This week's theme: terms in the pattern an X's Y.

friar's lantern (FRY-uhrz LAN-tuhrn) noun

   A phosphorescent light seen over marshy ground at night, caused by

   spontaneous combustion of gases emitted by decomposing organic matter.

   A synonym is foxfire (not Firefox), especially for luminescence

   produced by fungi.

[The first use of the term is in John Milton's 1632 poem L'Allegro:

"She was pinched and pulled, she said; / And he, by Friar's lantern led."]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=friar's+lantern

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

  "Question: What do you get when you cross a firefly with a tobacco plant.

   Answer: A cigarette that lights itself.

   The joke quickly made the rounds after a group of genetic engineers in

   California earlier this month announced that they had transferred into

   the cells of a tobacco plant the gene that causes a firefly to glow.

   The tobacco plant seems to rise out of the page like a will-o'-the-wisp

   or friar's lantern."

   Chet Raymo; A Tale of a Firefly and a Tobacco Leaf; The Boston Globe;

   Nov 24, 1986.

 

 lol

 

 O