Word-Wednesday for July 20, 2022

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of new words... the trill of frippary... and the apogee of offbeat... the human drama of semantic explication...here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, July 20, 2022, the twenty-ninth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of summer, and the 201st day of the year, with 164 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for July 20, 2022
Don’t Eat These

Wannaska's got some big, delicious-looking mushrooms pushing up, including Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita, a basidiomycete of the genus Amanita. Trouble is, these beauties are also known as muscimol mushroom. Muscimol (also known as agarin or pantherine) is one of the principal psychoactive constituents of Amanita muscaria and related species of mushroom. Muscimol  displays sedative-hypnotic, depressant, and hallucinogenic psychoactivity. Squirrels love them, but in humans the Amanita genus is responsible for approximately 95% of the fatalities resulting from mushroom poisoning.

Wannaskan squirrel enjoying Amanita

July 20 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 20 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 20, 2022
Sunrise: 5:42am; Sunset: 9:18pm; 2 minutes, 15 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 12:29am; Moonset: 2:10pm, waxing gibbous, 50% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 20, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             78                     96                     82
Low              55                     43                     58


July 20 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Fortune Cookie Day
• National Lollipop Day
• National Moon Day
• National Pennsylvania Day
• National Hot Dog Day
• National Get Out of the Doghouse Day
• International Chess Day
• Take Your Poet To Work Day

July 20 Word Riddle
As a stone inside a tree,
I’ll help your words outlive thee.
But if you push me as I stand,
The more I move, the less I am.
What am I?*


July 20 Word Pun
Ula regretted telling Erin secrets about Sven while in the garden —
the potatoes have eyes, the corn has ears, and the beanstalk.


July 20 Walking into a Bar Grammar
Sixteen sodium ions walked into a bar, followed by Batman.**


July 20 Etymology Word of the Week
meridian
/mə-ˈri-dē-ən/ n., a circle of constant longitude passing through a given place on the earth's surface and the terrestrial poles, from mid-14th century., "noon, midday," from Old French meridien "of the noon time, midday; the meridian; a southerner" (12th century), and directly from Latin meridianus "of midday, of noon, southerly, to the south," from meridies "noon, south," from meridie "at noon," altered by dissimilation from pre-Latin medi die, locative of medius "mid-" (from Proto-Indo-European root medhyo- "middle") + dies "day" (from Proto-Indo-European root dyeu- "to shine").

The cartographic sense of "a great circle or half-circle of a sphere passing through the poles" is attested from late 14c., originally astronomical. Figurative uses tend to suggest "point of highest development or fullest power," implying a subsequent decline. As an adjective from late 14th century. Related: Meridional. The city in Mississippi, U.S., was settled 1854 (as Sowashee Station) at a railway junction and given its current name in 1860, supposedly by people who thought meridian meant "junction" (they perhaps confused the word with median).


July 20 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 514 St. Hormisdas elected as Pope succeeding Pope Sympowerus; Reverend Mother Eubestrabius is not amused.
• 1801 Elisha Brown Jr. presses a 1,235 pound cheese ball at his farm.
• 1921 Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson becomes the first woman to preside over the floor of US House of Representatives.
• 1942 First detachment of Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, begin basic training.
• 1963 Verne Gagne beats Crusher Lisowski in Minneapolis, to become NWA champ.
• 1967 Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda receives first Viareggio-Versilia Prize.
• 1969 Apollo 11 lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lands on the surface of the moon.

