AWADmail Issue 194
January 7, 2005
A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day
and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages
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From: Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net
It Was a Heckuva Phrase:
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=10722204
Whales Speak in Dialects:
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060103_whale_noises.html
National Foreign Language Initiative
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060105_3849.html
(In our first lesson, we'll learn to spell the name of the
languages. It's "Hindi", not "Hindu".)
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From: Manoj Saranathan (amicusdiaboliAThotmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--hesternal
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/hesternal.html
There is also "nudiustertian" which is pertaining to day before yesterday.
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From: Rebeca M. Plank, M.D (rplankATpartners.org)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--perennial
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/perennial.html
My family and I always get a laugh in the spring remembering our favorite
definition of perennial: It's a plant that, had it lived, would have
grown back year after year.
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From: Don Eckhardt (doneckATalum.mit.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--perennial
Millennium is frequently misspelled with only a single "n". Its cognates --
perennial, annual, annuity, anniversary, centennial, etc. - are usually
spelled correctly, so I'm flummoxed over why millennium is so often botched.
The State of New Hampshire even casts the misspelling in bronze on both
sides of a historic marker: http://wordsmith.org/awad/images/lochmere.jpg
The Deputy State Archaeologist told me, "We became aware of the error in the
historical marker almost immediately after it was put in place. It is only
a small consolation that several other errors were caught before the marker
was cast."
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From: D Helmick (helmickpartsATatt.net)
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--anachronism
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/anachronism.html
The classic (in)famous anachronism of a Roman chariot racer wearing
a wristwatch in 1959's epic film "Ben-Hur" came immediately to mind.
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From: Johanna Meyer-Mitchell (johannammATaol.com)
Subject: Anachronism
I belong to a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism. We recreate
the best of the middle ages in modern times. (We try not to bring the
plague or widespread ignorance, but rather courtliness and a study of the
arts of pre-1066 Europe.) Because that's a wide span of time, and because
we can't entirely leave the 21st century behind (few of us are willing to
give up spectacles, and we arrive generally by automobile), our gatherings
abound in anachronisms.
The story goes that shortly after the founding of the group, Marion Zimmer
Bradley (science fiction author and early member of the group) needed a
name for the group to reserve a park for a gathering, and it was she who
first came up with the name.
-Johanna Meyer-Mitchell (known in the SCA as Annalind Airamid the Healer)
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From: Martine Natasha Johnson (martinenatashaATgmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--hesternal
Christian author C.S. Lewis (whose The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
recently was made into a film which claimed the top spot at the US box
office) wrote about the mystery of time and humanity's discomfort with it
in a letter to his friend Sheldon Vanauken (author of A Severe Mercy) on
December 23, 1950:
"Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact
itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always
be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at
Time. (`How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly
believe it!') In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something
about us that is not temporal."
Imagine that! Fish were created for the sea and so they are comfortable in
that realm. Perhaps humans were not created to truly live in this world and
will not truly thrive until they have been spirited away into the world they
were created for.
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From: David Halperin (halperin.davidATgmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--hesternal
The time theme reminded me that Hebrew has a commonly used word meaning "last
year": estaqqad; and a word for "last night": emes. I wonder if other
languages have single words for these.
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From: Rama Kulkarni (ramaa1ATpacbell.net)
Subject: yestreen
Here's a great poem (The Queen's Marie) that includes the word "yestreen":
http://www.bartleby.com/101/375.html
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From: Lance Feldman (lfeldmanATrocketmail.com)
Subject: Tempus fugit
In your January 2nd AWAD you wrote:
"And with a new year, we feel our knapsack of time is replenished."
I disagree. All of the people I know look at the new year's
celebration as a commemoration of the passing of a precious year of
life. Another year has got behind us leaving us fewer to enjoy.
While the great march of time continues on indefinitely, our individual
lives are each closer to the end. There is no replenishment of "our
knapsack of time". And it is only from optimism and hope for better
times that we, secondarily, greet the new year with good cheer and
noisy celebration.
This note is not intended to be at all gloomy, but merely a reminder of
the natural cycle of life.
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Erratum
The usage example for "yestreen" http://wordsmith.org/words/yestreen.html
was from The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens by an anonymous author which
Coleridge used as an epigraph for his ode. Read more about the ballad at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Patrick_Spens
............................................................................
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. -Aldous Huxley,
novelist (1894-1963)
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