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