Word-Wednesday for July 22, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 22, 2026, the twenty-ninth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of summer, the fourth Wednesday of July, and the two-hundred third day of the year, with one-hundred sixty-two days remaining. Sponsored by Bead Gypsy Studio and Scandinavian Shoppe, donating 50% of jewelry sales to our local ALS Fund now through July 25, 101 Main Avenue North, Roseau.


Wannaska Phenology Update for July 22, 2026
Lluebead Bily
As a phenological and safety notice, Clintonia borealis — godotaagaans, in Anishinaabe — is now bearing its blue fruits in Wannaskaland. The term "bluebead" refers to the plant's quite toxic small blue spherical fruits, a quite striking feature. If you're inviting friends up here in the middle of nowhere to pick blueberries, please show them the difference between blueberries and godotaagaans. Fortunately, the taste of bluebead lily fruit is unpleasant. Other parts of the plant have medicinal value in aboriginal cultures. An infusion of the godotaagaans rhizome [/RĪ-zōm/ n., a continuously growing horizontal underground stem which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals] is used to aid parturition.

July 22 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 22 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Still closed until further notice.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 22, 2026
Sunrise: 5:44am; Sunset: 9:16pm; 2 minutes, 21 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 3:56pm; Moonset: 12:07am, waxing gibbous, 55% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 22, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             79                     93                     77
Low              57                     37                     59

Apples
by Laurie Lee

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole. 

July 22 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Mango Day
• National Fragile X Awareness Day
• National Penuch Fudge Day
• National Hammock Day
• National Spoonerism Day
• Rat-Catcher’s Day

July 22 Word Pun
Monique and her friends named their new band "Duvet". It’s a cover band.


July 22 Word Riddle
What is Dracula’s favorite summer fruit?*


July 22 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
MACHINATION, n., The method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

    So plain the advantages of machination
    It constitutes a moral obligation,
    And honest wolves who think upon't with loathing
    Feel bound to don the sheep's deceptive clothing.
    So prospers still the diplomatic art,
    And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.
                            —R.S.K.


July 22 Etymology Word of the Week
apt
/apt/ adj., appropriate or suitable in the circumstances; having a tendency to do something, from mid-14th century, "inclined, disposed;" late 14th century, "suited, fitted, adapted, possessing the necessary qualities for the purpose," from Old French ate "fitting, suitable, appropriate" (13th century, Modern French apte), or directly from Latin aptus "fit, suited, proper, appropriate," adjectival use of past participle of apere "to attach, join, tie to." This is reconstructed to be from Proto-Indo-European root ap- "to grasp, take, reach" (source also of Sanskrit apnoti "he reaches," Latin apisci "to reach after, attain," Hittite epmi "I seize"). The elliptical sense of "becoming, appropriate" is from 1560s.


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

• 1489 Tractate Niddah, a Talmudic edition, is first printed.
• 1598 William Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, is entered on the Stationers' Register.
• 1893 Katharine Lee Bates writes America the Beautiful in Colorado.
• 1919 De Falla & Massine's Three-cornered Hat premieres.
• 1933 Caterina Jarboro sings Aida at the New York Hippodrome, becoming the first Black female opera singer to perform in the United States.
• 1959 Benjamin Britten's Missa Brevis in D premieres.
• 1959 Ed Wood's cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space, often called one of the worst films ever, premieres.
• 2015 Oldest Qur'an fragments are discovered in the collection of Birmingham University, with radiocarbon testing dating them to AD 568-AD 645.

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

• 1597 Virgilio Mazzocchi, Italian composer.
• 1642 Johann Quirsfeld, German composer.
• 1644 Arnold Moonen, Dutch vicar, linguist and poet.
• 1651 Ferdinand Tobias Richter, Austrian Baroque composer.
• 1713 Jacques-Germain Soufflot, French architect.
• 1733 Mikhail Shcherbatov, Russian writer.
• 1804 Victor Schoelcher, French writer.
• 1807 Karolina Pawlowa, Russian writer.
• 1830 Herbert Stanley Oakeley, English composer.
• 1833 Benjamin Hanby, American composer.
• 1846 Alfred Perceval Graves, Irish poet.
• 1849 Emma Lazrus, American poet.
• 1853 Victor Roger, French vaudeville-opérette composer.
• 1863 Eyre Chatterton, Irish author.
• 1871 Akos Buttykai, Hungarian composer.
• 1873 James Cousins, Irish writer, poet, and playwright.
• 1873 Ettore Pozzoli, Italian composer.
• 1881 Robert Brennan, Irish writer.
• 1882 Edward Hopper, American painter.
• 1884 Odell Shepard, American poet.
• 1894 Oskar Maria Graf, German-American writer.
• 1898 Alexander Calder, American sculptor.
• 1898 Stephen Vincent Benét, American author.
• 1900 Zdeněk Kalista, Czech poet.
• 1901 Charles Weidman, American choreographer and modern dancer.
• 1902 Vladimir Nikolayevich Kryukov, Russian composer.
• 1907 Zubir Said, Singaporean composer.
• 1908 Amy Vanderbilt, American author.
• 1912 Stephen Gilbert, Irish novelist.
• 1914 Cecil Effinger, American composer.
• 1916 Hipolito Ocalia, Curacao landscape painter.
• 1920 Malcolm Hughes, British artist,
• 1921 Colin Madigan, Australian architect.
• 1922 Julia Farron [Joyce Farron-Smith], British dancer.
• 1928 Per Højholt, Danish poet.
• 1930 Leoncjusz Ciuciura, Polish classical composer.
• 1932 Tom Robbins, American author.
• 1948 S. E. Hinton, American author.
• 1957 Mairéad Byrne, Irish poet.
• 1963 Miluše Poupětová, Czech painter.

