Word-Wednesday for June 10, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for June 10, 2026, the twenty-third Wednesday of the year, the twelfth Wednesday of spring, the second Wednesday of June, and the one-hundred sixty-first day of the year, with two-hundred four days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for June 10, 2026
Fireflies!
Lampyridae — waawaatesi, in Anishinaabe — are a family of elateroid beetles with more than 2,400 described species, many of which are light-emitting. They are soft-bodied beetles, also known as fireflies, glow worms, lightning bugs, and lightningbugs for their conspicuous production of light, mainly during twilight, to attract mates. Adults are soft-bodied, elongated, and flattened. The exoskeletal plate covering the thorax (pronotum) is nearly as wide at the base as the forewings (elytra). Light production in fireflies is due to the chemical process of bioluminescence. This occurs in specialized light-emitting organs (known as photophores), usually located on a female firefly's lower abdomen. Fireflies produce the devilish enzyme firefly luciferase that acts on another compound produced by fireflies, firefly luciferin. In the presence of magnesium ions, ATP, and oxygen, this reaction produces light.

In Italy, the firefly (Italian: lucciola) appears in Canto XXVI of Dante's Inferno, written in the 14th century:

    Quante 'l villan ch'al poggio si riposa,
    nel tempo che colui che 'l mondo schiara
    la faccia sua a noi tien meno ascosa,

    come la mosca cede a la zanzara,
    vede lucciole giù per la vallea,
    forse colà dov' e' vendemmia e ara:

    di tante fiamme tutta risplendea
    l'ottava bolgia, ...

    How many the peasant who rests on the hill, 
    in the time that he who clears the world 
    his face is less hidden from us, 

    as the fly yields to the mosquito, 
    sees fireflies down the valley, 
    perhaps there where there is harvest and plowing: 

    everything shone with so many flames 
    the eighth circle of hell,

June 10 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


June 10 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for June 10, 2026
Sunrise: 5:21am; Sunset: 9:26pm; 54 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 2:14am; Moonset: 4:11pm, waning crescent, 26% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for June 10, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             72                     93                     77
Low              51                      31                     55

Fireflies in the Garden
by Robert Frost

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

June 10 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Black Cow Day
• National Iced Tea Day
• National Frosted Cookie Day
• Egg Roll Day
• National Herbs and Spices Day
• National Ball Point Pen Day
• World Art Nouveau Day

June 10 Word Pun Riddle
Why do bees stay in their hives during winter?* 


June 10 Word Riddle
Why are so many blonde jokes one-liners?**


June 10 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
FIDDLE, n., An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

    To Rome said Nero: "If to smoke you turn
    I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn."
    To Nero Rome replied: "Pray do your worst,
    'Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first."
                        —Orm Pludge


June 10 Etymology Word of the Week
coffee
/KÔfē/ n., a hot drink made from the roasted and ground seeds (coffee beans) of a tropical shrub, from circa 1600, from Dutch koffie, from Turkish kahveh, from Arabic qahwah "coffee", which Arab etymologists connected with a word meaning "wine," but it is perhaps rather from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant (coffee in Kaffa is called būno, which itself was borrowed into Arabic as bunn "raw coffee").

The early forms of the word in English indicate a derivation from Arabic or Turkish: chaoua (1598), cahve, kahui, etc. French café, German Kaffe are via Italian caffè.

The first coffee-house in Mecca dates to the 1510s; the beverage was in Turkey by the 1530s. It appeared in Europe circa 1515-1519 and was introduced to England by 1650. By 1675 the country had more than 3,000 coffee houses and coffee had replaced beer as a breakfast drink, but its use there declined circa 1800, with the introduction of cheaper tea. In the American colonies, however, the tax on tea kept coffee popular.

Meaning "a light meal at which coffee is served" is from 1774. As a shade or color resembling coffee, 1815. Coffee-bean is from 1680s. Coffee-mill is from 1690s; coffee-spoon is from 1703; coffee-pot is from 1705; coffee-cup is from 1762. Coffee-shop is from 1838. Coffee-cake is from 1850 as "cake in which coffee is an ingredient." Coffee break attested from 1952, at first often in glossy magazine advertisements by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau.


