This week's theme: words for odds and ends.
gnomon (NO-mon) noun
1. The raised arm of a sundial that indicates the time of day by its
shadow.
2. The remaining part of a parallelogram after a similar smaller
parallelogram has been taken away from one of the corners.
[From Latin gnomon (pointer), from Greek gnomon (interpreter), from
gignoskein, to know. Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know)
that is also the root of knowledge, prognosis, ignore, narrate, and normal.]
Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=gnomon
-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
"Eighty-six years in the making, one of the world's largest sundials has
finally been installed at Place de la Concorde, as part of the Year 2000
festivities of the City of Paris. It takes an approach more cerebral than
celebratory. The sundial's pointer, or gnomon, is the 109-foot Obelisk of
Luxor. Its base is the northern half of Place de la Concorde."
Rose Marie Burke; Sundial Aids Millennium Countdown; The Wall Street
Journal (New York); Oct 26, 1999.
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There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and
after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
-Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)
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Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/gnomon.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/gnomon.ram
Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/gnomon.html
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