Word-Wednesday for October 22, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 22, 2025, the nineteenth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of fall, the fourth Wednesday of October, and the two-hundred ninety-fifth day of the year, with seventy days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for October 22, 2025
Yellow-Rumped Warbler    
The last of the yellow-rumped warbler, Setophaga coronata — ginjibagwesiwag in Anishinaabe — depart their Wannaskan breeding grounds this month, migrating southwards to southern North and Central America in the winter. It generally prefers coniferous forests or mixed coniferous-deciduous forests as its breeding habitat, while during the winter it can be found inhabiting more open areas such as shrublands that offer food resources. The yellow-rumped warbler was formally described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Motacilla coronata. The specific epithet is from Latin coronatus meaning "crowned". The genus name Setophaga combines the Ancient Greek σης/sēs, σητος/sētos meaning "moth" with -φαγος/-phagos meaning "-eating". The yellow-rumped warbler has a trill-like song of 4–7 syllables (tyew-tyew-tyew-tyew, tew-tew-tew) and an occasional check or chip call note.

October 22 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


October 22 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 22, 2025
Sunrise: 7:55am; Sunset: 6:21pm; 3 minutes, 24 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:22am; Moonset: 6:20pm, waxing crescent, 1% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 22, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             48                     81                     44
Low              29                      1                      30

The New Moon
by Sara Teasdale

DAY, you have bruised and beaten me,
As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,
Beaten my body, bruised my soul,
Left me nothing lovely or whole—
Yet I have wrested a gift from you,
Day that dies in dusky blue:
For suddenly over the factories
I saw a moon in the cloudy seas—
A wisp of beauty all alone
In a world as hard and gray as stone—
Oh who could be bitter and want to die
When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

October 22 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Medical Assistants Recognition Day
• Ntional Tavern-Style Pizza Day
• National Make a Dog’s Day
• National Color Day
• National Nut Day
• Smart is Cool Day
• International Stuttering Awareness Day
• Feast Day of Donatus of Fiesole

October 22 Word Pun
Sven entered ten puns into a contest to see which one would win...
No pun in ten did.


October 22 Word Riddle
How much is 2,000 pounds of Chinese soup?*


October 22 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
ICHOR, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of blood.

    Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
    Restrained the raging chief and said:
    "Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled—
    Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
                        —Mary Doke


October 22 Etymology Word of the Week
immaculate
/i-MAK-yə-lət/ adj., (especially of a person or their clothes) perfectly clean, neat, or tidy, from mid-15th century, "free from mental or moral pollution, pure," from a figurative use of Latin immaculatus "unstained," from assimilated form of in- "not, opposite of" + maculatus "spotted, defiled," past participle of maculare "to spot," from macula "spot, blemish," a word of uncertain origin. The literal sense of "spotlessly clean or neat" in English is first attested 1735. Related: Immaculately. The phrase Immaculate Conception "freedom from original sin possessed by the Virgin Mary from her conception in her mother's womb" is from late 15th century in English (from French conception immaculée); the idea itself had been debated in the Church since the 12th century, declared to be an article of faith in 1854.


October 22 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 362 The temple of Apollo at Daphne, outside of Antioch, is destroyed in a mysterious fire.
• 1827 German chemist Friedrich Wöhler is the first to isolate pure aluminum.
• 1861 First telegraph line linking West & East coasts completed.
• 1868 Jacques Offenbach's opera Genevieve de Brabant premieres.
• 1879 Thomas Edison perfects the carbonized cotton filament light bulb.
• 1881 Boston Symphony Orchestra gives its first concert.
• 1883 New York's original Metropolitan Opera House has its grand opening with a performance of Charles Gounod's opera Faust.
• 1941 Maxwell Anderson's play Candle in the Wind premieres.
• 1964 French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre refuses the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying he doesn't want to be "institutionalized".
• 1987 Nobel prize for literature awarded to Joseph Brodsky.

