Roar

today's word---

lionize \LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb:

To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.

'nough said.

There's a moster under my bed

chimera \ky-MIR-uh\, noun:

1. 1. (Capitalized) A fire-breathing she-monster represented as having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.


2. Any imaginary monster made up of grotesquely incongruous parts.


3. An illusion or mental fabrication; a grotesque product of the imagination.


4. An individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution, produced as a result of organ transplant, grafting, or genetic engineering.
   
   

   
   I love this word.
   

   
   
   As an avid dreamer, my sleep state can sometimes be filled with chimeras that haunt me as I wake.

Today's word is....

miasma \my-AZ-muh; mee-\, noun:

1. A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.

2. A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence; also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog.

Miasma comes from Greek miasma, "pollution," from miainein, "to pollute."


Through his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore works toward ending the miasma we have created on this planet.

To learn more about global warming and the film, go to the following website:
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

See a trailer: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2078944470709189270

Today's WORD is...
pin money \pin money\, noun:

1. An allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for private and personal expenditures.
2. Money for incidental expenses.
3. A trivial sum.

Women's groups have contended that jobs that usually go to men pay more because of the old-fashioned idea that a man is supporting a family while a woman is merely working for pin money.-- Juan Williams, "A Question of Fairness", The Atlantic, February-1987

Meaning of: Pin Money
Pin Money: Catharine Howard, wife of Henry VIII., introduced pins into England from France. As they were expensive at first, a separate sum for this luxury was granted to the ladies by their husbands. Hence the expression "pin-money."

Today’s word is…

woebegone \WOE-bee-gon\, adjective:1. Beset or overwhelmed with woe; immersed in grief or sorrow; woeful.2. Being in a sorry condition; dismal-looking; dilapidated; run-down.

We are definitely NOT woebegone after

our trip to Memphis for the Doodle Romp.

hom·age

Pronunciation[hom-ij, om-]
–noun
Respect or reverence paid or rendered; In his speech he paid homage to Washington and Jefferson; the formal public acknowledgment by which a feudal tenant or vassal declared himself to be the man or vassal of his lord, owing him fealty and service; the relation this established of a vassal to his lord; something done or given in acknowledgement or consideration of the worth of another.

“And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today”.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. April 3, 1968 Memphis, TN

I happen to be in Memphis, TN today. I saw the many, many television trucks surrounding the Lorraine Hotel, the location where Dr. King was murdered and where today stands the National Civil Rights Museum. The media is marking this day in history, but will we? Forty years have passed and we’re still grappling with war and violence; we still grapple with race and religion.

I had the privilege to be in Memphis today. I also had the privilege to hear many people reciting the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech on Good Morning America today. It was moving and surreal as I reflected on how far we’ve come in forty years and how far we still have to go.

2008 also marks the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s Poor People's Campaign. The Poor People's Campaign challenged our nation to end the poverty afflicting millions of Americans of all races and confront the entrenched triple evils of racism, excessive materialism (poverty) and militarism that threaten our nation and world.

"There is nothing new about poverty," he said. "What is new is that we now have
the means and the know-how to lift every child out of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will!"

TODAY's WORD--

deus ex machina \DAY-uhs-eks-MAH-kuh-nuh; -nah; -MAK-uh-nuh\,

noun: 1)In ancient Greek and Roman drama, a god introduced by means of a crane to unravel and resolve the plot. 2) Any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an apparently insoluble difficulty.

Whenever I hear the words, deus ex machina, I think back to college to my Intro to Theatre Class. We gathered on the commons outside the Jones Theatre building with commissary tomato cans tied to our feet and a very poorly constructed mask impairing our vision. It's the only memory of Greek theatre left in my brain and any form of a deity saving plot immediately conjurs this image to my brain.

The images dotting the page are varyJPG files I picked from googling deus ex machina... I definitely think the Stressed Out Cat is my favorite.

Jollificating

Mal·a·prop mæl əˌprɒp/ Pronunciation Key -

Pronunciation[mal-uh-prop]
–noun – Mrs. Malaprop: A character in Sheridan’s The Rival (1775), noted for her misapplication of words. [from malapropos.]

Word History:
"She's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" and "He is the very pineapple of politeness" are two of the absurd pronouncements from Mrs. Malaprop that explain why her name became synonymous with ludicrous misuse of language. A character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals (1775), Mrs. Malaprop consistently uses language malapropos, that is, inappropriately. The word malapropos comes from the French phrase mal à propos, made up of mal, "badly," à, "to," and propos, "purpose, subject," and means "inappropriate."

The Rivals was a popular play, and Mrs. Malaprop became enshrined in a common noun, first in the form malaprop and later in malapropism, which is first recorded in 1849. Perhaps that is what Mrs. Malaprop feared when she said, "If I reprehend any thing in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!"

[Mrs. Malaprop examples]

• "O, he will dissolve my mystery!" [resolve]


• "He is the very pine-apple of politeness!" [pinnacle]


• "I have since laid Sir Anthony's preposition before her;" [proposition]

If anything, along with the fear of Alzheimer’s, my malapropism is chortled at by many dear friends. While I strive for an educated, tongue, my misrepresented mis-speak will ever prove I’m just a hillbilly from the Ozarks.

p.s.
chortled: chor·tle
Pronunciation verb, -tled, -tling, noun
–verb (used without object)-
to chuckle gleefully; to express with a gleeful chuckle, to chortle one’s joy.

Jollificating is not a real word. The correct word is ..jollification \jol-ih-fuh-KAY-shuhn\, noun: Merrymaking; festivity; revelry. It's also dictionary.com 's word of
the day for today.

There will be varying levels of jollification today

due to today's date, April 1st.

Don't be fooled.

in case you were wondering.....

Weekend Word Wrap by David - August 11, 2006 - 9:16 AM
As promised, today’s edition of the Weekend Word Wrap is on “malapropisms”—a word not to be confused with Bushisms. While George W. certainly has rattled off his fair share of them over the years (“We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces”), a Bushism shouldn’t be mistaken for a malapropism, nor vice-versa. Very often you’ll hear or read people using the the two interchangeably. The truth is, our president doesn’t usually speak in malapropisms. His “manglement” of the language is so unique, it needs its own term.