Celebrating chickens During a recent mini-vacation, we ate fresh local eggs in Traverse City, and then walked next door to see the layers: eight ISA Browns, a hybrid resulting from crossing Rhode Island Reds and Rhode Island Whites. As we approached, the chickens courteously beckoned with musical clucking and chuckling. All moved in harmony, reminding me how sheep, cows and goats sometimes do the same thing. I picked up one chicken to pet and, when I put it down, it tried to jump back up but didn't make it all the way. Chickens are sociable, and are celebrated in songs, stories, jokes and phrases, such as found here: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/chicken

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest (the examples use "I" as the subject, "see" as the verb, and "him" as the object): SOV is the order used by the largest number of distinct languages; languages using it include the prototypical Japanese, Mongolian, Basque, Turkish, Korean, the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages. Some, like Persian, Latin and Quechua, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages. A sentence glossing as "I him see" would be grammatically correct in these languages.
SVO languages include English, the Romance languages, Bulgarian, Chinese and Swahili, among others. "I see him."
VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages, and Hawaiian. "See I him" is grammatically correct in these languages.
VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy. "See him I."
OVS languages include Hixkaryana. "Him see I."
OSV languages include Xavante and Warao. "Him I see."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

Lewis Carroll coined chortle in "Through the Looking Glass." It is probably a blend of chuckle and snort and connotes a good-natured, restrained gesture of humor. http://vocabulary-vocabulary.com/dictionary/chortle.php

John McCarthy, the inventor of programming language Lisp and a pioneer in “artificial intelligence” technology, died at the age of 84 on October 24. He served on the faculty at Stanford University for almost four decades. While there, McCarthy’s became the first to use the term “artificial intelligence,” in 1956. His programming language, Lisp, is the language used for artificial intelligence applications. Mashable reports that McCarthy was also one of the first people to propose “selling computing power through a utility business model,” in 1961. While the idea didn’t gain much traction at the time, it’s now coming back in a big way with the use of grid and cloud computing. McCarthy’s Web site
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/ also has a wide following. There the scientist published his Stanford lectures, thoughts on the future of robots, and science fiction writing. But McCarthy’s most widely-read work is likely his proposal for artificial intelligence, presented at Dartmouth in 1955
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html, in which he wrote that “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/john-mccarty-artificial-intelligence-pioneer-dies-at-84/2011/10/25/gIQALnwpFM_blog.html

Words you don't hear often: Sunup, moonrise, moonset.

The Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park is a natural park in Italy, which was established in 1991. It has an area of 2,014 square kilometres. The terrain is predominantly mountainous. The park is one of the largest protected areas in Europe, the show-piece being the massif of Gran Sasso, which dominates the surrounding landscape; it rises vertically on the immense pastures of Campo Imperatore. On the east side, from Teramo, there is the majestic "Paretone" which is a part of the central Adriatic landscape. It is the kingdom of perennial snow, rocks and wind. On the north there is the profile of Monti della Laga chain, where thousands of migratory birds stop on the shores of Lake Campotosto. This area is completely covered by woods of beeches, firs, turkey oaks and chestnuts. The park contains one of the most biologically diverse areas of Europe. The climate is borderline between that of the Mediterranean and that of Europe. The park contains more than two thousand plant and vegetable species, some of which are found exclusively in this area, such as Abruzzo Edelweiss, as well as fauna which are equally precious. See pictures and map at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Sasso_e_Monti_della_Laga_National_Park

Swindle, donate, and brainwash. Can there be anything common among those three actions? What unites these verb forms is that all of them are coined by a process known as back-formation. It's a reverse process in which words are formed by subtraction of an affix. That means the previously mentioned verbs were derived from the nouns swindler, donation, and brainwashing, respectively (unlike the usual way: nouns forming from verbs, such as lover from the verb love). Back-formations are often the result of erroneous usage. In Middle English, the original word for pea was pease. It was mistakenly considered a plural and thus people started using the supposedly singular form pea.
euthanize (YOO-thuh-nyz) verb tr.
Ending life for humane reasons, such as to avoid pain from an incurable condition. Back-formation from euthanasia (mercy killing), from Greek eu- (good) + thanatos (death). Earliest documented use: 1931
picaresque (pik-uh-RESK) adjective
1. Of or relating to humorous or satiric fiction describing, in a series of episodes, the adventures of a roguish hero.
2. Of or relating to rogues or scoundrels.
Via French, from Spanish pícaro (rogue). Picaresque fiction was popularized in Spain. Earliest documented use: 1827.
dogsbody (DOGZ-bod-ee) noun
A menial worker; drudge.
In the British navy, dogsbody was the term sailors used for the unpalatable food given to them, boiled peas (officially known as pease pudding) and biscuits soaked in water. With time the term began to be applied to low-ranked sailors and eventually to anyone who is forced to do menial jobs that no one else wants to do. Why a dog? Probably from the general poor reputation of a dog, as evident in terms such as a dog's life and a dog's chance. Earliest documented use: 1818. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg