Word of the Day -- Redux

For my first word of the day in quite a while (even words need a vacation) this word seemed appropriate to me:

redux:  brought back —used postpositively

In Latin, redux (from the verb reducere, meaning "to lead back") can mean "brought back" or "bringing back." The Romans used redux as an epithet for the goddess Fortuna with its "bringing back" meaning; Fortuna Redux was trusted to bring those far from home back safely. It was the "brought back" meaning that made its way into English. Redux belongs to a small class of English adjectives that are always used postpositively—that is, they always follow the words they modify. Redux has a history of showing up in titles of English works, such as John Dryden's Astraea Redux (a 17th-century poem on the happy restoration and return of the majestic Charles the Second), Anthony Trollope's 19th-century Phineas Redux, and John Updike's 20th-century Rabbit Redux. 

 

City Life -- An ode to urbanity

I came by this the hard way.  I've read poetry and essays and books about the outdoors and living the rural life.  From Thoreau to Bass to hundreds of others, I've pored over the call of the wild, so to speak.  Whether its living in the woods and under the stars, or hiking a mountain trail and camping on the side of a cliff, or simply building a cabin down by a river or stream.  I have taken it all in.  And I thought when I was younger that was what I wanted to do.  

I was wrong.

I love it all.  I love the mountains, I love hiking and exploring nature. I love driving the back roads looking for moose and bear, deer, and bobcats.  I love the solitude and the quiet and the rivers and streams, just a paddle and canoe and the peace of moving along.

For about a week.  Maybe two if there is enough booze.  

 

But after that, I crave buildings.  And cars and noise and people and sidewalks.  Brick, asphalt, the sights and smells of a city.  You can find solitude in a city.  I would argue its easier than in a small town where everyone knows you.  There you have to talk to people but in the city where you hardly know anyone, there is the unwritten rule of mind your own business and I'll mind mine.  There's a dance, a rhythm to the city where in you look away or you look and nod, but it's a silent action.  Or mostly silent.  Then there are the random acts of kindness that are displayed every day by strangers: someone opens the door for you and you smile, you say thank you.  You drop your phone and someone stops and helps you.  For a moment there is a connection between you and that person that's part of the tapestry of a city.

 

Of course there are assholes in the city as well.  There are burglars, and robbers, and meth heads, and well, assholes.  But because there are more of them, doesn't mean the ratios are any different.  We have those out in rural areas as well. Every place will have its good and bad, ups and downs.

I like the convenience of a city.  I currently am in Arkansas where the nearest store, nearest anything is 20 mins and 7 miles of gravel road away.  My condo in Portland (Maine, not that "other" Portland) is set between a bakery/meat market/coffee place and what is essentially a bodega on the other side.  When I am there, I don't have to drive for a week.  Maybe make a trip to the larger grocery store for paper towels and bulk items.  But mostly I can walk to get anythng I want.  And I love the familiarity of the places and things I see on my walk rather than driving; there's more time.  And I love seeing people, and even though I don't talk to them, or know them, because it's my neighborhood, we might smile and nod, or just do the polite non-stare.  Or if you are inclined (and especially if you have a pet), you might stop and talk for a minute with the person passing by.  Anonymous city folk going about their days.

 

Sales! Get your Digital On...

As you can see in some posted blogs after this one, we Trolls are once again going on the road.  We are headed to GaryCon in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  Steve and Tim are driving up today, and others are driving/flying/thumbing their way in.  Promises to be a fun time catching up with old friends and hopefully making new ones as well.

But while we are out and about, the shipping office suffers a bit.  Steve is second in line on shipping and therefore things slow down.  That's why we are trying to entice all of you -- that if you order this week -- you order digitally.  We've marked down everything in our digital category by 33% through Sunday starting now!

All you need do is go to our Digital Category and shop like mad.  Then use this coupon code at checkout:

GC33XH7S

And let us know what you think of the new layout as well in the store.  Should be streamlined somewhat, shorter steps to get to checkout.  

