Word-Wednesday for August 20, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 20, 2025, the twenty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of summer, the third Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred thirty-second day of the year, with one-hundred thirty-tree days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for August 20, 2025
Feeding Frenzy!
While the mourning doves continue to nest and the second broods of barn swallows leave their nests, and monarch butterflies cluster on trees - a sign that their migration is beginning - these calm, peaceful moments pale with the onset of the hummingbird feeding frenzy. Those of us who have been feeding our hovering friends now fill the feeders almost every day. The adults and their new broods prepare for the long journey south.

August 20 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


August 20 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 20, 2025
Sunrise: 6:24am; Sunset: 8:31pm; 3 minutes, 19 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 2:46pm; Moonset: 7:41pm, waning crescent, 6% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 20, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             76                     91                     81
Low              53                    32                     63

Homecoming
by W. S. Merwin

Once only when the summer
was nearly over and my own
hair had been white as the day's clouds
for more years than I was counting
I looked across the garden at evening
Paula was still weeding around
flowers that open after dark
and I looked up to the clear sky
and saw the new moon and at that
moment from behind me a band
of dark birds and then another
after it flying in silence
long curving wings hardly moving
the plovers just in from the sea
and the flight clear from Alaska
half their weight gone to get them home
but home now arriving without
a sound as it rose to meet them 

August 20 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Bacon Lovers Day
• National Accessible Air Travel Day
• National Chocolate Pecan Pie Day
• National Radio Day
• World Mosquito Day

August 20 Word Pun
Sven became confused when his printer started playing music.
Turns out the paper was jamming.


August 20 Word Riddle
Why does Sven never eat more than two-hundred thirty-nine beans in a single meal?*


August 20 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
DROPSY, n. A disease which makes the patient's lease of life a kind of naval engagement.

    Dick, through all his life, had cherished
    An ambition when he perished
    To be drowned in the deep ocean,—
    Not from any foolish notion
    That so damp a death was cheerful,
    But because the wretch was fearful
    That he some day would exhibit
    On the tight-rope of a gibbet;
    Or, escaping that curtailment,
    Die of some distressing ailment,
    Giving up the ghost by inches
    With contortions, twinges, flinches.
    Death at last one day assailed him,
    And with agonies impaled him—
    Pegged him firmly for the slaughter
    Fifteen hundred miles from water!
    Now, his bowels all were topsy
    Turvy with a case of dropsy,
    And his abdomen was bloating,
    And his vitals were a-floating,
    When, between the paroxysmal
    Rush of tides along the dismal
    Channels of his ventilating
    Apparatus—when his lungs were
    Full as barrels, and no bungs were
    Handy to reduce the billow,
    Richard, strangling on his pillow,
    Turned his body, spouted finely
    Like a whale, and smiled divinely,
    Saying 'twixt convulsions frantic:
    "Every man his own Atlantic."


August 20 Etymology Word of the Week
dictate
/DIK-tāt/ v., lay down authoritatively; prescribe; say or read aloud (words to be typed, written down, or recorded on tape), from 1590s, "to practice dictation, say aloud for another to write down," from Latin dictatus, past participle of dictare "say often, prescribe," frequentative of dicere "to say, speak" (from Proto-Indo-European root deik- "to show," also "pronounce solemnly"). Sense of "to command, declare, or prescribe with authority" is 1620s, as is the meaning "be the determining cause or motive of."


August 20 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 2 Venus and Jupiter in conjunction - possible astrological explanation for the Star of Bethlehem.
• 1828 Gioachino Rossini's opera Le Comte Ory premieres in Paris.
• 1858 Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.
• 1882 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts.
• 1886 Second Salon exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists is held in Paris and includes Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
• 1896 The dial telephone is patented.
• 1951 Twelfth Venice Film Festival: Rashomon directed by Akira Kurosawa wins the Golden Lion.

