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Provided by the compucert etiolate \EE-tee-uh-layt\, transitive verb:
- (Botany) To bleach and alter the natural development of (a green plant) by excluding sunlight.
- To make pale or sickly.
- To make weak by stunting the growth or development of.
- (Botany) To become bleached or whitened, as when grown without sunlight.
Etiolate comes from French étioler, perhaps for s'éteuler, "to become like straw," from Old French esteule, "stubble or straw," from Latin stipula, "a stalk, straw."
Are you shitreous? - A phrase that comes from the mixture of the emphatic expressions "no shit!" and "are you serious?" It is normally used in response to some surprising or shocking news or information. When said fast is indistinguishable from saying "are you serious?"
Tom: Wow! Are you shitreous?
Trivia
What led Pope Pius XII to designate Clare of Assisi, a cloistered 13th-century nun, the patron saint of television?
- A vision. Saint Clare, ailing and unable to leave her convent cell one Christmas Eve, reported seeing on her cell wall the midnight mass that was being held in a nearby chapel.
- LSD: Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic effects of the drug (1943)
- Walter Cronkite: the "most trusted man in America" began his 19-year run as anchor of CBS Evening News (1962)
- panda diplomacy: China sent the US two giant pandas as a gift after President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China (1972)
- Anatole France (1844-1924): Nobel Prize-winner for literature; novelist/poet Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) was also born on this date
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977): silent movie superstar and commie
- Queen Margrethe II (69): Denmark's reigning queen
- Ellen Barkin (55): actor, Sea of Love, Ocean's Thirteen; actors Peter Ustinov (1921-2004), Martin Lawrence and Jon Cryer (both 44) and Lucas Hass (33) were also born on this date
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