Word-Wednesday for May 1, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, for May 1, 2019, the 18th Wednesday of the year,  the 121st day of the year, with 244 days remaining.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Beef


May 1 Local News Headline:
Jackie Helms-Reynolds has a photograph featured on today's Wiktel home page.


Earth/Moon Almanac for May 1, 2019
Sunrise: 6:04am; Sunset: 8:38pm; 3 minutes, 9 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 5:15am; Moonset: 5:049m, waning crescent


Temperature Almanac for May 1, 2019
                Average        Record         Today
High             59                 88               45
Low              35                 14                36


May 1 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Loyalty Day
• National Skilled Trades Day
• National Loyalty Day
• May Day
• National Mother Goose Day
• National Chocolate Parfait Day
• Law Day
• School Principals’ Day
• Silver Star Service Banner Day

May 1 Riddle
They kept on the ______ so as to _______ their position when required.
What two 5-letter words that share the same letters will complete this sentence?*


May 1 Pun
100 years ago, everyone owned a horse and only the rich had cars. Today, everyone has cars and only the rich own horses. The stables have turned.


May 1 Punctuation Point
See yesterday’s fine Wannaskan Almanac post.

May 1 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1006 Supernova observed by Chinese and Egyptians in constellation Lupus.
• 1753 Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, and the formal start date of plant taxonomy adopted by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
• 1776 Adam Weishaupt founds secret society of Illuminati.
• 1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna with Mozart himself directing.
• 1852 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm publish the first part of their German Dictionary.
• 1867 Howard University chartered.
• 1939 Batman first appears in Detective Comics #27.
• 1961 Pulitzer prize awarded to Harper Lee for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

May 1 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1764 Gottfried Rieger, Czech composer.
• 1830 Mother (Mary Harris) Jones, US reformer and labor organizer.
• 1859 Bohuslav Jeremias, Czech composer.
• 1881 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
• 1900 Ignazio Silone, Italian novelist/politician, Bread & Wine.
• 1913 Walter Susskind, Czech conductor.
• 1923 Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
• 1939 Judy Collins.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:

• affine: a relative by marriage.
• agit-prop: political (originally communist) propaganda, especially in art or literature.
• corsair: a pirate.
• diptych: a painting, especially an altarpiece, on two hinged wooden panels which may be closed like a book.
• gimlet: a small T-shaped tool with a screw-tip for boring holes.
• mesclun: a salad made from a selection of lettuces with other edible leaves such as dandelion greens, mustard greens, and radicchio.
• ojek: a trader who transports goods using a bicycle.
• papadum: a thin, crisp, disc-shaped food from the Indian subcontinent, typically based on a seasoned dough usually made from peeled black gram flour (urad flour), either fried or cooked with dry heat (usually flipping it over an open flame).
• proxemics: the branch of knowledge that deals with the amount of space that people feel it necessary to set between themselves and others.
• sutchell: a narrow lane or passageway between buildings or hedges.

May 1 Word-Wednesday Feature
Nonce Words
A nonce word, is  a word created by an author and used apparently to suit one particular occasion of poetry or prose. Sometimes used independently by different writers and speakers, and while not adopted into general use, nonce words can become hallmarks of an author's style and notoriety. Here are a few of the more notable literary works and some of their nonce words.

Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carrol

• animagus: a witch or wizard who can morph into an animal at will.
• apparate: a spell that allows a witch or wizard to teleport from one place to another.
• dementor: a dark creature that absorbs the happiness of the creatures around them.
• horcrux: an object infused with a fragment of a person’s soul.
• lumos: a spell that emits light from a witch or wizard’s wand.
• mudblood: a magical person who is born to non-magical parents.
• pensieve: a magical instrument used to view memories.
• quidditch: a sport within the realm of the wizarding world.
• squib: a non-magical person who is born to magical parents.
• thestral: a mythical horse with a skeletal body and bat-like wings.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”


James Joyce fans can look for the following from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake:

• bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk: the sound of the thunderclap that accompanied the fall of Adam and Eve (Finnegans Wake).
• botch-up: noun form of the verb botch.
• mrkgnao: onomatopoeic for meow.
• obstropolos: an irritable person’s downturned mouth.
• peloothered: very, very drunk.
• poppysmic: the smacking sound of a person’s lips, coined it in Ulysses, in perhaps one of his most characteristically nonce-sensical sentences: “Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.”
• ringroundabout: to completely surround something, used in Ulysses and used to describe the conversations of WannaskaWriter and Chairman Joe as they set personal records in Thief River Falls.
• whenceness: someone's or something’s its birthplace or source point, the place from which it arises and develops.
• yogibogeybox: all of the equipment and paraphernalia that a spiritualist carries around with them, (Ulysses).

Be better than yesterday, invent a new word today, try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow, and write when you have the time.

alert and alter*