Word-Wednesday for February 28, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for February 28, 2024, the ninth Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of winter, and the fifty-ninth day of the year, with three-hundred seven days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for February 28, 2024
Were DreamWorks Pictures ever to release a Wannaska version of Madagascar, the feature film would replace the lemur with Procyon lotor, the common raccoon, and also featuring the voice of Sven as the raccoon king, Hjalmar. Depending on the weather, Wannaskan raccoon mating activities usually peak in March each year, but the roads are already demonstrating evidence of increased raccoon buffoonery as February comes to a snowy end. Known by North American indigenous peoples as a trickster of tricksters, the raccoon is a favorite character in myth, literature, and entertainment media.

February 28 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


February 28 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for February 28, 2024
Sunrise: 7:09am; Sunset: 6:04pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:44pm; Moonset: 8:31am, waning gibbous, 87% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for February 28, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             25                     46                     8
Low                1                    -48                   -4

February
by Margaret Atwood

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

February 28 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chocolate Soufflé Day
• National Tooth Fairy Day
• National Floral Design Day
• National Public Sleeping Day
• Kalevala Day

February 28 Word Riddle
What starts with O and ends with nions and sometimes make you cry?*


February 28 Word Pun
The fact that some people can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bugs me in ways I can't put into words.


February 28 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

    "More dear than all my bosom knows, O thou
    Whose 'lips are sealed' and will not disavow!"
    So sang the blithe reporter-man as grew
    Beneath his hand the leg-long "interview."
    —Barson Maith


February 28 Etymology Word of the Week
word
/wərd/ n., a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed, from Old English word "speech, talk, utterance, sentence, statement, news, report, word," from Proto-Germanic wurda- (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian word, Dutch woord, Old High German, German wort, Old Norse orð, Gothic waurd), from Proto-Indo-European were- "speak, say" (see verb).

The meaning "promise" was in Old English, as was the theological sense. In the plural, the meaning "verbal altercation" (as in have words with someone) dates from mid-15th century. Word-processor first recorded 1971; word-processing is from 1972; word-wrap is from 1977. A word to the wise is from Latin phrase verbum sapienti satis est "a word to the wise is enough." Word-for-word "in the exact word or terms" is late 14th century. Word of mouth "spoken words, oral communication" (as distinguished from written words) is by 1550s.


February 28 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1749 Henry Fieldings' novel Tom Jones published.
• 1826 Biela's Comet rediscovered by Austrian astronomer Wilhelm von Biela.
• 1835 Elias Lönnrot publishes Finnish pram Kalevala.
• 1883 First US vaudeville theater opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1920 Maurice Ravel's orchestral suite Le Tombeau de Couperin premieres.
• 1940 Richard Wright's Native Son published.

February 28 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1533 Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher and essayist.
• 1616 Kaspar Förster, German composer.
• 1797 Mary Lyon, American educator and activist for woman's higher education.
• 1854 Juliusz Zarębski, Polish pianist.
• 1865 Arthur Symons, Welsh poet
• 1893 Ben Hecht, American novelist.
• 1895 Marcel Pagnol, French playwright.
• 1900 Edna Manley, Jamaican sculptor.
• 1900 Laura Z. Hobson, American writer.
• 1901 Otakar Pařík, Czech pianist.
• 1901 Rudolf Nilsen, Norwegian poet.
• 1905 Glyn Jones, Welsh, novelist and poet.
• 1909 Stephen Spender, English poet.
• 1911 Amir Hamzah, Indonesian poet.
• 1921 Vladimir Sommer, Czech compos.
• 1929 Frank Gehry, Canadian architect.
• 1929 John Montague, Irish poet and first occupant of the Ireland Chair of Poetry.
• 1930 Bruce Dawe, Australian poet
• 1941 Alice May Brock, American author.
• 1953 Osmo Vänskä, Finnish clarinetist.
• 1970 Daniel Handler, American writer, better known as Lemony Snicket.
• 1977 Kehinde Wiley, American painter.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Write a story or pram from the following words:

• achkan: /ˈäch-kən/ n., a three-quarter-length coat or tunic worn by men in India.
• colliemuddle: /KOL-ee-muh-d’l/ v., of lovers: to court in a ludicrously affectionate manner.
• daver: /ˈdāvər/ v., Scottish, to move about as if in a stupor; stagger; to wander in mind.
• emacity: /eh-MA-ci-tee/ n., a fondness for buying things or the desire to spend money.
• flaught: /ˈflaḵt/ n., Scottish, a snowflake.
• headword: /ˈhed-wərd/ n., a word that begins a separate entry in a dictionary or other reference work.
• laidner: /LAYD-nuhr/  n., a person who is in charge of a larder; a room, building, or cupboard used to store meat and other foods; a larder.
• skeevy: /ˈskē-vē/ adj., morally or physically repulsive.
• vulgo: /VUL-goh/  adv., commonly, popularly; in common parlance.
• whicken: /WIH-kin/ v., to awake from the death of winter, made use of in reference to the lengthening of days and the revival of vegetation in spring; to awake from insensibility, as from a fainting fit; to revive.

February 28, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
dord
/dôrd/ n. Physics & Chemistry, Density. This was the exact dictionary entry. The year was 1934, and Merriam-Webster had just published a brand new dictionary blessed by the labor of two-hundred fifty editors and consultants. Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition—or "W2," was the largest book to ever be mass produced at that point in history, weighing in at seventeen pounds with a six-inch binding. Word mavens will immediately note that the definition includes no etymology or examples of the word in use.

Amongst those two-hundred fifty editors and consultants was Chemistry Editor Austin M. Patterson, who like other editors, used three-by-five inch cards with official stamps to communicate dictionary entries with other editors and printers. Patterson submitted the following card:

The key to this interesting dictionary entry is how to interpret the details of the card. The wavy line is the symbol that Merriam-Webster editors used to indicate that all letters above the wavy line were to be printed in boldface, such as any headword. The tricky bit lies in the spaces between the letters. Note what seem to be extra spaces between the initial D, the or, and final the d? Whenever making a card for a dictionary word entry, spaces were required between ALL the letters of the word being defined so that there would be room to add marks showing stress and syllable breaks.

The card represented information that would become an entry, where this card was intended to be one of several cards for the letter "D" as an abbreviation — in this case, for "density." Somehow this interpretation got by final reader, the etymologist, and the proofreader, and dord as a word for "density" was born as a ghost word. Even more spooky, although the error was noticed and submitted with another three-by-five card in 1939:

the error wasn't corrected until the 1947 edition, when the ghost word had finally vanished.

Create your own dord today, which Wannaskan Almanac will preserve for as long as Google continues to store our records.

halluxicued: /ˈhal-əks-kyo͞od/ adj., curly-toed.

From A Year with Rilke, February 28 Entry
The Unspeaking Center, from Book of Hours I, 17

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth—
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

Abandon
Camille Claudel
(Claudel was Auguste Rodin's troubled muse)

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.






*Opinions.