Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (rss.art19.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 4, 2017 is:
stridulate \STRIJ-uh-layt\ verb
: to make a shrill creaking noise by rubbing together special bodily structures — used especially of male insects (such as crickets or grasshoppers)
Examples:
"When attacked from the side, the crickets stridulated and tried to bite their attacker." — Matt Walker, BBC News, 28 July 2009
"Every day throughout the year begins and ends with … insects rattling and stridulating, and birds singing their hearts out." — Alex Shoumatoff, Yale Environment 360, 18 May 2017
Did you know?
Stridulate is one member of a word family that has its ancestry in the Latin word stridulus, meaning "shrill." The word alludes to the sharp, high-pitched sound that is produced by a number of insects—particularly crickets and grasshoppers but also certain beetles—as well as other animals, usually as a mating call or a signal of territorial behavior. Stridulus comes from stridere, which is the direct source of our noun stridor, a word found in medical dictionaries. Stridor means "a harsh, shrill, or creaking noise" and also "a harsh vibrating sound heard during respiration in cases of obstruction of the air passages."
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.