Other D's in the Collegiate: dumortierite, drogue, etc.

Six words remain from the previous list, but let's begin with one other I discovered and want to mention: dracaena. Pronounced dra CEE nah, this genus of plant with its several species is a great interior plant. We have the Dracaenas marginata, Dracaena reflexa and even the Dracaena Janet Craig. I wonder who the last one is named after... So popular are dracaenas among some that there is even a book entitled "How to Care for Your Dracaena." Making them attractive to many homeowners is the fact that dracaenas are low maintenance and "generally rugged, carefree houseplants with a robust and tropical appearance." Doesn't this sound like it really describes a Hawaiian body builder? You can find pictures online. Let's move on.

I will continue with doxycycline, a tetracycline antiobiotic with potent anti-bacterial activity often taken by travelers to prevent diarrhea. Well, in describing this term we could go in a number of directions, but let me only say a word about tetracyclines. They are a group of "broad-spectrum" antibiotics (can be used against several diseases/illnesses) whose general usefulness has been reduced with the onset of bacterial resistance. That is, just as the Empire "struck back," so now it seems that bacteria are doing so, also. That really isn't very considerate of them, since they end up hurting people left and right. As with many modern drugs, the tetracyclines were only discovered in the 1940s. The first of the tetracyclines to be discovered was Chlortetracycline (Aureomycin) by Dr. Benjamin Duggar of Lederle Laboratories in New York. This was derived from the soil-dwelling bacterium Streptomyces aureofaciens. The next tetracycline to be discoverd was Oxytetracycline (Terramycin). Doxycycline was discovered in 1966. It can be used to treat prostatitis, sinusitis, syphilis, chlamydia, pelvic inflammatory disease, acne and rosacea. Enough on this...

A drogue is a cylindrical or funnel-shaped device towed as a target by an airplane. It can also be a device to slow down a boat in a storm so that it doesn't rapidly speed down the slope of a wave and crash into the next one. The word is probably derived from drag, though no one seems to be sure. A popular way the word is used today is simply something that is dragged by a plane. Thus, this web site describes, and pictures, a drogue designed by Kite Studio in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. I feel like a fool because I didn't know this word. Anyone in the airline or boat industry knows it. Well, let's stop crying, learn the word, and then move on.

The word douroucouli comes from an unidentified South American language and refers to the owl monkey. Here is a picture of one. I wouldn't call the little guy exactly cute, but it is the only nocturnal species of monkey. It has large eyes (the better to see you with, my dear), and is well adapted for night vision, though it can't perceive colors. This last feature, monochromatism, is rare among New World monkeys. Just to keep my "animal phyla muscles" in shape, the douroucouli is a from the Primate Order of Mammals, but then, before we get to the family name (Aotidae), we have to slog through the suborder (Haplorrhini), the infraorder (Similiformes) and the parvorder (Platyrrhini). There aren't that many Primates in the world, folks, but we have division after division of them. They live in South America and, predictably enough, the higher up in the mountains they live, the richer and thicker their fur. Classification of species is always a problem for monkeys, and I won't wade into that one here. Suffice it to say that the douroucoulis exhibit a variety of sounds, with 50-100 distinct calls having been identified. The male is the primary caregiver, and the mother only gets involved in "raising" the baby for the first week or so of its life. I have a big book of primates on my card table; I can look at pictures of them for hours.

Final Words--Domaine, Dumortierite, Dysprosium

Domaine doesn't appear in the OED, but it is in our little dictionary, and so I will learn it. I can easily see it becoming confused with "domain," whcih is pronounced the same way. It is short for domaine vinicole or vitticole, and it refers to a vineyard esp. in Burgundy that makes and bottles wine from its own grapes. Here, for example, is the web site of the wines of Domaine Leroy, Burgundy. Whoever put together the web site calls their wines "magical," even though the output each year doesn't seem to be that impressive. Let's leave the wine in France and move to dumortierite.

Dumortierite was named in 1881 after the French paleontologist, Eugene Dumortier (1803-73), and is defined as a silicate of alumina, occuring in minute crystals in gneiss (another good word), and showing unusal dichroism. I could describe the mineral in some detail, but this would involve returning to the langauge of minerals (orthorhombic system, etc.), and I wrote on that about three years ago, even though I long to return to it on some occasion. It is used in manufacture of high grade porcelain and has been used as imitation lapus lazuli. In the linked web site below we are told that dumortierite acts as an aid to our mental capabilities in overcoming tough situations. Nothing like a precise diagnosis. But there is a picture here, as well as in other places on the web. It is also said to aid a student in taking in large amounts of data over short periods of time--because it aids memory. Now THAT is what I need in the next week on my spelling bee. I am going to a gem shop as soon as I can!

I suffered a slight anxiety attack when I was reading up on dumortierite, because I learned (re-learned, really) that there are more than 4,000 minerals that have been identified and named. Many of the are named after people. Some of these surnames are very difficult to spell. There are 220 of these minerals under the letter "A" alone. And that was in 2005. Surely several more have come in by now. I guess I can only lay claim to being a mediocre speller and learner until I have made my peace with gems, minerals and rocks.

Let's quickly finish this so I can go and meditate on my limited knowledge. Dysprosium doesn't bring back specific memories, but it drives me back to the periodic table of elements, which I only half-heartedly learned about 40 years ago. But I am interested not only in learning it today, and how to spell all the elements, but also in trying to figure out what each element does, and how we differentiate among the alkali metals, alkali earth metals, rare earth metals and other groups. Dysprosium, element # 66 (does that bode ill?), is a rare earth metal. That group comprises elements # 58-71. I didn't know this but there seemingly is a new element "on the block"--darmstadtium (# 110). It was first generated in 1994 in, guess where?, Darmstadt Germany by a team headed by Dr. Jorge Rigol. Its new name was given to it by the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) in August 2003. No wonder no modern dictionary has it, though all the other 109 elements are in my Collegiate (11th ed. published in 2002).

Conclusion

So, reviewing where we have been today, we have dysprosium, dumortierite, domaine, douroucouli, drogue, doxycycline and drycaena. One mineral, one plant, one monkey, one banner, one drug, one element, one wine area. YOU do the matching!

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