sex toys that are “popular with long-distance couples,” says The Week.

The word teledildonic is made up of a few different parts: tele-, meaning “over a long distance”; dildo, referring to the sex toy; and the suffix –ic, which means “of or relating to,” but perhaps also echoes the –ic of electronic.

The word dildo, in case you were wondering, is over 400 years old, and might come from the Italian deletto, “delight.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Spider,” CC BY 2.0 by Peter Harrison]