Word-Wednesday, March 7, 2018

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, March 7, 2018, brought to you by The Roseau County Museum and Historical Society, dedicated to the collection, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge about the history of Roseau County as our county has contributed to the history of the state of Minnesota, and where such history may not necessarily, nor comprehensively, represent detailed accounts of certain nefarious business interests from Mickinock Township citizenry. "Semper labium superius habere rigidum."

March 7 is the 66th day of the year, with 299 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday, so there you have it.

Today is predicted to bring mostly cloudy skies with a high of 26 degrees Fahrenheit, with sunrise at 6:54am, sunset at 6:16pm as we approach the spring equinox at 11:15am on March 20.

In English, the grammatical gender of the days of the week is uniformly neuter, whereas in Spanish, French, and other Romance languages, the days of the week are uniformly masculine. Russian and other Slavic languages differ in the grammatical gender of each day, where in Russian we see each day as follows:

понеде́льник – Monday (masculine)
вто́рник – Tuesday (masculine)
среда́ – Wednesday (feminine)
четве́рг – Thursday (masculine)
пя́тница – Friday (feminine)
суббо́та – Saturday (feminine)
воскресе́нье – Sunday (neuter)

An uneventful day in the history of literature, this date is notable for the birth of František Ladislav Čelakovský, Czech poet who composed the words and music to the Czech national anthem  and various folk songs, 1799, but the day is notable for little else. Otherwise, today is National Cereal Day.

Today's Riddle:

What is the meaning of TINGO?*

Inspired by Chairman Joe, this edition of Wannaskan Almanac Word-Wednesday examines helpful vocabulary resources for general mental upkeep and those more desperate times when the perfect word remains elusive. Joe shared a link to the Oxford University Press blog, with a drop-down menu tab for Language, from which you can select Dictionaries and Lexicography, Linguistics, Oxford Etymology, Rhetoric and Quotations, Word of the Year, and OxfordWords blog. For a daily vocabulary fix, subscribe to the OED Word of the Day, and have an interesting word arrive in your Inbox every day of the year.

Specialty books on uncommon words can be sometimes inspiring, and almost always fun. One of my favorites is The Meaning of Tingo: and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World, by Adam Jacot de Boinod. As we move into that season where the weather can't seem to make up its mind, we might turn to the Scots to expand the specificity of our vocabulary options. From The Meaning of Tingo:

In deepest winter it will generally be snell, (piercing cold), and sometimes fair jeelit (icily so) among the wreaths (drifts) of snow. Driech is their highly evocative word for a miserably wet day. Gentle rain or smirr might be falling, either in a dribble (drizzle) or in a dreep (steady but light rainfall). Plowtery (showery) weather may shift to a gandiegow (squall), a pish-oot (complete downpour), or a thunder-pump (sudden rainstorm accompanied by thunder and lightning).

Any of these is likely to make average walkers feel dowie (downhearted) as they push through the slaister (liquid bog) and glaur (mire), even if they're not yet drookit (soaked to the skin). The track in front of them will probably be covered with dubs (puddles), as the neighboring burn (stream) grows into a fast-flowing linn (torrent).

The very next day the weather may be different again, and the walk beset by blenter (gusty wind). Or if it's grulie (unsettled), there's always the hope that it might turn out leesome (fair) with a lovely pirl (soft breeze). And then, after the next plype (sudden heavy shower), there may even be a watergow (faint rainbow).

Another gem of a word-resource is Landmarks, by Robert Macfarlane, "a book about the power of language - strong style, single words - to shape our sense of place." Macfarlane calls his book a "word-hoard" of the English lexicon for such landscape of the island, river, strand, fell, loch, city, town, corry, hedgerow, field, and edgeland.

Chapter 4, Woods and Water, has words that seem to speak directly of Palmville Township. Here are but a few from that chapter's glossary:

aghlish: crook or sharp curve of a river (literally "armpit")

aker: turbulent current

bathshruth: calm stream, smoothly flowing (Irish)

borbhan: purling or murmur of a stream (Gaelic)

calbh: gushing of water or blood (Gaelic)

comb: feature of a stream where water pours over a rock such that it stand upwards in glossy ridges, separated by grooves (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

drindle: diminutive run of water, (smaller than a currel)

faoi: noisy stream (Gaelic)

gulsh: to tear up with violence, as a stream when swollen with floods

land-shut: flood

marbh-shruth: that part of a river or stream the current of which is scarcely perceptible

nailbourne: intermittent stream

pow: naturally sluggish, slow moving stream, generally with a muddy bottom

reach: level, interrupted stretch of water on a river

seabhainn: very small river

speat: sudden flood in a river following rain, snow, or thaw

threeple, tripple: gentle sound mad by a quick-flowing stream

twire: movement of slow and shallow river water

winterbourne: intermittent or ephemeral stream

These are but a few entries from that chapter's glossary just for rivers, which includes additional glossaries for Pools, Ponds, and Lakes; Rain and Storm; Riverbed, Riverbank; Springs and Wells; Swimming and Splashing; Water's Surface; and Wetlands. Ten such word-hoarded chapters await you. It's too much for a single sitting, but ideal for privy reading.

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

*from Easter Island, to borrow objects from a friend’s home one-by-one until there is nothing left.