Social Science Questions & Answers

A golden parachute is a lucrative contract given to top executives in the event of the company being taken over by another corporation, resulting in job losses. The contract usually includes a large severance pay, stock options and a bonus. Golden parachutes are usually a part of an anti-takeover strategy.

It’s a mutual fund that invests in highly risky but potentially rewarding stocks. During the 1960s, many go-go funds shot up in value, only to fall dramatically. In some cases, they even went out of business.

A ghost word is one that has entered the language through the perpetuation of an error. It is a term invented by lexicographer W W Skeat in 1886 to denote words that are not real words. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable revised by Adrian Room describes ghost words as “spurious terms, the result of errors made by authors, typists, …

A gazebo is a pavilion structure, often octagonal, commonly found in parks, gardens, and spacious public areas. Gazebos are generally freestanding at the open space, roofed, and open on all sides; they provide shade, basic shelter, ornamental features in a landscape and a place to rest.

Fossils are the remains, moulds, traces or impressions of prehistoric animals and plants found in the ground. The word comes from the Latin fodere, meaning ‘to dig’, and originally meant any old, curious object dug out of the earth. But since about the middle of the 16th century, fossils have been regarded specifically as hard objects showing evidence of earlier …

A flying fox is a kind of bat and is so called because of its head somewhat resembles that of the fox. Most bats are small and look like winged mice. But flying foxes can be as big as little dogs and have a wingspan of up to six feet. Their habitats are rather similar to those of ordinary bats, …

A flophouse is a place of cheap lodging. It’s normally an apartment where some occupants pay rent while others are unemployed and do nothing with their lives except party and abuse drugs. They generally share bathroom facilities and reside in very cramped quarters. The people who use these places are often called transients, although some people stay in them for …

A fish pedicure is performed by a special kind of fish known as garra rufa or doctor fish. The feet are immersed in a tub of warm water which has several of these tiny fish. They nibble on the toes and eat away dead skin making the feet clean and smooth. This treatment originated in Turkey.

A dry port, also called sometimes an inland port or multimodal logistics centre, is an inland terminal connected to a seaport by rail or road. It serves as a transhipment point in the transport of export/import goods. A dry port is called so because it is very similar to a seaport in the services it offers, except that it is …

The Cyrus Cylinder is a clay cylinder on which a declaration issued by the emperor Cyrus II of Persia is inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform. It has been described as the world’s first charter of human rights, predating the Magna Carta by more than one millennium.