Names of Things You Never Knew Had Names
AGLET – The plain or ornamental covering on the end of a shoelace.
CHANKING – Spat-out food, such as rinds or pits.
COLUMELLA NASI – The bottom part of the nose between the nostrils.
OCTOTHORPE – The symbol `#’ on a telephone handset. Bell Labs’ engineer Don Macpherson created the word in the 1960s by combining octo-, as in eight, with the name of one of his favourite athletes, 1912 Olympic decathlon champion Jim Thorpe.
PHOSPHENES – The lights you see when you close your eyes hard. Technically the luminous impressions are due to the excitation of the retina caused by pressure on the eyeball.
SNORKEL BOX – A mailbox with a protruding receiver to allow people to deposit mail without leaving their cars. (Well… I guess any postal worker or mailman would know this one.)
Information | TheFourEyes October 31, 2007
