I do believe all the Interested Parties have been heard from.

Need I say - the correct answer is D. An OPERCULUM is:

a) the focusing mechanism in the eyepiece used by jewelers for evaluating the quality of gemstones. - from jo

b) the muscle, directly beneath the vocal cords, which allows a singer to control vibrato - from Caterwauler

c) a duct in a living organism - from Asa Lovejoy

d) the lid closing the aperture of various species of shells, such as the common whelk - from Webster's unabridged, 1913

e) a bag for carrying needlework, knitting, etc. - from arnie

f) a small shrine - from Kalleh

g) a brief musical work of second-century Rome, using voices and instruments - from me, just to get an extra entry into the list


It's also (as I first learned it in a Tropical Medicine class) a feature of any of several kinds of parasite egg. See the vertical line at the right end, showing opening of the egg that the operculum covers. Which means the "correct" definition isn't my original one; I thought that would be too obviously medical. Clearly I didn't disguise it well enough.

I think it's a first for this game: Nobody snookered anybody, and everyone got the right answer!

Well, now I know what TM stands for: Tropical Medecine! And here I think it was Transcendental Meditation.

Incidentally, what's the Latin root? An "opercule" is clearly a little one, but a little...what?

Operculum is the Latin for "lid". It comes from the Latin operire "to cover" plus the diminutive ending -culum.

I am behind in my wordcraft posting...too many emails, etc., to get back to after being gone.

However, Hab, you are wrong. Not everyone got the right answer. I was in England without a computer when the answers were posted, so I had asked Arnie to post an answer for me that was related to a medical word. Therefore he chose B for me. So you spoofed me, at least!