Have a great week and look here and on social media for tales from the road!

~ Tim & The Trolls 

 

Word of the Day -- Gill

I get inspiration for the Words of the Day from a lot of places.  From merriam-webster, from wikipedia, from my inbox of word-genius and word-trivia.  But some of you might be surprised that I get a lot of my inspiration from the animated series Archer.  

It's a clever show.  From the campy,  clever comedy, to the irreverent humor.  Hidden in all that,   behind the slapstick humor, the silliness -- is a story told with intelligence, bite, and humor.  

 So I was watching an episode from early one, as I'm wont to do in the wee hours of the evening.  And Archer was being drained of his blood, specifically from a "gill" of his blood.  And I felt a tingle on my skin when I heard that, because I was about to come across a word that was rare, antiquated, interesting, and rare. 

Gill -- a measure of liquids containing one fourth of a standard pint.

It’s often mentioned in the Lewis and Clark journals that whiskey was rationed out by the gill or dram. Joseph Whitehouse wrote on June 9, 1805, “…the officers gave the party a dram, the fiddle played and they danced late &c…”

How much was a gill? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a gill as "a measure of liquids containing one fourth of a standard pint." Thus, at one-fourth of a pint, a gill equates to four ounces. With two pints to the quart and four quarts to the gallon, there are 32 gills to the gallon.  A fluid dram equals one-eighth of a fluid ounce (the equivalent to two average-size thimbles), so there would be 128 drams per pint and 1,024 drams per gallon. So, there are 32 drams in a gill.

Word of the Day -- Fodder

 This is one of those words you rarely hear outside some phrase about something negative:

Fodder -- inferior or readily available material used to supply a heavy demand.

Which in turn is usually used such as fodder for the tabloids.  I happened to use  it today in a Discord chat and thought, wow I haven't heard that word in a long time, even longer since I've used it. I was surprised to find out it had another meaning: 

something fed to domestic animals

It comes from Middle English, from Old English fōdor; akin to Old High German fuotar food. You also hear of it in the phrase: cannon fodder.  Just so many uses for such an obscure word.  

Word of the Day -- Mulct

I must admit, I came across this word by typing some random letters into the dictionary online at merriam-webster.com.  I do this occasionally.  I liken it to rolling the dice and seeing what comes up.  You then take that and run with it, no matter where it goes.  So this is where I first heard of:

Mulct -- to defraud especially of money.

This led me down a wide reaching and fascinating journey to know more about mulct.  I can't tell you how rewarding searches like this are.   You just start reading and one thing takes you to another which takes you to another.   

A fine assessed as a penalty for an infraction is generally considered justifiable. Fraud, on the other hand, is wrong—it's just the sort of thing that deserves a fine. So in mulct we have a unique word, one that means both "to fine" and "to defraud." The "fine" sense came first. Mulct was borrowed from the Latin word for a fine, which is multa or mulcta. The "fine" sense is still in use, mostly in legal contexts ("the court mulcted the defendant for punitive damages"), but these days mulct is more often used for an illegal act. It has been speculated that the "defraud" use may have developed from an association with the verb milk, in its "to exploit, to coerce profit from" meaning (as in "she was milked by the lawyers for everything she had"), but that speculation has never been proven.

Word of the Day -- Ice

Okay, this word isn't so much chosen because it is odd, or rare, or interesting, as so much as it gives me a chance to complain about the...

Ice -- frozen water; or a stretch or sheet of frozen water.

We have been inundated with ice of late.  Starting Wednesday morning the skies opened up and it got to freezing, got to sleeting, and it got to snowing.   Mostly it was sleet and freezing rain however, and that made getting outside problematic.  We are on a bit of a hill and due to poor prior planning, the woodpile is halfway down the hill.  Basically I had run out of wood up near the house and was planning to move more closer when the storm came.  Yesterday in an attempt to get some wood I slipped and proceeded to slide down the gravel driveway.  I mention that it's gravel so that you know there were a lot of "bumps" along the way.  Needless to say it is hard to sit down today...

