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- Apr 17, 2005
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I'm trying to talk about the life cycle of an imaginary animal. The stages go like this:
1. Egg
2. Puppy (quadrapedal stage, age 0-5)
3. Child (first bipedal stage, age 6-11)
4. Juvenile (age 12-17 is not fertile and is a different color from both children and adults)
5. Adult (age 18, reproductive cycle kicks into gear)
6. Menopause/senescence (at approximately age 60 fertility ends, healing abilities decrease, ability to build muscle ends, ability to accumulate fat stores ends, mental abilities decrease, sleep needs decrease and half-sleep trance states become more common, etc. until death occurs at approximately age 70.)
But since I'm trying to sound formal, official, and sciency, I'd like a set of terms for these stages that all come from the same root language, like Greek or Latin, and I want adjective and verb forms of them, so I can say stuff like "In the ovonic phase, blah blah..." and "Juvenation occurs at approximately age 12..." But I googled ovonic and it doesn't seem to be a word. Ovicular is apparently a word, but it sounds terrible. And there doesn't seem to be a Greek or Latin term for teenage which is distinct from that for child. Just, ugh! All I want to do is a passable impression of a discovery channel narrator. Where do they learn all those special biology terms and how to properly conjugate and decline them to the desired part of speech?
1. Egg
2. Puppy (quadrapedal stage, age 0-5)
3. Child (first bipedal stage, age 6-11)
4. Juvenile (age 12-17 is not fertile and is a different color from both children and adults)
5. Adult (age 18, reproductive cycle kicks into gear)
6. Menopause/senescence (at approximately age 60 fertility ends, healing abilities decrease, ability to build muscle ends, ability to accumulate fat stores ends, mental abilities decrease, sleep needs decrease and half-sleep trance states become more common, etc. until death occurs at approximately age 70.)
But since I'm trying to sound formal, official, and sciency, I'd like a set of terms for these stages that all come from the same root language, like Greek or Latin, and I want adjective and verb forms of them, so I can say stuff like "In the ovonic phase, blah blah..." and "Juvenation occurs at approximately age 12..." But I googled ovonic and it doesn't seem to be a word. Ovicular is apparently a word, but it sounds terrible. And there doesn't seem to be a Greek or Latin term for teenage which is distinct from that for child. Just, ugh! All I want to do is a passable impression of a discovery channel narrator. Where do they learn all those special biology terms and how to properly conjugate and decline them to the desired part of speech?