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

• altisonant: /al-TISS-uh-nuhnt/ adj., high-sounding, lofty, pompous, loud.
• bobolink: /BŌ-bə-liNGk/ n., a North American songbird of the American blackbird family, with a bill resembling that of a finch. The male has black, buff, and white plumage.
• cathemeral: /kuh-THEM-uh-rul/ adj., an animal activity pattern where an organism's behavior is irregularly spread across both the day and night, rather than being strictly diurnal (daytime only) or nocturnal (nighttime only).
• fady: /FAH-dy/ n., MALAGASY, taboo; a wide range of cultural prohibitions, sacred rules, and restrictions that govern daily life, protect the environment, and show respect for ancestors.
• kyarn: /KEE-yarn / n., a dialectal Southern US and Appalachian term that refers to carrion (rotting, dead flesh) or anything that smells utterly repulsive.
• magpiety: /mag-PIGH-uh-dee/ n., talkativeness, chattering, or garrulity.
• paysage: /pay-ee-ZAHZH/ n., countryside, esp. as a subject for contemplation or description; a particular landscape.
• queef: /kweef/ n., 1. a piece of useful information not generally known; a dodge. 2. A conjuring trick; a mesmerist’s or conjurer’s sleight-of-hand pass. 3. An engaging girl.
• saol: /SAY-ahl/ IRISH, n., life; lifetime; world.
• sizzard: /SIZ-urd/ n., an atmosphere characterized by uncomfortably high heat and humidity.

July 22, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
aptronyms
/AP-trə-nim/ n., a person's name that is amusingly appropriate to their occupation, also known as aptonym or euonym, coined in 1922 by Franklin Pierce Adams, a columnist for The Conning Tower, as an anagram of patronym, to emphasize "apt”. 

Some accessible real-life examples include: 

• Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt
• British sanitary engineer, Thomas Crapper
• telephone inventor, Alexander Graham Bell
• Swiss psychiatrist, Jules Angst
• Obama press secretary, Josh Earnest
• meteorologist, Sara Blizzard
• American ornithologist specializing in bird strikes, Carla Dove
• British gardener, Bob Flowerdew
• plaintiffs in Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage throughout the United States, Richard and Mildred Loving
• American novelist, Francine Prose
• American columnist who has been cited for having the world's highest-recorded IQ, Marilyn vos Savant
• Russian hurdler, Marina Stepanova, and 
• English poet and advocate for the extension of British copyright law, William Wordworth. 

Similarly humorous are inaptronyms, such as British police officer - Rob Banks, American lawyer and judge - Colleen Lawless, and baseball pitcher - Bob Walk.

Fiction writers have long used aptronyms to enhance characterization. Shakespeare character aptronyms include Shallow, Quickly, Bottom, Falstaff, and Toby Belch. Henry Fielding gave us the righteous Squire Allworthy, Lady Booby, and Mrs. Slipslop in his works, Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. Paul Bunyan (author, not lumberjack) featured Mr. Talkative and Mr. Worldly Wiseman in Pilgrim’s Progress.

Charles Dickens was one of history's aptronym-masters, with characterizations such as Scrooge the miser, Old Fezziwig, his foil, from A Christmas Carol; Grimwig, the fussy official Bumble, and Toby Crackit, the burglar, in Oliver Twist; Gradgrind, the austere the austere schoolowner, and M’Choakumchild, one of the school's teachers in Hard Times; and the Crunchers, a family of grave-robbers in A Tale of Two Cities.

If you happen to engage in creative writing using this week's Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge, come up with your own aptronym for one or more of your pram or story characters. For the really creative, throw in a spoonerism or two to celebrate National Spoonerism Day.


From A Year with Rilke, July 22 Entry
Evening, from Book of Images

Slowly evening takes on the garments
held for it by a line of ancient trees.
You look, and the world recedes from you.
Part of it moves heavenward, the rest falls away.

And you are left, belonging to neither fully,
not quite so dark as the silent house,
not quite so sure of eternity
as that shining now in the night sky, a point of light.

You are left, for reasons you can't explain,
with a life that is anxious and huge,
so that, at times confined, at times expanding,
it becomes in you now stone, now star.

Farmhouses Among Trees
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.






*Necktarine.