Word-Wednesday for March 25, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for March 25, 2026, the twelfth Wednesday of the year, the first Wednesday of spring, the fourth Wednesday of March, and the eighty-fourth day of the year, with two-hundred eighty-one days remaining, sponsored by Bead Gypsy Studio, 101 Main Avenue North, Roseau, March Madness sale: Purchase any bracelet or necklace at full price and get a pair of earrings 50% off.

Wannaska Phenology Update for March 25, 2026
Sandhill Crane
Here at Word-Wednesday headquarters, we're all ears for the first call of Antigone canadensis — ajijaak in Anishinaabe — as one of our favorite harbingers of spring, and we heard our first song on Monday. This comes as no surprise; in Anishinaabe oral history, Ajijaak is the leader tasked by the Creator with finding a suitable home for the people, ultimately guiding them to the Great Lakes region. Sandhill cranes are social birds that live in pairs or family groups throughout the year. During migration and winter, unrelated cranes come together to form "survival groups" that forage and roost together. Such groups often congregate at migration and winter sites, sometimes in the thousands. 

March 25 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


March 25 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for March 25, 2026
Sunrise: 7:16am; Sunset: 7:43pm; 3minutes, 36 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:55am; Moonset: 3:38am, first quarter, 42% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for March 25, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             38                     64                     40
Low              19                    -28                     22

March
by Richard Kenney

Sky a shook poncho.
Roof   wrung. Mind a luna moth
Caught in a banjo.

This weather’s witty
Peek-a-boo. A study in
Insincerity.

Blues! Blooms! The yodel
Of   the chimney in night wind.
That flat daffodil.

With absurd hauteur
New tulips dab their shadows
In water-mutter.

Boys are such oxen.
Girls! — sepal-shudder, shadow-
Waver. Equinox.

Plums on the Quad did
Blossom all at once, taking
Down the power grid.

March 25 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Whole Day for Whole Grain
• Manatee Appreciation Day
• National Little Red Wagon Day
• National Medal of Honor Day
• Tolkien Reading Day
• National Lobster Newburg Day
• International Waffle Day
• International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
• New Year's Day (Lady Day) in England, Wales, Ireland, and some of the future United States and Canada from 1155 through 1751, until the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 moved it to 1 January and adopted the Gregorian calendar. (The year 1751 began on 25 March; the year 1752 began on 1 January.)

March 25 Word Pun
What did the sushi say to the bee?**


March 25 Word Riddle
Where do Irish sailors go for relief?*

a Chairman Joe original

March 25 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
BACCHUS, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

    Is public worship, then, a sin,
    That for devotions paid to Bacchus
    The lictors dare to run us in,
    And resolutely thump and whack us?
                    —Jorace


March 25 Etymology Word of the Week
haggle
/HAG-(ə)l/ v., dispute or bargain persistently, especially over the cost of something, from 1570s, "to cut unevenly, mangle in cutting" (implied in haggler "clumsy workman"), frequentative of haggen "to chop" or "to hack": "to cut roughly, cut with chopping blows," circa 1200, from verb found in stem of Old English tohaccian "hack to pieces," from West Germanic hakkon (source also of Old Frisian hackia "to chop or hack," Dutch hakken, Old High German hacchon, German hacken), from Proto-Indo-European root keg- "hook, tooth." Perhaps influenced by Old Norse höggva "to hew, cut, strike, smite" (which is unrelated, from Proto-Indo-European kau- "to hew, strike;" see hew).

The slang sense of "cope with" (as in can't hack it) is recorded in American English by 1955, with a notion of "get through by some effort," as a jungle (phrase hack after "keep working away at" is attested from late 14th century). To hack around "waste time" is U.S. slang, by 1955, perhaps originally of golfers or cabbies.


March 25 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1 Origin of Dionysian Incarnation of the Word.
• 31 The first Easter is celebrated by Christians, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus.
• 421 City of Venice is founded, at noon on a Friday.
• 1305 Consecration of the Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel) in Padua, Italy, with fresco masterpiece by Florentine painter Giotto.
• 1655 Astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
• 1807 British Parliament abolishes the slave trade throughout the British Empire.
• 1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
• 1852 Friedrich Hebbel's tragedy Agnes Bernauer premieres.
• 1946 First performance of Igor Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto, by Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd.
• 1955 United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl as obscene.

March 25 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1495 Leonhard Paminger, Austrian composer, poet.
• 1532 Pietro Pontio, Italian composer.
• 1594 Maria Tesselschade Visscher, Dutch writer.
• 1688 Johann Gotthilf Ziegler, German Baroque composer.
• 1713 Jean-Baptiste Canavas [Canavasso], Italian composer.
• 1745 Nicolas Etienne Framery, French composer.
• 1762 Francesco Giuseppe Pollini, Italian composer.
• 1769 Salvatore Vigano, Italian choreographer.
• 1770 Carl Friedrich Ebers, German composer.
• 1867 Arturo Toscanini, Italian cellist.
• 1867 John Gutzon Borglum, American sculptor.
• 1869 Gustaaf Schamelhout, Flemish writer.
• 1872 Vito Pardo, Italian sculptor.
• 1879 Otakar Zich, Czech composer.
• 1881 Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer.
• 1881 Mary Webb, English writer.
• 1885 Mateiu Caragiale, Romanian poe.
• 1894 Erik William Gustav Leidzen, Swedish American composer.
• 1897 "Sweet" Emma Barrett, American Dixieland jazz pianist and singer.
• 1899 Bella Spewack, Hungarian-American playwright.
• 1899 Jacques Audiberti, French poet and playwright.
• 1902 Sten Broman, Swedish composer.
• 1906 Curley Weaver, American blues guitarist.
• 1908 František Kardaus, Czech designer.
• 1910 Magda Olivero, Italian soprano.
• 1910 Mario Peragallo, Italian composer.
• 1911 Willy Anthoons, Belgium avant-garde sculptor.
• 1916 Nikolay Ivanovich Peyko, Russian composer.
• 1922 Tobias Schneebaum, American writer.
• 1924 Julia Perry, American classical composer.
• 1929 Cecil Taylor, American pianist, poet.
• 1931 Humphrey Burton, British writer.
• 1938 Daniel Buren, French conceptual artist.
• 1942 Aretha Franklin, American singer.
• 1953 Iryna Kyrylina, Ukrainian composer.
• 1953 Lorna Byrne, Irish writer.

