Word-Wednesday for June 8, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 8, 2026, the twenty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the third Wednesday of summer, the second Wednesday of July, and the one-hundred eighty-ninth day of the year, with one-hundred seventy-six days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for July 8, 2026
Blue Cohosh
Caulophyllum thalictroides — bezhigojiibik, in Anishinaabe — is a species of flowering plant in the Berberidaceae (barberry) family, now sprouting green berries in Wannaskaland. A medium-tall perennial with blue berry-like mature fruits and bluish-green foliage, the common name cohosh is probably from an Algonquian word meaning "rough". The Greek-derived genus name Caulophyllum signifies "stem-leaf", while the specific name thalictroides references the similarity between the large highly divided, multiple-compound leaves of meadow-rues and those of blue cohosh. Indigenous peoples traditions centered around the use of blue cohosh by tribal midwives to ease childbirth. Revered in ethnobotany as "papoose root", the plant’s stories are rooted in its medicinal power to facilitate delivery, manage menstrual cramps, and serve as a calming uterine tonic.

July 8 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 8 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Temporarily closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 8, 2026
Sunrise: 5:30am; Sunset: 9:28pm; 1 minute, 27 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 12:35am; Moonset: 3:14pm, waning crescent, 40% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 8, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             78                     96                     80
Low              57                     37                      53

A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky

Epilogue To Through The Looking Glass 
by Lewis Carroll

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?

July 8 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Freezer Pop Day
• Scud Day
• National Raspberry Day
• National Chocolate with Almonds Day
• National Cucumber Salad Day
• Feast Day of Kilian and Totnan

July 8 Word Pun
Ula once worked at a cheap pizza shop to get by; he kneaded the dough.


July 8 Word Riddle
Why is it unwise to share your secrets with a clock?*


July 8 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
KING, n., A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

    A king, in times long, long gone by,
    Said to his lazy jester:
    "If I were you and you were I
    My moments merrily would fly—
    No care nor grief to pester."

    "The reason, Sire, that you would thrive,"
    The fool said—"if you'll hear it—
    Is that of all the fools alive
    Who own you for their sovereign, I've
    The most forgiving spirit."
                    —Oogum Bem


July 8 Etymology Word of the Week
awe
/ô/ n., a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder, from circa 1300, aue, "fear, terror, great reverence," earlier aghe, circa 1200, from a Scandinavian source, such as Old Norse agi "fright;" from Proto-Germanic agiz- (source also of Old English ege "fear," Old High German agiso "fright, terror," Gothic agis "fear, anguish"), from Proto-Indo-European agh-es- (source also of Greek akhos "pain, grief"), from root agh- "to be depressed, be afraid" (see ail).

The current sense of "dread mixed with admiration or veneration" is due to biblical use with reference to the Supreme Being. To stand in awe (early 15th century) originally was simply to stand awe.

    Al engelond of him stod awe. 

    The Lay of Havelok the Dane, circa 1300


July 8 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1907 Florenz Ziegfeld stages first Follies on New York Theater roof.
• 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the 3rd book in the series by J. K. Rowling, is published.
• 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the 4th book in the series by J. K. Rowling, is published.

