Nail

Nail or Nails may refer to:

In biology

Objects

Arts and entertainment

People

Businesses

Nail (unit)

A nail, as a unit of cloth measurement, is generally a sixteenth of a yard or 2¹⁄₄ inches (5.715 cm). The nail was apparently named after the practice of hammering brass nails into the counter at shops where cloth was sold. On the other hand, R D Connor, in The weights and measures of England (p 84) states that the nail was the 16th part of a Roman foot, i.e., digitus or finger, although he provides no reference to support this.Zupko's A dictionary of weights and measures for the British Isles (p 256) states that the nail was originally the distance from the thumbnail to the joint at the base of the thumb, or alternately, from the end of the middle finger to the second joint.

An archaic usage of the term nail is as a sixteenth of a (long) hundredweight for mass, or 1 clove of 7 pound avoirdupois (3.175 kg).

The nail in literature

Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail
Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou:―
Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of
thread!

Explanation: Katherine and Petruchio are getting married. At the tailor shop, they examine the wedding dress, which is nearly finished. Petruchio is concerned that it has too many frills, wonders what it will cost, and suspects that he has been cheated. Katherine says she likes it, and complains that Petruchio is making a fool of her. The taylor repeats Katherine's words: Sir, she says you're making a fool of her. This is where Petruchio launches into the above-quoted tirade. Monstrous may be a double-entendre for cuckold. The half-yard, quarter and nail were divisions of the yard used in cloth measurement.

Nail (fastener)

In woodworking and construction, a nail is a pin-shaped object of metal (or wood, called a treenail or "trunnel") which is used as a fastener, as a peg to hang something, or sometimes as a decoration. Generally nails have a sharp point on one end and a flattened head on the other, but headless nails are available. Nails are made in a great variety of forms for specialized purposes. The most common is a wire nail. Other types of nails include pins, tacks, brads, and spikes.

Nails are typically driven into the workpiece by a hammer, a pneumatic nail gun, or a small explosive charge or primer. A nail holds materials together by friction in the axial direction and shear strength laterally. The point of the nail is also sometimes bent over or clinched after driving to prevent pulling out.

History

The history of the nail is divided roughly into three distinct periods:

Betta

Betta /ˈbɛtə/ is a large genus of small, often colorful, freshwater ray-finned fishes in the gourami family (Osphronemidae). By far the best known Betta species, however, is B. splendens, the Siamese fighting fish.

Characteristics

All the Betta species are small fishes, but they vary considerably in size, ranging from under 2.5 cm (1 in) total length in B. chanoides to 12.5 cm (5 in) in the Akar betta (B. akarensis).

Bettas are anabantoids, which means they can breathe atmospheric air using a unique organ called the labyrinth. This accounts for their ability to thrive in low-oxygen water conditions that would kill most other fish, such as rice paddies, slow-moving streams, drainage ditches, and large puddles.

The various bettas can be divided into two groups, based on their spawning behaviour: some build bubble nests, such as B. splendens, while others are mouthbrooders, such as B. picta. The mouthbrooding species are sometimes called "pseudo bettas", and are sometimes speculated to have evolved from the nest-builders in an adaptation to their fast-moving stream habitats.

Siamese fighting fish

The Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens), also sometimes colloquially known as the Betta, is a species in the Gourami family which is popular as an aquarium fish. They are called pla-kad (biting fish) in Thai or trey krem in Khmer. They are a highly aggressive fish and it is unwise to house two males together - and even the females may kill each other.

These species are native to the Mekong basin of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. The fish can be found in vast standing waters of canals, rice paddies and floodplains.

In January 2014 a large population of the fish was discovered in the Adelaide River Floodplain in the Northern Territory, Australia. As an invasive species they pose a threat to native fish, frogs and other wildlife in the wetlands.

Description

B. splendens usually grows to a length of about 6.5 cm (2.6 in). Although aquarium specimens are known for their brilliant colours and large and typically flowing fins, the natural coloration of B. splendens are generally dull green, brown and grey, and the fins of wild specimens are short, about the size of the B. Splendens plakat tail. In captivity, they have been seen with varying fin sizes and varieties and as well as observed coming in colours such as salamander, mustard gas, butterfly, blue, red, white, black and many others.

New Electricity Trading Arrangements

New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) is the system of market trading arrangements under which electricity is traded in the United Kingdom's wholesale electricity market as of 27 March 2001. The arrangements provided that parties could trade off their imbalances close to real time.

BETTA

As of April 2005, NETA changed its name to the British Electricity Trading Transmission Arrangements, and expanding to become the single Great Britain electricity market of England, Wales and Scotland.

See also

References

External links

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may be any group of words, often carrying a special idiomatic meaning; in this sense it is roughly synonymous with expression. In linguistic analysis, a phrase is a group of words (or possibly a single word) that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentence—a single unit within a grammatical hierarchy. A phrase appears within a clause, although it is also possible for a phrase to be a clause or to contain a clause within it.

Common and technical use

There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", "kick the bucket", and the like. It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc.

In grammatical analysis, particularly in theories of syntax, a phrase is any group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the grammatical structure of a sentence. It does not have to have any special meaning or significance, or even exist anywhere outside of the sentence being analyzed, but it must function there as a complete grammatical unit. For example, in the sentence Yesterday I saw an orange bird with a white neck, the words an orange bird with a white neck form what is called a noun phrase, or a determiner phrase in some theories, which functions as the object of the sentence.