Word-Wednesday for July 14, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, July 14, 2021, the 28th Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of summer, and the 195th day of the year, with 170 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for July 14, 2021
From Whence the Monarchs Come
We have a cluster of milkweed pods that attract Monarch flutterbys each year. We like to imagine the freedom they have in our neck of the woods as compared to the tight spaces they must share in Mexico.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 14, 2021
Sunrise: 5:36am; Sunset: 9:23pm; 1 minutes, 54 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 10:27am; Moonset: 12:31am tomorrow, waxing crescent, 15% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 14, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             78                     94                     81
Low              56                     36                     54


July 14 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Mac & Cheese Day
• National Grand Marnier Day
• National Tape Measure Day
• National Nude Day

July 14 Word Riddle
What two English words of more than two letters both begin and end with the letters “he” in that order?*


July 14 Pun

July 14 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1682 Composer Henry Purcell appointed organist of Chapel Royal, London.
• 1868 Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut patents the tape measure.
• 1941 Jam rationed in Holland.

July 14 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1862 Gustav Klimt.
• 1912 [Woodrow Wilson] Woody Guthrie.
• 1918 Ingmar Bergman.
• 1939 Karel Gott, Czech singer, "Sinatra of the East".
• 1986 SpongeBob SquarePants.
  

July 14 Word Fact
Horse Words in Europe

July 14, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 37 of 52
You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d!
Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering,
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side,
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.)

Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.

Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,
My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.

Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.


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

• axicolous: /aks-’i-əl-us/n., something that lives on rocks.
• bunk: /bəNGk/ v., abscond or play truant from school or work.
• caoutchouc: /kouˈ-CHo͞ok/ n., unvulcanized natural rubber.
• dunger: /‘dəŋn-gə(r)/ n., something (sounding) mechanically worn out or not in first-class order, /esp./ an old car.
• forswink: /for-swingk′/ v., to exhaust by labor; to overwork.
• gigil: /GHEE-gheel/ n., the irresistible urge to pinch or squeeze something cute.
• haibun: /俳文/ n., literally, haikai writings, a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku.
• mensuration: ˌmen(t)SHəˈrāSHən/ n., the measuring of geometric magnitudes, lengths, areas, and volumes.
• quockerwodger: /KWAH-ker-wah-jher/ n., a toy in the form of a person, which moves and dances about when a string is pulled; a politician who is controlled or bought off by corporations or other entities with the necessary money.
• scrynne: /skrahyn/ n., a wooden chest or casket, usually decorated with ivory or jewels, and containing writing materials and sacred relics.
  

July 14, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Malaprop
/ˈma-ləˌ-präp/ n., the mistaken or intentional use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with unintentionally amusing effect.

Also known as acyrologia or Dogberryism, the word comes from a character named Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop frequently misspeaks (to comic effect) by using words which do not have the meaning that she intends but which sound similar to words that do: "He is the very pine-apple of politeness!" [pinnacle] or "Why, murder's the matter! slaughter's the matter! killing's the matter! - but he can tell you the perpendiculars." [particulars]. Dogberryism comes from the 1598 Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing, in which the character Dobberry utters many malapropisms to humorous effect: "Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined before your worship." [apprehended] or, "First, who think you the most desartless man to be constable?" [double malaprop on deserving].

Other authors and performers have used the malaprop. In Huckleberry Finn, Aunt Sally noted, “I was most putrified with astonishment!” Then there’s Archie Bunker: “They can make a baby in a shot glass, or something. It’s what they call artificial separation.” Or Yogi Berra: “With so many people, Texas has a lot of electrical votes.”

One of the authors who most commonly used the malaprop was William Sidney Porter, otherwise known by his nom de plume, O. Henry. A master of the short story, Porter liked to feature street-wise characters set in New York City, where his characters comically over-thought their circumstances, as denoted expressed in their overcooked, pleonastic, gassy, prolix, roundabout, bush-beating circumlocution.

In an Indian Territory feud of which: "I was a press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact.”
 
From the scene of a murder: “A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was conspicuous by its absence.”

While walking his beat, the detective saw “a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor.”

About the speaking habits of a certain person: “I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears [spheres] compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates our of your organs of conversation.”

“The duty of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World is to offer cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other lands.

Of a pretentious person: “He wants his name, maybe, to go thundering down the coroners of time.”

On civic duty: “If you know anything about the thief, you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.”

The town named Guayaquerita: “is a clear case where Spelling Reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it.”

Or, from a righteous woman: “I follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Steins onto Samson.”

Oh, Henry!


From A Year with Rilke, July 14 Entry
Some Generous Place, from Worpswede, July 16, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet

If I had grown in some generous place—
if my hours had opened in ease—
I would make You a lavish banquet.
My hands wouldn’t clutch at You like this,
so needy and tight.

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


*headache and heartache.