I love snow.  I frigging hate frigging ice.

Calamity Hill

 

Word of the Day -- Umbrage

This is one of the words that my father knew and I was so impressed that he knew it. I was in my teens probably and it was in a B.C. cartoon of all places.  Someone said: "I take considerable umbrage at your use of that word".  I don't remember the word in question nor can I say I am properly remembering this story, it was over 40 years ago after all.  But when I asked Dick (that's what my father's nickname and indeed what all of us called him) what it meant he knew right away:

Umbrage -- a feeling of pique or resentment at some often fancied slight or insult.

That's the merriam-webster.com version, but in the mail today I got this:  

Umbrage comes from the Old French ombrage (shade, shadow), and it was once used to talk about actual shade from the sun. It took on various figurative meanings having to do with doubt and suspicion or the giving and taking of offense. To give umbrage was to offend someone, to "throw shade." However, these days when we see the term umbrage at all, it is more likely to be because someone is taking, rather than giving it.  

That is where we get "umbrella"  Words are just fu**ing cool...

Word of the Day -- Butter

So this isn't one of those words that you would think people wouldn't know, right?  I mean everyone has heard of:

Butter -- a solid emulsion of fat globules, air, and water made by churning milk or cream and used as food.

Pretty simple right?  The product itself has been around for what seems like forever and the word butter has been around since before the 12th century.  It comes froom Middle English, from Old English butere, from Latin butyrum, from Greek boutyron, from bous cow + tyros cheese; akin to Avestan tūiri- curds.

No, that's not what struck me as interesting to bring it up as the word of the day today.  That comes courtesy of an email I somehow get each day from "Interesting Facts".  You can check them out here, it's a pretty cool site.   Here's what was in my inbox today...

The ancient Romans thought eating butter was barbaric. Our friends in ancient Rome indulged in a lot of activities that we would find unseemly today — including and especially gladiators fighting to the death — but they drew the line at eating butter. To do so was considered barbaric, with Pliny the Elder going so far as to call butter “the choicest food among barbarian tribes.” In addition to a general disdain for drinking too much milk, Romans took issue with butter specifically because they used it for treating burns and thus thought of it as a medicinal salve, not a food. 

They weren’t alone in their contempt. The Greeks also considered the dairy product uncivilized, and “butter eater” was among the most cutting insults of the day. In both cases, this can be partly explained by climate — butter didn’t keep as well in warm southern climates as it did in northern Europe, where groups such as the Celts gloried in their butter. Instead, the Greeks and Romans relied on olive oil, which served a similar purpose. To be fair, though, Romans considered anyone who lived beyond the Empire’s borders (read: most of the world) to be barbarians, so butter eaters were in good company.

----

Who knew?  Well apparently someone did.  I must admit, I'm not a huge butter fan myself.  Don't put it on bread, or on my potatoes, or corn, etc.  It's good in dishes, good in recipes, but for just eating?  I think I'll take a pass.  But it definitely is one of those foods modern day could not survive without...

 

Word of the Day -- Meander

Wow... I just realized it's been a week since I did a word of the day.  If I don't keep to a strict calendar, the day just gets filled up and I forget completely. Which is crazy because all I do is think about words.  But sometimes it's easier to think about them than to write them.  And sometimes my brain just takes a:

Meander -- a winding path or course; a turn or winding of a stream.

Meander comes from Greek Maiandros, an old name for a winding river in Asia Minor that is now known as the Menderes. Despite this origin, the word is more commonly used to refer to a person's wandering course than a river's.

All I know is, I gotta get my brain back from meandering and get back on the WOTD!