October 22 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1511 Erasmus Reinhold, German mathematician.
• 1686 Georg Balthasar Schott, German composer.
• 1698 Nicola Logroscino, Italian composer.
• 1737 Vincenzo Manfredini, Italian harpsichordist, compose.
• 1752 Ambrogio Minoja, Italian classical composer.
• 1765 Daniel Steibelt, German pianist and composer.
• 1809 Federico Ricci, Italian composer.
• 1811 Franz Liszt, Hungarian composer.
• 1818 Leconte de Lisle, French poet and writer.
• 1826 Guglielmo Quarenghi, Italian composer and cellist.
• 1832 August Labitzky, Bohemian composer.
• 1832 Leopold Damrosch, German-American composer.
• 1838 Carl Fuchs, German composer.
• 1865 Kristjan Raud, Estonian painter.
• 1870 Ivan Bunin, Russian poet and novelist.
• 1870 Lord Alfred Douglas, English poet.
• 1883 Viktor Jacobi, Hungarian operetta composer.
• 1883 Otakar Kubín, Czech painter and sculptor.
• 1885 Lothar Windsperger, German composer.
• 1891 Fidelio Friedrich Finke, Czech composer.
• 1898 Dámaso Alonso, Spanish linguist and poet.
• 1898 Marcel Mihalovici, French composer.
• 1904 Paul Arma, Hungarian-French pianist, composer.
• 1906 Sidney Kingsley, American playwright.
• 1913 Patricia "Boots" Mallory, American dancer.
• 1919 Doris Lessing, British novelist.
• 1921 Georges Brassens, French poet.
• 1925 Robert Rauschenberg, American painter.
• 1928 Clare Fischer, American musician, composer.
• 1928 Dominic Behan, Irish writer.
• 1929 Giorgio Gaslini, Italian jazz pianist and composer.
• 1930 Philomena Lynott, Irish author.
• 1937 Manos Loïzos, Greek composer.
• 1937 Tadeáš Salva, Slovak composer.
• 1948 Håkon Austbø, Norwegian classical pianist.
• 1959 Arto Salminen, Finnish cult writer.
• 1976 Alena Kupčíková, Czech painter and sculptor.

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

• berceuse: /behr-SYOOZ/ n., a song sung to lull a baby to sleep; a cradlesong.
• carnser: /KARN-suhr/ n., a raised path or road, esp. across an area of low or wet land.
• friable: /FRĪ-ə-b(ə)l/ adj., easily crumbled.
• machair: /MÄKH-ər/ n., low-lying arable or grazing land formed near the coast by the deposition of sand and shell fragments by the wind.
• moke: /mōk/ n., a donkey.
• papyrocracy: /puh-PIE-ruh-kruh-see/ n., Government by excessive paperwork.
• slutch: /slutch/ v., to cover or splash (a person or thing) with mud; to dirty, soil.
• tautology: /tô-TÄL-ə-jē/ n., the saying of the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style.
• vemod: /VAY-mood/ n., SWEDISH, a melancholy, wistful sadness, or a pensive longing for things past or yet to come.
• ybete: /eye-BEET/ v., to pound or pulverize (a substance) into a powder or paste, e.g. with a pestle and mortar.

October 22 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
diacope
/dahy-AK-uh-pee/ n.,  a rhetorical device where a word or phrase is repeated with one or more words in between for emphasis, from the Ancient Greek word diakopē, διακοπή, meaning "a cutting in two" or "a cleft". Like other forms of repetition, diacope helps express strong emotions, or help give weight to the repeated word. Diacope can be utilized in three ways in writing:
Vocative Diacope, in which the repeated words are separated by nouns that are directly addressed. The noun must address something, or someone; 

Elaborative Diacope, in which an adjective is used between the repeated words to enhance the meaning of the repeated word; and 

Extended Diacope, in which a word is repeated thrice for even more emphasis. See if you can spot each kind in the familiar examples below:

"Bond. James Bond."

James Bond

"Put out the light, and then put out the light."

William Shakespeare, Othello, Act V, scene 2

"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 5, Scene 4

"You think you own whatever land you land on."

Second verse from the song Colors of the Wind from the movie Pocahontas

"And we loved with a love that was more than love — I and my Annabel Lee."

Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee

    The life that I have
    Is all that I have
    And the life that I have
    Is yours.

    The love that I have
    Of the life that I have
    Is yours and yours and yours.

    A sleep I shall have
    A rest I shall have
    Yet death will be but a pause.

    For the peace of my years
    In the long green grass
    Will be yours and yours and yours.

Leo Marks's poem The Life That I Have

"In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these."

Paul Harvey

"Keeps going and going and going."

Energizer slogan

"I am dying, Egypt, dying." 

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene 15

From A Year with Rilke, October 22 Entry
To Give Ourselves Fully, from Early Journals

We do not have to build a church. Let us be complete in ourselves. Let us drink ourselves empty, give ourselves fully, extend ourselves outward—until, at last, the waving treetops are our own gestures and our laughter is resurrected in the children who play beneath them...

Chestnut Trees in Blossom
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.






*Wonton.