Herpetologic Verse: Still More REPTILES

A follow-up to blog-posts of June 2019 , and May, 2020.

green anole, appearing gray, climbing down fencepost

same anole, 2 minutes later

Authors' Note:  'Leapin' Lizards' was a classic idiom used to express surprise, long before it was suspected that birds had evolved from reptiles! 

Authors' Note: 

ophidiophobia: an extreme or incapacitating fear of snakes

herpetophobia: a similar anxiety disorder extending to all reptiles

The reptilian suborder Serpentes was previously known as Ophidia, a term derived from ophis, Greek for 'snake'. 

Authors' Note: With four regional subspecies, the painted turtle, Chrysemus picta, has a range covering almost the entire United States and a part of Canada; it is North America's most common turtle.

  The verse's tale, based on a recent experience by the author dealt with an attractive female belonging to the eastern subspecies, although her accent was definitely southern.

 midland painted turtle (in Ontario), scurrying home

 

Authors' Note: Most commonly, we think of asymptomatic carriers as humans who can transmit a microbial infection, but have no symptoms themselves; such diseases as typhoid and salmonellosis are well-known to be transmitted by such carriers.

Similarly, pets may harbor organisms that cause human disease, although the animals themselves don't become ill. Salmonella bacteria are commonly found on the skins of certain lizards and most turtles. The red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta), a reptile native to the US, has attained notoriety in this regard; as children's pets they are cute, easy to care for, and inexpensive. Combined with their penchant for taking over ponds from native turtles, these traits underlie their status as an invasive species whose sale is now banned in many countries around the globe.

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NON-SEQUITURS #2

This blogpost is a continuation of material developed for a blog-post in 2021 entitled "Non-Sequiturs #1'. Click HERE to see that posting.

Authors' Note: For educators, giftedness, e.g. in intellectual abilities, implies an ability significantly above average that motivates differences in school programming. For gifted children, social isolation from the majority of their age-peers is a major problem in their development and maturation. Various educational theories and practices abound in attempting to deal with this problem.  

Authors' Note:

hamulus: (Latin) a little hook, plural = hamuli, with biologic implications discussed at OEDILF in a verse by Snowy Owl. Also, the hamate bone of the human wrist, bearing a prominent hook-like extension is a relatively frequent site of human fractures, as in a verse by your blogging team (see link below).

Remus: one of Rome's mythological founding twin infants, most often pronounced in anglo-Latin as REE-mus, but here, invoking more classic Latin, as RAY-mus.

Our collection of 'Non-Sequiturs' on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense", contains an admittedly bizarre assortment of nonsensical odds-and-ends, that don't quite fit into other topic-based offerings. But should you want to review the entire collection, click HERE.

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Grandpa Greg's Advanced Grammar: PLURALIA TANTUM

Authors' Note: Plurale tantum, meaning plural only, is a Latin-derived term (with plural form pluralia tantum), for a noun that has no, or only a minimally used singular form, e.g. alms, auspices, and dregs. There are over one hundred of these in English. In other languages, such forms are commonly used to refer to ceremonial time-points on life's journey, but in English we have only the relatively archaic terms banns, nuptials, obsequies and remains, also last rites and final respects. Bryce's attempt to help his audience is incorrect, as these peculiarly plural nouns generally are paired with a plural verb-form.

Authors' Note: Eruption is a venerable medical term for a skin rash, in use since an earlier era when practitioners paid careful attention to characteristic skin lesions and various symptoms, but knew little of disease causality such as viral infection and allergy. Traditional names for medical symptoms and diseases in general are often based on lay vernacular terms dating from a much earlier time. Shingles is also known as herpes zoster, the second term referring to the belt-like distribution of lesions.

Authors' Note: 

clunky: slang for 'awkward'

Our disappointed grammar-buff is right: a lot of grammar is not derived from logical principles. All languages face the problem of characterizing masses and groups of undistinguished small objects as singular or plural. This dilemma seems to reach its peak with items that are the basis of cooking. Despite an attempt to find rules, there is no dependency on particle size.

Nouns used only, or principally in the plural form are known as pluralia tantum; those used excusively in the singular form are known as singularia tantum. This usage varies from one language to another. We find some foreign uses 'incomprehensible', as in the general Hebrew plural form mayim for 'water', despite the fact that, on occasion, "Still waters run deep."

Authors' Note: The above verse provides several further examples of the grammatical phenomenon pluralia tantum. An idiom associated with providing condolences for the family and friends of a single deceased person is to 'pay one's final respects'.

Authors' Note:   

Urals: The Ural Mountains, a discrete range running north and south, separates old Russian from more sparsely populated Siberia, and is considered as the boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia.

 The above verses provide further examples of the grammatical phenomenon pluralia tantum. 

RELATED VERSE:

OVERLAPPING THEMES: 

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