14 March 2008

Freeloaders and Stowaways

Greetings,

Here's an interesting question you might like to ponder as you wait in line for your lunch-time sandwich, or perhaps you could raise it at your next dinner party when there's a lull in the conversation:

"Would you trust anything living in your bowels that has teeth but NO eyes?!!"

I know; it's the sort of question that makes you pause and reflect on the company you keep, isn't it?

It got me wondering about all the other wee beasties we cart around with us every day, so off I went to my best mate, Google and Oh my! You won't believe what I found!

Suffice to say none of us need ever feel lonely again, because we share every moment of our lives with a cast of thousands. This week's Little Something Extra introduces you to some of our fellow travellers. Be sure to spend a few minutes getting to know them ...

Which brings us, surreptitiously scratching, to this week's topic ... sewage and sewerage and similar misunderstood words. Many of our stowaways find themselves swept into the sewerage as sewage, because the system of "the removal of waste water and refuse by means of sewers" OR "the system of sewers" is sewerage (which, I'm sure you've noted already, is only ever a noun and never an adjective, so you shouldn't have a 'sewerage system' ... just sewerage). 

Sewage itself is the "waste matter that passes through sewers." And the sewer is "an artificial conduit, usually underground, for carrying off waste water and refuse, as in a town or city."

All these words come from the Old French se(u)wiere 'overflow channel.'

If the parasites get the upper hand (not that they have "hands" as such ... or do they? That reference to things with teeth has me rattled, I can tell you) ... but if they do get out of control, you could find yourself prone or supine ... Does it matter? Well, if you've been laid low by parasites, I don't suppose you'd care all that much, but if you're prone, you're face down, and if you're supine, you're on your back (think 'spine' and 'supine' to remember which is which).

The thing about parasites is that they're such social butterflies ... they're always on the look-out for a party and like to spread themselves around. If you have a contagious disease, you actually have to make contact with another person (or something that person has used) before you succumb. However, if it's an infectious disease, you're in bigger trouble, because these critters can fly through the air with the greatest of ease on a sneeze or a breeze.

Contagious means 'capable of being transmitted by bodily contact with an infected person or object' and comes from the Latin contingere meaning 'touch closely.'

Infectious refers to the 'spread of a disease involving a microorganism that can be transmitted from one person to another by a specific kind of contact; the spread of germs of disease, as through the medium of infected insects, air, water or clothing' and comes from the Latin inficere 'to immerse in dye; discolour, taint, poison.'

So now you know!

And here's a story with a grammatical moral ...

An English major was being released from prison. The nice-looking female clerk was about to give him the $100.00 they give to all released prisoners. Since the inmate had not had female attention for a long time, he suggested that she could keep the money if she would go out with him. He was immediately rearrested and thrown back into jail. 

Why? 

Everyone knows you should never end a sentence with a proposition.

This week's quiz:

Here are some terms you might encounter while mixing with parasites ... match 'em up:

anaphylaxis, ectoparasite, halzoun, aspirate, cachexia, encystment, autochthonous, axostyle, cercaria, commensalism

1. association in which one individual receives benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed 

2. general ill health with emaciation, usually occurring in association with cancer or a chronic infectious disease; severe debilitated states (heavy worm infestation, visceral leishmaniasis) 

3. formation of a resistant external wall by protozoa to enable them to survive drying and adverse environmental conditions; encysted forms are infective to humans 

4. exaggerated allergic reaction to a foreign protein resulting from previous exposure to it 

5. organism that lives on or within the skin of its host (lice, mites, ticks) 

6. indigenous or normally found in a particular area; originating where it is found 

7. remove fluid from a cavity 

8. infestation of the larynx and pharynx especially by tongue worms of the genus Linguatula (especially L. serrata) consumed in raw liver 

9. rodlike supporting structure in some parasitic flagellates that gives rigidity to the body 

10. free-living, tailed larval stage of trematodes; may infect humans by direct penetration (schistosomes); may attach to vegetation and encyst to metacercarial stage, or may penetrate tissues of vertebrates or invertebrates and encyst to metacercarial stage; parasitic larva of a trematode worm, having a tail that disappears in the adult stage 

There you go ... I bet that will give you pause before you exchange any bodily fluids this weekend!

But if you're feeling amorously inclined ... here's a story, just in time for St Patrick's Day ...

An Irishman proposed to his girl on St. Patrick's Day and gave her a ring with a synthetic diamond. On learning it wasn't real, she protested vehemently about his cheapness. 

"It was in honour of St. Patrick's Day," he smiled, "I gave you a sham rock."

Archives

Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time!  

Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK. For all the flash new browsers, you'll have to do a search on my mate google to find what to do. There's a search box on the archives page!)

Subscribe Here and Be Bribed!

If you've received this little missive from a friend, you can get your very own issue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every Friday morning by clicking here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogrups.com And I'm even prepared to offer a shameless bribe.  

