Word-Wednesday for February 11, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for February 11, 2026, the sixth Wednesday of the year, the eighth Wednesday of winter, the second Wednesday of February, and the forty-second day of the year, with three-hundred twenty-three days remaining. Brought to you by Bead Gypsy Studio’s 20% off leather bracelets Happy Valentine’s Day Sale, where you can register to WIN A GIFT BASKET: 101 Main Avenue North, downtown Roseau.

Wannaska Phenology Update for February 11, 2026
The American marten, Martes americana, waabizheshi in Anishinaabe, is also known as the American pine marten. They're a species of North American mammal, and a member of the family Mustelidae, but in Wannaska is sometimes referred to as simply the pine marten. The name "pine marten" is derived from the common name of the distinct Eurasian species, Martes martes. Martes americana favor's conifer forests in Wannaska and is otherwise  found throughout Canada, Alaska, and parts of the northern United States. It is a long, slender-bodied marten, with fur ranging from yellowish to brown to near black. It may be confused with the fisher (Pekania pennanti), but the marten is lighter in color and smaller. Identification of the marten is further eased by a characteristic bib that is a distinctly different color than the body. The pine marten is omnivorous and varies by season, but relies chiefly on small mammals like voles. They are solitary except during the mid-summer breeding season. Despite all the alone time, pine martens have a variety of vocalizations, from the squeaks and chirps of kits, to chuckles when encountering Sven and/or Ula, to female cooing during the breeding season (summer), to hisses, growls and screams when in danger.

February 11 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


February 11 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for February 11, 2026
Sunrise: 7:39am; Sunset: 5:37pm; 3minutes, 18 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 4:09am; Moonset: 11:26am, waning crescent, 32% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for February 11, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             18                     39                     25
Low              -4                   -50                     18

Afternoon in February
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o’er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.

February 11 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Latte Day
• National Guitar Day
• National Inventors’ Day
• Ntional Peppermint Patty Day
• National Shut-In Visitation Day
• National White Shirt Day
• National Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day
• National Make a Friend Day
• Satisfied Staying Single Day
• International Day of Women and Girls in Science
• Feast Day of Gobnait

February 11 Word Pun

February 11 Word Riddle
What gets wetter the more it dries?*


February 11 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
SYCOPHANT, n., One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.

    As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
    To fix itself upon a part diseased
    Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
    It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
    So the base sycophant with joy descries
    His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
    Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
    Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
    Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
    Your talent to the service of a goat,
    Showing by forceful logic that its beard
    Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
    If to the task of honoring its smell
    Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
    The world would benefit at last by you
    And wealthy malefactors weep anew—
    Your favor for a moment's space denied
    And to the nobler object turned aside.
    Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
    Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
    Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
    To safer villainies of darker dye,
    Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
    To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
    May see you groveling their boots to lick
    And begging for the favor of a kick?
    Still must you follow to the bitter end
    Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
    And in your eagerness to please the rich
    Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
    In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
    And sing hosannas to great Havemeyer!
    What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
    He too is reeking rich—deducting you.


February 11 Etymology Word of the Week
sycophant
/SI-kə-fant/ n., a person who acts obsequiously toward someone important in order to gain advantage, from 1530s (in Latin form sycophanta), "informer, talebearer, slanderer" (a sense now obsolete), from French sycophante and directly from Latin sycophanta, from Greek sykophantēs "false accuser, slanderer," literally "one who shows the fig," from sykon "fig" + phainein "to show" (from Proto-Indo-European root bha- "to shine").

"Showing the fig" was a vulgar gesture made typically by sticking the thumb between two fingers. That it was considered obscene and insulting is all that is sure. A split fig was symbolic of a vagina (sykon also meant "vulva"). The thumb-poking-between-the-fingers gesture has been a sexual image in various times and places.

The usual modern explanation of the use of the word in reference to certain persons in ancient Greece is that prominent politicians held aloof from scurrilous gestures but privately urged followers to taunt their opponents.

The explanation, long current, that it orig. meant an informer against the unlawful exportation of figs cannot be substantiated. [OED, 2nd ed. print, 1989] That discarded explanation is as old as the word's use in English, and the phrase already was explained differently in antiquity. The general sense of "parasite; mean, servile flatterer" especially of princes or the great is recorded in English by 1570s.


February 11 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1790 Society of Friends petitions Congress for abolition of slavery.
• 1840 Gaetano Donizetti's opéra comique La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) premieres.
• 1843 Giuseppe Verdi's dramatic opera I Lombardi premieres.
• 1852 First British public female toilet opens.
• 1878 First US bicycle club, the Boston Bicycle Club, forms.
• 1896 Oscar Wilde's one-act tragedy Salome premieres.
• 1903 Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony premieres.
• 1929 Eugene O'Neill's play Dynamo premieres.
• 1942 Archie comic book debuts.
• 1978 China lifts a ban on works of Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

