Word-Wednesday for October 13, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 13, 2021, the 41st Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of fall, and the 286th day of the year, with 79 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for October 13, 2021
petrichor: /ˈpe-trī-kôr/ n., that pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. Now available in Wannaska.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 13, 2021
Sunrise: 7:41am; Sunset: 6:38pm; 3 minutes, 29 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 4:12pm; Moonset: --, waxing gibbous, 48% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 13, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             53                     83                     57
Low              33                     11                      46


October 13 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Train Your Brain Day
• National Yorkshire Pudding Day
• Navy Birthday
• National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day
• National No Bra Day
• National Curves Day
• National Emergency Nurse’s Day
• National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work/School Day
• National Stop Bullying Day
• National Fossil Day
• National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day
• International Top Spinning Day

October 13 Word Riddle
What’s the favorite breakfast of high school English teachers?*


October 13 Word Pun
At David’s funeral, his coworker Mark approached his grieving widow Emily.
Mark said, “I don’t know your family well, but I worked with David for a great many years. With your permission, I’d like to say a word.”
Emily agreed, so Mark approached the podium. He was clearly nervous as he pulled out a note card from his suit pocket while fumbling with the microphone.
Finally, Mark cleared his throat and said, “plethora.” He then left the podium and walked back to his seat.
On the way, he passed David’s widow Emily. And as he did so, she reached out to take his hand, looked up at him with tears in her eyes, and said, “Thank you, Mark. That means a lot.”


October 13 The Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Sacred Heart Church Hiring Mother Superiors for New Consulting Agency: Nun of Your Business


October 13 Etymology Word of the Week
author: /ˈô-THər/ n., mid-14c., auctor, autour, autor "father, creator, one who brings about, one who makes or creates" someone or something, from Old French auctor, acteor "author, originator, creator, instigator" (12c., Modern French auteur) and directly from Latin auctor "promoter, producer, father, progenitor; builder, founder; trustworthy writer, authority; historian; performer, doer; responsible person, teacher," literally "one who causes to grow," agent noun from auctus, past participle of augere "to increase.


October 13 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1399 Henry of Bolingbroke is crowned King Henry IV of England in Westminster Abbey, a few weeks after deposing Richard II.
• 1724 Jonathan Swift publishes last of Drapier's letters.
• 1792 Old Farmer's Almanac is first published and edited by Robert Thomas.
• 1870 10-year-old Gustav Mahler gives his first public piano concert.

October 13 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1474 Mariotto Albertinelli, Italian painter, born in Florence.
• 1783 Frantiszek Sołtyk, Polish composer.
• 1797 William Motherwell, Scottish civil servant and poet.
• 1880 Sasha Chorny [Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg], Russian poet.
• 1890 Gösta Nystroem, Swedish composer.
• 1902 Arna Bontemps, American poet.
• 1910 Art Tatum [Arthur Tatum Jr], American jazz pianist and composer.
• 1958 Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabian journalist.
• 1961 Fox Miulder, The X-Files.
• 2324 Dr. Beverly Crusher, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

October 13, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 50 of 52
There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep—I sleep long.

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.


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

• almuten: /ælˈ-mju-tn/ n., the prevailing or ruling planet in a horoscope.
• enosimania: /ĕn″ŏs-ĭ-mā′nē-ă/ n., a mental state marked by excessive and irrational terror.
• facinorous: /fə-ˈsin-ə-rəs/ adj., atrociously wicked; infamous.
• garbist: /GARB-ist/ n., one who is adept at engaging in polite behavior; an expert in etiquette; from French “garbe” (grace & elegance) from Old High German “garbe” (preparation & adornment).
• monopolylogue: /mon-uh-POL-i-lawg/ n., a theatrical entertainment in which the same performer plays several parts or characters.
• pantoum: /panˈ-to͞om/ n., a Malay verse form, imitated in French and English, consisting of quotations with an /abab/ rhyme scheme linked by repeated lines.
• remuda: /rə-ˈmo͞o-də/ n., a herd of horses that have been saddle-broken, from which ranch hands choose their mounts for the day.
• sestet: /sĕ-stĕt′/ n., group of six lines of poetry, especially the last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
• tziganologue: /(t)siˈɡɑnəˌlɔɡ/ n., student of or expert in Romani peoples and culture.
• whin: /(h)win/ n., furze; gorse.

October 13, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Words by Dickens
Here’s why I put monopolylogue in this week’s Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge. In her October 07, 2021 The New York Review of Books article, "Dickens’s Multitudes", Ruth Bernard Yeazell notes with regard to the word’s origin: “Credit for that particular invention belongs to the English actor Charles Mathews (1776–1835), who devised the term for farcical entertainments in which he played all the parts, each with its characteristic idiolect.”

Yes, Charles Dickens was good with names - Mr. Fezziwig, Affery Flintwinch, Luke Honeythunder, Martin Chuzzlewit, Canon Crisparkle, Rogue Riderhood, and Mr. and Mrs. Spottetoe, to name but a few. Like Charles Lutwidge Dodgson [Lewis Carroll] and William Shakespeare, Dickens coined many new words in his fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories. Dickens was clearly a right hemisphere writer who used names and words to embody and enliven his stories in the minds of his readers. Yeazell talks about how Dickens spent much of his time on the road performing his stories at public readings:

At once dramatist, impresario, and actor, the Dickens of the public readings was clearly restoring the monopolylogue to its original venue. But as he threw himself now into the part of Ebenezer Scrooge or Tiny Tim, now into that of the prostitute Nancy or the murderous Sikes, he was also implicitly demonstrating that his version of the form had a tonal range well beyond that of Mathews’s farcical performances. Indeed, with its dizzying shifts among comic, satiric, sentimental, and melodramatic registers, the Dickens style might be said to contain multitudes.

Here are a few of the 400 words coined by Charles Dickens as recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary:

• abuzz (A Tale of Two Cities)
• butterfingers (The Pickwick Papers)
• cagmag (Great Expectations)
• connubialities (Nicholas Nickelby)
• the creeps (David Copperfield)
• devil-may-care (The Pickwick Papers)
• doormat [in reference to a person] (Great Expectations)
• flummoxed (The Pickwick Papers)
• jog-trotty (Bleak House)
• marplot (Our Mutual Friend)
• sassigassity (A Christmas Tree)
• sawbones (The Pickwick Papers)
• slangular (Bleak House)
• smifligate (Nicholas Nickelby)
• ugsome (All the Year Round)
• whiz-bang (The Pickwick Papers)

From A Year with Rilke, October 13 Entry
The Mercy We Long For, from Sonnet to Orpheus II, 9

Don’t boast, you judges, that you no longer torture
or clamp an iron collar ‘round the neck.
Though the mercy we long for
may rearrange your features

and the scaffold fall into disuse
like an outgrown toy,
no one is better off.
The god of true mercy would step differently

into the undefended heart.
He would enter with radiance
the way gods do, strong as the sea wind

for treasure-bearing ships, and claim us lightly
as the child of an infinite union
absorbed in play.



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




*Synonym buns.