Word-Wednesday for April 28, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 29, 2026, the seventeenth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of spring, the fifth Wednesday of April, and the one-hundred-nineteenth day of the year, with two-hundred forty-six days remaining.

Wannaska Phenology Update for April 29, 2026
Squeaky Peepers
One of our favorite signs of spring, Pseudacris crucifer — omakakii, in Anishinaabe — announced their emergence in a full-throated chorus on Monday, but their songs have become more singular and squeaky with the cooler weather the last couple of days. The ponds melt more slowly here in the forest, and it is always a treat to hear this Vårsång. Climate plays a major role in the timing of spring peeper breeding: studies have shown a correlation between temperature and the date of first call (when spring peepers start to breed). The males sing, and the females choose their mates based on the frequency and volume. Satellite males, who do not make any calls, strategically place themselves near those that sing loudly in an attempt to intercept females.

April 29 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


April 29 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for April 29, 2026
Sunrise: 6:07am; Sunset: 8:35pm; 3 minutes, 11 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 6:53pm; Moonset: 5:00am, waxing gibbous, 93% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for April 29, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             59                     88                     41
Low              35                     13                     28

A Cookie for April
by Jennifer Mills

Sweet and round
Like the sun you bring
Can I give you a cookie?
Perhaps crushed,
To be whisked away
By the sugar wind.
April, sweet month, goodbye…
This cookie is for you.

April 29 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Administrative Professionals Day
• National Zipper Day
• National Shrimp Scampi Day
• Stop Food Waste Day
• National Peace Rose Day
• International Guide Dog Day
• International Dance Day

April 29 Word Pun
A termite walks into the pub and asks, “Is the bar tender here?”


April 29 Word Riddle
Who’s the best singer on Easter Island?*

a Chairman Joe original

April 29 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
SABBATH, n., a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly." To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth Commandment:

    Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
    And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine ordinance.


April 29 Etymology Word of the Week
sabbath
/SA-bəTH/ n., a day of religious observance and abstinence from work, kept by Jewish people from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and by most Christians on Sunday; a supposed annual midnight meeting of witches with the Devil, from Middle English sabat, from Old English sabat "seventh day of the week in the Jewish calendar; Saturday" as observed by the Jews as a day of rest from secular employment and of religious observance, from Old French sabat and directly from Latin sabbatum, from Greek sabbaton, from Hebrew shabbath, properly "day of rest," from shabath "he rested" (from labor). The spelling with -th is attested from late 14th century but was not widespread until the 16th century.

The Babylonians regarded seventh days as unlucky, and avoided certain activities on them; the Jewish observance might have begun as a similar custom. Among European Christians, the time of "Sabbath" shifted from the seventh day to the first (Sunday) via the Christians' celebration of the Lord's resurrection on the first day of the week (a Christian Sabbath) "though no definite law, either divine or ecclesiastical, directed the change" [Century Dictionary], but elaborate justifications have been made. In English Sabbath as "Sunday" is evident by early 15th century. The sense change was completed among the English people generally during the Reformation.

The original use of the word is preserved in Spanish Sabado, Italian Sabato, and other languages' names for "Saturday." Hungarian szombat, Rumanian simbata, French samedi, German Samstag "Saturday" are from Vulgar Latin sambatum, from Greek sambaton, a vulgar nasalized variant of sabbaton. Gothic Sabbato, Sabbatus probably are directly from Greek.

The meaning "any day (or month or year) in which religious rest is enjoined" is by the late 14th century; the word also was used in Medieval Latin of any feast day, the solstice, etc. Sabbath-breaking "act of profaning the Sabbath" is attested from 1650s (to break the Sabbath is from the late 14th century), formerly a legal violation in parts of the old U.S., "immoral, disturbing, or unnecessary labors or practices" [Century Dictionary]. Sabbath-school is by 1798.


April 29 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1553 A Flemish woman introduces the practice of starching linen into England.
• 1784 Premiere of Mozart's Violin Sonata No. 32.
• 1834 Charles Darwin's expedition sees the top of the Andes Mountains from Patagonia.
• 1852 First edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus is published.
• 1912 Frank Wedekind's play Tod und Teufel premieres.
• 1940 Robert Sherwood's play There Shall be No Night premieres.
• 1943 Noël Coward's comic play Present Laughter premieres.
• 1967 Aretha Franklin releases her single Respect.
• 2018 Sweden's official Twitter account confirms Swedish meatballs actually originated in Turkey.
• 2020 World record for the longest single lightning flash of 477miles (768km) across US states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi according to World Meteorological Organization.

