Thank you for the compliments in the Word of the Year Contest. It was quite fun coming up with the entry, whiling away the time on a flight to Asia, then jet lagged and not sleeping.
The initial inspiration was the discussion of Return of the Turns, Episode 2, by @Marcus Caston, in the Technical Off Piste Videos opened by @jmeb. I imagined two species of skiers, those who arc turns, and those who straight line and do tricks. In that first iteration, I came up with Homo anfractus and Homo conversus, respectively. Anfractus means bend, curve, orbit, spiral, coil. Co versus means inverted, turned backward, upside down. Both are adjectives; I wanted to adhere to the convention of using adjectives, as in Homo erectus and in Homo sapiens. I had fun characterizing these two species, anfractus being hunter/gatherers, and conversis being domesticated, kept in the park, taking out at great expense and effort, in transport, sustenance, and shelter for filming.
Despite the fun and having put something together, I didn't see an appropriate place to post it. It would have been a tangent in @jmeb's thread. Seemed odd just to post it out of the blue. Then, all of a sudden, in a short span of time, I happen to read all this stuff that gets published one right after the other, the BBC article on birds, and the modem definition of speciation, wow, a hypothetical species of skier can be a species, yet be able to breed with ordinary humans! Then, @martyg opens a post about good skiers, and (I hate the word "expert") I think real skiers aren't good or bad, they are simply in different syages of development, child to adult. And, the Word Contest pops up almost the same time; a place to post! Then I read the interview of Eileen Shiffrin; the counterpoint to "good skier". So, I get to work in earnest.
I drop Homo conversus; this is no longer about one skier type vs another. I am not fully satisfied with anfractus. I do not mean a curved or bent man, a hunchback. So I search. I find apsidae. arc described by a planet, perfect! But, it's a noun. I look up convention; it can either be adjective or noun, but I want adjective. Then, I learn that a word can be made up. Well then, I'll use apsidaeor, as in genitor (creator), creator or maker of arcs. Better still, words like genitor are 3rd declension, as erectus and sapiens are. So, make it a 3rd declension adjective, add -is, then add some reasoning why such a species can exist to defend the coining of a scientific word for this new species, and voila, an entry for the Word Contest!
BTW, it wouldn't be conversus. I would now use Homo contorqueoris. And, on account of the very low female to male ratio, it would have to have the social model of
Formicidae and Anthophila.
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