Stemistry lab

The alt glossary

A creative dictionary of terms

• KENNINGS
• A kenning is a poetic phrase, a figure of speech, substituted for the usual name of a person or thing. In its simplest form, it comprises two terms, one of which (the 'base word'), is made to relate to the other to convey a meaning neither has alone.
• Blastocyst
  New starters
  Elastic band ball
  Jack's bag of magic beans
  Time-bomb
  5-day football
  Somebody's plan
  Having a ball
  Cycle bag
  Life-ball
  Life-basket
  Big-bang
• Blood
  Oxygenating Underground
  Liquid lunch
  Pillar-box plasma
  Organ-food
  Life-juice
  Corpuscle river
  Donated sea
  Cell-motorway
• Body
  Cell hotel
  Sinew carriage
  Energy untethered
  Forgotten cage
  Person-mover
  Consciousness carriage
  House of me
  Soul-keeper
  Creation's manifesto
  Creation's manifestation
  
• Cells
  Human soup pearl barley
  Life-prison
  Jelly house
  Winged secret
  Breeze blocks
• Chimera
  Biological-black velvet
  Living hotch-potch
  Parts-and-parcelled
  Hairy half-blood
  Fantasy animal
  Mutant meeting place
  Heinz-57
  Checked shirt
  Misplaced promise
  Designed imposter
  Multi-task camera
  
• Chromosome
  Shopping list item
  Dr Jekyll's key
  Blue-eyes-button
  Unknitted wool
  Gender-decider
  Identity mail-merge
  Witness for the prosecution
  Connected bows
  Defintive instruction
  Coiled wiring
  Rolled up socks
  Flat-pack instructions
• Clones
  As-you-were-human
  Call-centre-solution-creature
  Resurrection-man
  Gender-pretender
  New-you
  Self-stealer
  Mirror mist
  Seed-fall
  Monochrome copy
  Blatant lie
  Big Bang II
• DNA
  ID card
  Extension ladder
  Runged pathway
  Body-print
  Information bristle
  People patterns
  Fairisle French knitting
  Shopping list of life
• Embryo
  Little potential
  Potential provider
  Love's hope
  Floating isthmus
  Pulsing life
  Idea potential
  Hope-cathedral
  Cell factory
  Awaited-person
  In the beginning
• Nucleus
  Message centre
  Information store
  Live receptionist
  Heart-in-the-hole
  Middle Earth
  Cellular lynch-pin
  Cell club
  Bull's-eye
  Where all roads lead
  Central Plaza
  
• Stem cell
  All-and-nothing key
  Needful co-operator
  Hope-giver
  Lost SAE
  Cure-promise
  Misheard joke
  

• DEFINITIONS
• The following alternative "definitions" were formulated in a creative writing workshop as direct responses to the following words:
  
  
• Biology
  Not the sum of ours parts
  How flora and fauna work and what they do
  How animals and plants work
  Understanding function of living things/beings
  Living things
  Diligent continuous study
  Life, its guts and glory
  Mechanics of nature
  Word of life
  Life
• Cell
  Life
  Part of a jigsaw
  Matter held together by electricity and gravity
  Building block
  A beginning
  Part of me/you
  A full stop in a sentence of body parts
  There but not there
  Microscopic
  Tiny, microscopic and one of many
• Chimera
  A smoothie of animal DNA
  Half animal half person
  Desert heat
  A thing difficult to see
  Flowering plant
  Takes photos in Adelaide?
  Mirrored
  Myths and fearful legends, then minotaur in the making
  Weird mythical beast
  Half-blood
  A strange animal, perhaps a hybrid
• Clone
  Scary
  Doppleganger
  Someone just like you
  Made from the same material
  A copy
  Once again
  As above. Ditto
  Identity-less
  Double
  Not real, wants to be real
• DNA
  An immense ladder of proteins and connections
  A flukey jigsaw in a spin or vortex
  Chasing the essence of you-ness
  Codes for propensities and potentials
  Guilty, not guilty
  Identity
  Duplicating Natures Abilities
  To classify a human
  Unmistakable fingerprint
  Do Not Alter
• Embryo
  Does it have a profile?
  Beginning
  Potential baby
  Beginning of an idea
  New life
  Once
  A gathering of cells ready for the life ahead
  Baby vote
  Potential baby
  Small life
• Gentics
  My grandmother's hands
  Jigsaw of life
  Abolition of the disabled and the different
  Passing on of DNA
  Where we started, where we've been
  Overtaken by stem cell research
  Looking at our Lego bricks
  Crossing
  Pandora's box
  Bending the rules
• Genetically modified plant
  Could end world hunger?
  Adapted for instant gratification
  The abolition of flavour and the introduction of the unknown
  Spliced with something else
  Custom-bulity designer plant
  Corn (maize)
  Blooming unique, or not
  Ear of corn
  Worrying
  Bad for us, unless you are from a poor country with not enough to eat
• Science
  Should always be spelled with a small "s"
  Physics without maths
  Business Profit Warp
  Set of laws
  Finding reasons why...
  Diligent continuous work
  Exploration and discovery
  The atheist's oracle
  Knowledge
  Clever
• Stem cell research
  A big ocean of questions
  Looking for a source to repair what is fragile
  Nano-interference in body make-up
  Uncovering more mystery
  Cures
  Deeply controversial
  Working with the world's only blank canvas that's also the Encyclopedia Brittanica
  Fiddling
  Problematic
  New, spooky, good/bad