April 29 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 534 Taliesin, Welsh poet and bard.
• 1584 Melchior Teschner, German composer.
• 1636 Esaias Reusner, German lutenist and composer.
• 1660 Matthias Henriksen Schacht, Danish composer.
• 1667 John Arbuthnot, Scottish writer.
• 1727 Jean-Georges Noverre, French dancer and choreographer.
• 1771 Matthäus Stegmayer, Austrian composer.
• 1773 J.S. Anna Liddiard, Irish poet.
• 1780 Charles Nodier, French writer.
• 1783 David Cox, English painter.
• 1783 Rosine Lebrun, German opera singer.
• 1842 Carl Millöcker, Austrian composer.
• 1848 Raja Ravi Varma, Indian painter.
• 1855 Anatoly Liadov, Russian composer.
• 1855 Edmund van der Straeten, German composer.
• 1857 Édouard Rod, France-Swiss writer.
• 1857 František Ondříček, Czech violinist and composer.
• 1860 Lorado Taft, American sculptor.
• 1862 Vittorio Mario Vanzo, Italian composer.
• 1863 Constantine P. Cavafy, Egyptian-Greek poet.
• 1872 Eyvind Alnæs, Norwegian pianist, organist, choral director, and composer.
• 1874 Conal Holmes O'Connell O'Riordan, Irish writer.
• 1875 Rafael Sabatini, Italian-British writer.
• 1882 Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, Dutch artist.
• 1885 Egon Kisch, Austrian-Czech writer.
• 1885 Wallingford Riegger, American cellist, composer.
• 1893 Elisaveta Bagriana, Bulgarian poet.
• 1896 Jacques Wolfe, Romanian-American composer.
• 1896 Walter Mehring, German writer.
• 1897 Bernard Verhoeven, Dutch poet.
• 1899 (Karl) Yngve Sköld, Swedish organist, pianist, and composer.
• 1899 Duke Ellington, American composer.
• 1902 Theodore Chanler, American composer.
• 1902 Francis Stuart, Irish writer.
• 1908 Jack Williamson, American science fiction author.
• 1912 Italo Valenti, Italian sculptor.
• 1912 Terence de Vere White, Irish novelist.
• 1920 Edward Blishen, English author.
• 1922 (Jean-Baptiste) "Toots" Thielemans, Belgian-American jazz harmonica player, guitarist, whistler, and composer.
• 1923 Radim Drejsl, Czech composer.
• 1924 Renée "Zizi" Jeanmaire, French dancer.
• 1929 Peter Sculthorpe, Australian composer.
• 1929 Václav Kučera, Czech composer.
• 1929 Walter Kempowski, German writer.
• 1931 Frank Auerbach, German-British painter.
• 1933 Darijan Božič, Slovenian composer.
• 1935 Otto Zykan, Austrian composer.
• 1937 Jill Paton Walsh, English writer.
• 1939 (Louella) "Spanky" Wilson, American soul and jazz singer.
• 1954 Snorri Sigfús Birgisson, Icelandic pianist and composer.
• 1955 Gino Quilico, Canadian Grammy Award-winning operatic baritone.
• 1960 Robert J. Sawyer, Canadian science fiction writer.
• 1980 Kian Egan, Irish singer.

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

• asweddumize: /uhss-VED-uh-mighz/ v., to prepare (fallow or disused land) for cultivation.
• caparison: /kuh-PAIR-ih-sun/ n., rich clothing; adornment.
• epithalamic: /ep-ə-thə-LAM-ik/ adj., relating to or being a poem/song written to celebrate a marriage.
• gleeman: /GLEE-muhn/ n., a man who performs for an audience; a (male) entertainer; esp. a minstrel, a jongleur.
• poetaster: /PŌ-ə-tas-tər/ n., a writer of insignificant, meretricious, or shoddy poetry; an inferior rhymer, or writer of verses; a dabbler in poetic art; an unskilled poet.
• scop: /skäp/ n., an Old English bard or poet.
• stoat: /stōt/ n., a small carnivorous mammal of the weasel family which has chestnut fur with white underparts and a black-tipped tail.
• synonymy: /sən-ÄN-ə-mē/ n., the state or fact of having the same meaning as another word or phrase in the same language.
• tradwife: /TRAD-wyfe/ n., a dutiful housewife active on social media.
• yips: /yips/ n., a state of extreme nervousness that causes a golfer to miss an easy putt.

