Wild Word Friday! Once upon a time, the English had a law that required a homebuilder to get a permit before he could build eaves that allowed water to drip on land owned by someone else. Not only were eaves sometimes a controversial matter in ancient England, in the 1600s they gave us the verb EAVESDROP,…
About You! I’m a brunette. Well, I was a brunette. Now I’m a brunette thanks to the skills of my colorist. (No, this is not me. I wish it were!) For a while, I actually went gray, and I was fine with that until the first time someone “carded” me as a senior citizen. Who? Me? Wait a…
Wild Word Friday! Here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we are very aware of the difference between a snow storm and a BLIZZARD. You can drive in a snow storm. It’s not fun, and it is dangerous, but you can. In a snow storm, you can walk to your neighbor’s house. In a BLIZZARD you shouldn’t…
The men in my life don’t like vegetables. I do my best to get a green salad on the table at supper each night, but other than that – except for corn or peas – I have little success. My father-in-law once took me aside and gently said, “You don’t have to work so hard at…
Wild Word Friday! When my 92-year-old father-in-law refers to electricity, he says ‘lectricity. The process of dropping an initial syllable when pronouncing a word is so common in human speech that it’s been given a name – APHAERESIS (uh-fur-eh-sus). APHAERESIS – the word – may be totally unfamiliar to us in our everyday speech, but APHAERESIS…
I’ve never been an insect-lover. Not flies, not cute little lady bugs, not cockroaches (which we don’t have up here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – Hooray!), not fleas or… I could go on almost forever, couldn’t I? I know insects are necessary to our ecology and part of God’s plan, and I can claim…
Wild Word Friday! Please don’t ask me how to pronounce it, but SELEDREORIG is an Anglo-Saxon word that means “sadness for the lack of a hall.” In Anglo-Saxon days, a hall was a long rectangular community building, usually made of timber and roofed with thatch. Most halls had a centrally located hearth. According to archaeologists, almost every Anglo-Saxon…
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