Word-Wednesday for September 24, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for September 24, 2025, the fifteenth Wednesday of the year, the first Wednesday of fall, the fourth Wednesday of September, and the two-hundred sixty-seventh day of the year, with eighty-nine days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for September 24, 2025
Sphinx Moth
Sphingidae (not to be confused with Sphindidae) are a family of moths commonly called sphinx moths, also colloquially known as hawk moths, with many of their caterpillars known as hornworms. Northern pine sphinx (Lapara bombycoides), Blinded sphinx (Paonias excaecata), and Galium sphinx (Hyles gallii) are common to Wannaska, but you have to be out when it's dark to appreciate them. These moderate- to large-sized moths fly with agility and sustained can hover like hummingbirds, for which they are sometimes mistaken. The sphinx moth is multivoltine, capable of producing several generations a year if weather, whether permitting.

September 24 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


September 24 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for September 24, 2025
Sunrise: 7:13am; Sunset: 7:18pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 10:24am; Moonset: 7;55pm, waxing crescent, 8% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for September 24, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             62                     85                     76
Low              41                      19                     56

An Apple-Ripe September Morning
by Patrick Kavanagh 

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

September 24 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• World Dense Breast Day
• National Cherries Jubilee Day
• National Punctuation Day
• National Women’s Health and Fitness Day

September 24 Word Pun
People are generally shocked when they find out that Sven is not a very good electrician. 


September 24 Word Riddle
What does the man in the moon do when his hair gets too long?*


September 24 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
QUIXOTIC, adj., Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.

    When ignorance from out our lives can banish
    Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.
    —Juan Smith


September 24 Etymology Word of the Week
fortnight
/FÔRT-nīt/ n., a period of two weeks, from 17th century contraction of Middle English fourteniht, from Old English feowertyne niht, literally "fourteen nights" (see fourteen + night). It preserves the ancient Germanic custom of reckoning by nights (mentioned by Tacitus in Germania xi).


September 24 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1657 First autopsy and coroner's jury verdict are recorded in Maryland.
• 1688 Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce leaves Michilimackinac on a mysterious journey of exploration, during which he later writes about discovering a "long" river.
• 1786 African American slave and poet Jupiter Hammon delivers his "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York" speech advocating emancipation at a meeting of the African Society in New York.
• 1872 Franz Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg premieres.
• 1884 Dixey, Rice & Gill's musical Adonis premieres.
• 1928 George M. Cohan and Ring Lardner's musical play Elmer the Great premieres.
• 1930 Noël Coward's play Private Lives premieres.

September 24 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1667 Jean-Louis Lully, French composer.
• 1725 Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer and founder of the Guinness brewery.
• 1748 Philipp Meissner, German composer.
• 1761 Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen, German composer.
• 1773 Johann Philipp Christian Schulz, German composer.
• 1806 George Alexander Osborne, Irish pianist and composer.
• 1817 Ramón de Campoamor y Campoosorio, Spanish poet.
• 1821 Cyprian Norwid, Polish painter, poet and playwright.
• 1825 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, American poet.
• 1859 Julius Klengel, German cellist and composer.
• 1860 S. R. Crockett, Scottish novelist.
• 1878 Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, Swiss writer.
• 1885 Artur Lemba, Estonian concert pianist, composer.
• 1890 A. P. Herbert, English writer.
• 1896 F. Scott Fitzgerald, American author.
• 1899 Eduardo Hernández Moncada, Mexican composer and pianist.
• 1899 William Dobell, Australian portrait artist.
• 1900 Ham Fisher, American comic strip writer and cartoonist (Joe Palooka).
• 1904 Cemal Reşit Rey, Turkish composer.
• 1907 Pierre Moulaert, Belgian composer.
• 1909 Gerard Ciołek, Polish architect.
• 1910 Cao Yu, Huaju writer.
• 1912 Ian Serraillier, English children's books author.
• 1914 Andrzej Panufnik, Polish-British conductor and composer.
• 1915 Margarita Aliger, Russian poet.
• 1918 Richard Hoggart, British author.
• 1919 Václav Nelhýbel, Czech-American composer.
• 1923 Ladislav Fuks, Czech writer.
• 1929 Erik Lotichius, Dutch composer.
• 1930 Józef Krupiński, Polish poet.
• 1934 John Brunner, Britsih science fiction author.
• 1936 Jim Henson, American puppeteer, artist, screenwriter and filmmaker, best known as the creator of The Muppets, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show.
• 1940 Yves Navarre, French writer.
• 1948 Heinz Chur, German composer.
• 1981 Diana Rotaru, Romanian composer.
• 1984 Szilvia Molnar, Hungarian-Swedish writer.

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

• affeeror: /ə-FIR-ər/ n., a historical legal official, often found in manor court proceedings, who was sworn to assess and fix the amount of an "amercement" for an offense, particularly when the penalty was not precisely defined by law.
• amercement: /ə-MəRS-m(ə)nt/ n., LEGAL, a fine.
• blore: /blohr/ v., to cry out, bleat, or bray like an animal.
• dace: /dās/ n., a small freshwater fish of the minnow family, typically living in running water.
• evell: /EE-vuhl/ v., to pull or pluck out.
• eavelong: /EEV-long/ adj., oblique, slanting.
• fulciment: / FUL-sə-mənt/ n., a center of gravity; a fulcrum; a prop, a support (literal and figurative).
• homodoxian: /ho-muh-DOKS-ee-un/ adj., n., a person who just happens to have the good sense to share the same opinion as you; a rare and noble individual possessed of argute sensibilities, and the only other person in this benighted room—besides oneself—worth listening to; from Greek “homodoxos” (of the same opinion) from “homos” (same) + “doxa” (opinion, praise).
• lagom: /LAW-gom/ adj., SWEDISH, not too much, not too little or just the right amount, emphasizing balance, moderation, and contentment in life.
• mirliton: /MUR-lit-on/ n., the eunuch flute, a kind of kazoo or membranophone.

