A Word to the Wise

It's amazing what disrupted sleep patterns can do to one's morning. Mine isn't getting started quite as early as it would have had we not had a bumpy night of thunderstorms - even a tornado warning, although the potential actually went way north of us and we ended up not going to the basement for probably the first time ever - usually when I hear/see the word 'warning' I'm pulling everyone out of bed, but last night the threat didn't seem quite as imminent.

And using that 50-cent word, of course, makes a nice segue into this week's treasure trove of winning words:

From wordsmith.org (this week's theme being words derived from the names of mythical creatures):

chimera \ki-MEER-uh, ky-\ (noun) - 1 : A fanciful fabrication; illusion. 2 : An organism having genetically different tissues.
[After Chimera, a fire-breathing female monster in Greek mythology who had a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. From Greek khimaira (she-goat), ultimately from the Indo-European root ghei- (winter) that is the ancestor of words such as chimera (literally a female animal that is one winter, or one year old), hibernate, and the Himalayas, from Sanskrit him
(snow) + alaya (abode).]

argus \AHR-guhs\ (noun) - An alert and observant person; a watchful guardian.
[After Argus, a giant in Greek mythology who had 100 eyes and was sent to watch over Zeus's lover Io. He was killed by Hermes and after his death his eyes transformed into spots on the peacock's tail. Greek argos (bright).]

centaur \SEN-tor\ (noun) - 1 : An expert horse rider. 2 : An unnatural creation made of disparate entities.
[After Centaur, a race of monsters having the torso of a human and lower body of a horse. Also, early Greek literature depicted Centaurs as a tribe from Thessaly whose members were skilled horse riders.]

sphinx \sfingks\ (noun) - A mysterious, inscrutable person.
[After Sphinx, a winged monster in Greek mythology who had a woman's head and a lion's body. It killed anyone who was not able to answer its riddle. From Greek sphinx (literally, strangler), from sphingein (to bind tight), also the source of the word sphincter.]

harpy \HAR-pee\ (noun) - 1 : A predatory person. 2 : A bad-tempered woman.
[After the Harpies, monsters in Greek mythology, who had a woman's head and a bird's body. The gods ordered them to snatch food from Phineus, a king who was punished for revealing secrets. From Greek harpazein (to snatch).]

And from ArcaMax:

winsome \WIN-suhm\ (adjective) - 1 : Cheerful; merry; gay; light-hearted. 2 : Causing joy or pleasure; agreeable; pleasant.
"Above all, it was winsome, devastatingly winsome. For a pretty face to be winsome is normal enough and very winsome it can be, but it is a tepid thing..." -- Mervyn Peake, 'The Gormenghast Novels'
Winsome is from Old English wynsum, from wynn, "joy" + -sum (equivalent to Modern English -some), "characterized by."

edify \ED-uh-fy\ (transitive verb) - To instruct and improve, especially in moral and religious knowledge; to teach. -- edifying, adjective
"He attended like holiness itself; He attended to edify the people with His example, to teach them His doctrine, and to favor men with His grace." -- José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, 'The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento'
Edify is from Old French edifier, from Latin aedifico, aedificare, to build.

Brobdingnagian \brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn\ (adjective) - Of extraordinary size; gigantic; enormous.
"The cover was removed... revealing two gigantic pots... capable of holding 200 gallons each...a cooking apparatus as might have graced a Brobdingnagian kitchen." -- Frank T. Bullen, 'Cruise of the Cachalot Round the World After Sperm Whales'
Brobdingnagian is from Brobdingnag, a country of giants in Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

grok \GRAWK\ (transitive verb slang) - To understand, especially in a profound and intimate way. Slang.
'"Even if you explain it in short words I'm not going to grok it, okay?" Benjamin frowned the uncomprehending frown of someone whose learning of the English language had missed the word "grok" entirely."' - Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis, '1634: The Galileo Affair"
The slang word grok was coined by Robert A. Heinlein in the science fiction novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", where it is a Martian word meaning literally "to drink" and metaphorically "to be one with". It was adopted into the vocabulary of 1960's youth and hackish jargon, whence it has become a part of net culture.

tittle-tattle \TIT-uhl TAT-uhl\ (noun) - 1 : Idle, trifling talk; empty prattle. 2 : An idle, trifling talker; a gossip. (verb) - to talk idly; to prate.
"Both were in their seventies, and like two old parrots they told, in identical words, the tale they had heard so often from their mother...The tittle-tattle of a half-starved countryside that throughout its long winters had nothing but tittle-tattle for amusement." -- Eric Linklater, 'The Dark of Summer'
Tittle-tattle is a varied reduplication of tattle, which derives from Medieval Dutch tatelen, to babble.

After the busy-busy preparations for company (Milady and her mom are coming this afternoon so we can take pictures before prom - and we're allowing The Boy to have a basement full of teenagers for an all-night movie party after prom; better here safe than somewhere else, right?), I might have the afternoon to get a few more things checked off the to-do list in the study. I'm wondering if I might be able to use a few of these choice words ... hmmmm ...

Read a book (because it's good for you, of course) and enjoy your day.

=) JB

"Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short."
-- Golda Meir (1898-1978) Israeli political leader