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

• 1561 Jacopo Peri, Italian composer.
• 1625 Thomas Corneille, French playwright.
• 1666 Alphonse d'Ève, Flemish Baroque composer.
• 1720 Bernard de Bury, French musician and composer.
• 1756 Bernardo Bittoni, Italian composer.
• 1778 Lily O'Brennan, Irish writer and playwright.
• 1788 José Bernardo Alcedo, Peruvian composer.
• 1820 Adolphe Fétis, Belgian-French pianist and composer.
• 1827 Josef Strauss, Austrian composer.
• 1842 Juliaan de Vriendt, Flemish painter.
• 1847 Bolesław Prus, Polish writer.
• 1855 Innokenti F Annenski, Russian poet.
• 1856 Jakub Bart-Ćišinski, Sorbian writer.
• 1873 William Henry Bell, English composer.
• 1881 Edgar Albert Guest, English-American poet.
• 1885 Dino Campana, Italian poet.
• 1888 George Sklavos, Greek composer.
• 1889 Witold Friemann, Polish composer.
• 1890 H. P. Lovecraft, American horror writer.
• 1897 Tarjei Vesaas, Norwegian poet and author.
• 1898 Leopold Infeld, Polish writer.
• 1898 Vilhelm Moberg, Swedish author.
• 1901 Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian poet.
• 1905 Jean Gebser [Hans Gebser], German-Swiss author.
• 1907 Anatole Fistoulari, Ukrainian conductor.
• 1907 Stanley Devon, British photographer.
• 1910 Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect.
• 1918 Jaqueline Susann, American author.
• 1930 Mario Bernardi, Canadian pianist and conductor.
• 1931 Bernhard "Bernd" Becher, German artist and photographer.
• 1932 Vasily Aksyonov, Soviet-Russian novelist.
• 1935 J. J. Malone, American blues and soul singer.
• 1936 Carla Fracci, Italian ballerina.
• 1945 Sylvie Richterová, Czech writer.
• 1951 Greg Bear, American science fiction author.
• 1961 Greg Egan, Australian science fiction author.
• 1975 Marcus Mastin, American author.

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

• aestivate: /ESS-tuh-vayt/ v., to pass the summer, or any prolonged period of hot or dry conditions, in a state of torpor or suspended animation.
• bayalage: /ba-lā-YÄZH/ n., a technique for highlighting hair in which the dye is painted on in such a way as to create a graduated, natural-looking effect.
• causerie: /KŌ-zə-rē/ n., an informal article or talk, typically on a literary subject.
• enfilade: /EN-fə-lād/ n., a suite of rooms with doorways in line with each other; a volley of gunfire directed along a line from end to end.
• faience: /fā-ÄNS/ n., glazed ceramic ware, in particular decorated tin-glazed earthenware of the type which includes delftware and maiolica.
• guyish: adj., reminiscent or characteristic of a guy or Sven Guyson, esp. in having an odd or untidy appearance, typically by wearing old or ill-fitting clothing.
• hastilude: /HAST-ə-lüd/ n., a medieval joust, spear play.
• Noachian: /nōĀK-ē-ən/ adj., relating to the biblical patriarch Noah or his time; relating to or denoting an early geological period on the planet Mars.
• whirlagust: /WHUR-luh-gust/ n., collective noun for a group of woodpeckers; other woodpecker collective nouns include gatling, yaffle, and descent, depending on the breed.
• wubble: /Wə-b(ə)l/ n., the imperfection that is added to synthetic creations in order to give them the appearance of reality; see geeblies - grubbiness added to model kits of trains, tanks, and planes to make them appear used and realistic.