September 24 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
2025 Ig Nobel Prizes
For word lovers, the annual Ig Nobel Prizes can be a vocabulary Christmas come early, and 2025 delivers nicely. These awards — devoted to “achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think” — have delivered a cornucopia of quirky, brain-tickling curiosities. As a Word-Wednesday tradition, here's a guided tour through this year's winners, with occasional linguistic frolics for the lexicon-minded.

Chemistry: Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich & Frank Greenway
These scientists tested whether ingesting polytetrafluoroethylene (aka Teflon) can make food bulkier without raising calories — i.e. could you feel full without consuming more energy? The rat experiments (25% Teflon diet for 90 days) suggested weight loss without obvious toxicity. The FDA, unsurprisingly, declined to review the proposal. Polytetrafluoroethylene is a splendid sesquipedalian mouthful. The notion of eating plastic to slim down flirts dangerously with oxymoron (e.g., “healthy plastic consumption”). The “less is more” principle is probably safer when applied to Teflon than to your cholesterol.

Biology: Tomoki Kojima et al.
These intrepid researchers painted cows with zebra-like stripes to reduce fly bites. The logic: zebras seem to trick flies with their striping. Their experiments suggested fewer flies landed on the striped cows, offering a pesticide-free deterrent. The term mimesis (imitation) comes to mind: mimicry of zebra-style patterns in cows to fool biting insects. Based on this fine example of biomimicry, one might whimsically coin the neologism, cow-zebrafication.

Physics: Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas & Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti
These Italians, no doubt inspired by their nonnas, explored the physics behind the Italian dish cacio e pepe, dissecting how cheese, starch, and temperature can cause clumping — thus ruining your pasta experience. Their work identified phase transitions in the sauce that lead to the dreaded “globby mass.” For the word-acolyte, the term phase transition is borrowed from physics, yet here it applies to molten cheese-starch interactions. Also we see viscosity, emulsification, coagulation, and colloidal suspensions — delightful terms from soft matter physics. Next time your pasta clumps, you can whisper “Oh forsooth, a phase transition!”

Peace: Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field & Jessica Werthmann
These researchers showed that a small amount of alcohol (vodka + lemon) modestly improves performance in foreign language speaking — attributed to reduced anxiety and greater confidence, though not to sudden mastery. Linguistically, the irony is delicious. Elocution and eloquence lurk at the edge: the drink doesn’t increase your vocabulary, but perhaps your fluency audacity. It’s a study in psycholinguistics and confidence aesthetics.

Engineering design: Vikash Kumar & Sarthak Mittal
Kumar and Mittal designed a shoe-rack system that counteracts many people’s bane—foul-smelling shoes by using UV light to kill odor-causing bacteria inside a rack (albeit using materials that sometimes burned sneakers). Related vocabulary words: deodorization, photocatalysis, sterilization, antimicrobial irradiation, and dereekify.

Nutrition: Daniele Dendi, Gabriel H. Segniagbeto, Roger Meek & Luca Luiselli
They studied lizard pizza preferences at a resort in Togo, finding that the rainbow lizard had a startling preference for “four-cheese” pizza among available options. Herpetophagy (eating reptiles) is real enough, but pizzaphagy (eating pizza) seems ubiquitous now on our planet. We might label this experiment a case of gourmet herpetological forensics — detecting the gustatory predilections of reptiles.

Pediatrics: Julie Mennella & Gary Beauchamp
These scientists revisited the classic study: when a nursing mother eats garlic, the flavor compounds pass into her breast milk, altering smell and taste—and babies reportedly suckled for longer. They noted organoleptic (sensory properties), chemosensation, and olfaction. The study’s subtlety lies in how diet affects gustatory perfusion in milk.

Psychology: Marcin Zajenkowski & Gilles Gignac
Marcin and Gilles examined what happens when people are told (truthfully or not) that they are intelligent. Particularly, narcissistic individuals receiving positive intelligence feedback may react with inflated self-regard and bragging. Psychologically, key words include narcissism, ego inflation, state narcissism vs. trait narcissism. And the feedback effect is a nice instance of self-fulfilling prophecy — or at least self-exalting prophecy.

Literature (posthumous): William B. Bean
Over 35 years, Dr. Bean meticulously recorded and analyzed a single fingernail’s growth. He amassed a trove of data on nail extension, rate fluctuations, aging effects, and seasonal influences. Dactylometry — the measurement of fingers or nails. The research is a testament to longitudinal observation and methodological persistence. Also, onychology (study of nails) — applies, though more often used in cosmetology than science.

Though many of these studies might seem frivolous they embody a vital scientific spirit: curiosity without shame. The Ig Nobels remind us that playful inquiry can yield serious insight, even if only in methodology, in anomalies, or in reframing a problem. And for lovers of words, the Ig Nobels provide a sublime buffet of jargon and conceptual cross-pollination (emulsification, organoleptic, narcissism, biomimicry). One might even compose an Ig-inspired lexicon or pram.


From A Year with Rilke
Angels, from Book of Images

They all have tired mouths
and bright, seamless souls.
And a yearning, as for sin,
drifts at times through their dreams.

They mostly resemble each other.
In the garden of God they are silent,
like rest-notes
in his music and his might.

Only when they spread their wings,
do they stir the air—
as if God with wide sculptor's hands
were turning pages
in the hidden book of first things.

Abraham and the Three Angels
by Marc Chagall

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.






*Eclipse it.