Word-Wednesday for October 19, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 19, 2022, the forty-second Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of fall, and the 292nd day of the year, with 73 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for October 19, 2022
They're Back!
WannaskaWriter's lease favorite fall pest, Coccinellidae /ˌkɒk-sɪ-ˈnɛ-lɪ-diː/, better known as Lady Bug, seem to crystallize out of thin air in large numbers on window sills this time of year. Those that don't make it inside your home spend the winter in piles of leaves, bark, dead trees, or in other buildings, usually clustered together in groups.

 

Photo: Jared Birk, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

October 19 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


October 19 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 19, 2022
Sunrise: 7:50am; Sunset: 6:27pm; 3 minutes, 26 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 12:49am; Moonset: 4:43pm, waning crescent, 31% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 19, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             13                     77                     51
Low              30                    14                     30


October 19 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Kentucky Day
• National LGBT Center Awareness Day
• National Seafood Bisque Day
• BRA Day
• Hagfish Day
• Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce
• Medical Assistants Recognition Day
• Evaluate Your Life Day
• Feast Day of Frideswide

October 19 Word Riddle
What’s the name of the girl who always sits in the middle of the tennis court?*


October 19 Word Pun
An opinion without 3.14 is an onion.


October 19 Walking into a Bar Grammar
A dyslectic priest, rabbi, & minister walk into a bra...


October 19 Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Roseau School Announces New Hide-N-Seek League: Good Participants Hard to Find.


October 19 Etymology Word of the Week

October 19 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1512 Martin Luther becomes a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia).
• 1845 Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhäuser" premieres.
• 1870 First African Americans (4) elected to US House of Representatives.
• 1901 Edward Elgar's "Pomp & Circumstance March" premieres.
• 1953 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is published.
• 1960 Martin Luther King Jr. arrested in Atlanta sit-in.

October 19 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1821 Charlotte Piepenhagen, Czech artist.
• 1878 Hermann Claudius, German folk poet.
• 1879 Emma Bell Miles, American writer, poet, and artist.
• 1892 Ilmari Hannikainen, Finnish pianist and composer.
• 1899 Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan novelist, poet, and Nobel Prize winner.
• 1931 John le Carré [pen name for David Cornwell], English novelist.
• 1937 Peter Max, American psychedelic artist.
• 1943 L. E. Modesitt, Jr., American author and poet.
• 1954 Deborah Blum, American writer.
• 1956 Kathy O'Beirne, Irish writer.

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

• alterity: /ôl-ˈter-ə-dē/ n., the state of being other or different; otherness.
• bodjie: /ˈbɑd-ʒi/ v., to modify (something) with the intention to deceive; esp. to alter (figures, documents, etc.) fraudulently; to falsify, frequently with up; and, o make or repair (something) in a clumsy, unskilful, or makeshift way; to cobble together, to bodge, also frequently with up.
• counterfactual: /ˌkoun-(t)ər-ˈfak(t)-SH(əw)-əl/ adj., relating to or expressing what has not happened or is not the case; the science of otherwise.
• ebullient: /ih-BOOL-yint/ adj., bubbling with enthusiasm or excitement; joyously unrestrained; exuberant.
• frumious: /FROO-mee-uhs/ adj., very angry.
• lanceolate: /ˈlan-sē-ə-ˌlāt/ adj., shaped like the head of a lance; of a narrow oval shape tapering to a point at each end.
• miasmic: /mī-ˈaz-mik/ adj., producing unpleasant smell; noxious.
• parlous: /ˈpär-ləs/ adj., full of danger or uncertainty; precarious.
• ramulouse: /ˈræ-mjə-ˌloʊs/ adj., having many small branches.
• spreathed: /spri-ðd/ adj., of skin: cracked, rough, or sore, as a result of exposure to cold or damp; chapped.

October 19, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
poo
/po͞o/ n., excrement; v., defecate; exclam., used to express disgust at an unpleasant smell, dating back to 1744, a children's euphemism, probably of imitative origin. The verb in this sense is from 1903, but the same word in the sense "to break wind softly" is attested from 1721; earlier "to make a short blast on a horn" (poupen, late 14c.). Meaning "stupid or dull person" is from 1915, but this is perhaps short for nincompoop. Pooper-scooper is attested from 1970.

Synonyms include brown of renown, bottom dollar, bowel movement, cow pie, crap, dark matter, doo-doo, dookie(y) dropping, dung, excrement, excreta, feces, feculence, Hershey squirts, Lincoln log, meadow muffin, midden, muck, night soil, number two, ordure, scat, sh*t, slops, soil, the brown, turd, and waste. How the creative writer uses the correct term depends highly on context.

More interesting, the Word-Wednesday staff have laid down some euphemisms for the poo act:

Answer nature’s call
Bake some brownies
Baptize a Baby Ruth
Build a log cabin
Clear/clog the pipes
Cleave a loaf
Code brown!
Conduct an aerial strike on Porcelainistan https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/readers-letters-democracy-as-defined-by-referendum-seekers-3774469
Cut a cigar
Defecate
Destroy the toilet
Download some software
Drive out the prairie dogs
Drop a bomb/deuce/some potatoes in the crockpot/the kids off at the pool
Drown a brown snake
Evacuate your bowels
Feed the fish
Go number two
Have a bowel movement/BM
Lay a stink pickle/some cable
Liquidate some assets
Log out
Make a deposit in the porcelain bank
Make room for lunch
Massage the mud vein
Morning constitutional
Negotiating the release of the chocolate hostages
Pinch a loaf
Pop a squat
Release the Kraken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken
Relieve yourself
See a man about a horse
Squeeze some sausage
Start the fudge shuttle
Stock the lake with brown trout
Strangle a Snickers
Take a crap/dump/growler/sh*t
Take the Browns to the Super Bowl
Throw down some brown
Unload some timber
Unloose the caboose
Use the big, white telephone
Visit the porcelain throne

We here at Word-Wednesday recognize that poo is a constantly emerging word story in Wannaska and across the globe. Please add to the deposit of today's pile of synonyms and euphemisms with your own personal or familial favorites, and those from your homeland.

From A Year with Rilke, October 19 Entry
Afterlife, from Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Cruoy

I don’t care for the Christian concept of an afterlife. I distance myself from it ever more, without of course taking the trouble to attack it. It may have its value, alongside so many other metaphysical hypotheses. But for me the danger is that it not only renders what is mortal more vague and inaccessible, but also—because of our longing for the Beyond—it makes us less present and earthy. As long as we are here, and cousin to tree, flower, soil, may all that is near at hand be real to us and enter fully our awareness.

Landscape with Trees
by  Vincent van Gogh

Be better than yesterday,
make room for lunch today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.






*Annette.