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The "B" Word: Barack, Baruch, Benediction and Blessing
Some were sceptical when Barack Obama told Jewish voters that his first name had the same Semitic root as Hebrew "Baruch," meaning "A blessing." [1] Although further speculation (not by Obama) that Barack was...
created by denseatoms | 3 years ago | updated 3 years ago
2722 views | 12 recommendations | 1 comment
2722 views | 12 recommendations | 1 comment
Would you salute a flag of beige?
Ho hum. “There was a perception that life here was," said Hanna Holborn Gray, former president of the University of Chicago, of her institution, "— I won’t say gray, that’s hard for me — but... Caucus = Powwow or Mechanics' Club?: You Decide
The word "caucus" sounds Latin to the core, and summons images of Roman Senators haggling away in their togas.
The fact may be that a caucus is more powwow than Capitoline deliberation.
Walter W. Skeat... "Coffee, tea or chai" -- History in a teapot
At a "working lunch" meeting, a coworker ordered a chai amid calls for lattes and regular coffees. That order reminded this writer that the name for the beverage known to us as "tea" has two basic forms in the...horizon - etymology & story - podictionary 560
Henry Kissinger once said: "“For other nations, Utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.”" This sounds like a nice sentiment but perhaps Kissinger should have chosen another word than horizon. As Mark Pattison, a...press - etymology & story - podictionary 558
In old movies you sometimes see the reporter elbowing his way through the crowd with a fedora on his head and stuck into the band of the hat is a little sign “press.” These days we talk about the media more than the press and this is appropriate because the news...destination - etymology & story - podictionary 557
The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English defines destination as: "“a place to which a person or thing is going”" This is in fact one of those examples of human laziness because this sense of destination is actually short for the phrase place of destination. The...ponder - etymology & story - podictionary 556
To ponder something is to think about it. Although the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is for ponder as a noun, the verb, as we use it, actually has a longer history. It appears first in the written record in the late 1300s and not surprisingly...text - etymology & story - podictionary 555
The other day I was listening to a radio piece about teenagers driving, what with all the grad parties that had been going on. What struck me was one cop’s description of impaired driving that extended beyond driving drunk. She said drivers were sometimes... mesmerized - etymology & story - podictionary 554
If I look up the word mesmerized in a modern dictionary it
will tell me that to be mesmerized is to be fascinated and almost put
into a trance, or hypnotized. The New Oxford American Dictionary gives the following example sentence:
"“she was mesmerized by the blue... mustard - etymology & story (podictionary 553)
As you slather that mustard on your burger little do you think of the Romans who named this delicious yellow condiment. Mustard is made from mustard seeds but the plant takes the name from the foodstuff and not the other way around. Mustard is made by crushing those...guillotine - podictionary 552 -etymology & story
Doctor Joseph Guillotin was a reformer and compassionate public representative in the days leading up to the French Revolution. It’s too bad that he’s remembered in the name we give the head-chopping instrument by which so many of France’s revolutionary victims...focus - podictionary 238
For those who have a burning desire to understand geometry (or Latin) focus focus focus.NowPublic on Facebook
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