Words of Wisdom

There's a bit of a double meaning in that title. Since I missed yesterday due to various and sundry activities of daily living (not to mention it being Mother's Day), I'm posting last week's vocab words in truncated form - you can get the full entries from the respective websites if you're just dying to ... but I also want to direct you to a terrific post presented yesterday over at Murderati by Toni McGee Causey. If you're a mom, read this. Read it even if you aren't a mom. It's worth it.

On to the pearls from the sea of syntax (sources specified in brackets - ArcaMax.com or wordsmith.org) ...

autodidact \aw-toh-DY-dakt\ (noun) - One who is self-taught. [arcamax]

babbitt \BAB-it\ (noun) - A self-satisfied narrow-minded person who conforms to conventional ideals of business and material success. [After the main character in Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt.] [wordsmith]

gargantuan \gar-GAN-choo-uhn\ (adjective) - Gigantic. [After Gargantua, a voracious giant, the father of Pantagruel, in a series of novels by François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553).] [wordsmith]

genial \JEEN-yuhl; JEE-nee-uhl\ (adjective) - 1 : Friendly, warm; kindly; sympathetically cheerful and cheering. 2 : Mild, pleasant; comfortable; favorable to life or growth. [arcamax]

juju \JOO-joo\ (noun) - 1 : An object superstitiously believed to embody magical powers. 2 : The power associated with a juju. [arcamax]

lilliputian \lil-i-PYOO-shuhn\ (adjective) - Very small. (noun) A very small person. [After Lilliput, a fictional island nation in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels. Everything was diminutive in Lilliput -- its inhabitants were six inches in height.] [wordsmith]

pantagruelian \pan-tuh-groo-EL-ee-uhn\ (adjective) - 1 : Enormous. 2 : Displaying extravagant and coarse humor. [After Pantagruel, a giant king with an enormous appetite, depicted in a series of novels by François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553).] [wordsmith]

Simon Legree \SY-muhn li-GREE\ (noun) - A harsh taskmaster. [After Simon Legree, a brutal slave dealer in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896).] [wordsmith]

specious \SPEE-shuhs\ (adjective) - 1 : Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; as, "specious reasoning; a specious argument." 2 : Deceptively pleasing or attractive. [arcamax]

Zeitgeist \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\ (noun) - [Often capitalized] The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time. [arcamax]

I hope all you mothers out there enjoyed your Mother's Day yesterday as much as I did. The WGH bought me something I have wanted for quite a while now (since we moved into this house, to be exact) - a freestanding swing! I'm just tres excited. Yesterday was a bit too windy 'round these parts to put it out, but it's set up in his garage, waiting for him to get home so we can drag it out to the yard. I'm going to go sit in it and read a book - woot!

I'm off to tackle the to-do list again. Hope you have a swing to sit in ... and even if you don't, read a book!

=) JB

"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December."
-- Sir James M. Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish writer