Wednesday, February 24, 2010

the word of the day

is retromingent--an animal that urinates backward. See also: raccoon, camel, hippopotamus.

We learn so much from each other in creative writing.

3 comments:

  1. I...don't understand at all. Urinates backward as in it shoots out the back of them? Isn't that true of almost all four-legged animals? Or pees backward...like this? Or it comes out the top of their bladder and not the bottom? What am I missing? 10 minutes of Google searching have returned nothing, so clearly, I've exhausted every possible avenue of research.

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  2. (I'm going to go ahead and answer this like it's a school e-mail, since that's what I have been doing for the last few hours)

    Hi, Chad,

    Good question! As it turns out, nearly every female mammals are in fact retromingent, due to their carriage. Male mammals run the gamut (think of a dog, for example).

    It has nothing to do with the tier of urine in the bladder. After all, all bladder would come from the bottom. Think of a crowded movie theater that catches on fire: who's the first out? That's right! The man closest to the door. The same is true of pee: closest to the exit is first out.

    Thanks for linking to "retrograde ejaculation," though I don't know that it's really on-topic. But I do see here that you've done some research.

    Hope this answers your question. Let me know how else I can help, or let's talk more tomorrow in class.

    C.

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  3. Interesting! Retromingent has also been used as an insult meaning, basically, "cowardly."

    I BET, because I'm an awesome theoretical etymologist, that THIS IS BECAUSE ALMOST ALL FEMALES ARE RETROMINGENT.

    Remember back when Shakespeare was all, "Thy beauty has made me effeminate" and "Frailty, thy name is woman" and shit? Yeah, yeah. Laertes sheds womanly tears because when they "are gone,/ The woman will be out."

    Women are cowardly. And retromingetn. We get it.

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