Wednesday, 17 January

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for January 17, 2018, brought to you by Mittens from Dickens, "Our mittens beget warmth. Nothing propagates so fast."

Mittens from Dickens styles include:
The Ravishing Havisham: When you have Great Expectations for your evening at the Roseau Diner.
The Fancy Nancy: When you need to Twist that budget for special winter fashion accoutrements.
The Naughty Nickleby: For the teen flâneuse who wants to appear above the fray.
The Little Dorrit: For the common sense elementary schooler.
And,
The Itty Biddy: The reliable choice for today's infant woman.
Find your favorite at Minnesota Bead Gypsy in fabulous downtown Roseau.

There are 348 days that follow today this year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56).

Persons born on this day fall under the Zodiac house of Capricorn, the most determined of the entire Zodiac and the theme of last Wednesday's Daily. The other most prominent qualities of the Goats,  include ambition, conservative thinking, practicality, and helpfulness. Capricorns are the bluffing pros in the Zodiac. They can keep a straight face until they suddenly burst out laughing at themselves.

Otherwise, with all the obsession about the cold temperatures, and as this is not a particularly playful time of year, today's Daily will be all about play - specifically, word play.

Playful English comes in so many forms, such as cacoepy /kuh-koh-uh-pee/, the mispronunciation of words. One of the most common and amusing forms of cacoepy is the eggcorn, a word or phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another word, where examples include:

• When it comes to Joe's pizza, it's the best thing since life's bread.
• As a matter of weekly grooming, Steve always trims his nose drills on Thursday.
• Joe forgot to plug in Teresa's iPad before the Sunday FaceTime with the grandchildren, which really got Teresa's gander up.
• It was -27 °F last week, and Woe forgot to plug in his car. So Woe called his neighbor asked for a junk start.
• That same day, despite being scandally clad, Joe made a dash for the Shédeau to make sure the wood stove fire was still burning.
• When it comes to choosing between Steve or Joe for just about any job, it's usually a matter of the lesser of two equals.
• As a rule, Jackie lives a life full of vim and vinegar, with a healthy dose of worth ethnic.

http://www.thesurrealmccoy.com/

Monday's child, our fair-of-face contributor, Catherine, has her own, as yet unnamed form of cacoepy, where she makes up new words for subtle nuances of the human condition for which the English language has not yet generated an official term. Some of Catherine's finest include hugget: noun, a desirable nugget. Some meanings are evident; some are not. Please suggest an official sounding term for this form of cacoepoetic word play, and have a go at defining some of Catherine's other gems:

• anthenticity
• dribblage
• emplematic
• humality
• implistic
• truthiness
• meniverse vs youniverse

Another fun form of word play is the malaprop /maləˌpräp/, the use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound. Shakespeare's Dogberry was a malaprop maven before the term was even coined: "Oh villain! Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this!"

The term obtained its name much later from Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play, The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop demonstrates her gift as she explains her ideas on the education of women to Sir Anthony Absolute:

"Observe me, Sir Anthony. I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning. I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman. For instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments. But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries. But above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not misspell and mispronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do; and likewise that she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying. This, Sir Anthony, is what I would have a woman know; and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it."

There you have it. Look for more fun with words in next Wednesday's Daily. Meanwhile, please have yourself more fun than you did yesterday, playfully use a new word today, and don't be too serious about the weather - at least until tomorrow.