Word of the Day -- Puttanesca

Over the weekend I was chatting (well texting to be precise) with Mac, one of the founders of C&C.  We both love to cook and are even starting a cooking thing for Aihrde and our own thing for YouTube.  First episode: Scrambled Eggs!  I'm still trying to learn to edit videos.  Once I get the hang of it, look for our premier!

But this weekend he was filling me in on capers and caper history etc. when he came up with this nugget:

Puttanesca -- served with or being a pungent tomato sauce typically containing olives, garlic, capers, hot pepper, and sometimes anchovies.

Seems straightforward right?  Delicious, to be sure, but it's the origin he sent me that was the kicker:  Yes, puttanesca literally translates to “of, relating to, or characteristic of a prostitute,” to quote the OED.  There are a ton of theories as to why it is called that, but they seem to all come down to some sort of aroma. And that is probably all we need to know about that.  :-)

Word (Scottish) of the Day -- Guddle

Again from that email from wordgenius.com, we have another word I had never heard of: 

Guddle -- to catch (fish) with the hands by groping (as under banks or stones)

I have heard of "noodling" which is the (mostly) southern tradition of fishing for catfish by sticking your hands deep in holes along stream and creek beds.  They supposedly latch on, or attempt to swallow your hand.  

I know several people who have done it but you will never see me doing it.  I'm not nervous by nature, and I'm not easily scared, but there's no way I'm sticking my hand shoulder deep in a hole in muddy murky water.  That is just not happening!  :-)

 

Word (Scottish) of the Day -- Kenspeckle

Every once in a while I get an email from this site, wordgenius.com.  It's usually about a particular word or a phrase but this time it was about Scottish words, in particular some of those words that those of us in the states might not know.  I knew a few of them but was totally lost on this one:

Kenspeckle -- Good luck flying under the radar in Scotland. A particularly recognizable or conspicuous person is known as kenspeckle.

It comes from mid 16th century: of Scandinavian origin, probably based on Old Norse kenna ‘know, perceive’ and spak-, spek- ‘wise or wisdom’.  I'm sure you all will recognize these kenspeckles:

 

 

Word of the Day -- Ziggurat

This is one of those words that you just have no idea what it means, even guessing.  A lot of the times I can tell from the base at its derivation, but not for:

Ziggurat -- an ancient Mesopotamian temple that resembles a pyramid having successive stages with outside staircases and a shrine at the top. The word is used figuratively for any structure having stages or steps. ~ Merriam-Webster

French professor of archaeology Francois Lenormant spent a great deal of time poring over ancient Assyrian texts. In those cuneiform inscriptions, he recognized a new language, now known as Akkadian, which proved valuable to the understanding of the ancient civilization. Through his studies, he became familiar with the Akkadian word for the towering temples: ziqqurratu, which was translated into English as ziggurat.

 

Word of the Day -- Picadillo

Okay, I'll admit that yesterday's word made me think of this word.  The sound is quite similar but the derivations and meanings quite different. Today's word is:

Picadillo -- a spicy Latin-American hash or stew of meat and vegetables often with raisins and olives that is commonly used as a filling (as for tacos) or served with rice and beans.

A far cry some peccadillo, unless of course you are planning to committing a misdemeanor with a spicy hash... picadillo came about as a word in the late 1800's and is American Spanish, from Spanish, stew of chopped meat, from picado, past participle of picar to prick, chop, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin piccare. 

Oddly enough, right after choosing peccadillo as the word of the day, I saw picadillo used in a YT video, someone making a vegetable picadillo.  It's odd how words just show up.  There's a word for that, but it's name escapes me at the moment.  Maybe that will be a word of the day if I can ever remember what that is called...

Word of the Day -- Lutefisk

This is one of those words that I'm not sure where I heard it first.  It's not something you normally come by unless you live in northern Europe:

Lutefisk -- dried codfish that has been soaked in a water and lye solution before cooking.

Preserved fish provided protein during the long winter months for generations in a part of the world with a strong fishing tradition. It is not known when people first started treating dried fish with lye. The reason was probably that the lack of major salt deposits in the area favored the drying process for the preservation of whitefish - a process known for millennia.