April 29, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
thesaurus
/THə-SÔ-rəs/ n., a book or electronic resource that lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts, from 1823, "treasury, storehouse," from Latin thesaurus "treasury, a hoard, a treasure, something laid up", figuratively "repository, collection", from Greek thēsauros "a treasure, treasury, storehouse, chest", related to tithenai "to put, to place." According to Watkins, it is from a reduplicated form of Proto-Indo-European root dhe- "to set, put", but Beekes offers: "No etymology, but probably a technical loanword, without a doubt from Pre-Greek."

The meaning "encyclopedia filled with information" is from 1840, but it existed earlier as thesaurarie (1590s), used as a title by some early dictionary compilers, on the notion of thesaurus verborum "a treasury of words". The meaning "collection of words arranged according to sense" is attested from 1852 in Roget's title. Thesaurer is attested in Middle English for "treasurer" and thesaur "treasure" was in use 15th-16th centuries; Elizabethan English had thesaurize "hoard as treasure." According to Merriam-Webster, synonyms for the word, thesaurus, include: gloss, glossary, lexicon, nomenclator, vocabulary, and wordbook.

Today Word-Wednesday celebrates the one-hundred seventy-fourth anniversary of Roget's Thesaurus.  Peter Mark Roget was born in Broad Street, Soho, London, the son of Jean (John) Roget (1751–1783), a Genevan cleric born to French parents, and Catherine "Kitty" Romilly, the sister of British politician, abolitionist, and legal reformer Sir Samuel Romilly. In time, he became a  physician, natural theologian, lexicographer, and founding secretary of The Portico Library. Roget retired from professional life in 1840, and by 1846 was working on the book that perpetuates his memory today. A relatively complete, obsessively exact person, Roget gave his first edition the following title: Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. If you've never read book's thematic index, please take a moment to peruse it here.

In literature, Roget appears in Canadian writer Keath Fraser published a story, Roget's Thesaurus, in 1982, which is narrated in Roget's voice. He has Roget speak on his wife's death, from cancer. Roget also appears in Shelagh Stephenson's An Experiment with an Air Pump, set in 1799, as the only historical character. The play is set in the fictional household of Joseph Fenwick, and Roget is one of Fenwick's assistants. A picture-book biography of Roget, The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus, was published by Eerdmans Books in 2014. It was named a Caldecott Honor book for excellence in illustration and won the Sibert Medal for excellence in children's nonfiction. Martin Luther King, Jr. cites Roget’s Thesaurus in the context of racism:

Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget’s Thesaurus there are some 120 synonyms for “blackness” and at least 60 of them are offensive—such words as “blot,” “soot,” “grime,” “devil” and “foul.” There are some 134 synonyms for “whiteness,” and all are favorable, expressed in such words as “purity,” “cleanliness,” “chastity” and “innocence.”

The word Wannaska does not appear in Roget's Thesaurus, but the word almanac appears with sixteen synonyms: calendar, yearbook, annual, ephemeris, astronomical table, register, registry, Witaker, farmer's almanac, world almanac, nautical almanac, statistical almanac, chronicle, journal, record, and register of the year. The word poet has twenty-four synonyms: writer, poemwriter, minstrel, muse, bard, versifier, rhymester, dilettante, scribbler of verses, metrist, author, poetess, lyricist, librettist, troubadour, poet laureate, sonneteer, epigrammatist, rhymer, scop, rhapsodist, rhapsode, epigrammatizer, poetaster.


From A Year with Rilke, April 29 Entry
Impermanence, from Letter to Witold Hulewicz, November 13, 1925

Impermanence plunges us into the depth of all Being. And so all forms of the present are not to be taken and bound in time, but held in a larger context of meaning in which we participate. I don't mean this in a Christian sense (from which I ever more passionately distance myself) but in a sheer earthly, deep earthly, sacred earthly consciousness: that what we see here and now is to bring us into a wider—indeed, the very widest—dimension. Not in an afterlife whose shadow darkens the earth, but in a whole that is the whole.

Still Life with Cabbage and Clogs
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.






*Rapper Nui.