#TFG #GOP #ChristianRight #AWAD #AnuGarg

Today's word:

pecksniff

PRONUNCIATION:
(PEK-snif)

MEANING:
noun: A hypocritical person who pretends to have high moral principles.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Seth Pecksniff, a character in Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit (serialized 1843-1844). Earliest documented use: 1844. The adjectival form is pecksniffian.

NOTES:
Pecksniff sounds like a man who moralizes in public and misbehaves in private. Which, spoiler alert, he does.

But Pecksniff, seriously? If a character’s name is Pecksniff, his moral downfall feels less like a character arc and more like a destiny. With a name like this, you have given them no hope. They’re doomed from page one. See nominative determinism.

It’s not just Dickens. The Harry Potter world has Voldemort (from French vol de mort: flight of death), 101 Dalmatians has Cruella de Vil, and so on. Heroes, on the other hand, get regular names like Oliver Twist or Harry Potter.

#Nautical theme this week on A Word A Day #awad #AnuGarg #language
https://wordsmith.org/words/today.html

A.Word.A.Day
with #AnuGarg

Eight billion people. That’s a lot of humanity -- and a lot of personality! One can never have too many words, especially words to describe people.

Sometimes a single word just won’t cut it when summing up someone’s essence. This week’s words might help. Who in your life, at work, or beyond fits one or more of these words?

nefandous

PRONUNCIATION:
(nuh-FAN-duhs)

MEANING:
adjective: So wicked as to defy description: abominable, appalling.

#AWAD
Wordsmith.org

 
Today's #AWAD #AWordADay: ELSEWHEN
with Anu Garg

❛❛ Unlike a #BlackHole — a region of #SpaceTime from which you cannot escape if you get too close — a #Wormhole is a region into which you would disappear only to reappear #elsewhere or #elsewhen. ❜❜ 2001 May 20 #WaPo

🔗 https://Wordsmith.org/words/elsewhen.html 2025 Jan 06
🔗 https://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Anu_Garg … #AnuGarg

#Community #TimeTravel #Research #vocabulary #lexicon #words #glossary #English #Time #Kronodon

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.

-Turkish proverb

#awad
#awordaday

#Quotes #AWAD #Wilderness #WilliamCowper

I would like this, too, but I cannot help but feel for those unhappy or oppressed or troubled. I just can't help it.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore. -William Cowper, poet (26 Nov 1731-1800)

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia
(23 Jul 1892-1975)

wordsmith.org

#awad

Want to share today's #awad thought for the day:

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars. -Gwendolyn Brooks, poet (7 Jun 1917-2000)

#AWordADay #AnuGarg #AWAD #Wordplay #DadJokes

In Anu Garg's weekday email, the word was "tangent" in a week of math/geometry terms.

Of course, my mind went:

Tangent: The dapper dude that sprays a certain orange-y bronze-ish color on an egomaniac and then tells him how great it looks.

#AWordADay #AWAD #AnuGarg

Another new word to me that I probably knew at one point. Maybe?

umbrageous

PRONUNCIATION:
(uhm-BRAY-juhs)

MEANING:
adjective:
1. Inclined to take offense easily.
2. Cast in shadow; shaded.
3. Providing shade.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin umbra (shade, shadow) + -ous (full of). Earliest documented use: 1587.

À #Rennes, une famille palestinienne est menacée d’expulsion vers #Gaza. Le préfet d'Ille-et-Vilaine, #PhilippeGustin, donne son feu vert. Soutien à Shaden et Ibrahim #Awad
ainsi qu'à leurs enfants !

Un peu comme si en pleine guerre en #Ukraine, on expulsait une famille ukrainienne avec 3 enfants vers les zone de bombardement.

Les réfugiés, y'en a des biens, et y'en a, c'est des bronzés, #FautPasConfondre.

#CaNaRienAVoir #DouceFrance #CestPasPareil #FrancePaysDesDoigtsDeLHomme

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great. -Zane Grey, author (31 Jan 1872-1939)
#awad

#Quotes #AWAD #WashingtonIrving

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart. -Washington Irving, writer (3 Apr 1783-1859)

#AWAD #Quotes @Atheist #Religion #WhyImNot #SusanNeiman

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If you view religion as necessary for ethics, you've reduced us to the ethical level of four-year-olds. "If you follow these commandments you'll go to heaven, if you don't you'll burn in hell" is just a spectacular version of the carrots and sticks with which you raise your children. -Susan Neiman, philosopher and author (b. 27 Mar 1955)

#AWAD #Quotes #Law #DerekBok

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot. -Derek Bok, lawyer and educator (b. 22 Mar 1930)

#Quotes #Seeds #Rising
#Poets #DinosChristianopoulos
#AWAD

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
What didn't you do to bury me / But you forgot that I was a seed. -Dinos Christianopoulos, poet (20 Mar 1931-2020)

#Quotes #AWAD #AnuGarg #ThoughtForToday #JohnUpdike

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. -John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009)

#Quotes #AWAD #AnuGarg #JohnUpdike

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback. -John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009)

#Quotes #AWAD #AnuGarg #Crime #CesareBeccaria #IdesOfMarch

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. -Cesare Beccaria, philosopher and politician (15 Mar 1738-1794)

#Quotes #AWAD #AnuGarg #PZMyers #Atheist #Science

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
What has occurred over the course of the last few centuries is a growing (but by no means universal or certain) recognition that science gets the job done, while religion makes excuses. Sometimes they are very pretty excuses that capture the imagination of the public, but ultimately, when you want to win a war or heal a dying child or get rich from a discovery or explore Antarctica, you turn to science and reason, or you fail. -PZ Myers, biology professor (b. 9 Mar 1957)