I skipped yesterday's word in this series because yesterday's word was "grouse". I think people are already pretty familiar with the meaning of the word "grouse". It's not an unfamiliar word. It means, more or less, to complain. It also means any of numerous gallinaceous birds of the subfamily Tetraoninae. It's sort of like the word "carp", which we already covered. "Carp" kind of means to complain. It also means a large freshwater cyprinid fish, Cyprinus carpio, native to Asia but widely introduced in tropical and temperate waters. If you want a synonym for complaining, think of the name of a small animal.
I almost skipped today's word in this series as well. But not because I think it's too easy. Rather, because I don't know what in the hell to do with it. Today's word is "zeitgeber". Pronounced ZYTE-gay-burr. Not surprisingly, Firefox doesn't recognize it as anything but gibberish. I'm pretty sure this word only survives in English in scientific literature, but scientific literature is barely English. Here I am, though, and I'm going to give this a shot because I'm a real procrastinator when it comes to exercising. The definition:
an environmental cue, as the length of daylight or the degree of temperature, that helps to regulate the cycles of an organism's biological clock.
God, okay, an attempted example sentence:
The early Japan series start times forced west-coast viewers to act in a way other than that dictated by the light/dark zeitgeber.
That example sentence doesn't make any sense. It sure as hell doesn't adequately showcase the word "zeitgeber". And I don't care because you'll probably never see the word "zeitgeber" again. I don't know why I wrote this up. I'm going to exercise, finally. Happy zeitgebers to all of you.