Naked shorting, nipplefruit, and the Oil Thigh!

I'll bring you the "N / O" words from this book that Jon and Harmony got me for my birthday. This is from Butt Rot and Bottom Gas: A Glossary of Tragically Misunderstood Words (Eric Groves, Sr.)


N

naked buckwheat: a shrub of the wild buckwheat genus

naked confession: an occurrence in which a person confesses to a crime, but no evidence supports the confession

nakedhead: a type of osmeriforme (ray-finned) fish of the family Alepocephalidae that lives in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans; also called SLICKHEAD {The fish is called a nakedhead because it lacks the hard scales found on the heads of many other fish species. Extensively-studied members of the family include Baird's smooth-head [Alepocephalus bairdii] and the softskin smooth-head. [Rouleina attrita]}

naked mole rat: a hairless burrowing rodent common in east Africa

naked shorting: a financial term for a controversial method of selling securities; also known as naked short-selling [Selling short occurs when a seller contracts to sell securities he or she doesn't own, but has paid to "borrow." The short seller hopes that the price of the securities will go down, not up, so that he may buy them back at the reduced price and pocket the difference. For example, suppose shares of Company A sell for $10 apiece. A short seller pays cash to borrow 100 Company A shares, then quickly sells them to someone else for $1000. If the shares go down to $5 apiece, the short seller buys back 100 shares for $500, returns the shares to the first owner, and makes $500 in profit. But in naked shorting, the seller not only doesn't own the securities, but hasn't even paid to borrow them. That makes naked shorting controversial, with some critics charging fraud, while others claim the practice weeds out overvalued stocks.]

nastic movement: in botany, a plant movement that is not in the direction of a stimulus, such as sunlight, but away from it

natural gas: a combination of methane and other hydrocarbons that is burned for cooking, heating, and transportation

nightstick: the baton used by a police officer to subdue criminal suspects

nipplefruit: a plant of the family Solanaceae found throughout South America and the Caribbean [The nipplefruit is genetically related to tomatoes, but is poisonous and inedible. The plant features large, bulbous fruit, culminating in slender delicate tips.]

nipple gong: a small metal gong with a raised boss, or nipple, in the centre

nosegay: a small bouquet of fragrant flowers given as a gift; also known as tussie-mussie or posy [originally, in the Middle Ages, Europeans wore nosegays on their lapels to hide the reeking odors of raw sewage, horse manure, etc. that were abundant at the time] {"I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together." - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays}

nudibranch: [from the Latin word nudus, meaning "nude," and the ancient Greek word brankhia, meaning "gills"] a sea slug featuring sensitive tentacles on its head, and a brightly-colored undulating body {the word "nudibranch" relates to the slug's act of breathing through fleshy plumes on its backs, not through gills}

nutcracker: a device for cracking open nut shells

nut dilation: the widening or expansion of a nut as it wedges tightly against a bolt

nut hand: in the card game of poker, the strongest hand at any one time

nuthatch: one of the birds of the family Sittidae characterized by small tails and sharp bills

nutmeat: the edible flesh found in the centre of any nut

nutpick: a slender metal instrument with a sharp tip or point for digging out a nut's nutritious kernel after the nut's hard outer shell has been cracked

nut raiser: a guitarist's device for elevating guitar strings above a fret board

nut runner: an air-compressed, torque-controlled tool for tightening fasteners

nutting: to gather nuts

nyctinasty: in botany, the rapid opening and closing of flower petals, sometimes observable within minutes [Nyctinasty is caused by the rising and setting of the sun, or by other variations in light, producing chemical changes and a resultant physical movement. Nyctinastic plants close their petals at night and open them in daytime. Common nyctinastic plants are mimosa (Mimosa pudica) and clover. (Trifolium repens)]


O

Oil Thigh: the unofficial title of the famous chorale Queen's College Colors sung by the students of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, during sporting events; the song's colloquial title derives from the Gaelic refrain Oil thigh no Banrighinn a'Branrighinn gu brath ("The college of the queen forever")

oosperm: an alternative name for a zygote, or a fertilized human embryo

openhole: in oil-well drilling, the uncased part of an oil well, or the part that has not yet been reinforced with heavy metal pipe

openhole packer: in oil-well drilling, a specific type of packer, or a device that is inserted into a borehole and that then expands to seal the hole

open position: in dancing, any position in which the couple stands apart

organ grinder: a street musician who plays a cylindrical instrument called a barrel organ

organicism: a biological doctrine that says life results from the whole physiological system of an organism, not from its separate individual organs

organism: an individual, composed of various organ systems

organ meat: the internal organs of butchered livestock, excluding muscles; also known as offal [organ meat may either be discarded or sold as a rare delicacy, depending on the local market]

organza: a sheer dress fabric, usually made of silk

outgassing: to release gases from a planet's interior into its atmosphere

oxpecker: a type of African bird of the subfamily Buphaginae