June 10 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1639 First American log cabin at Fort Christina, Wilmington, Delaware.
• 1720 Mrs. Clements of England markets the first paste-style mustard.
• 1752 Benjamin Franklin tests the lightning conductor with his kite-flying experiment.
• 1761 Puritan version of Shakespeare's Othello opens in Newport, Rhode Island.
• 1865 Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde) premieres.
• 1971 44th National Spelling Bee: Jonathan Knisely wins spelling shalloon.
• 1976 49th National Spelling Bee: Tim Kneale wins spelling narcolepsy.

June 10 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1213 Fakhr-al-Din Iraqi, Persian poet.
• 1557 Leandro Bassano, Italian painter.
• 1630 Willem van Bemmel, Dutch painter and etcher.
• 1632 Esprit Fléchier, French writer.
• 1781 Giovanni Battista Polledro, Italian composer.
• 1790 Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul, French composer.
• 1791 Václav Hanka, Czech poet.
• 1819 Gustave Courbet, French realist painter.
• 1831 W. A. Remy [Wilhelm Mayer], Austro-Bohemian composer.
• 1832 Edwin Arnold, English writer.
• 1835 Rebecca Latimer Felton, American writer.
• 1836 Yamaoka Tesshū, Japanese swordsman and master of kendo.
• 1840 Theodor Philipsen, Danish painter.
• 1843 Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Austrian composer.
• 1844 Albert Neuhuys, Dutch painter.
• 1859 Jacques Perk, Dutch poet.
• 1861 Joseph Cuypers, Dutch architect.
• 1862 Mrs. Leslie Carter, American writer.
• 1863 Louis Couperus, Dutch poet and writer.
• 1865 Dermod O'Brien, Irish artist.
• 1870 Lucien Abrams, American impressionist painter.
• 1879 Benjamin Lambord, American composer.
• 1880 Margit Kaffka, Hungarian writer.
• 1888 Leo Weismantel, German writer.
• 1888 Lilla Minnie Perry, Irish landscape painter.
• 1890 Powell Weaver, American composer.
• 1894 Pavel Bořkovec, Czech composer.
• 1895 Immanuel Velikovsky, Russian writer.
• 1900 Henri Bruning, Dutch poet.
• 1902 Gaston Brenta, Belgian composer.
• 1906 János Viski, Hungarian classical pianist, composer.
• 1907 Fairfield Porter, American painter.
• 1909 Erwin Dressel, German composer.
• 1910 Robert Still, English composer.
• 1911 Terence Rattigan, British playwright.
• 1913 John Edmunds, American composer.
• 1913 Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov, Soviet composer.
• 1914 Oktay Rıfat Horozcu, Turkish poet and playwright.
• 1915 Saul Bellow, Canadian author.
• 1920 Zbyněk Vostřák, Czech composer.
• 1925 Nat Hentoff, American novelist.
• 1925 James Salter, American novelist and short-story writer.
• 1928 Maurice Sendak, American author and illustrator.
• 1929 Vasile Herman, Romanian pianist and composer.
• 1929 [Marie] Grace Mirabella, American writer.
• 1931 Romualds Jermaks, Latvian composer.
• 1934 Nicolas Roussakis, American composer.
• 1936 M.C. Beaton [Marion Chesney], Scottish novelist.
• 1937 Richard Foreman, American avant-garde playwright.
• 1938 Violetta Villas [Czesława Cieślak], Polish cabaret singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist.
• 1941 Philip Caputo, American Vietnam War veteran, author.
• 1942 Janet Vogel, American doo-wop soprano.
• 1945 Martin Wesley-Smith, Australian composer.
• 1946 Mensje van Keulen [Mensje Francina van der Steen], Dutch writer.
• 1952 Kage Baker, American author.
• 1956 Stefania de Kenessey, Hungarian-American composer.
• 1962 Anderson Bigode Herzer, Brazilian poet.
• 1962 Sylva Lauerova, Czech writer and poet.
• 1969 Breandán de Gallaí, Irish dancer.
• 1977 Benjamin Millepied, French ballet dancer, choreographer.
• 1978 Karl Scully, Irish opera singer.

