Word of the Day
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.
brattice
noun
any temporary wooden fortification, especially at the top of a wall.
More about brattice
Brattice “a temporary wooden fortification” comes by way of Old French from Medieval Latin brittisca, which appears to be a Latin adaptation of Old English Bryttisc “British” because of the assumption that this type of fortification originated in Britain. The word British—as well as the related terms Breton, Britain, Brittany, and Brythonic—comes from a lost Celtic name that Greek writers recorded variously as Brettanoí and Prettanikḗ two millennia ago. An alternative proposal is that brattice is a compound of German Brett “board” and a common Romance element derived from Latin -iscus, which forms adjectives. Brattice was first recorded in English in the early 14th century.
how is brattice used?
In the middle of the pass was a brattice in which a man always stood guard. While they were yet a good distance away, the man in the brattice saw them and shouted loudly, “Enemy approaching! Enemy approaching!”
A constant thunk! of bolts and shafts echoed along the brattice now; points hitting wood and stone. Her body tensed against the searing rush of Greek Fire …. The hook of a scaling ladder thumped into another brattice, further along the wall; she had a bare second to see that the men with swords and axes beginning to swarm up it were not Visigoth auxiliary troops …