Irene Followup: Strafe, Flank, Berm, Herculean
In followup to the previous post about Hurricane Irene, this article from last week contained some unusual vocabulary words:
After the Outer Banks, the storm strafed Virginia with rain and strong wind. It covered the Hampton Roads region, which is thick with inlets and rivers and floods easily, and chugged north toward Chesapeake Bay. Shaped like a massive inverted comma, the storm had a thick northern flank that covered all of Delaware, almost all of Maryland and the eastern half of Virginia.
To strafe (obviously being used metaphorically here) is to “attack (ground troops, for example) with a machine gun or cannon from a low-flying aircraft.”
As a noun, a flank is a lateral part or side — as in, flank steak, or the flank of a mountain.
To flank — another military metaphor — means:
1. To protect or guard the flank of.
2. To menace or attack the flank of.
3. To be placed or situated at the flank or side of: Two stone lions flanked the entrance.
4. To put (something) on each side of: flanked the driveway with tall shrubs.
In other words, to flank is to do something along the side or sides of.
Long Beach, New York, where the surf is starting to pick up and they’re building berms to absorb the sea surge when it comes ashore overnight and Sunday.
A berm is “a narrow ledge or shelf, as along the top or bottom of a slope” or “a nearly horizontal or landward-sloping portion of a beach, formed by the deposition of sediment by storm waves.” To build a berm in preparation for a storm would mean to build up the beach so that it no longer slopes down towards the water.
In New York, authorities began the herculean job of bringing the city to a halt.
Image is “Hercules and the Centaur” by Giovanni da Bologna.
Herculean, of course, means “of unusual size, power, or difficulty” — as in, a job you wish you had Hercules to do for you.