barometz: Word of the day for June 6, 2020
barometz , n : (mythology) A purported zoophyte, half-animal and half-plant, said to grow in the form of a sheep. The golden chicken fern or woolly fern (Cibotium barometz), the rhizomes of which are covered in furry brown hair; the legend (sense 1) is supposed to have arisen because, when inverted, the rhizomes with stalks growing out of them resemble lambs. Today is the 10th anniversary of UN Russian Language Day, one of six such days established by UNESCO in 2010 to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity and to promote the equal use of its working languages. The word barometz is thought to be a corruption of Russian баране́ц (baranéc, “a species of club moss (genus Lycopodium)”).