A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 786

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AWADmail Issue 786

A Weekly Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Tidbits about Words and Language

Sponsor’s Message: Sometimes the way things were is better than the way things are. We call it “Old’s Cool”, and we’d like to invite this week’s Email of the Week winner, Audrey Kopp (see below), as well as anyone who loves wit, excellence, adventure, and a few typographical errors every once in a while to enjoy our cool sardine-can edition of One Up! -- The Wicked/Smart Word Game FREE with every purchase of $25 or more. Just use coupon code: “summerfunshine”. SHOP NOW.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

Fears of British English’s Disappearance Are Overblown
The Economist
Permalink

Why Do Human Beings Speak So Many Languages?
The Conversation
Permalink

A Microsoft Font May Have Exposed Corruption in Pakistan
The Verge
Permalink

Photo: Audrey Kopp

Email of the Week -- Brought to you by One Up! -- A can of perfect summer funshine.
From: Audrey Kopp (audreystory verizon.net)
Subject: lateritious

Picture taken of this lateritious work of art on July 4, 2017, on Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA.

Audrey Kopp, Marina del Rey, California

From: Ken Doerr (ken.doerr btinternet.com)
Subject: lateritious

Laterite is the name given to a soft stone found around the globe used, commonly, to make bricks. I came across it in Chad where we used it to make road surfaces.

Ken Doerr, Chester, UK

From: Lynn Mancini (mancini dtcc.edu)
Subject: Lateritious

Thank you for teaching me a new “five vowels in order” word. I had long known about “facetious” and “abstemious”, but I hadn’t realized there was a third word in English that contained all five vowels in alphabetical order. Admittedly, “lateritious” does have an extra “i”, and, unlike the other two words, it can’t be turned into an adverb to incorporate “y”, but it is still a gem even so.

Lynn Mancini, Newark, Delaware

See also this and this and this.
-Anu Garg

From: Andrew Pressburger (andpress sympatico.ca)
Subject: Empyrean

Schubert’s Ninth Symphony is known by many names. Wagner referred to its “heavenly length”, for example. But while on music, let us mention the waltz Music of the Spheres a composition by Josef Strauss, whom his famous brother Johann Strauss Jr. called the most talented of us all.

Andrew Pressburger, Toronto, Canada

From: Linda Owens (lindafowens netzero.net)
Subject: niveous

In the old days, when I was young and adventurous, I used to go winter hiking with other outdoor enthusiasts. A common preventative for frostbite was to smear Nivea cream all over our faces and other exposed body parts. It was sticky and gooey, and I felt Niveous, but I never got frostbite.

Linda Owens, Exeter, Rhode Island

From: Fred Perri (f.b1 verizon.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--niveous

I wish I had known this over half a century ago so I could have screamed at my father in the attic moving the TV antenna, “It’s still niveous!”

Fred Perri, Scituate, Rhode Island

From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: lateritious and coadjutant

Who would have thunk that I’d be repurposing a photo I’d taken a few weeks ago of a funky graffiti-ed brick wall outside Los Angeles’s downtown Arts District’s Angel City Brewery, in this week’s cartoon illustration for our word “lateritious”? Hmm... maybe my signature frog had some inkling? Ha!

“Sun King”, Louis XIV, could well have come from a long line of royal “bleeders”... one of the downsides of Euro nobility often interbreeding to solidify power. Here, I’m referencing a royal affliction, hemophilia, to support an admitted royal groaner-of-a-pun... “coagulants”, indeed!

PS: I confess, my afflicting French monarch Louis XIV with hemophilia may be stretching the bounds of historical truth (hmm... an “alternative fact”?). Yet it does make for a ripping fun cartoon scenario, no? Sadly, many a male descendant of long-lived British Queen Victoria suffered from this genetic quirk.

Alex McCrae, Van Nuys, California

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Anagrams of this week’s words

The text in each box is an anagram of the text in other boxes.

