Entry: tympanum (n.)
In context: "An intriguing single-decker medical-looking bldg. with a sort of tympanum over the smoked glass door..."
Definition: The vertical recessed face of a pediment, often adorned with sculpture.
but also:
A drum or similar instrument, as a tambourine or timbrel (esp. ancient); also, the stretched membrane of a drum, a drum-head.
Other:
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 479
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
Also, the morphological structure some orthopteran insects (the katydids, grasshoppers, and crickets) use to produce noise! Thanks, entomology!
ReplyDeleteBest comment yet Anonymous! This is exactly the type of information I'm thrilled to learn.
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