Never-Ending Story

An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot!  Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them).

Map of the World

I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark.

Last week's quiz:

apostrophe, synesthesia, alliteration, elision, assonance, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, metonymy, paradox, pleonasm

1. the repetition of similar vowel sounds - ASSONANCE (e.g. "I am sitting in my dingy little office ...")

2. a closely related term substituted for an object or idea - METONYMY (e.g. "the pen is mightier than the sword")

3. an attempt to fuse different senses by describing one in terms of another - SYNESTHESIA (e.g. 'the sweet smell of success' ... Obviously not a comment you'd use in relation to cooking with asafoetida!)

4. situation or phrase that appears to be contradictory but which contains a truth worth considering; a situation in which something seems both true and false - PARADOX (No, not a pair of boots ...The following is a paradox ... it's also one of those simple statements that makes you break out in a cold sweat at night as it goes round and round: "I always lie.")

5. the omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry - ELISION (e.g. "'Twas his shearing mate who write it ...")

6. a direct address of an inanimate object, abstract qualities, or a person not living or present - APOSTROPHE (Not our old favourite, the punctuation mark this time, but the figure of speech as in, "Oh, Asafoetida, what have you done to my social life?"

7. use of superfluous or redundant words - PLEONASM (e.g. 'Ears pierced while you wait!')

8. exaggeration for emphasis - HYPERBOLE

9. the repetition of consonant sounds, particularly at the beginning of words - ALLITERATION (e.g. "...as the stock are slowly stringing ..."

10.  the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe - ONOMATOPOEIA (e.g. "lowing cattle, ...fiendish rattle")

And because St Patrick's Day is just around the corner, here's a story you may, or may not, have seen before ...

An American tourist travelling in Limerick came across a little antique shop in which he was lucky enough to pick up, for a mere $150, the skull of St Patrick. 

Included in the price was a certificate of the skull's authenticity, signed by St Patrick himself.

Ten years later the tourist returned to Ireland and asked the antique shop owner if he had any more bargains.

"I've got the very thing for you," said the Irishman. "It's the genuine skull of St Patrick".

"You swindler," said the American. "You sold me that ten years ago," and, producing the skull, added, "Look, they're not even the same size."

"Ah yes," said the Irishman. "But this is when he was a lad."

A Little Something Extra

There's enough information here to keep you scratching away for weeks! (Oh ... and, of course, you could always use some of these bugs and ailments as afflictions for your characters if you're writing a novel!)

Parasitic diseases in humans are caused by protozoans and helminthes (Barbara Krumhardt, Ph.D., Science Group Leader, Biology Instructor, Urban Campus, Des Moines Area Community College, Des Moines, Iowa, USA): 

Hookworm

Hookworm is an intestinal parasite of humans that usually causes mild diarrhea or cramps. Heavy infection with hookworm can create serious health problems for newborns, children, pregnant women, and persons who are malnourished. Hookworm infections occur mostly in tropical and subtropical climates and are estimated to infect about 1 billion people -- about one-fifth of the world's population: (Source) 

Skin parasites

A variety of invertebrates that bite or feed on or in the human skin: (Source) 

Brain parasites

Parasites infect us all the time. They live in our bodies, even in our cells, and most of the time we do not even know that they are there. The brain can provide a pleasant, nurturing environment for parasites, because it has structures that prevent many of the immune system’s cells from entering, at least in the early stages of infection. Add to that plenty of oxygen and nutrients, and the brain seems like a rather nice place to live: (Source) 

And just to finish off, have you ever wondered why we humans are relatively hairless compared to our cousins? Those creepy crawlies could be responsible ...

Humans are unique among primates for our near-total bodily hairlessness. In fact, only a handful of the 5,000 or so mammals—mostly semi-aquatic species such as whales, walruses, and hippopotamuses—are not covered in dense fur.

Now, a controversial new theory suggests that human hairlessness evolved as a strategy to shed the ticks, lice, fleas, and other parasites that nestle deep in fur: (Source)

Word of the week: Buccal plates (n) Tooth-like structure in the mouth cavity of adult hookworms of the genus Ancylostoma ...

See? They do have teeth!

Oxymoron of the week: new tradition

And a Latin phrase for you if you decide to raise the delicate subject of parasites at your dinner party ...

Stercorem pro cerebro habes

[stayr-KOH-raym PROH kay-RAY-broh HAH-bayz]

(That's certainly food for thought)

Did you know that you can have your very own Latin reminders? How about undies proclaiming, Bene est rex esse? (It's good to be king) Or a shopping bag that warns, Emptrix nata sum (Born to shop)? 

Kind regards,

Jennifer

	Web www.write101.com

To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: mailto:WritingTips- unsubscribe@ yahoogroups. com  or go to the  web site, at http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/WritingTip s  This menu will also let you change your subscription between digest and normal mode.

Copyright  Jennifer Stewart  2008

Individual articles copyrighted by their authors.