Word of the Day
cognoscenti
plural noun
persons who have superior knowledge and understanding of a particular field, especially in the fine arts, literature, and world of fashion.
More about cognoscenti
Cognoscenti “persons who have superior knowledge of a particular field” is the plural of cognoscente, which refers to an individual person with such knowledge. Unlike English, French, and Spanish, which usually add -s or -es to indicate a plural noun, Italian typically changes the final vowel of a word; singular -a often becomes plural -e, while singular -e and -o often become plural -i. The Italian verb meaning “to know” is conoscere, with the present participle conoscente, which lacks the g of cognoscente; the reason for the g is the influence of Latin cognōscere “to know.” Cognoscenti was first recorded in English in the 1770s.
how is cognoscenti used?
In the past few decades a U.S. gastronomic explosion led in part by food TV has the culinary cognoscenti in a dither to define a national food character that includes barbeque, lobster rolls, foraged locavore salads, and molecular gastronomy.
With the U.S. and Cuba restoring diplomatic ties, some art-world cognoscenti are betting that the tiny island could become the next hot corner of the global art market.
intramundane
adjective
existing or occurring within the material world.
More about intramundane
Intramundane “existing within the material world” is based on intra- “within” and mundane “common, ordinary, of the earth.” Intra- comes from Latin intrā “within, inside” and is related to interior, internal, intestine, intimate, intrinsic, and introduce, all of which come from Latin terms involving movement toward or existence inside something. Mundane ultimately comes from Latin mundus; as we learned from the recent Word of the Day gens du monde, mundus originally meant “clean” before expanding to mean “elegant,” then “ornament,” and finally “the world.” A similar shift in meaning happened with the unrelated Ancient Greek word kósmos “order, government, universe,” as in cosmic and cosmopolitan. Intramundane was first recorded in English in the 1830s.
how is intramundane used?
In fact, correct understanding of the problem of void entails distinguishing two levels: the anthropological and the cosmological, or—to put it another way—the intramundane level and that of the totality of being …. For Sartre, this intramundane dimension is essential, and distinct from the extramundane, the void as an infinite milieu.
In Fink’s view, play, more than work, struggle, or love, provides the “operative model” most conducive to revealing the mundanity of the world; … in play, the human being deals not with another, equally real being but with the unreal, such that play is thus always more than mere intramundane behavior.
muon
noun
a subatomic particle similar in most respects to the electron except that it is unstable, it may be positively charged, and its mass is approximately 207 times greater.
More about muon
Muon “an unstable, positively charged subatomic particle” is a shortening of mu meson; beginning in the mid-20th century, scientists have used Greek letters to identify specific types of newly discovered subatomic particles, and the terms pion and tauon are formed similarly. The Greek letter mu, which is pronounced as “mee” in modern Greek and is the ancestor of the Roman letter m, is a borrowing from the Phoenicians, a seafaring people of the ancient Mediterranean. The Phoenician source is the letter mēm, a relative of the Hebrew letter mem, and both come from a Semitic root meaning “water.” Muon was first recorded in English in the early 1950s.
how is muon used?
Like electrons, muons have a negative electric charge and a quantum property called spin, which causes the particles to act like tiny, wobbling tops when placed in a magnetic field. The stronger the magnetic field, the faster a muon wobbles.
Muons are all around us and are, for example, created when cosmic rays collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. They are able to pass through matter, and researchers have used them to probe the inaccessible interiors of structures from giant volcanoes to the Egyptian pyramids.