Interesting word for today: graben

According to the American Geological Institute's Glossary of Geology, 4th edition, the definition of graben is the following:

"graben (n) An elongate trough or basin, bounded on both sides by high-angle normal faults that dip toward the interior of the trough."

Breaking it down a bit:

A fault is a crack in a rock body along which the rock has moved--i.e., the rock on each side of the fault has moved relative to the rock on the other side. Most faults are tilted relative to Earth's surface--they're not perfectly vertical. Therefore, there is a body of rock "above" the fault and a body of rock "below" the fault. The rock "above" the fault is called the hanging wall. The rock "below" the fault is called the footwall:

The hanging wall and the footwall can move in two different ways. In a normal fault, the hanging wall moves down relative to the footwall. In a thrust fault, the hanging wall moves up relative to the footwall:


A graben is a valley bounded by high-angle (i.e., steep) normal faults on both sides:


Sorry about the blurry images. Blogger's thumbnails aren't that great. But you should be able to see the images in all their glory by clicking on them...

Interesting word for today: kobold

According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th edition, the definition of kobold is the following:

"kobold (n) Germanic folklore: 1 a helpful or mischievous sprite in households 2 a gnome in mines and other underground places"

The roots of kobold are not Greek, but German: Middle High German kobolt (a household spirit), to be precise.

I think it might be fun to have a kobold, provided it was of the helpful, rather than mischievous, sort.

Interesting word for today: metagnathous

According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th edition, the definition of metagnathous is the following:

"metagnathous (adj): 1 having the points of the beak crossed, as in the crossbills 2 having larvae that feed by chewing and adults that feed by sucking, as in butterflies and moths"

Yet again, the roots are Greek: meta- (between, among, along with) and -gnathous (having a jaw). Words that share meta- as a root include (among many others) metaphysics, metamorphosis, metagenesis, metacarpal, metabolism, and metagalaxy. -gnathous is a bit more obscure, but Agnatha (a class--or superclass, depending on who you ask--of animals, comprising the jawless fishes), gnathite, and gnathic are some of them. I suspect that words like gnashing and gnaw are also related, but I can't confirm that with my dictionary.

Interesting word for today: thanatocoenosis

According to the American Geological Institute's Glossary of Geology, 4th edition, the definition of thanatocoenosis is the following:

"thanatocoenosis (n): a) a set of fossils brought together after death by sedimentary processes, rather than by virtue of having originally lived there collectively; b)...all the fossils present at a particular place in a sediment" [note: I trimmed some of the definition a bit]

The word comes from the Greek thanatos ("death") and koinos ("general" or "common").

Thanatocoenosis shares a root with thanatology (the study of death), thanatophobia (the fear of death), and thanatopsis (a view or thought about death).

This was also another word I considered as a title for this blog, but rejected because it's hard to spell...

Interesting word for today: catachresis

According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th edition, the definition of catachresis is the following:

"catachresis (n): incorrect use of a word or words, as by misapplication of terminology or by strained or mixed metaphor" (p. 229)

The roots of the word are (what else?) Greek, from kata, which means "against" or "down," and chresthai, which means "to use."

Other words using the prefix cata in a similar way include cataclysm, catabolism, cataclastic, catacomb, catadromous, and catafalque. (Perhaps some of those will become words of the day later on...)

On a side note, I almost called this blog Catachresis...but decided that naming my blog after something I wish to avoid might not be the wisest of ideas.