Word-Wednesday for October 7, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 7, 2026, the fortieth Wednesday of the year, the third Wednesday of fall, the first Wednesday of October, and the two-hundred eightieth day of the year, with eighty-five days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for October 7, 2026
pumpkins
Curcurbita pepo are now widely on sale for pie-making and jack-o-lantern carving in and around Wannaska. Okosimaan in Anishinaabe, and otherwise known as winter squash, is among the oldest known domesticated plants, first cultivated between 7000 BCE and 5500 BCE in Mesoamerica. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English word pumpkin is a 17th-century corruption of the earlier pompion, denoting any of various kinds of edible gourd. The latter ultimately derives, via French and Latin, from Greek πέπων (pepōn). An alternative etymological theory derives pumpkin from the Massachusett word pôhpukun, meaning "grows forth round", used by the Wampanoag people when introducing pumpkins to English Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony. The English word squash is derived from a Massachusett word, askꝏtasquash, or, in the closely related Narragansett language, askútasquash.

Pumpkin chunking is a competitive activity in which teams build various mechanical devices designed to throw a pumpkin as far as possible. Catapults, trebuchets, ballistas, and air cannons are the most common mechanisms, such as the one developed by Knorr Helmersson for chucking Mephitis mephitis.

October 7 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


October 7 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Closed until further notice.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 7, 2026
Sunrise: 7:32am; Sunset: 6:51pm; 3 minutes, 32 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 3:55am; Moonset: 5:34pm, waning crescent, 9% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 7, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             56                     82                     63
Low              35                     11                      38

And Now it’s October
by Barbara Crooker

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery
grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs
and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker
down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope
of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.

October 7 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chocolate-Covered Pretzel Day
• National Tregeminal Neuralgia Awareness Day
• National Inner Beauty Day
• National Pumpkin Seed Day
• National Frappe Day
• National Coffee with a Cop Day
• National Walk and Roll to School Day
• Random Acts of Poetry Day
• National LED Light Day
• National Propane Day
• World Smile Day

October 7 Word Pun
Sven went to a big paddle sale at the local boat store.

It was quite and oar deal.


October 7 Word Riddle
What disappears when you name it?*


October 7 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
FOLD, n., In the miserable nomenclature of those outlying dark corners of the universe beyond the boundaries of the Pacific Slope, a sheep corral. The wretched barbarians infesting those remote dependencies have also the bad taste to call a band of sheep a "flock" and a sheepherder a "shepherd," besides being linguistically disgusting in a reasonless multitude of other ways. In ecclesiastical affairs, the fold means the church.

    By plain analogy we're told
    Why first the church was called the fold:
    Into the fold the sheep are steered
    There guarded from the wolf and—sheared.


October 7 Etymology Word of the Week
person
/PəRS-(ə)n/ n., an individual human being, such as a man, woman, or child, from circa 1200, persoun, "an individual, a human being," from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12th century, Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "a mask, a false face," such as those of wood or clay, covering the whole head, worn by the actors in later Roman theater.

OED (1989) offered the general 19th century explanation of persona as "related to" Latin personare "to sound through" (i.e. the mask as something spoken through and perhaps amplifying the voice), "but the long o makes a difficulty ...." Klein and Barnhart say it is possibly borrowed from Etruscan phersu "mask." De Vaan has no entry for it.

From mid-13th century as "one of the persons of the Trinity," a theological use in Church Latin of the classical word. The meanings "one's physical being, the living body" and "external appearance" are from late 14th century. In grammar, "one of the relations which a subject may have to a verb," from 1510s.

In legal use, "corporate body or corporation other than the state and having rights and duties before the law," 15th century, short for person aggregate (circa 1400), person corporate (mid-15th century).

The use of -person to replace -man in compounds for the sake of gender neutrality or to avoid allegations of sexism is recorded by 1971 (in chairperson). In person "by bodily presence" is from 1560s. Person-to-person (adj.) is attested by 1919, originally of telephone calls; the phrase itself was in use by 1880 in reference to the spreading of diseases.


October 7 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1714 People riot due to a beer tax in Alkmaar, Netherlands.
• 1806 Carbon paper patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgwood.
• 1856 Cyrus Chambers Jr. patents a folding machine that folds books and newspapers.
• 1868 Cornell University opens in Ithaca, New York.
• 1886 Spain abolishes slavery in Cuba.
• 1937 Johan Wagenaar's orchestral work Feestmars premieres.
• 1946 Charles Ives' Second String Quartet premieres.
• 1955 Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reads his poem Howl for the first time at a poetry reading in San Francisco.
• 1971 Terence McNally's play Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? premieres.
• 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to American writer Toni Morrison.
• 2010 Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

