lychnobite

Was the word for 8 February. The following was in the description:

"lychnobite (LIK-nuh-byt) noun

One who works at night and sleeps during the day.

[From Greek lychnos (lamp) + bios (life).]

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

"Before the enfeebled of the dull-eyed lychnobite of the press could
succumb to its influence, the cheerful voice of the magician awoke him."
Observer Journal (Dunkirk, New York); Nov 5, 1887."

I don't understand the sentence quoted from the Observer
Journal of Nov. 5, 1887.

1) Isn't enfeebled an adjective? So what does it modify?
2) Is the implied person a servant of the lychnobite?
3) What is the antecedent of "its"?
4) Who is "him"?

David: Welcome!!!

By coincidence I have had published a treatise on the effect of Zen in promoting sleep. I can't post it here obviously for fear of occupying OT disk space but if you're interested I am dalehileman@verizon.net

It would, I suppose, be nice to have the whole article before us to answer these questions, but I'll make a stab.

1) I suspect that "enfeebled" is being used nominally here. Kind of like "the young and the restless" or "fortune favors the brave."

2) I think the implied person is the lychnobite.

3) Looks to me like the antecedent of "its" is "the cheerful voice of the magician."

4) "[H]im" is "the enfeebled of the dull-eyed lychnobite of the press."

Just my WAGs, mind.

It does sound reasonable and I'm glad you could figure it out. Thank you.

I'm not making any promises as to its validity. You might want to check with the good folks at wordorigins. They've got the research skills to find the original article and the language skills to answer your question.

Fal thank you most kindly for that link. I was unable to add it to my Faves (by clicking on the yellow star), however, because in a recent software change Bill apparently had inadvertently created in Windows/Outlook another glitch that prevents it. If any one else has had that experience, however, I'd be interested to learn how he coped with it

Edited to remark that I have learned how it's done: In the past you clicked on the yellow star but now there's another box in the task bar (if you can find it) containing the same star but with a green cross in the foreground

Yes I know Bill isn't there any more so for newcomers, I use him as a symbol for everything wrong with Microsoft and the rest of the software industry

By the way if you can't find "refresh" it has been squezed into a small square and moved to another location. But if you miss it as I did, it now looks like this: ',

Fal thanks again

PS: Incidentally and forgive me for an OT, but in Bill's defense it no longer takes a routine of 43 keystrokes to copy and backup an email from Outlook to your serial external hard drive, but now only two or three--Gosh thanks Bill

And to think to become aware of the problem and rectify it took you only 17 years!!!

I'd like to see these 43 itemised - I started using Outlook in 1999 and even back then it only around six. Even more interesting is the question of how you were using Outlook 17 years ago when it was first released (for MS-DOS), in 1995.

lat, Welcome!!!

I might have exaggerated just a bit, though Bill did leave us with a legacy--and this is true now, literally-- that in a long file when he decides there are too many mistakes, he deletes all the spellcheck green wigglies whereupon it actually requires 18 keystrokes to replace

Thereupon I had to devise a macro for the purpose and now I can restore them in an instant, whereupon they stay for a week or two before he deletes them again and I have to repeat it

Of course one might ask the obvious question if he thought there were too many of them then why now does he leave them in place for so long

I had another correspondent who experienced the same problem, asking me to Fwd my macro for his use too. But in the meantime Bill thwarted me with another change in his software that made it not work, I presume in a later edition of Windows/Word

God bless Bill Gates and thank you lat for your interest. If you would like a copy of the algorithm or the macro itself or chat on any subject at all I am dalehileman@verizon.net