1. retral 2. lateritious 3. coadjutant 4. empyrean 5. niveous	=	1. last 2. rust red 3. our mate 4. top elevation 5. ice in January	=	1. later 2. puce 3. a junior 4. astral, divine unto a tee 5. stormy
		-Dharam Khalsa, Burlington, North Carolina (dharamkk2 gmail.com)		-Robert Jordan, Lampang, Thailand (alfiesdad ymail.com)

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: limericks

They went straight to the rearmost pew,
Since those restless teenagers knew
“A retral seat
Just can’t be beat
For rituals we giggle through.”
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

In the mathematical labyrinth of the cosmic fractal,
inhabited by the Sun, the Moon, and the luminaries astral,
where a billion billion is still very small,
delusions of grandeur take a big fall
and the egotist sinks to the position retral.
-Shyamal Mukherji, Wakefield, Massachusetts (mukherjis hotmail.com)

A word to the wise: When things fecal
are being debated, the heat’ll
soon set off a fan.
Escape if you can,
or at least find a seat that is retral!
-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

On the bus Rosa Parks and her people
Were confined to the area retral.
Though some may still long
For an era bygone,
That it’s over is cause to be gleeful.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Of our prez I’m suspicious,
We are NOT where I’d wish us!
So I think, instead,
I’ll just bang my head
Hard on a wall lateritious.
-Barbara Barthelemy, Normal, Illinois (barbbb89 comcast.net)

No yeast, no gluten, no dairy,
That health-lover’s loaf makes me wary.
Nuts and oats are suspicious,
Such bread’s lateritious,
While brioche is extraordinary.
-Phyllis Morrow, Fairbanks, Alaska (phyllismorrow1 gmail.com)

A crime occurred, heinous and vicious,
In a desolate fort lateritious.
A girl bared her knees
And waist in the breeze.
(In Saudi, that’s seen as pernicious.)
-Anna C Johnston, Coarsegold, California (ajohnston13 gmail.com)

“I’m proud that you’re so avaricious,”
Said Ivanka, “But Dad, they’re suspicious.
In men I am keen
On dishonest and mean,
But you’re hitting a wall lateritious.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

When they chose him as Donald’s coadjutant,
it amazed almost every inhabitant.
‘Cause Ivanka he married
we got stuck with Jared.
Now we’re under nepotical management!
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

Trump needs the right coadjutant.
Someone to tell him his constant
Tweeting all day long
Is certainly wrong.
It just makes him sound petulant.
-Lois Mowat, Orinda, California (loscamil aol.com)

When told of his choir boys’ abuse,
The Pope’s brother had an excuse.
Coadjutants did it.
I hate to admit it.
Though choir director, I missed the cues.
-Anna C Johnston, Coarsegold, California (ajohnston13 gmail.com)

“As our Savior’s devoted coadjutants,”
Said the bishop, “You must observe abstinence.
But if urges propel
You to sin we won’t tell,
So don’t worry in case you have accidents.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

The words that you send shed much light;
I’m conscious of words day and night,
And there are just a few
That give more than their due --
Such a one is “empyrean” -- true delight!
-Marcia Sinclair, Newmarket, Canada (marciasinclair rogers.com)

She once met a lad quite lascivious
whose secretions were ample and niveous!
So naive, her criterion
was but pleasure, empyrean --
soon she found herself roundly conceiv-eous!
-Brenda J. Gannam, Brooklyn, New York (gannamconsulting earthlink.net)

The astronomer wanted fun.
His new bride was the lucky one.
Their lovemaking delight
Lasted all through the night.
He declared, “It’s empyrean.”
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

If you’re looking for discourse empyrean,
These days you’ll find Washington wearyin’.
But if tickled to death
By King Lear and Macbeth,
It’s hypnotic like drama Shakespearean.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

As soon as anyone met her,
He’d see dandruff on her sweater.
To the flakes niveous
She was oblivious;
She really should have known better.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

Miss Lulu, with dance moves lascivious,
Made the other performers seem hideous.
Her skilled undulations
Caused worldwide sensations,
Though her morals were purely just niveous.
-Judith Marks-White, Westport, Connecticut (joodthmw gmail.com)

Robert Frost wrote of woods dark and niveous,
Of regret and of choices multiveous.
This poet’s collection
invites introspection.
No reader can long stay oblivious.
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

When the weather outside’s getting niveous,
It’s perfect for pastimes lascivious.
Some music and wine
And black lace are just fine.
To the blizzard you’ll soon be oblivious.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Took these words and random into the ground

Does in retral fertilization result in breech births?

When the fire truck arrived, we yelled from our penthouse, “Will that lateritious?”

Wondering where to set up camp we were told, “Coadjutant to the others.”

The pervert was jailed when police caught empyrean in my window.

If an herbivore is transported in a snowstorm, does it become car niveous?

Phil Graham, Tulsa, Oklahoma

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Television’s perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don’t have to concentrate. You don’t have to react. You don’t have to remember. You don’t miss your brain because you don’t need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man’s nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn’t got the price of a television set. -Raymond Thornton Chandler, writer (23 Jul 1888-1959)

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