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Provided by the compucert gamine \gam-EEN; GAM-een\, noun:
- A girl who wanders about the streets; an urchin.
- A playfully mischievous girl or young woman.
Gamine comes from the French. A boy who wanders about the street is a gamin.
- [From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"]
- A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term telefactoring, this technology is of intense interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance. (© The Jargon File)
"Robot," which first appeared in the 1923 English translation of the Czech play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, is perhaps the most famous example of a word that originated in science fiction literature and passed into common parlance. This week we'll take a look at other terms coined by sci-fi writers.
- Someone who spends all their time on the computer surfing the net or playing games. Similar to couch potato.
You spent seven hours on the internet creating meanings for words on urban dictionary? Wow, You're such a mouse potato.
Trivia
Which U.S. president had a basketball half-court installed on the South Lawn of the White House?
- George H. W. Bush, in 1989.
- Cleveland: the Forest City was named after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the group that surveyed the area (1796)
- Wiley Post: American aviator completed the first round-the-world solo flight (1933)
- Jessica Lynch returned home to West Virginia (2003)
- Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): monk who experimented with pea plants and discovered the basic rules of genetics
- Emma Lazarus (1849-1887): penned "Give me your tired, your poor"; also, writers Oskar Maria Graf (1894-1967), Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943) and Paul Schrader (62)
- Bob Dole (85): former senator and presidential candidate
- Oscar de la Renta (76): fashion designer
- Rhys Ifans (40): actor, Notting Hill; also, actors Orson Bean (80), Louise Fletcher (74), Terence Stamp (69), Bobby Sherman (65), Albert Brooks (61), Willem Dafoe (53), Rob Estes (45), John Leguizamo (44), David Spade and Patrick Labyorteaux (both 43) and Franka Potente (34)
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