azurelunatic | Fucking *diurnal*, man.

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Fucking diurnal, man.

Poll #2308 Diurnal

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 43

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The word "diurnal"...

... pretty basic, even people who haven't entirely mastered English might know it
2 (4.7%)

... a fluent speaker of English would know it
12 (27.9%)

... if you passed the SAT well enough to get into college, you should know it
23 (53.5%)

... only a writer or a scientist whose field touches on the concept would drop this in casual conversation
4 (9.3%)

... I would like to complain about this poll
2 (4.7%)

*facepalm*

Well, *I* know it.
36 (85.7%)

... though I did reach for a dictionary to double-check myself
4 (9.5%)

You *are* a writer, though? And at least some kind of a scientist?
7 (16.7%)

What kind of moron is your neighbor?
15 (35.7%)

(ticky is up past its bedtime)
19 (45.2%)

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I had to look it up.

Good to know.

My perception of what a native speaker of English should and should not know is a little warped, because I think of my own vocabulary as being slightly above average. But I thought that it was basic enough that surely a lifelong, college-educated (in English) speaker of English such as my neighbor would know what it meant.

For some pseudo-statistics, I currently have 130 paper, mostly Biology, in my literature management software and none of them use the word "diurnal", though two use the word "daily".

I use it frequently when referring to the effect that severe jetlag has on me. Eg. "Don't worry. After 24 hours on a plane I wind up completely diurnal for the first week, so a 9am meeting should be no problem at all." (For contrast, I will note that I am currently posting this comment at 2:24am local time.)

Wait, does it mean 'daily' or 'active during the day' now? Or both? My dictionary says both...

*researchs a bit*

Okay, so it's both. And from Google Scholar, it appears that Biologists mostly use it to refer to 'active during the day' and not to 'daily', while people in medicine use it for 'daily' a lot. Strange word.

Edited (editing again, because Azz likes to get comment notifications ;)) 2010-02-19 10:31 (UTC)

Hmm! Clearly I was raised by a biologist, not a doctor.

I use it because I am by nature a very nocturnal person, and tend to sleep by day...so I joke that my genes forgot the bit where humans tend to be diurnal.

Indeed.

I switched to "diurnal" and "not diurnal" as descriptive and no-values-attached descriptions of my sleep patterns after a sleep self-help book pointed out that "bad" and "good" as descriptions of sleep were likely to reinforce self-loathing opinions about sleep, which is counterproductive to good and timely sleep; I formed the connection in my own head between value judgments on sleep times and value judgments on foods and the destructive attitudes that *those* can promote, and that made me even more through with declaring myself "bad" for not sleeping at the right time.

... I didn't know this word existed O.O

(My uni education was pretty much all maths, maybe that's why?)

Interestingly, I did know "nocturnal". I guess I just never really bothered to learn the opposite :)

And hardly anyone knows "crepuscular" (in its context of activity-phase).

Unless you were the sort of kid who read "Horrible Science" books as a kid. (This one taught me it.)

I think everyday usage of the word tends to be "active during the day"; until now, I'd never heard of it used in a "daily" sense. But then medicine tends to latinize everything (off the top of my head, oculus dexter instead of right eye? seriously?) so it's not surprising to me that a Latin-derived word is used instead of the Germanic "daily".

I feel we use "nocturnal" very frequently, and that's a pretty basic word, and therefore people might be able to intuit that "diurnal" is its opposite, but it's hardly thrown around frequently — maybe because being active during the day is considered a norm and doesn't need to be specified.

I'd just like to admit that I totally totally FAILED at this poll.

I said anybody who got an college entry should know it and then from reading the comments I realised that my brain has it completely mis-defined *facepalm*

And ... umm ... I have a BSc with a major in linguistics.

I thought diurnal meant "twice daily" and in the context of sleep phases meant sunrise and sunset. Presumably my brain back-formed from the greek di- (two/twice) prefix at some point. Upon dictionary checking "crepuscular" which doesn't sound familiar at all to me I discovered that this is actually the word that means what I thought "diurnal" meant.

This is an ultimate maximum *facepalm* for me because I frequently describe my OWN sleep cycle this way (ie: as "diurnal" when I actually should be saying "crepuscular") because I fail to function unless I get 2-3 hours proper deep sleep in the afternoon, thus it feels like I get two half-days rather than one long one with a short nap. /o\

I shall go and return my geek badge at once!

r is glad she knows the correct words now! Bloody Greek roots...

PS
"Crepuscular" sounds so cool! I'm looking forward to saying it a lot!

It's very, very confusing when you have two different professors who use the word to mean different things, too. :) Endocrine prof says it means 'active during the day,' whereas gastroenterology uses it for 'daily.'

So yeah, it's both, and it's both in common use in my corner of learnings, and it's a headache. I'd never heard it used as 'daily' before this year (and have been working in healthcare longer than a year) and was always used to 'diurnal, opposite of nocturnal, means awake during the day and sleeping at night,' otherwise known as 'my dad, but not me or my mom.' Now it means two things! It's weird!

I know the word. I never took the SATs or a single college course. I've done the reading on my own though, to probably equal a bachelor's degree.

Didn't know that one. My favorite times of day, shame they're so fleeting, and the word isn't as fun to say as "diurnal".

Me too! And I didn't recognize diurnal as the opposite because I can pronounce nocturnal (I hope), but have no clue about diurnal.

Ooh, I know that one. I looked it up when I realized I was missing a word. Or possibly I got it from Ro. It's been a while.

DYE-urn-null

Problem with poll: Both option 2 & 3 are correct, fluent educated people should know what the word means.

But it's a word rarely used, in my experience, outside of scientific discourse, and will therefore be unfamiliar to people who know it but don't recall it.

I thought diurnal meant "twice daily" and in the context of sleep phases meant sunrise and sunset

So did I! Except I was fairly sure that this was just my own back-formation and that it didn't really mean this so I didn't take the poll at all :-)

I know that one very well.

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