VICENNIAL

[Dr. Goodword]

• vicennial •

Pronunciation: vai-sen-i-êl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Occurring every twenty years. 2. Lasting twenty years.

Notes: We love to divide time into convenient chunks: ten years (decade), a hundred years (century), a thousand years (millennium), and we always turn to Latin for the names of these periods. Today's word covers a score of years or a vicennium, the plural of which is vicennia. Our adjective has a fraternal brother, vicenary, with the same meaning.

In Play: We start out thinking about the hours that have passed, then the days, then the months and years, and even the decades. However, we eventually reach the age when we think in larger periods than decades: "I didn't really begin to think about my age until my children began celebrating their vicennial birthdays." This word also indicates a period of twenty years: "When Rip van Winkle woke up from his vicennial slumber he was surprised at what he found."

Word History: Today's word was created from Latin vicennium "a twenty-year period", a word goes back to viginti "twenty", which currently is vingt in French. The Latin word apparently started out in Proto-Indo-European as a compound of wi- "half, in two" + dekmt-i "decade", containing the root dek- "ten", which we find in our words decade, decimal, and others. The original PIE word for "twenty" came to be vimsatih in Sanskrit. The phrase pañca + vimsatih "twenty-five" developed over the next 3000 years into modern Hindi pacis "twenty-five". Adding the simple noun suffix -i to this word gave Hindi and English the name of the game pachisi. (We hope we have far less than a vicennial wait for the next Good Word from today's contributor, David Ross.)

[sluggo]

So this is what we generally call a generation.

[Perry]

"People try to put us d-d-down..."

[engineer27]

• vicennial •

Our adjective has a fraternal brother, vicenary, with the same meaning.

Is there another kind of brother?

[Stargzer]

• vicennial •

Our adjective has a fraternal brother, vicenary, with the same meaning.

Is there another kind of brother?

Identical, as in Fraternal vs. Identical Twins?

Or Biological vs. Fraternal (member of a club or fraternity)?

But yeah, it does sound a bit redundant ...

[Perry]

• vicennial •

Our adjective has a fraternal brother, vicenary, with the same meaning.

Is there another kind of brother?

Well, the brother might have been a greaser or a hippy. Oops, did I just show my age?

[engineer27]

Well, the brother might have been a greaser or a hippy.

Presumably, the hippy would be somehow more than fraternal, while the greaser would be less than fraternal.

Oops, did I just show my age?

Only to indicate you have passed your vicennial year.

[Stargzer]

...

Oops, did I just show my age?

Only to indicate you have passed your vicennial year.

Probably his 3rd vicennial at least!

[engineer27]

...

Oops, did I just show my age?

Only to indicate you have passed your vicennial year.

Probably his 3rd vicennial at least! :P

Careful. We may force you to start putting the two e's back into your handle.

[Perry]

Well, the brother might have been a greaser or a hippy.

Presumably, the hippy would be somehow more than fraternal, while the greaser would be less than fraternal.

Oops, did I just show my age?

Only to indicate you have passed your vicennial year.

In fact, back in the day, greasers and frats were considered opposites. Then hippies came along and spoiled the symmetry.

[engineer27]

Well, the brother might have been a greaser or a hippy.

Presumably, the hippy would be somehow more than fraternal, while the greaser would be less than fraternal.

In fact, back in the day, greasers and frats were considered opposites. Then hippies came along and spoiled the symmetry.

I guess that was about the time they started looking for another three fundamental "social particles," in keeping with super-symmetry theory.
So perhaps there are indeed at least six types of brothers, only one of which would be referred to as fraternal (top, bottom, strange, charmed, etc)?

[Stargzer]

... Only to indicate you have passed your vicennial year.

Probably his 3rd vicennial at least!

Careful. We may force you to start putting the two e's back into your handle.

Any engineer whose avatar is a symbol for a discrete component shouldn't fling solder, OM! Do you think mine should be a triode? Or maybe a cat's whisker and a piece of galena?

[engineer27]

Careful. We may force you to start putting the two e's back into your handle.

Any engineer whose avatar is a symbol for a discrete component shouldn't fling solder, OM!

BJTs have been integrated on a large scale for more than a vicennium, thank you very much!

Do you think mine should be a triode? Or maybe a cat's whisker and a piece of galena?

If you are reaching back, why not an EF-50 pentode?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... symbol.svg

[sluggo]

Anode the current thread would transform to this, all the sines were there. Oh they tried to resist but just didn't have the capacitance.

Serially, you guys could be on the circuit faraday. Watt would you charge?

As they say in the Pirate Radio Resistance Network, Ohm shanty ohm (R!)

[Stargzer]

... BJTs have been integrated on a large scale for more than a vicennium, thank you very much!

Yeah, but you rarely see an NPN or PNP discrete; mostly you see NANDs and NORs and DACs and ADCs and Op Amps and all that highly integrated stuff, or else just a rectangle with a pinout.

Do you think mine should be a triode? Or maybe a cat's whisker and a piece of galena?

If you are reaching back, why not an EF-50 pentode?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... symbol.svg

Uh, because Lee De Forest's Audion (father of the triode) preceded the pentode? The only thing earlier than a lead crystal was probably Marconi's coherer, which pre-dates me by even more than the triode.

(Hoo, boy! looking up De Forest led me off to a series of articles that dragged me down memory lane, back to the days of vacuum tubes and the All American Five, one of which I owned in my youth.