July 20 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1304 Francesco Petrarch, Italian poet.
• 1659 Hyacinthe Rigaud, French painter.
• 1793 Aleksander Fredro, Polish poet and comedy writer.
• 1806 John Sterling, Scottish writer.
• 1838 Augustin Daly, American playwright.
• 1864 Erik Karlfeldt, Swedish poet.
• 1893 George Llewelyn-Davies, English inspiration for the Peter Pan character,.
• 1902 Dilys Powell, English writer.
• 1902 Jimmy Kennedy, Irish singer-songwriter of "Teddy Bears' Picnic".
• 1905 Molly Mary Nesta Keane, Irish novelist and playwright.
• 1910 Vilém Tauský, Czech conductor.
• 1922 Karel Krautgartner, Czech jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, arranger, composer, conductor and teacher.
• 1933 Cormac McCarthy.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem or pram) from the following words:
droke: /ˈdrōk/ n., a valley with steeply sloping sides.
eructation: /ih-ruhk-TAY-shuhn/ n., an act or instance of belching; the action of voiding stomach gases through the mouth; a belch.
fantast: /ˈfan-tast/ n., an impractical, impulsive person; a dreamer.
greenwash: /‘ɡrēn-wäSH/ n., disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.
inaniloquent: /IHN-an-il-ih-kwent/ adj., full of empty or idle talk; given to talking inanely; loquacious; garrulous.
murk: /mərk/ n., darkness or thick mist that makes it difficult to see.
noust: /naʊst/ n., SCOTTISH, a place where a boat can be hauled up and kept ashore; specifically a scooped-out trench at the edge of a beach surrounded by a shallow wall of stones.
quodlibetificate: /kwäd-li-bet-tə-fə-kāt/ v., to deal with (a word) quibblingly.
ruffin: /RUHF-in/ n., a devil or fiend; adj., in a state of confusion or disarray; disordered or disheveled.
ungapatchka: /'o͞on-ga-päCH-kə-iNG/ YIDDISH adj.,  overly ornate, busy, ridiculously over-decorated, kitch, and garnished to the point of distaste; v., doing senseless things.
wampish: /ˈwam-pish/ v., SCOTTISH to fluctuate, to swing, to wave about or flop to and fro.


July 20, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
Anadiplosis
/ˌa-nə-də-ˈplō-səs/ n., a specific type of repetition that takes place at the end of a phrase, and then again at the beginning of the next one. The goal of this device is to connect one phrase to the next, guiding the reader's  attention through the way an idea unfolds. Another common form of anadiplosis uses a pattern of a repeating word or words in successive sentences or clauses, drawing emphasis to variations in the meanings of a certain word or idea. Sometimes, anadiplosis reflects the main idea of the entire work of writing. Here are some examples, and as always, we can look to Shakespeare:

Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 20

The love of wicked men converts fear;
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.

Richard II, from Richard II, by Shakespeare, Act V, Scene 1

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leave to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Yoda, from The Phantom Menace

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seem waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life and death.

W.B. Yeats, from his pram, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

Noust in the grass
grass in the wind
wind on the lark
lark for the sun
Sun through the sea
sea in the heart
heart in its noust
nothing is lost

John Glenday, his pram, Noust

What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French).

Humbert Humbert, from Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us.

the Bible, Romans 5:3-5

And so even though we face the difficulties of tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Hitty Pitty within the wall,
Hitty Pitty without the wall;
If you touch Hitty Pitty,
Hitty Pitty will bite you!

Beatrix Botter, from The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin on Amanita

How bigga skunk
voulda skunk-chucker chuck
ifa skunk-chucker
could chuck skunk?

Sven Guyson, May 13, 2020 entry from his Shop Note Book

From A Year with Rilke, July 20 Entry
On the Edge of Night, from Book of Images

My room and the vastness around it,
awake in the oncoming night,
are one. I am a string
stretched taut
across resonating distances.

All things are the body of the violin,
filled with murmuring darkness.
There, grieving women lie down to dream.
There the resentments of generations
surrender to sleep…
A silver thread,
I reverberate:
then all that’s underneath me
comes to life.

And what has lost its way
will, by my vibrant sounds,
be at last brought home
and allowed to fall endlessly
into the depthless source…

Violinist Seen from the Front
by Vincent van Gogh

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.



*a pencil.

**Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Batman!