October 7 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1576 John Marston, English poet and playwright.
• 1591 Pierre Le Muet, French architect.
• 1635 Roger de Piles, French painter.
• 1698 Henri Madin, French composer.
• 1746 William Billings, American hymn composer.
• 1758 Paul Wineberger, German cellist, organist, kapellmeister, and compose.
• 1774 Ferdinando Orlandi, Italian musician, singing teacher, and composer.
• 1801 Adolf Muller Sr., Austrian composer.
• 1802 Wilhelm Bernhard Molique, German violinist and composer.
• 1819 Ann Eliza Smith, American author.
• 1835 Felix Draeseke, German composer.
• 1849 James Whitcomb Riley, American author and poet.
• 1866 Martha McChesney Berry, American educator who founded Berry School for Children.
• 1879 Joseph Bovet, Swiss composer.
• 1880 Jaume Pahissa, Spanish-Catalan composer.
• 1887 Gastone De Zuccoli, Italian organist, composer.
• 1888 Cecil Coles, Scottish organist and composer.
• 1907 Helen MacInnes, Scottish-American spy writer.
• 1909 Anni Blomqvist, Finnish novelist.
• 1912 Fernando Belaúnde Terry, Peruvian architect.
• 1915 Margarita Aliger, Russian poet.
• 1915 Roman Padlewski, Polish violinist, composer.
• 1922 Reina Prinsen Geerligs, Dutch poet.
• 1923 Jean-Paul Riopelle, French-Canadian painter.
• 1926 Ivan Jirko, Czech composer.
• 1926 Marcello Abbado, Italian pianist, composer.
• 1928 Sohrab Sepehri, Persian poet and painter.
• 1929 Robert Westall, British author.
• 1934 Amiri Baraka [Everett Leroy Jones], American poet.
• 1934 Feliksas Bajoras, Lithuanian composer.
• 1935 Thomas Keneally, Australian writer.
• 1941 John Ford Noonan, American playwright.
• 1946 Anita Shreve, American writer.
• 1948 Diane Ackerman, American poet.
• 1951 Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, Irish musician.
• 1955 Yo-Yo Ma, Chinese-American cellist.
• 1958 Bernardo Arévalo, Guatemala writer.
• 1966 Sherman Alexie, American novelist.
• 1976 Pekka Kuusisto, Finnish violinist and composer.

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

• abibliophobia: /uh-bib-li-uh-FŌ-bee-yuh/ n., the fear of running out of reading material.
• catio: /CAT-ee-oh/ n., an enclosed, secure outdoor space attached or connected to a home where pet cats can safely experience the outdoors.
• chatelaine: /SHAT-uh-layn/ n., 1. Mistress of a House: The female owner or the wife of the owner of a castle, château, or large country house; 2. Waist Accessory: A decorative clasp, hook, or ornamental chain worn at a woman's waist from which practical items—such as keys, a purse, a watch, or scissors—were suspended.
• deuterostome: /DOO-ter-uh-stohm/ n., a major group of animals where the first opening in the embryo becomes the anus, and the mouth forms secondarily, e.g., homo sapiens.
• grobian: /GRŌ-bē-ən/ n., a crude, sloppy, uncouth, or buffoonish person.
• leesome: /LEE-sum / adj., pleasant, delightful, or lovable.
• protean: /PROH-tee-uhn/ adj., able to change easily and frequently in form, character, or function; highly versatile or adaptable.
• slangrel: /SLANG-grull/ n., one who is quite slender; a lean or long person or thing.
• terce: /tərs/ n., a traditional Christian canonical hour of prayer fixed at mid-morning, or about 9:00am.
• wanion: /WON-yun/ n., a curse or imprecation; ill luck or misfortune.

October 7, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
Demonstrative Determiners and Deixis
/DĪK-səs/ n., the use of words or phrases whose meaning changes depending on the context of who is speaking, where they are, or when they say. One cannot understand a deictic word fully without knowing the real-world situation of the conversation. The main types of deixis are Person — I, me, you; Spacial — here, there, this, that; Temporal — now, today, tomorrow; and Discourse — phrases that point to parts of conversation or the text, itself — that was a funny joke.

Demonstrative determiner is a grammatical term, not a politician, centered on the term, determiner: də-TəR-mə-nər/ n., a closed class of words that provide information such as familiarity, location, quantity, and number about a noun or noun phrase. A demonstrative determiner is defined as a determiner of literal and figurative distance, meaning the distance is physical (spatial deixis, referring to physical space) or affective (discourse deixis, referring to emotional space including space resulting from time), where determinative /də-TəR-mə-nā-tiv/ adj., means having the power or quality to decide, control, or shape an ultimate outcome — a favorite pastime of grammarians. Note the base word demon in the term demonstrative.

We fortunately learn demonstrative determiner and deixic usage as children, but English majors need to learn the grammatical terms:

Single Proximal Demonstrative Determiner: this (dis, for Scandinavians)
This grammar stuff gives me a headache.

Singular Distal Demonstrative Determiner: that (dat, for Scandinavians)
That awful grammar teacher destroyed my will to live, much less finish my English major.

Plural Proximal Demonstrative Determiner: these (dese, for Scandinavians)
These demonstrative determiner types can't possibly go on forever.

Plural Distal Demonstrative Determiner: those (doze, for Scandinavians)
Those other majors look much more interesting to me now.

In closing, it is important to distinguish determiners from pronouns. Because of the identical word forms, the functional difference between demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative determiners sometimes results in further confusion:
THIS banana smells fresher than THAT apple. [determiners]
THIS smells fresher than THAT. [pronouns]

You're over the hump. Class dismissed.


From A Year with Rilke, October 7 Entry
Train Yourself to This, from Worpswede, July 16, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet

You carry within you the capacity to imagine and give shape to your world. It is a pure and blessed way of living. Train yourself to this, but also trust whatever comes. If it comes from your desire, from some inner need, accept that and hate nothing.

The Creation of Man 
by Marc Chagall

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.







*Silence.