taxidermy means The art of stuffing and mounting the skins of dead animals for exhibition in a lifelike state. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 86 out of 100.
Why this word is great
TAXIDERMY — [Noun] The art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of animals to create lifelike representations. From the French taxidermie, from Ancient Greek τάξις (táxis, "arrangement") + δέρμα (dérma, "skin"). Unlike embalming (which seeks only sterile preservation) or sculpture (which builds form from alien matter), taxidermy is a hybrid craft of preservation and pose, using the creature’s own pelt as its primary medium. It is the glass eye fixed in a perpetual, simulated alertness; the careful stitch hidden along a moth-threatened flank; the predator forever poised in mid-snarl on a mantelpiece—a museum of suspended gestures, where the final arrangement of skin argues poignantly against the disarranging work of time.
noun
- The art of stuffing and mounting the skins of dead animals for exhibition in a lifelike state.
verb
- To stuff and mount the skin of a dead animal.“Today's taxidermying is a combination of field work, calipers and Rodin. The hunters who get the animals for the leading museums of natural science bring 'em back dead, but measured within an inch of their lives […]”