Vitamin C

The human body doesn't produce its own vitamin C.

So take your chewables or eat some limes, you scurvy rouges!

Murder Board

Sounds scarier than it is. The murder board is a group of people questioning a person who is in preparation for an oral examination or a Senate confirmation hearing. The murder board should be as tough if not quite a bit tougher than the committee he is preparing to face.

Larry Tracy explains it pretty well in this article, which also happens to be an excert from his book The Shortcut to Persuasive Presentations.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/

Swash!

My biggest regret in packing for school was leaving behind my vampire teeth. My second was neglecting to bring my Compact OED so I could give more detailed descriptions of lovely words like "swash."

After I do well on my Diplomacy midterm tomorrow, I'm going to go swashing down the street.

It is so fun to say:

Swash.      Truly onomatopoetic.

n.  1.
1. A splash of water or other liquid hitting a solid surface.
2. The sound of such a splash.
3. A narrow channel through which tides flow.
4. A bar over which waves wash freely.
5. Swagger or bluster.
6. A swaggering or blustering person.

v.   swashed, swash·ing, swash·es
intr.
1. To strike, move, or wash with a splashing sound.
2. To swagger.

tr.
1. To splash (a liquid).
2. To splash a liquid against.

"swash." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 10 Nov. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/swash>.

Iniquitous

Now when I first saw this word, I thought for sure it was related to ubiquitous, which is a fun Weighty Word. However, I was wrong in this assumption. Where ubiquitous comes from the Latin word ubīqu(e) meaning everywhere, iniquitous come to us from the Latin word inīqu(us) meaning uneven or unfair. So we see they will have vasty different meanings.

iniquitous: adj.   Characterized by iniquity; wicked.
ubiquitous: adj.   Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent.

I came across this word researching sugar-based biofuels. "[Farmers] have not been paid what they were promised. Payments have been erratic and iniquitous, with some farmers getting full payment at old rates, while others not paid at all." 


"iniquitous." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 20 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/iniquitous>.

"ubiquitous." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 20 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ubiquitous>.

Primogeniture

Primogeniture: Being born first, or in my family's case, this guy:

Term also refers to the law where the first-born son would inherit land.

I have yet to find a word to describe "guy-in-family-best-at-putting-sisters-into-a-headlock," but I'll keep looking.

Comparative advantage

Hypothetical:
1. Tiger Woods has a lawn that needs mowing.
2. Tiger Woods has a teenage neighbor who charges $10/hour to mow lawns.
3. Tiger Woods can mow his law three times as fast as his neighbor.
4. Tiger Woods makes $80 mil a year, or about $913.25/hour in endorsements.
so
5. Although Tiger Woods can mow his own lawn three times as fast as his neighbor, his time would be better spent filming another ad or working on his swing.

Tiger Woods has the absolute advantage in this situation. He is better at mowing, golfing and making money in endorsements. However, if he pays someone else to mow his lawn, he can not only increase his own productivity by filming an ad, but also the productivity of his neighborhood.

And that is why we get our flowers from South America, kids.

Rabbit Killer

Rabbit killer: A slayer of the weak who can look fragile against the strong.

BBC sports used this term to describe Robinho: "His truly great performances came in the two meetings with Chile, a 3-0 win in a group game and a 6-1 rout in the quarter final. Both times Robinho was dazzling. But Chile were not only very poor defensively, they were also falling apart after internal discipline problems."

He's a pretty sweet player, but probably not good enough to warrant all his sulking.