Sunday, April 25, 2010

sough \SAU; SUHF\, intransitive verb

• To make a soft, low sighing or rustling sound, as the wind.

noun:

• A soft, low rustling or sighing sound.

Sough comes from Middle English swoughen, from Old English swogan.
intellectual masturbation

• Fascinating intellectual breakthroughs regarding reality, language, existence, knowledge, perception, or human behavior which are completely unprovable and utterly without use, and therefore of no real consequence to anyone. See also: philosophy

Etymology: the mental counterpart to masturbation; i.e. a process that is very pleasurable but hasn't accomplished anything at the end.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language influences human thought, so that native speakers of different languages think about concepts in incommensurably distinct modes. Linguists and psychologists contend fiercely over the validity of this claim, oblivious to the fact that it is intellectual masturbation.

Trivia
What kind of nuts are in the Nutella spread?

• Hazelnuts.

History

• "La Marseillaise": French national anthem was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg (1792)
• guillotine: highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier was beheaded in France's first public execution-by-guillotine (1792)
• Suez Canal: ground was broken on the waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea (1859)
• double helix: in the magazine Nature, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid," which described the structure of DNA (1953)

Birthdays

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  Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658): Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland
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  Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): composer of Swan Lake and the 1812 Overture
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  Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937): physicist and inventor of wireless telegraphy and recipient of Nobel Prize in Physics; another Nobel Prize laureate born on this date was Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)
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  Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965): broadcast journalist and commentator
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  Ella Fitzgerald (1918-1996): jazz singer known for scat
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  Meadowlark Lemon (78): Harlem Globetrotters' "Clown Prince"; plus, NBA star Tim Duncan (34)
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  Hank Azaria (46): Emmy-winning actor who provides many of the voices for The Simpsons; also, actors Paul Mazursky (80), Al Pacino (70), Bertrand Tavernier (69), Talia Shire (64), Renée Zellweger (41) and Jason Lee and Jason Wiles (both 40)