Thanks, OED
Aug. 6th, 2012 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyI was reading a a review of Paul Churchland, Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals, and came across a word I'd never seen before: altricial.
So I head straight over to the OED, plug the word in, and was presented with this gloss:
Hands up for anyone here who knew what "nidicolous" meant but didn't know what "altricial" meant.
(I note that in the entry for nidicolous, the second part of the first definition reads: "Also (of a species): bearing young of this kind; altricial". Way to go circular definitions, OED.
So I head straight over to the OED, plug the word in, and was presented with this gloss:
= NIDICOLOUS adj. : opp. PRECOCIAL adj., q.v.
Hands up for anyone here who knew what "nidicolous" meant but didn't know what "altricial" meant.
(I note that in the entry for nidicolous, the second part of the first definition reads: "Also (of a species): bearing young of this kind; altricial". Way to go circular definitions, OED.
