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What is a spoonerism?

A spoonerism is the interchange of the initial sounds of two words, for example, “he is a boiled sprat”. It is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched. It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency.

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What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund?

A Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is an investment fund owned by a government. The funds invested through such funds are usually the proceeds of non-renewable natural resources or a higher return alternative to holding foreign currency. An SWF differs from government funds that invest in their own country as these are usually driven by the desire to direct the economy …

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What is a slumpometer?

The global slumpometer is a yardstick economists use to measure the severity of the recession in various economies across the world. It takes into account unemployment, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross Domestic Income (GDI). To the average person, rising unemployment and pink slips mean a recession. While for many economists, a recession has arrived when there’s a dip in …

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What is a shifting agriculture?

In poor developing countries, some farmers grow only enough food to feed their families, with a little left over to barter or sell for such things as clothes. This is called subsistence farming. In tropical countries, subsistence farmers clear plots in the forests or savanna and farm them for a few years. When the soil begins to become infertile and …

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What is a shibboleth?

A shibboleth is a practice of identifying the members of a community or a clan and their social and regional origin. The term originated from the Hebrew language which literally means ‘the part of the plant’s. In modern usage, it is used to solve numerous conflicts between groups speaking different languages of dialects, and is also used to discover hidden …

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What is a salamander?

A salamander is amphibian – an animal that lives both on land and in the water. It is a lizard-like member of a group of back-bones creatures between fish and reptiles. This class includes frogs and toads. Like fish and reptiles, the salamander is cold-blooded. It was anciently believed that the first salamander was born out of the heart of …

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What is a progressive score in chess?

In chess tournaments, when two players end up with the same score on the final round, the tie needs to be broken for ranking purposes. Different systems of rating follow different rules for such tie-breaking, and the FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs) or the Worldwide Chess Federation system uses the cumulative progressive score. Progressive score in a round is the …

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