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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
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We haven't had one of these for a little while: a language-related listicle from Mental Floss.
Well, now next time someone invites me somewhere, I can say I have extenuating errands.
The English language is certainly bizarre in the best way.
For instance, there are values of "best" I wasn't aware of until just now.
Some of it is totally run-of-the-mill, and some of it is full of words that only seem to appear in one extremely specific situation.
There's another listicle somewhere that explains "run-of-the-mill." Maybe I already featured it. Maybe it's coming. Maybe I forgot to save it. I don't recall. It's really not hard to guess at, but I think it's good for writers to think about these things.
So let’s take a little stroll through eight words that only show up in one weirdly specific context.
Including the word "weird" in the headline (and to a lesser extent, here) is way too close to clickbait. But have you ever wondered why "weird" is so weird? I mean, it doesn't even follow the well-known "I before E except after C" spelling rule.
Anyway, I'm not going to cover all of them.
Inclement (Weather)
If you’ve ever heard the word “inclement” outside of local news broadcasts, please step forward, because we know you’re lying.
This is, of course, our clue to use it to describe something other than weather. The situation at the office, maybe, or a police raid.
What the article doesn't note, but I will, is that this is one of those Latin-root words whose cousins appear every now and then. The obvious example is the name "Clementine," or the citrus fruit that has that name. But my dictionary source says "clement" can describe someone's demeanor (synonym: merciful), so why can't "inclement?"
Diametrically (Opposed)
Diametrically has one job: heighten drama. No one is ever diametrically aligned, and no one is diametrically friends.
That's because the meaning is something like "directly and completely," and it doesn't hurt that the word contains many of the same sounds. This isn't a case like "literally," which is often used to mean "figuratively or metaphorically" and also to heighten drama. "Figuratively" and "metaphorically" have definitions that should be diametrically opposed to that of "literally."
Bode (Well/Ill)
Bode is a free agent in theory, but let’s be honest: you’ve only ever seen it next to “well” or “ill.”
Again, an opportunity to get this one to stretch a bit.
Hermetically (Sealed)
Now, this word is a little “underground,” if you will. Hermetically sealed sounds like something out of a sci-fi lab, but it mostly refers to food packaging and those little foil seals you peel off with your teeth, even though you’re not supposed to.
This one's a little trickier. It doesn't mean what I thought it meant for most of my life. I thought it was related to mercury (the element, not the planet or the god), by extension from Mercury to Hermes. I thought it had to do with how liquid mercury could form seals. In my defense, I wasn't too far off, but it referred to an entirely different god: Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge who, when the Greeks took over Egypt, became identified with Hermes. How that led to things being described as hermetically sealed is interesting, but beyond today's scope.
If that's a little confusing, don't worry. I was confused, too. The link in the article only goes to something that explains what "hermetically sealed" does, without going into the word origin.
Pyrrhic (Victory)
Of all the words here, I think this one makes the most sense to be paired with only one other word. Again, it's of ancient origin, but it's derived from a person's name: a Roman general named Pyrrhus. And to one particular battle, which his forces won, but only at great cost. It became the Platonic ideal (Platonic, of course, being another word derived from a name, but which can pair with several other words besides "ideal") of a victory that only comes with tremendous losses.
Contiguous (United States)
Contiguous technically means “touching,” but 99% of its appearances involve either a map or the phrase “excluding Alaska and Hawaii.”
Yeah, but that other 1% exists (though I think the percentages here are pulled from thin air)—though they're mostly technical jargon.
English is full of these little linguistic oddities. Some may be outdated, sure, but one thing remains true: We sound incredibly smart when we use them the right way!
I think we can sound even smarter if we come up with new ways to use them, perhaps even all of them in one contiguous sentence. Which I'm entirely too lazy to do right now, so I'll settle for just the one. |
© Copyright 2026 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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