July 8 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1478 Gian Giorgio Trissino, Italian linguist, poet, and playwright.
• 1574 Giovanni Battista Stefanini, Italian organist, maestro di cappella, and composer.
• 1593 Artemisia Gentileschi, Italian baroque painter.
• 1621 Jean de La Fontaine, French poet.
• 1637 Johann Georg Ebeling, German composer.
• 1638 Matteo Coferati, Italian composer.
• 1757 Richard Wainwright, English composer.
• 1779 Giorgio Pullicino, Maltese painter and architect.
• 1809 Ljudwit Gaj, Croatian writer and poet.
• 1819 Vatroslav Lisinski [Ignatius Fuchs], Croatian composer.
• 1821 Jozef Lies, Flemish painter.
• 1829 Pierre Alexis de Ponson du Terrail, French serial writer.
• 1844 Mary Johnson Lincoln, American cooking teacher and author.
• 1867 Kathe Kollwitz, German print maker and sculptor.
• 1869 William Vaughan Moody, American poet.
• 1870 Marie van Zeggelen, Dutch author.
• 1871 Clement Harris, British pianist and composer.
• 1877 Elin Pelin [Dimitar Ivanov Stoyanov], Bulgarian writer.
• 1882 Percy Grainger, Australian-American concert pianist and composer.
• 1890 Walter Hasenclever, German expressionist poet and playwright.
• 1891 Elisabeth Zernike, Dutch writer.
• 1891 Josef Hora, Czech writer and poet.
• 1892 Pavel Korin, Russian painter.
• 1892 Richard Aldington, English writer.
• 1895 Anton van de Velde, Belgian writer.
• 1898 Alec Waugh, English novelist.
• 1901 Ludwig Stiel, German pianist, composer.
• 1904  František Zelenka, Czech architect.
• 1906 Philip Johnson, American architect.
• 1907 Kishio Hirao, Japanese composer.
• 1909 Petar Šegedin, Croatian novelist.
• 1913 Caitlin Thomas (née Macnamara), British author.
• 1914 Billy Eckstine, American jazz singer.
• 1914 Mary Eily de Putron, Irish stained glass artist.
• 1917 J. F. Powers, American novelist and short story writer.
• 1926 Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Swiss-American author.
• 1929 Shirley Ann Grau, American author.
• 1931 Louis Ballard [Honganózhe], Native American composer.
• 1933 Maria Helena Rosas Fernandes, Brazilian composer.
• 1938 Alan Aldridge, British artist.
• 1944 Margaret W. Rossiter, American historian and author.
• 1946 Cynthia Gregory, American ballerina.
• 1947 Jenny Diski, English writer.
• 1952 Marianne Williamson, American writer.
• 1953 Zhou Long, Chinese-American composer.
• 1960  Rodney Orpheus, Irish writer.
• 1963 Susan Chilcott, English operatic soprano.
• 1980 Tyshawn Sorey, American composer.

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

• agnotology: /ag-nuh-TAHL-uh-jee/ n., the study of deliberate, culturally cultivated ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favor, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.
• cognomen: /KÄG-nə-mən/ n., a third personal name given to an ancient Roman citizen, typically passed down from father to son, for example Marcus Tullius Cicero; a nickname.
• doover: /DOO-ver/ n., a thing (esp. a gadget or small component) of which the speaker or writer cannot recall the name, or does not care to specify precisely.
• heanling: /HEEN-ling/ n., a base, abject, or wretched person; a self-abasing person.
• muniment: /MYo͞oN-ə-mənt/ n., a document, such as a title deed, charter, etc., preserved as evidence of ownership of land or of rights or privileges.
• negus: /NĒ-ɡəs/ n., a hot drink of port, sugar, lemon, and spices.
• punctilio: /pəNG(k)-TI-lē-ō/ n., a fine or petty point of conduct or procedure.
• quincunx: /KWING-kuhngks/ n., an arrangement of five objects with one at each corner of a square and one in the center, like the pattern on the five side of a die; by extension, any similar geometric arrangement.
• syllabub: /SIL-ə-bəb/ n., a whipped cream dessert, typically flavored with white wine or sherry.
• widge: /wij/ n., a poetic term for a horse.

July 8, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
Words to Know for Large Language Models
We're all about words and the languages they form here at Word-Wednesday headquarters. We all have a general understanding of the words word and language, but what about large language model (LLM)?, A large language model is a type of learning system where a computer is trained on massive datasets of text to understand and generate human language. The fundamental task seems simple: given a sequence of words, predict what word comes next. From this basic mechanism, the ability to write coherent essays, translate languages, answer complex questions, and even reason through multi-step problems has emerged.

This achievement resulted from the development of transformer technology (see GPT, below). Let's hope that this name of this technology supposedly has nothing to do with the series of popular science fiction movies, with disturbing titles like Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction, and The Last Knight. Transformer architecture, introduced in 2017, forms the backbone of virtually all modern LLMs, using computerized attention mechanisms to weigh the importance of different words in a sequence, enabling models to understand context and relationships across long passages of text.

