An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word anagram itself can be rearranged into nag a ram, also the word binary into brainy and the word adobe into abode.
Leet, also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words based on a system of suffixes and alternate meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
A metasyntactic variable is a specific word or set of words identified as a placeholder in computer science and specifically computer programming. These words are commonly found in source code and are intended to be modified or substituted before real-world usage. The words foo and bar are good examples as they are used in over 330 Internet Engineering Task Force Requests for Comments, the documents which define foundational internet technologies like HTTP (web), TCP/IP, and email protocols.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.
WordNet is a lexical database of semantic relations between words in more than 200 languages. WordNet links words into semantic relations including synonyms, hyponyms, and meronyms. The synonyms are grouped into synsets with short definitions and usage examples. WordNet can thus be seen as a combination and extension of a dictionary and thesaurus. While it is accessible to human users via a web browser, its primary use is in automatic text analysis and artificial intelligence applications. WordNet was first created in the English language and the English WordNet database and software tools have been released under a BSD style license and are freely available for download from that WordNet website.
A slush fund is a fund or account that is not properly accounted, such as money used for corrupt or illegal purposes, especially in the political sphere. Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from money that is used for legitimate purposes. Slush funds may be employed by government or corporate officials in efforts to pay influential people discreetly in return for preferential treatment, advance information, and other services. The funds themselves may not be kept secret but the source of the funds or how they were acquired or for what purposes they are used may be hidden. Use of slush funds to influence government activities may be viewed as subversive of the democratic process.
In fiction, a MacGuffin is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for film, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock, and later extended to a similar device in other fiction.
Charles Simonyi is a Hungarian-American software architect. He started and led Microsoft's applications group, where he built the first versions of Microsoft Office.
A French leave, sometimes Irish goodbye or Irish exit, is a departure from a location or event without informing others or without seeking approval. Examples include relatively innocuous acts such as leaving a party without bidding farewell in order to avoid disturbing or upsetting the host, or more problematic acts such as a soldier leaving their post without authorization.
James Davis Nicoll is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usenet personality, Nicoll is known for writing a widely quoted epigram on the English language, as well as for his accounts of suffering a high number of accidents, which he has narrated over the years in Usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. He is now a blogger on Dreamwidth and Facebook, and an occasional columnist on Tor.com. In 2014, he started his website, jamesdavisnicoll.com, dedicated to his book reviews of works old and new; and later added Young People Read Old SFF, where his panel of younger readers read pre-1980 science fiction and fantasy, and Nicoll and his collaborators report on the younger readers' reactions.
Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, leaves, roots, and seeds. An alternate definition of the term is applied somewhat arbitrarily, often by culinary and cultural tradition. It may exclude foods derived from some plants that are fruits, flowers, nuts, and cereal grains, but include savoury fruits such as tomatoes and courgettes, flowers such as broccoli, and seeds such as pulses.
Buddy Wakefield is an American spoken word artist, a three-time poetry slam world champion, and the most toured performance poet in history. His works have been released by Strange Famous Records (CD), Righteous Babe Records (CD), and Write Bloody Publishing (books). He has lived in Sanborn, New York; Baytown, Texas; Seattle, Washington; and Los Angeles, California.
Harcourt Butler Technical University (HBTU) is a Premier State Technical University in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. The HBTU was named after Sir Spencer Harcourt Butler, Governor of the United Provinces in British India. Its programs have been conferred in autonomous status under the university. It is one of the oldest engineering institutes in the country and holds the ISO 9001:2000 certification. It offers Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral programs in engineering,natural sciences and humanities as well as Masters programs in Computer Application (MCA) and Business Administration (MBA).
Taylor McDowell Mali is an American slam poet, humorist, teacher, and voiceover artist.
Beecher's Handmade Cheese is an artisan cheesemaker and retail shop with locations in the Pike Place Market, Seattle, Washington and New York City's Flatiron District. The company was founded by Kurt Beecher Dammeier in 2003 and opened in the Pike Place Market after Dammeier obtained a difficult to obtain storefront lease in the Market. Because Dammeier had never been a cheesemaker, he sought out the assistance of Brad Sinko, who helped run a family cheese-making business in Oregon. A second location was opened in 2011 in the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City.
The Bunbury Music Festival is a three-day music festival in Cincinnati, Ohio at Sawyer Point Park & Yeatman's Cove on the banks of the Ohio River. Each annual event typically features over 100 acts performing on three to six separate stages through the park. The festival was founded by MidPoint Music Festival co-founder and former Fountain Square managing director Bill Donabedian. The festival's inaugural event took place July 13–15, 2012. In 2014, Bunbury was purchased by PromoWest Productions, an entertainment company operating out of Columbus, Ohio.
Esemplastic is a qualitative adjective which the English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed to have invented. Despite its etymology from the Ancient Greek word πλάσσω for "to shape", the term was modeled on Schelling's philosophical term Ineinsbildung – the interweaving of opposites – and implies the process of an object being moulded into unity. The first recorded use of the word is in 1817 by Coleridge in his work, Biographia Literaria, in describing the esemplastic – the unifying – power of the imagination.
Wall Poems is a project in which more than 110 poems in many different languages were painted on the exterior walls of buildings in the city of Leiden, The Netherlands.
Roger W. Shuy is an American linguist best known for his work in sociolinguistics and forensic linguistics. He received his BA from Wheaton College in 1952, his MA from Kent State University in 1954, and his PhD from Case Western Reserve University in 1962, where he studied regional dialectology with Raven I. McDavid, Jr. Shuy took additional linguistic courses at the University of Michigan and Indiana University.
