Word-Wednesday for August 25, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 25, 2021, the 34th Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of summer, and the 237th day of the year, with 128 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for August 25, 2021
Spore Sports

The big ones are still waiting for water to build enough hydrostatic pressure to break through the surface. These small ones made it with the last rainfall.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed August 24-30.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 25, 2021
Sunrise: 6:31am; Sunset: 8:21pm; 3 minutes, 23 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 10:00pm; Moonset: 9:53am, waning gibbous, 90% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 25, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             75                     90                     68
Low              52                     34                     46


August 25 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Park Service Founders Day
• National Whiskey Sour Day
• National Kiss and Make Up Day
• National Secondhand Wardrobe Day
• National Banana Split Day

August 25 Word Riddle
What did the fisherman say to the magician?*


August 25 Word Pun
oyster: /ˈois-tər/ n., a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.


August 25 Etymology Words of the Week
Etymological Dirge
Heather McHugh
"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear."

Calm comes from burning.
Tall comes from fast.
Comely doesn't come from come.
Person comes from mask.

The kin of charity is whore,
the root of charity is dear.
Incentive has its source in song
and winning in the sufferer.

Afford yourself what you can carry out.
A coward and a coda share a word.
We get our ugliness from fear.
We get our danger from the lord.


August 25 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1609 Galileo demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1804 Alicia Thornton becomes first female jockey in England riding at Knavesmire in Yorkshire.
• 1932 Amelia Earhart completes transcontinental flight.

August 25 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1744 Johann von Herder, German philosopher, theologist, and poet.
• 1846 Judith Gautier, French poetess, novelist.
• 1887 Olav Fartein Valen, Norwegian composer.
• 1897 Jaroslav Řídký, Czech composer.
• 1913 Walt Kelly, American cartoonist and animator.
• 1918 Leonard Bernstein, American conductor and composer.
• 1921 Brian Moore, Irish novelist.
• 1949 Gene Simmons [Chaim Witz], Israeli-American rock guitarist.
• 1958 Tim Burton, American film director.

August 25, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 43 of 52
I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey.

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.

How the flukes splash!
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!

Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any,
The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same.

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.

Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d, not a single one can it fail.

It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again,
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,
Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo call’d the ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.


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

• atrate: /ā-'trāte/ adj., dressed in black.
• clomb: /klōm/ v., archaic past and past participle of climb.
• engastrimyth: /ɛen-ˈɡæs-trɪi-mɪθ/ n., a ventriloquist.
• freemium: /ˈfri-mi-əm/ n., originally: an incentive, such as a free gift, given by a business in order to persuade customers to pay for other goods or services (/rare/). Later: a business model, especially on the Internet, whereby basic services are provided free of charge while more advanced features must be paid for.
• guerdon: /ˈɡər-dn/ n., a reward or recompense.
• hebetic: /hih-BET-ihk/ adj., of, pertaining to, beginning at, or occurring during puberty.
• jink: /jiNGk/ v., change direction suddenly and nimbly, as when dodging a pursuer, n., a sudden quick change of direction.
• mungo: /MUHNG-goh/ n., a dumpster diver; one who extracts articles of value from the trash; a poor quality felted fabric made from reclaimed or waste wool.
• plagiarism: /ˈplā-jəˌ-rizəm/ n., getting in trouble for something you didn’t do.
• teocalli: /ˌtē-ə-ˈka-lē/ n., an ancient temple of Mexico or Central America usually built upon the summit of a truncated pyramidal mound.

August 25, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Untranslatable
As confusing as the English orthography may be to the non-native learner, English has surprisingly few words that linguists consider untranslatable, such that no similar word or synonym exists in other languages. There are, of course, a few isolated exceptions. The Italians have nothing that comes close to awkward. Their translators use multiple words, or just, scomodo, which means uncomfortable. If you grew up in Poland, you’ll not find a good word that corresponds to jinx, so the Poles say “something that brings bad luck”. The word nice, as used either in England or Minnesota, has a range of different meanings that depend on the context and tone of voice of the speaker, which many other languages struggle to replicate in quite the same way.

Other languages have words that are far more unique. Here are a few of the Word-Wednesday staff favorites:

From Germany

• backpfeifengesicht: n., a face that is badly in need of a fist.
• fernweh: v., feeling homesick for a place to which you have never been.
• schilderwald: n., a street with so many road signs that one becomes lost.
• waldeinsamkeit: n., the feeling of being alone in the woods.

From Japan

• aware: adj., the bittersweetness of a brief, fading moment of transcendent beauty.
• bakku-shan: n., a beautiful girl, as long as she is being viewed from behind.
• komorebi: n., a scattered, dappled sunlight that shines through trees.
• tsundoku: v., the act of leaving a book unread after buying, along with other similarly unread books.

From Scandinavian Languages

• gökotta: v., Swedish, to wake up early in the morning with the purpose of going outside to hear the first birds sing.
• tokka: n., Finnish, a large herd of reindeer.
• utepils: v., Norwegian, to sit outside on a sunny day enjoying a beer.

The Romance Languages

• culaccino: n., Italian, the mark left on a table by a moist glass.
• friolero: n., Spanish, a person who is especially sensitive to cold weather and temperatures.
• gattara: n., Italian, a woman, typically old and lonely, who devotes herself to caring for stray cats.
• rire das sa barbe: v., French, to laugh in one’s beard quietly while thinking about an event from the past.

From Slavic Languages

• pochemuchka: n., Russian, a person who asks too many questions.
• prozvonit: v., Czech, to call someone's cellular phone and hang up after one ring so that the other person calls back, allowing the original caller to save money related to minutes.
• shlimazl: n., Yiddish, a chronically unlucky person.

From A Year with Rilke, August 25 Entry
This Press of Time, from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 22

We set the pace,
But this press of time—
take it as a little thing
next to what endures.

All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy.

Young ones, don’t waste your courage
racing so fast,
flying so high.

See how all things are at rest—
darkness and morning light,
blossom and book.


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.


*Pick a cod, any cod.