Author Topic: oviduct - common?  (Read 3225 times)

mkenuk

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oviduct - common?
« on: February 24, 2018, 11:47:12 PM »
re the recent conductive 10-letter game.

Is oviduct really common?

Surely it's a 'technical' term used mainly among obstetricians and gynaecologists - and then only 'periodically'!

One for re-classification, perhaps?

nineoaks

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #1 on: February 25, 2018, 04:59:05 AM »
Seems common enough to me.

9oaks

rogue_mother

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2018, 05:31:32 AM »
I can't honestly say that oviduct is an everyday word, but it seems like one that ought to be known by reasonably well-read speakers of English. One can't escape oviducts in nature shows about sea turtles, platypuses, and chickens and other birds. It was not the last common I found -- not even the next to last. And for the record, I am not a gynecologist or biologist of any sort.
Inside the Beltway, Washington, DC metropolitan area

anona

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2018, 07:31:54 AM »
I'll display my ignorance yet again, and admit I have never heard the word or read it. But then I watch very little television.

Barbaram

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2018, 09:58:37 AM »
Me too Anona.

Barbaram

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2018, 10:00:46 AM »
Actually, just to qualify my previous post - I’ve never heard of the word (but I do watch tv!)

nineoaks

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2018, 10:58:23 AM »


...not sure what tv has to do with it. I don't even have a tv, but I did take basic biology...

9oaks

mkenuk

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2018, 11:19:07 AM »


..., but I did take basic biology...

9oaks


Ah, there you have me. I went to an all-boys Catholic school, with a teaching staff dominated by priests.

Biology? No, not on the syllabus after the first year. (We learned the anatomy of the insect, the fish and the bird as I remember -  I can still recite the parts we learned by rote - 'coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, tarsus'!!!)

Human biology? Absolutely no way.

Human biology which would involve learning the names of parts of the female anatomy? Never in a million years.

To compensate we had lots of Latin and a daily Religious lesson.......(No cold showers. It wasn't a boarding school.).

I might add that the word oviduct is now not altogether unfamiliar to me.
I simply feel that, like many terms from science, it's not common.
If nothing else, all that Latin would have been able to tell me what the word meant without looking it up!

The fact that it was seen by only 15 players in that game might also suggest that it should not be classed as common.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 02:04:04 PM by mkenuk »

Les303

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2018, 06:27:31 PM »
I ducked that one.

birdy

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #9 on: February 27, 2018, 05:05:55 PM »
Seems common to me, in the sense that it would be known to, as Rogue Mother says, a reasonably well-read speaker of English.  That wouldn't have stopped me from missing it, though, if I'd played that game.  But I'm capable of missing much more common words (like how many times have I missed "acre"?).

anona

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #10 on: February 27, 2018, 07:17:43 PM »
"...not sure what tv has to do with it. I don't even have a tv, but I did take basic biology...

9oaks"

It's just that that rogue mother mentioned "shows". I wouldn't be going to live shows on snakes, chickens or fish, which leaves television as a possible accidental source. I did in fact do basic biology at school, but we concentrated on human and plant biology after the inevitable amoeba and spirogella. So "Fallopian tube" was the only term I learnt for an egg canal.

The nearest we got to other vertebrates was the biology master killing a mouse in a vacuum device to prove animals needed air (I have still not forgiven him; I would have believed him without the death) and a dead lamb he brought in and cut up to demonstrate I have forgotten what.

yelnats

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2018, 07:23:24 PM »
Quote
(like how many times have I missed "acre"?).

Spoiler alert! I was just doing today's standard and what was the last word I got!

nineoaks

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #12 on: February 28, 2018, 03:35:35 AM »
Dear anona,

My apologies. I wasn't careful enough in reading previous posts. Please forgive any offense my post caused.

sincerely,

nineoaks

anona

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #13 on: February 28, 2018, 03:55:15 AM »
ThassOK, nineoaks. You must be quite unusual in not having a television. There have been times when we haven't - during one of these, a man from the TV licensing lot came, put his foot in the door when I opened it, and insisted on coming in to search the property. (Having nothing to hide I thought it would save another rude visit if I didn't put up a fight but just let him lose face.) He couldn't believe he wouldn't find a television - even checking in cupboards. Did he think we'd plug the television in for a quick fix and then hide it away again, I wonder?

nineoaks

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Re: oviduct - common?
« Reply #14 on: March 02, 2018, 03:14:51 AM »
Thanks, anona, and thanks for that funny story re: license fee guy. (Did he check the priest hole? I'll bet he missed that! >:D)

Many years (oh, dear, I can start saying decades now) ago, I mentioned to my class of nine-year-olds that I didn't have a tv. Soon after, I learned that they were secretly collecting money among themselves to buy me one. I thanked them for their thoughtfulness, and explained that it was my choice not to have a tv. This was a shocking new possibility for them, and I suppose they eventually chalked it up to just one more strange idea from the adult world.