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

• ait: /eyt/ n., a small island, especially in a river.
• bascule: /BAS-kyo͞ol/ n., a type of bridge with a pivoting section that is raised and lowered using counterweights.
• dekko: /DE-kō/ n., a quick look or glance.
• demijohn: /DEM-ē-jän/ n., a bulbous narrow-necked bottle holding from 3 to 10 gallons of liquid, typically enclosed in a wicker cover.
• indagation: /in-duh-GAY-shun/ n., the process of searching or inquiring; an investigation.
• macadam: /mə-KA-dəm/ n., broken stone of even size used in successively compacted layers for surfacing roads and paths, and typically bound with tar or bitumen.
• snook: /snook/ n., a projecting point or piece of land; a headland, cape, or promontory.
• taboret: /TAB-(ə)-rət/ n., a low stool or small table.
• ula: /yül-ə/ pl. n., the buccal gums.
• woodie: /WUUD-ee/ n., the common wood pigeon.

March 25, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
Creative Vocabulary Enhancement
Word-Wednesday featured musical terms in previous posts because music has fewer creative boundaries than language. Walt Whitman surely felt this when he named his masterwork, Song of Myself, celebrating the unity of person and nature with a chanting free verse. With spring upon us, and with our hearts swelling into our larger selves with each new day, here are a few words to inspire the song of your own heart as you sing your self through the coming day:

• appoggiatura: /ə-pä-jə-To͝oR-ə/ n., a grace note performed before a note of the melody and falling on the beat.
• attaca: /ə-TÄK- ə n., attack at once, used as a direction in music at the end of a movement to begin the next without pause.
• barcarolle: /baar-kr-OWL/ n., a boating song, generally describing the songs sung by gondoliers in Venice. Chopin, Mendelssohn, Fauré and Offenbach all wrote works imitating the form.
• berceuse: /behr-SUZ/ n., a lullaby. Generally slow and undulating, Chopin's famous Berceuse is the most well known example of the form.
• fagotto: /fa-GOT-toh/ n., the Italian word for bassoon.
• fermata: /fər-MÄ-də/ n., a pause of unspecified length on a note or rest; a mark over a note or rest that is to be lengthened by an unspecified amount.
• glissando: /gluh-SAAN-dow/ v., rom the French 'glisser", meaning to slide. An instruction to slide between a group of notes. On the piano, for example, the performer runs a finger down or up the keyboard.
• lied: /lēt/ n., a type of German song, especially of the romantic period, typically for solo voice with piano accompaniment.
• mazurka: /muh-ZUR-kuh/ n., a traditional Polish dance. Many composers, including Chopin and Szymanowski have written works using the form.
• nenefreghista: /men-ə-frə-GIS-ta/ adj., uncaring/unconcerned , indifferent.
• ostinato: /aa-stuh-NAA-two/ n., from the Italian, meaning obstinate, a repeated musical phrase or rhythm.
• passacaglia: /pah-suh-KAH-lee-uh/ n., baroque dance form in which a short melodic phrase, usually in the bass, form the basis of the work.
• ritard: /rē-TÄRD/ adv., (especially as a direction) with a gradual decrease of speed; n., a gradual decrease in speed.
• rubato: /ru-BAA-two/ adj., from the Italian for stolen, an instruction to play with freedom. Rubato allows performers to deviate from strict tempo regularity, and can enhance expressive playing. In essence, by 'stealing' time, or borrowing it, it should be contrasted with strict time, in a musically correct method of atonement.
• schleppend: /SHLEP-uhnt/ v., directive to perform the indicated passage of a composition in a dragging manner. More commonly, the directive nicht schleppend is seen which means; in a manner that does not drag.
• spiccato: /spee-KAA-tow/ adj., from the Italian, to separate, a bowing technique for string instruments in which the bow bounces lightly upon the string.

From A Year with Rilke, March 25 Entry
Annunciation (1), from Book of Images

(The angel speaks)

It's not that you are closer to God than we;
We are all far from God.
But your hands seem to me
so wonderfully blessed,
made ready as no other woman's.
They are almost radiant.
I am the day, I am the dew.
You, though, are the tree.

I am tired now, I have traveled a long way.
Forgive me, but I have forgotten
what He, enthroned in gold like the sun,
wanted me to tell you, quiet one.
All that space made me dizzy,
but I am just the beginning.
You, though, are the tree.

Cambodian Dancer
by Auguste Rodin

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.






*Wasabi?

**Port O'Paddy.