 

Word of the Day -- Haecceity

Full disclosure here -- I had NO idea of this word until I read it in my inbox today.  I love discovering new words, especially if they come out of left field and are something that I didn't even know there was a word for, much like...

Haecceity -- The property of being a unique and individual thing.

Haecceity is a deeply philosophical concept attributed to Scottish Catholic priest and university professor John Duns Scotus. He defined it as a non-qualitative property of a substance or thing that is responsible for its individuation and identity, such as a particular person’s unique identity. Interestingly, Scotus is also where the term “dunces” originated from. His opponents equated Duns’ followers, who argued against Renaissance humanism, to dullards incapable of scholarship.

This word stems from the medieval Latin “haecceitas.” It comes from the Latin “haec,” feminine of “hic,” meaning “this.”

It's still something that I'm trying to come to terms with, this word.  It seems to me, at least, that it is something that describes something's "essence" in other words.  What do you think?

 P.S. I chose this image because I have no idea how to quantify, in imagery, an essence.  :-)

 

 

Word of the Day -- Tergiversation

This is one of the 7 dollar words as my mother used to call them.  You know, those words that are big, fancy, and you have no frigging clue what they mean.  I ran across it in a new puzzle today, and it stumped both me and my wife.  But if you want to impress the barista at Starbucks, give this a go:

Tergiversation -- evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement; equivocation.

Now I knew what equivocation means, my wife says I do that all the time.  I hedge my answers or bets, so to speak.  You never want to paint yourself into a corner I say.  :-) 

The roots of tergiversation are about an unwillingness to pick a course and stay on it. The Latin verb tergiversari means "to show reluctance," and it comes from the combining of tergum, meaning "back," and versare, meaning "to turn." (While versare and its related form, vertere, turn up in the etymologies of many English words, including versatile and invert, tergum is at the root of only a few, among them tergal, an obscure synonym of dorsal.) While the "desertion" meaning of tergiversation is both older and a better reflection of the meanings of its etyma, the word is more frequently used as a synonym of equivocation. The related verb tergiversate is a somewhat rare synonym of equivocate. 

 

Word of the Day -- Tome

I wanted to do this one simply because of how our fearless leader, Steve, continues to screw up the pronunciation of this word.  It makes sense after you see what it is:

Tome -- A tome is a large or scholarly book.

So we have a book entitled Tome of the Unclean.  It's important to know that Tome is pronounced TOHM.  However, for whatever reason (partly because it kind of fits too) Steve will say Tomb (pronounced ˈtüm), with long Os.  Tomb is an excavation in which a corpse is buried, so it would actually would fit and he knows the difference but for some reason it is just stuck in his head.  You know how it is, once you start with something, it's there.  Just like when I was a kid and would ask my brother is going to do something for me and he would say "Maybe no, maybe not".  And I always thought that meant that he would do it because he always would do it.  

Words are confusing...

Word of the Day -- Calumet

Came across this one in one of the puzzles this morning.  Had no idea on it.   Usually I can at least guess at a word, either because I've seen or heard it, or can suss out something about its derivation.  But honestly, I was totally stymied:

Calumet -- a highly ornamented ceremonial pipe of the American Indians.

The calumet has long been an important component of the ceremonies of Native American groups, but the first inhabitants of the Americas did not give the venerated pipe (also known as the "peace pipe") that name. English speakers borrowed "calumet" from American French, which had carried it from the dialects of France to North America. "Chalumet," the French ancestor of "calumet," traces to the Latin calamus and the Greek kalamos, both of which mean "reed" or "pen." French baron Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce La Hontan, who explored North America in the 17th century, noted that French speakers had applied "calumet" to the highly ornamented clay pipes of Native Americans by the 1670s; English speakers followed suit before the turn of that century. (merriam-webster)