fairy ring
n.— «Some sediment dweller has built its mound hard against a nodule. And on the left is a “fairy ring” of unknown origin that seems to be slipping and perhaps rolling nodules into its moat.» —“Why are there any nodules at all?” by Richard A. Kerr Science Feb. 10, 1984. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...