xeric: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

[Dictionary.com]

	Word of the Day for Sunday, February 24, 2013 xeric \ZEER-ik\, adjective: of, pertaining to, or adapted to a dry environment. Tegene pointed out the subtle contouring that gradually ascended toward xeric slopes, where Lynden's army planted many surprises amidst the dry vegetation. -- Robert Luis Rabello, The Long Journey The range of plants selected tolerate this xeric, or very dry, regimen quite well. -- Steven L. Cantor, Green Roofs in Sustainable Landscape Design Xeric, a relatively young word, was coined by ecologists W.S. Cooper and A.O. Weese in 1926 to replace the word xerophytic for a lack of moisture in both plants and animals. Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help Words of the Day? How about words of timeless wisdom? Introducing our Quotes channel! "Life itself is a quotation." - Jorge Luis Borges Check out the Quote of the Day ›› When the language of life meets the language of literature: encoding Shakespeare into DNA From the birth of the sign to the development of new words, we've investigated many facets of our living language here at the Hot Word, but rarely do we have the opportunity to look at the language of life itself-DNA. As you might remember from 7th-grade science, DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, the molecular structure that... Read more ›› Dictionary.com Word of the Day You are subscribed to the Word of the Day as: e-dict...@googlegroups.com Subscriber since: January 06, 2008 Unsubscribe from the Word of the Day To subscribe to the Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wor...@lists.lexico.com ©2013 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Subscriptions to the Word of the Day can also be managed online   Tell a friend about the Word of the Day!