This monthly assignment prompt this week: to write or evaluate a definition or description. The options below are intended to give you more specific guidance, but you may also write 1 (single) to 2 (double-spaced) pages on the topic.

Option 1: Origins of a Technical/ Scientific/ Business term

Using the Oxford English Dictionary, look up the origins of a term in your field or another technical/ scientific/ business term that interests you. When did the term enter English? What older meanings (if any) did it have? Does it have different technical meanings in different fields (e.g. "prime" or "gas"). Write a memo about your findings.

Hint: This assignment is most interesting if you use older terms.
Variant: Discuss one or more technical terms in another language you know fairly well (as the book does with Swahili). 

Option 2: Descriptions for Different Audiences

Find two or more descriptions or extended definitions of the same term written for two clearly different audiences (elementary school kids and college students; college students and experts; patients and nurses; the general public and business leaders; chemists and geologists) and compare.

Option 3: Analyze a description

Locate an extended definition or description that interests you and discuss the descriptive teachniques it uses. You might also compate two definitions that use similar techniques. 

Option 4: Write a description

Locate a term you've wanted to learn more about; research it, and write a description or extended definition. Be sure to specifiy the audience.