John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, a British politician in the eighteenth century, was so fond of gambling that he spent the whole day playing, while devouring slices of bread with a filling between them. Little did he know that his name would become eponymous with that food. From sandwich to boycott we use numerous eponyms (words named after people) in our daily discourse. In this week's AWAD, we'll look at five not so common eponyms.
mesmeric (mez-MER-ik, mes-) adjective Fascinating; hypnotic. [After physician F.A. Mesmer (1734-1815) who discovered a way of inducing hypnosis through what he called animal magnetism.] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=mesmeric -Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org) "Michael Dempsey: Bill would coax money out of record companies in a kind of mesmeric way." Alexis Petridis; If You're Brave, Do It Like We Did; The Guardian (London, UK); Apr 27, 2007. Sponsors' Messages: Subscribe to http://delanceyplace.com -- a carefully selected non-fiction book excerpt free to your email each day. It's the thinking person's daily quotation. Free! Extra issue of any of Champs-Elysees Audio Magazines in French, German, Italian and Spanish. Subscribe at: http://web.champs-elysees.com/wsmith7 ............................................................................ The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973) Discuss this week's words on our bulletin board: http://wordsmith.org/board Remove, change address, gift subs: http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html Pronunciation: http://wordsmith.org/words/mesmeric.wav http://wordsmith.org/words/mesmeric.ram Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/mesmeric.html This message was sent to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]".