We're now sorting out how the words, intelligence: /in-TEL-ə-j(ə)n(t)s/ n., the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills; and knowledge: /NÄL-əj/ n., facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education, might apply to a computerized technology without a limbic system to regulate its ability to feel connected to and responsible for fellow beings. Borrowing from Mary Shelley's most popular work, we will, hopefully, come to understand our creation before it becomes ungovernable. To that end, here are a few basic words to help us all understand the vocabulary of this new technology:

• algorithm: /AL-ɡə-riT͟Həm/ n., a series of instructions that allow a computer program to analyze data in a particular way, such as recognizing patterns, and then in turn accomplish a task such as sorting results or making recommendations.
• alignment: /ə-LĪN-mənt/ n., tweaking an AI to better produce the desired outcome. This can refer to anything from moderating content to maintaining positive interactions with humans.
• artificial general intelligence, or AGI: /är-də-FISH(ə)l JEN-(ə)-rəl in-TEL-ə-j(ə)n(t)s/ n., a concept that envisions a more advanced version of AI than we know today, one that can perform tasks much better than humans while also improving its own capabilities.
• chatbot: /CHAT-bät/ n., an artificial intelligence program that draws on an LLM to communicate with humans by simulating human conversation in response to text or verbal prompts. 
• claw: /klô/ n., a type of AI agent that is autonomous and empowered by users to "claw" through files and other software on their computers, including web browsers, to accomplish tasks. 
• doomer: /DOO-mer/ n., a pessimist about AI who thinks that the dramatic advances in artificial intelligence are going to make a catastrophic mess of everything humans value, and very likely will wipe out humanity itself.
• foom: /foom/ n., a fast takeoff or hard takeoff. The concept that if someone builds an artificial general intelligence it might already be too late to save humanity.
• hallucination: /hə-lo͞os-ə-NĀSH-ən/ n., an error or a misleading statement in a response from a generative AI program, typically stated with confidence as if correct. It can be as simple as a misstated date reference or as sweeping as the wholesale and elaborate invention of events that never happened or people who never existed.
• generative pre-trained transformer (GPT): /JEN-ə-ra-div PRĒ-trānd trans-FÔRM-ər/ n., a series of large language models developed by OpenAI, based on the Transformer architecture, designed for various natural language processing tasks.
• hugging face: /HUH·gihng fās/ n., a popular platform that provides pre-trained language models and tools to use and fine-tune large language models.
• large language model (LLM): An AI model trained on mass amounts of text data to understand patterns and probabilities of language use and to generate novel content, from essays and email to computer code and images, that mimics what humans have written or created.
• paperclips: /PĀ-pər-klip/ n., The Paperclip Maximiser theory, coined by philosopher Nick Boström, is a hypothetical scenario in which an AI system produces as many paperclips as possible, converting all machinery and consuming all materials, even those that could be beneficial to humans, to achieve its goal. The unintended consequence is that this AI system may destroy humanity in its goal to make paperclips.
• prompt: /präm(p)t/ n., the suggestion or question you enter into an AI chatbot to get a response.
• slop: /släp/ n., low-quality AI-generated content, including text, images and video. It's often produced at high volume to garner views with little labor or effort, saturating search results and social media to capture ad revenue, displacing the work of actual publishers and creators and compounding the internet's misinformation problems.
• sycophancy: /SIK-ə-fan(t)-sē/ n., a tendency for AIs to over-agree with users to align with their views. Many AI models tend to avoid disagreeing with users even if their rationale is flawed.
• unsupervised learning: /ən-So͞oP-ər-vīzd LəRN-iNG/ n., a form of machine learning where labeled training data isn't provided to the model and instead the model must identify patterns in data by itself (think David Copperfield or Demon Copperhead).

From A Year with Rilke, July 8 Entry
The Island, from New Prams

As if lying in some crater on the moon,
each farm is encircled by its earthen banks.
And like orphans the gardens inside
are dressed and combed the same

by the storm that raises them so roughly,
scaring them all the time with threats of death.
That's when you stay indoors, gazing into
the crooked mirror at the assorted things

reflected there. Toward evening one of you
steps outside the door and draws from the harmonica
a sound as soft as weeping

such as you heard once in a distant port.
Out there, silhouetted against the sky,
one of the sheep stands motionless on the far dike.

Study of a Landscape at Auvers
by Paul Cézanne

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.






*Time will tell.