Word Wednesday, January 31

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, January 31, 2018, brought to you by Tooter's Bar & Grill in downtown Gatzke, home of the Toot Swede, Inge Tuttars, Proprietress.

Record temperatures for today are a high of 40 degrees Fahrenheit in 1993, and -43 degrees Fahrenheit in 1996.

As noted by John yesterday, while clock-time may march with a steadfast consistency, space-time and calendar time bend and curve according to the observer.

Today's Riddle: What's always coming but never arrives?* Should you need suggestions to fill your wait for what never arrives, curl up with some of the poetry and stories written by the authors born on this day: American western novelist Zane Grey, 1872; German poet Marie Luise Kaschnitz, 1901; American short story writer John O'Hara, 1905; French-American Catholic writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, 1915; and American novelist Norman Mailer, 1923. For astronomy buffs, U.S. space exploration began on this day 60 years ago: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180131.html, and you've got the Blue Blood Supermoon if you're an early riser. Should you be near Karlstad and in need of comfort food, today's Nordhem Lunch is Swedish Meatballs.

Writers need words like musicians need notes like fish need water. "So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." [Isaiah 55:11]

Or, in a more contemporary idiom:

As such, and by way of filling Chairman Joe's wish for some of the consistency featured in a bygone almanac for writers, each Wednesday Daily of the Wannaskan Almanac will henceforth explore a bon mot or two in the world of words.

Starting with the letter A, today's words are a collection useful literary techniques. For the creative writer, several of the following suggest onomatopoeic word play opportunities. So take a moment to come up with your own creative definition for the words listed below before moving on to the official definitions (and please share your creative definitions as a comment).

afflatus
amphiboly
antimetabole
anapest
anaphora

Ready for the real definitions?

afflatus: a creative impulse or inspiration [usually silent; sometimes deadly].

amphiboly: a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous, such as, "Theresa sees more of her children than Joe." Amphiboly also includes sentences or constructions that lack proper grammatical sequence, such as, "While puttering in Steve's garden, the door banged shut."

analects: a collection of short literary or philosophical extracts; see also apothegm and aphorism; [especially see Chairman Joe's Sunday Squibs].

antimetabole: a literary and rhetorical device in which a phrase or sentence is repeated, but in reverse order to emphasize certain words or to demonstrate that reality is not always what it seems by word reversal. Examples include:
"Both artists assign themselves an evergreen social mission: to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted." Peter Schjeldahl writing about activist artists in "Points of View", New Yorker, January 01, 2018.

"Eat to live, not live to eat." Socrates

"In America, there's plenty of light beer and you can always find a party. In Russia, Party always finds you." Yakov Smirnoff, Russian comedian

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Benjamin Franklin

"We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us." Malcolm X

"If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with." Billy Preston

anapest: a metrical foot consisting of two short or unstressed syllables followed by one long or stressed syllable, as demonstrated with the lyrics of a old time favorite:
Oh Steve flíes / through the aír / with the gréat / est of éase,
That dár / ing Norse mán / on the fly' / ing trap / éze.
Oh his móve / ments were gráce / ful, all sqúirrels / he could pléase,
And my núts / he pur lóined / a wáy.

anaphora: the deliberate repetition of part of the sentence in order to achieve an artistic effect, such as in the following examples:
Joe's oven timer pinged that Sunday evening, when all eyes moved in the same direction; all minds thought about the same thing; and all taste buds prepared for the same flavors.

After repeated failure to free his truck from the mud, Steve turns to Joe, and laments, “Who is to blame, who is to look to, who is to turn to, in a tough situation like this.”

Steve went outside at night to stay ahead of freshly fallen 2 feet already dropped by the ongoing blizzard, muttering into the darkness, “Everything looks dark and bleak, everything looks gloomy, and everything is under a blanket of snow, which I must now clear.”

Explaining motherhood to Catherine, Kim gave an example of her experience: "Buying diapers for the baby, feeding the baby, playing with the baby: This is what your life is when you have a baby."

aposiopesis: a sudden breaking off in the midst of a sentence, as if from inability or unwillingness to proceed, used frequently by The Bard, such as:

No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall — I will do such things—
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. [Shakespeare, King Lear, II.iv].

Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, and to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow.

*Riddle answer: Tomorrow