August 20, 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
Pottery Words
May 18th is National Pottery Day, which didn't fall on a Wednesday this year. To redress that missed opportunity, and should you be writing or reading a story that involves pottery, such as A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park, today we explore pottery terms: 

• ark: /ärk/ n., a large tank for the storage of slip, to prevent sedimentation it is gently agitated by slowly rotating blades.
• batt: /bat/ n., less commonly also known as a "batterboard", thin slab of wood, plaster or plastic used to support ware during shaping; also, a flat piece of kiln furniture on which ware is placed in a kiln.
• biscuit: /BIS-kət/n., pottery that has been fired but not yet glazed; occasionally also bisque.
• chamotte: /shə-MÄT/ n., a ceramic material formed by the high temperature firing of a refractory clay, after which it is crushed (and sometimes then milled) before being graded to size, used as the a non-plastic component of some clay bodies; grog is a similar material.
• dribbler: /DRI-b(ə-)lər/ a teapot from which tea does not pour well, rather it dribbles, due to inferior design.
• dunt: /dənt/ a crack caused by thermal shock, especially if ware cooled too rapidly after it has been fired. 
• engobe: /ÄN-gōb/ n., a slip coating applied to a ceramic body for imparting color, opacity or other characteristics, sometimes distinguished from slip by the addition of non-clay materials, and sometimes not, which may subsequently be covered with a glaze.
• fettling: /FE-tᵊl-iŋ/ v., the removal, in the unfired state of excess body left in the shaping of pottery-ware at such places as seams and edges.
• greenware: /GRĒN-wer/ n., unfired clay articles.
• hollowware: /HÄ-lō-wer/ n., vessels of any shape, as opposed to flatware such as plates.
• jigger: /JIG-ər/ n., a machine for the shaping of clay body into flatware by the differential rotation of a profile tool and mould; v., the process of using a jigger. 
• kidney: /KID-nē/ n., a kidney-shaped tool made of flexible steel for finishing thrown pots, or made of stiff rubber for pressing and smoothing clay in a mould.
• luting: /LŪT-iŋ/ v., joining together two pieces of dry or leather-hard clay with a slip.
• majolica: /mə-JÄL-ə-kə/ or maiolica, n., earthenware developed in France and England, which is made by applying temperature compatible colored lead glazes simultaneously to the biscuit body, then firing.
• opacifier: /oh-PASS-ih-fy-er/ n., a group of raw materials used in glazes which, after firing, reduce the transmission of light; to make opaque, useful to mask the color of the underlying body.
• pug: /pəɡ/ n., also pug mill, a machine for consolidating plastic clay or body into a firm column consisting of a barrel which tapers at one end to a die, through which the clay or body is forced by knives mounted on a shaft which rotates centrally to the barrel; a vacuum system may be installed to de-air the clay or clay body.
• refractory: /rə-FRAK-tə-rē/ adj., materials that are resistant to high temperature.
• sintering: /ˈsin(t)ər-iŋ/ v., solidification during firing of the individual materials in a body without the formation of any glass occurring in bodies with a low flux content or at low temperatures, such as in earthenware.
• slip: /slip/ n., a suspension of clay, clay body or glaze in water.
• tow: /tō/ n., coarse fibre used to fettle unfired ware. Traditionally natural materials, such as flax or hemp.
• vitreous: /VIT-rē-əs/ adj., for glaze, the presence of glass; for bodies, the absence of permeability to water.
• whiteware: /WYTE-wair/ n., a term for ceramic bodies that are white in color, whether because they fire to white, or have a white ceramic glaze.

From A Year with Rilke, August 20 Entry
The Carousel, from New Prams

Under its canopy, in the shade it casts,
turns a world with painted horses,
all from a land that lingers a while
before it disappears.
Some, it's true, are harnessed to a wagon,
but all have valor in their eyes.
A fierce red lion leaps among them,
and here comes 'round a snow-white elephant.

Even a stag appears, straight from the forest,
except for the saddle he wears, and,
buckled on it, a small boy in blue.

And a boy in white rides the lion,
gripping it with small clenched hands,
while the lion flashes teeth and tongue.

And here comes 'round a snow-white elephant.

And riding past on charging horses come girls,
bright-eyed, almost too old now for this children's play.
With the horses rising under them,
they are looking up and off to what awaits.

And here comes 'round a snow-white elephant.

Jardin du Luxembourg Carousel

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.






*Because one more would be Two-Farty.