Word To Use Today: calandria.

I'm sorry, but some words are a disappointment.

Calandria...it should be the source of some rare perfume, or a particularly refined district of heaven.

The word is derived from something lovely, but nowadays...all I can assume is that there are engineers out there with poetry singing in their souls.

And, after all, why shouldn't there be poetry-inspired engineers?

So what is a calandria? 

Well, several things. A calandria can be the core of a nuclear reactor, a thermosyphon reboiler:



 (they're used for industrial distilling)

or some other kind of heat exchanger. You use them in brewing.

In a desperate attempt to save this lovely word, I must point out that the Spanish word calandria is the sort of bird we in English call the Calandra Lark. It's found in the Mediterranean, Iran and Russia and is famous for its song.



So, how on earth can we use this word?

Well, how about: why have I chosen to live among traffic and sirens when my soul could have been filled with the exultant song of the Calandria Lark?

The chances are that no one will pick you up on the fact that you're saying the name of the bird in Spanish.

Word To Use Today: calandria. This word was first used in the 1900s. It's the Spanish for lark. My Collins dictionary also says 'arbitrarily named' but I wonder if it was something to do with heat and larks both rising.

In Spanish calandria also means a single peseta, a calendar, underground slang, or it describes a malingerer.