thanatology

March 04, 2015

noun

\than-uh-TAH-luh-jee\

Definition:

 the description or study of the phenomena of death and of psychological mechanisms for coping with them

Examples

One of the seminal texts on thanatology is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying, which outlines the five stages of grief.

"In her eight-week yoga for grief course, Stang … uses her background inthanatology—the scientific study of death, dying and bereavement—to educate participants about death and normalize their experiences." — Anna Medaris Miller, U.S. News & World Report, January 7, 2015

Did You Know?

In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of death and the twin brother of Hypnos (Sleep). The ancient Greeks eventually came to use thanatos as a generic word for "death." Thanatology is a direct linguistic heir of the Greek term and was first documented in English in the mid-1800s. As a science, thanatology examines attitudes toward death, the meaning and behaviors of bereavement and grief, and other matters. In 1935, the word thanatos itself made its debut in English, ushered in with psychoanalytic theory to describe an unconscious tendency toward self-destruction.

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One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Meaning:

        What is useless to one person could be valuable to another.

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Once bitten, twice shy.

Meaning:

After an unpleasant experience, people are careful to avoid something similar.

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chatoyant

March 03, 2015

adjective

\shuh-TOY-unt\

Definition

 having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light

Examples

"Suddenly he felt himself again in Carthage. There was a river there, too: not a little bolt of chatoyant silk like the Avon, which they would have called a 'crick' back there." — Rupert Hughes, "Momma" And Other Unimportant People, 1920
"They had interesting rocks, everything from Texas Hill Country caliche and an agate found in a gravel parking lot to a trilobite fossil and slice ofchatoyant tiger's eye from Colorado." — Tommy Simmons, The Advocate(Baton Rouge, LA), September 2, 2010

Did You Know?

The complex structure of a cat's eye not only enables it to see at night but also gives it the appearance of glowing in the dark. Not surprisingly, jewels that sport a healthy luster are often compared with the feline ocular organ, so much that the term cat's-eye is used to refer to those gems (such as chalcedony) that give off iridescence from within. If you've brushed up on your French lately, you might notice that the French word for cat (chat) provides the first four letters of chatoyant, a word used by jewelers to describe such lustrous gems (and by others who see the same luster elsewhere). Chatoyant derives from the present participle of chatoyer, a French verb that literally means "to shine like a cat's eyes."

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cambridge grammar for ielts with answers.pdf

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Only real friends will tell you when  your face is dirty.

Meaning: 

            Only a real friend will tell you the truth.

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macaroni

March 02, 2015

noun

\mak-uh-ROH-nee\

Definition

1

: pasta made from semolina and shaped in the form of slender tubes

2

: an affected young man : fop

Examples

One of Tracy's favorite comfort foods is homemade macaroni and cheese.

"He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars." — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890

Source: Meriem webster 

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