Subject: Re: "reticulate"
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Tue May 16 2000 - 11:55:08 GMT
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 12:36:52PM -0700, citycabn wrote:
> But would anyone care to gloss
> "reticulate" in "...[Buddy] shedding some light on the short, reticulate
> life and times of my late, eldest brother, Seymour Glass,...."
>
> Consulting Webster's doesn't _really_ seem to bring it home.
The OED points reticulate (as an adjective) to "reticulated" -- which
means (seriously no pun intended in today's Internet world):
Constructed or arranged like a net; made or marked
so as to resemble a net or a network.
>From my old photography days, I can tell you that if you developed film
at too high a temperature, the emulsion would buckle and curl, and the
end result would look like an old master painting in a museum, with a
fine layer of cracks in the image. We called that "reticulation," and
avoided it assiduously!
Attributions from the OED:
attrib. a1728 WOODWARD Nat. Hist. Fossils (1729) 49 The
Intervals of the Cavities, rising a little, make a pretty
kind of reticulated Work. 1796 Phil. Trans. LXXXVI. 260 A
small piece of fine cambric, or reticulated silver wire
stretched before it. 1802 BINGLEY Anim. Biog. (1813) III.
479 Some are composed of reticulated fibres, or masses,
of small spines. 1857 LIVINGSTONE Trav. 612 The absence of
both these rhinoceroses among the reticulated rivers in the
central valley may easily be accounted for. 1885 Law Times
LXXIX. 247/1 A parallelogram covered with reticulated lines.
predic. 1755 JOHNSON, Network, any thing reticulated or
decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between
the intersections. 1796 WITHERING Brit. Plants (ed. 3) III.
885 Leaves smaller and shorter than in 1; fine green, not
shining, not reticulated. 1802 J. PLAYFAIR Huttonian The. 301
The strata are..reticulated by the veins. 1842 EMERSON
Transcendentalist Wks. (Bohn) II. 290 This pretty web..will
at last be overshot and reticulated with veins of the blue.
1877 THOMSON Voy. Challenger I. 195 Black oval bodies about an
inch long, with the surface reticulated.
I hope this helps!
--tim
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