November 05, 2004

This may be extremely offensive

Today in my neuroscience class we were talking about Huntington's Disease, a terrible genetic disorder where inhibition (the brakes) to the motor system is cut off, so a person with the disease makes uncontrollable spastic muscle movements. We saw a video, and I couldn't help but have the following thoughts:
  • It kind of looks like she's doing the robot.
  • If I had Huntington's Disease, I would just always carry a boombox around with me and tell people I was dancing.
  • If I had Huntington's Disease, it would take a long time to diagnose, because people would just thing my dancing had improved.

One word which doesn't make sense to me is the verb "preying," as in "The lion preyed on the gazelle," or "The 23-year old graduate student preys on nubile young undergrads." Shouldn't that word be "predators?" Lions predator on gazelles. Well, I'm going to start using it. Posted by mill1991 at November 5, 2004 10:25 AM | TrackBack

Comments

"Plunder" is also like that. And junk? I junk the junk. Knowing nothing about its history, I'm going to guess that "prey" was first a noun and then was converted to a verb.

"Predator" is more fun, though.

Personally, I'm always tickled that "raze" and "raise" are homonyms. How did THAT happen?

Posted by: Kaitlin Johnson, linguistics student extraordinaire at November 5, 2004 02:40 PM

predate

v 3: prey on or hunt for; "These mammals predate certain eggs" [syn: raven, prey]

But beware!

1: be earlier in time; go back further; "Stone tools precede bronze tools" [syn: precede, forego, antecede, antedate]

I'm picturing a stone arrowhead hunting down a bronze chisel.


In my Orgy Chem class we talked about "unionized" particles. No, they're not the ones that form inert complexes when you try to get them active; they're just the ones that aren't ionized.

Posted by: Epistaxis at November 7, 2004 05:47 PM

So does the chicken predate the egg?

Posted by: Epistaxis at November 7, 2004 05:48 PM

See, I qualify as a true chemistry person, because I read your comment, Joe, and am confused by the strange allusion you make to "unions"...

Posted by: Cupienda at November 11, 2004 03:04 PM
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