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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| All words are made up. Some were made up more recently than others. And some are more made up than others. Here's Mental Floss to not help: What’s the Longest Word in English?  Spoiler alert: Despite what you might have heard, it’s not ‘antidisestablishmentarianism.’ I memorized that one long ago, as well as another contender. If you can find a way to work pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis into a conversation, congratulations! But not that one. You’ve just managed to use the longest defined word you’ll find in any dictionary in everyday chatter. Being in a dictionary just means that someone put it in a dictionary. The word was coined in the 1930s, probably by the president of the National Puzzlers’ League, “in imitation of polysyllabic medical terms,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “but occurring only as an instance of a very long word.” Like I said, made up. In this case, made up less than 100 years ago. Somehow I doubt it ever entered public use the way 'antidisestablishmentarianism' once did. If anyone ever tried to say it, it would have most likely been in connection with longest-word contests. Another pretty long word, floccinaucinihilipilification—meaning “the action or habit of estimating as worthless”—was created by mashing together four words in a Latin grammar book that all meant something with little value and adding -fication at the end. And who doesn't need a -fication? That was the other long word I had memorized, incidentally. It seems appropriate in this context, though, as I consider the competition for longest word to be of little value. There are even longer words than pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis out there—you just won’t necessarily find them in a dictionary. I'm reminded of the Blackadder the Third dictionary scene, which is second only to the "Scottish Play" scene from the same serial in its capacity to send me into paroxysms of cacchination: As the article points out, words of even greater length are possible. They already exist in technical fields such as chemistry, so it's questionable if the matter can ever be settled with any definitization, as words can be crafted at any time by nearly anyone. The thing that's important is the usefulness of the word. Useful ones enter the lexicon with disturbing regularity. One might even say that what matters most isn't length, but girth. |
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