substrate \SUHB-streyt\, noun 基板

Word of the Day for Thursday, September 1, 2011
substrate \SUHB-streyt\, noun:
1. Something that is spread or laid under something else.
2. In biochemistry. the substance acted upon by an enzyme.
3. In electronics, a supporting material on which a circuit is formed or fabricated.
Perhaps, over millenia of time, periods of very intense erosion would be required to renew the weathering substrate and in effect renew the ecosystem.
-- F. Herbert Bormann, Gene E. Likens, Pattern And Process In a Forested Ecosystem
Under the desk a strange odor rises from the trays of substrate, fumey and metallic.
-- F. G. Priest, Iain Campbell -, Brewing Microbiology
Substrate combines the Latin sub-, "under," and sternere, "to spread."