Word-Wednesday for November 10, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, November 10, 2021, the 45th Wednesday of the year, the eighth Wednesday of fall, and the 314th day of the year, with 51 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for November 10, 2021
Get those shovels ready!

(from Wonderworldmotion)

Nordhem Lunch: Reopening soon!


Earth/Moon Almanac for November 10, 2021
Sunrise: 7:25am; Sunset: 4:50pm; 2 minutes, 55 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:50pm; Moonset: 19:29pm, waxing crescent, 43% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for November 10, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             37                     63                     39
Low              22                     -9                     32


November 10 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Marine Corps Birthday
• National Forget-Me-Not Day
• National Vanilla Cupcake Day

November 10 Word Riddle
How do you say suppository in Italian?*


November 10 Nordhem Word Pun
Today was just the tip of the iceberg.
Tomorrow romaines to be seen.


November 10 Etymology Word of the Week
rhyme: "agreement in terminal sounds of words or metrical lines," a 16c. attempt to restore a classical spelling to Middle English ryme, rime (c. 1200) "measure, meter, rhythm," later "rhymed verse" (mid-13c.), from Old French rime (fem.), which is related to Old Provençal /rim/ (masc.), earlier ritme, from Latin rithmus, from Greek rhythmos "measured flow or movement, rhythm; proportion, symmetry; arrangement, order; form, shape, wise, manner; soul, disposition," related to rhein "to flow" (from Proto-Indo-European root sreu- "to flow").

The persistence of rime, the older form of the word, perhaps is due to popular association with Old English rim "number" (from Proto-Indo-European root re- "to reason, count"). The intermediate form rhime was frequent until late 18c.

In Medieval Latin, rithmus was used for accentual, as opposed to quantitative, verse, and accentual verse usually was rhymed, hence the sense shift. In prosody, specifically the quality of agreement in end-sounds such that the last stressed vowel, and any sounds after it, are the same, and preceding sounds differ.

The sense of "a piece of poetry in which consonance of end-sounds is observed" is from 1610s. From 1650s as "word that rhymes with another." The phrase rhyme or reason "good sense" (chiefly used in the negative) is from late 15c. (see reason (n.)). Rhyme scheme "ordered pattern of end-rhymes in metrical composition" is attested from 1931. Rhyme royal (1841) is a stanza of seven 10-syllable lines rhymed a-b-a-b-b-c-c.


November 10 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1619 René Descartes has the dream that inspires his Meditations on First Philosophy.
• 1908 First Gideon Bible put in a hotel room.
• 1919 First observance of National Book Week.
• 1920 George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House premieres.
• 1938 Nobel for literature awarded to Pearl Buck for Good Earth.
• 1950 Nobel for literature awarded to William Faulkner.
• 1960 Uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley’s Lover finally goes on sale in the UK after a jury finds publisher Penguin Books not guilty in an obscenity trial.
• 1969 Sesame Street premieres on PBS TV.

November 10 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1483 Martin Luther, German theologian and key figure in the Protestant Reformation.
• 1577 Jacob Cats [Father Cats], Dutch grand pensionary and poet.
• 1668 François Couperin, French composer and organist.
• 1730 Oliver Goldsmith, Irish novelist and dramatist, She Stoops to Conquer.
• 1772 Jan Nepomuk Kanka, Czech composer.
• 1883 Bedrich Antonin Wiedermann, Czech organist and composer.

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

• anorak: /ˈ’an-əˌ-rak/ n., a waterproof jacket, typically with a hood, of a kind originally used in polar regions.
• barbate: /ˈbär-ˌbāt/ adj., bearing long stiff hairs; bearded.
• dissensus: /dis-ˈen-səs/ n., widespread dissent.
• ergasia: /ûr-‘gā-zhə/ n., the sum of the mental, behavioral, and physiological functions and reactions that make up an individual.
• gregatim: /ɡrɪ-ˈɡɑ-tɪm/ adv., in flocks or crowds.
• hodge: /ˈhäj/ n., an english rustic or farm laborer.
• podge: /päj/ n., a short, fat person.
• soutane: /so͞o-ˈtän/ n., a type of cassock worn by Roman Catholic priests.
• thwite: /thwahyt/ v.t., to cut or clip with a knife; to whittle; from Middle English whyttel variant of thwitel from Old English thwitan [þwitan] (to cut) from Proto-Indo-European twei- (to strike, cut). Related to thwaite (cleared land) from Old Norse or Old Danish þveit (a clearing, meadow, paddock).
• villanelle: /ˌvi-lə-ˈnel/ n., a nineteen-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the close of the concluding quatrain.

November 10, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
rhyme
/rīm/ n., correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry; v., (of a word, syllable, or line) have or end with a sound that corresponds to another. Common examples of rhymes include:

perfect: two words that share the exact assonance and number of syllables, and is also known as a true rhyme, exemplified by Dr. Seuss:
    The sun did not shine.
    It was too wet to play.
    So we sat in the house
    All that cold, cold, wet day.

    I sat there with Sally.
    We sat there, we two.
    And I said, "How I wish
    We had something to do!"

rich: two different words that happen to sound the same (i.e. homonyms). Thomas Hood uses this form in his pram, "A First Attempt in Rhyme":
    Partake the fire divine that burns,
    In Milton, Pope, and Scottish Burns,
    Who sang his native braes and burns.

slant: words with similar but not exact assonance and/or number of syllables, also known as half rhyme or imperfect rhyme, such as this from Seamus Heaney's "Digging":
    Between my finger and my thumb
    The squat pen rests; snug as a gun

eye: two words that appear similar when read, but do not actually rhyme when spoken or pronounced, as in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18":
    Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
    And summer’s lease hath all too short a date

internal: two words within the same line of poetry, e.g., Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven":
    Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary

identical: simply using the same word twice, as Emily Dickinson used in "Because I Could not Stop for Death":
    We paused before a House that seemed
    A Swelling of the Ground—
    The Roof was scarcely visible—
    The Cornice—in the Ground—

Unfortunately, a few words in the English language that don't rhyme with any other words.

• acrid
• angst
• beige
• bulb
• chaos
• circle
• circus
• concierge
• false
• film
• husband
• month
• music
• orange
• purple
• rhythm
• silver
• walrus
• wasp
• width
• window
• wolf
• woman

Fortunately, many words rhyme with Sven.


From A Year with Rilke, November 10 Entry 

Elegy to Marina Tsvetayeva-Efrom (II), from Uncollected Poems

Oh the losses in the universe, Marina, the perishing stars!
We don’t increase their number when we plunge.
In the All, everything has long been counted.
Our own falling does not diminish the sacred number.
Accepting this, we fall to the Source and heal…

Waves, Marina, we are the ocean! Depths, Marina, we are the sky!
Earth, Marina, we are earth, a thousand times spring.
We are larks whose outbursts of song
fling them to the heavens.



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.

*innuendo