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

• abnegant: /AB-nuh-gunt/ n., a person who denies, renounces, or surrenders a right, claim, or responsibility.
• brinded: /BRIN-dəd/ adj., streaked, spotted, or patched with a darker color on a grey or tawny background.
• famulus: /FAM-yə-ləs/ n., an assistant or servant, especially one working for a magician or scholar.
• glewing: /GLOO-ing/ n., mockery, derision.
• hoopoe: /Ho͞o-pō/ n., a salmon-pink Eurasian bird with a long down-curved bill, a large erectile crest, and black and white wings and tail.
• jussive: /Jə-siv/ adj., (of a form of a verb) expressing a command.
• limner: /LIM-(n)ər/ n., a painter, especially of portraits or miniatures.
• missish: /MIS-iSH/ adj., affectedly demure, squeamish, or sentimental.
• pastern: /PAS-tərn/ n,. the sloping part of a horse's foot between the fetlock and the hoof.
• tellurian: /tə̇-LŮ-rē-ən/ adj., of, relating to, or characteristic of the earth.

June 10, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
Words About Coffee
Do you remember your first cup of coffee? Your best cup of coffee? Like alcohol, it's one of those beverages that humans consume for reasons other than caloric intake. Did you know that coffee comes from the pale green seed of a fruit that looks like a cherry? The many flavors of different coffee beans come from the roasting of the beans, which cause the Maillard reactions:

Just to put this in historical context, Louis Camille Maillard didn't discover this until 1912. 

Coffee still grows wild in Southern Ethiopia, today, but it evolved there a couple hundred thousand years ago. People in Yemen were the first to roast and brew coffee in 1100 A.D. Coffee's botanical term is Coffea arabica, because at that time Yemen was considered part of Arabia. Coffee then spread via the Ottoman Empire all throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, in part because coffee wasn't alcohol. In Muslim countries, where there's a prohibition of alcohol, coffee was one of the best alternatives. As noted in this week's etymology feature, some people theorize that our word "coffee" comes from an old Arabic word meaning "wine".

The Dutch East India Company nabbed some coffee plants and in 1696 planted them in Jakarta, which just happens to be located o the island of Java in what is now Indonesia; /JÄ-və/ n., coffee. Yemen's most famous port at that time: Mocha. French colonists later smuggled a single seedling to the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, and the Spanish later smuggled a few seedlings into Brazil and Columbia.

Coffee has become a rich, expressive, creative metaphor for writers, too. Here are a few choice words to jump-start your day:

Coffee, which makes the politician wise
And see thro' all things with his half-shut eyes.

Alexander Pope

Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

Turkish proverb 

Coffee: We can get it anywhere, and get as loaded as we like on it, until such teeth-chattering, eye-bulging, nonsense-gibbering time as we may be classified unable to operate heavy machinery.

Joan Frank

To many people, decaffeinated coffee is like a car without an engine—it might look good on the surface, but it won’t get you where you want to go.

Susan Gilbert

Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body what the word of the Lord is to the soul.

Isak Dinesen

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I don’t know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple cups of coffee into me and weird things just start to happen.

Gary Larson

Coffee is far more than a beverage. It is an invitation to life, disguised as a cup of warm liquid. It’s a trumpet wakeup call or a gentle rousing hand on your shoulder.

Nicole Johnson

The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The urban workaday economy would be unthinkable without coffee.

Irene Fizer

Office civilization could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol.

Alain de Botton

The voodoo priest and all his powers were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.

Mark Helprin

The coffee was strong enough to trot a mouse across. 

Diane Ackerman, The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales

What hashish was to Baudelaire, opium to Coleridge, cocaine to Robert Louis Stevenson, nitrous oxide to Robert Southey, mescaline to Aldous Huxley, and Benzedrine to Jack Kerouac, caffeine was to Balzac.

Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays 

Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake in the afternoon.

Jilly Cooper

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.

Dave Barry

Only Irish Coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, fat.

Alex Levine

From A Year with Rilke, June 10 Entry
You Inherit the Green, from The Book of Hours II, 10

And you inherit the green
of vanished gardens
and the motionless blue of fallen skies,
dew of a thousand dawns, countless summers
the suns sang, and springtime to break your heart
like a young woman's letters.

You inherit the autumns, folded like festive clothing
in the memories of poets; and all the winters,
like abandoned fields, bequeath you their quietness.
You inherit Venice, Kazan, and Rome;

Florence will be yours, and Pisa's cathedral,
Moscow with bells like memories,
and the Troiska convent, and the monastery
whose maze of tunnels lies swallowed under Kiev's gardens.

View of Florence
Carl Gustav Carus

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.






*S’warm.
**So that brunettes can remember them.