a collection containing a variety of sorts of things; "a great assortment of cars was on display"; "he had a variety of disorders"; "a veritable smorgasbord of religions"
English linguist who contributed to linguistic semantics and to prosodic phonology and who was noted for his insistence on studying both sound and meaning in context (1890-1960)
the time required for something to fall to half its initial value (in particular, the time for half the atoms in a radioactive substance to disintegrate)