grandmother cell
n.— «The Grandmother cell.…Should one suppose that the cellular abstraction process goes so far that there exists for every meaningful structure of whose specific recognition a person is capable (for example, “my grandmother”) at least one particular nerve cell in the brain that responds if and only if the light and dark pattern from which that structure is abstracted appears in its visual space…?» —“Limits to the Scientific Understanding of Man” by Gunther S. Stent Science Mar. 21, 1975. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Rose in Lebanon, Virginia recalls a phrase passed down from her great-grandmother: The night before the first day of school, parents would come into the children’s bedroom and say in a singsong voice: School butter, school butter. This...
Diana from Tucson, Arizona, reports that when she was young, her Irish grandmother would chase her and her misbehaving siblings around the house yelling, “You omadhauns!” Also spelled amadán, this word of Celtic origin means...