February 11 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1568 Honoré d'Urfé, French writer.
• 1657 Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle, French scientist and writer.
• 1755 Albert Christoph Dies, German painter, engraver.
• 1764 Marie-Joseph de Chénier, French poet.
• 1790 Ignaz Assmayer, Austrian organist, and composer.
• 1802 Lydia Maria Child, American author.
• 1810 Loïsa Puget, French opera and salon song composer.
• 1813 Otto Ludwig, German writer and playwright.
• 1821 Hermann Allmers, German poet.
• 1830 Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf, Prussian pianist, composer.
• 1830 Peter Arnold Heise, Danish organist, composer.
• 1847 Thomas Edison, American inventor.
• 1860 Rachilde [Marguerite Vallette-Eymery], French author.
• 1869 Else Lasker-Schüler, German Expressionist poet and playwright.
• 1872 Edward Johnston, British craftsman regarded as the father of modern calligraphy.
• 1873 Feodor Chaliapine, Russian operatic bass-baritone singer.
• 1874 Elsa Beskow, Swedish children's author and illustrator.
• 1874 Fritz Bennicke Hart, British composer.
• 1875 Sara Wennerberg-Reuter, Swedish organist and composer.
• 1879 Jean Gilbert [Max Winterfeld], German composer.
• 1881 Florence Fulton Hobson, Irish architect.
• 1882 Gheorghe Cucu, Romanian composer.
• 1883 Paul August von Klenau, Danish composer.
• 1884 Alfonso Leng, Chilean dentist and composer.
• 1887 John van Melle, South African writer.
• 1889 Vladimir Mikhaylovich Deshevov, Russian-Soviet composer.
• 1895 Viktor Trambitsky, Russian composer.
• 1897 Yves de La Casiniere, French composer.
• 1902 Arne Jacobsen, Danish architect.
• 1903 Hans Redlich, Austrian-English composer.
• 1905 Beb Vuyk, Dutch-Indonesian writer.
• 1905 Zdeněk Burian, Czech illustrator, painter.
• 1907 E. W. Swanton, English author.
• 1908 Sutan Takdir Alishahbana, Indonesian linguist and writer.
• 1912 Roy Fuller, English poet and novelist.
• 1913 Lucio San Pedro, Filipino composer.
• 1915 Mervyn Levy, Welsh artist.
• 1917 Sidney Sheldon, American novelist and playwright.
• 1918 Margaret Heldt, American hairdresser who created the beehive hairstyle.
• 1920 Daniel F. Galouye, American science fiction author.
• 1920 Paul Peter Piech, American-British print artist.
• 1922 Tudor Jarda, Romanian composer.
• 1923 Sy Kattelson, American photographer.
• 1927 Michel Sénéchal, French operatic tenor.
• 1928 Raoul Cita, American R&B pianist and songwriter.
• 1929 Leonard Kastle, American opera composer.
• 1931 Bobby Lamb, Irish jazz trombonist, composer.
• 1939 Jane Yolen, American science fiction and children's literature author and poet.
• 1946 Heinz Winbeck, German composer.
• 1948 Susan Bernard, American author.
• 1954 Noriyuki Asakura, Japanese composer.
• 1987 Julio Torres, Salvadoran writer.

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

• anther: /AN-THər/ n., the part of a stamen that contains the pollen.
• britch: /britch/ n., the coarsest part of the sheep's wool.
• causse: /kohss/ n., a limestone plateau.
• exequy: /EKS-i-kwē/ n., funeral rites; obsequies.
• mellyvous: /meh-LIV-uhs/ adj., quarrelsome.
• mirabiliary: /mir-uh-BIL-ee-uh-ree/ n., a person who deals in marvels; a collector of marvelous things.
• noctilucous: /nok-tih-LOO-kuhs/ adj., shining, glowing, or phosphorescent at night or in the dark.
• porte cochère: /pôrt kō-SHER/ n., a covered entrance large enough for vehicles to pass through, typically opening into a courtyard.
• psykter: /SIK-tur/ n., sn open-topped jar used for cooling wine.
• strath: /straTH/ n., SCOTTISH ENGLISH, a broad mountain valley.

February 11, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
Name a Snowplow Contest
MnDOT’s 2025-2026 Name a Snowplow Contest entries have been posted, and you can click here to vote for your favorite. As an annual Word-Wednesday feature, here is the list of finalists for you to mull over before voting. And as always, please feel free to put your own unofficial entry in the comment section…

• 867-530 Brine
• AI: Arctic Intelligence
• Below Zero Hero
• Bob Chillin’
• Don’t Flurry, Be Happy
• Every Day I’m Shovelin’
• Feelin’ Salty
• Flurrious George
• Here We Snow Again
• I Got Friends In Snow Places
• Jon Bon Snowi
• Just Scraping By
• K Pop Blizzard Hunter
• KaPlow!
• Lake Snowbegone
• LL Cool Blade
• Minne-Snow-ta
• Mission: Impassable
• Mr. Plow
• O Brother, Where Art Plow?
• Oh, For Sleet's Sake
• Plowin’ In The Wind
• Salt Shaker
• Say It Ain’t Snow
• Six-Sleddin’, Six-Sleddin’
• Sled Zeppelin
• The Life Of A Snowgirl
• The North Plow
• Walter Whiteout
• Whiteout Warrior

From A Year with Rilke, February 11 Entry
If the Confident Animal, from the Eighth Duino Elegy

If the confident animal coming toward us
had a mind like ours,
the change in him would startle us.
But to him his own being is endless,
undefined, and without regard
for his condition: clear,
like his eyes. Where we see future,
he sees all, and himself
in all, made whole for always.

Flying Fox
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.





*A towel.