Chrysti The Wordsmith: Talus - 2

Good day I'm Christie the wordsmith. A recent mountain hike got my friend Mary and me wondering if there is a difference between scree and Telus. Last time on the series we examined the etymological life histories of these geologic terms. Screed derived from scree Thanh the old Norse word for Landslide is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a mass of detritus forming a precipitous stony slope upon a mountainside. Tell us from the old French term taboo or slope is a sloping mass of detritus lying at the base of a cliff. Now unless you're inclined to split hairs the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of these terms sound pretty similar. And indeed most sources I checked indicate scree and tellus are often interchanged. One geology website Riley proclaimed. If you're writing a geologic paper tell us is the preferred term. But scree is more fun to say. But I did find a bit of evidence that suggests that in past centuries scree was used a bit differently in 1781 an English

writer named John Hutton defined scree as small stones or pebbles. Screed has been an English language since at least seven thousand eighty one the year of its earliest citation. Well tell us legs behind by a half century. It first appears in print in 1830 when preeminent British geologist Sir Charles Lyell included it in his scientific Opus. The principles of geology. I'm Christie the wordsmith. CHRISTIE The wordsmith a sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.