trapeze

(tra-PEEZ, truh-)

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

foursquare

(FOHR-skwair)

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

Triangulation in politics Illustration: Leigh Heydon

Of all the shapes in the world, the square has a particularly bad reputation. No one wants to be called a square. To be square is to be unhip, uncool, not-with-it. As they say, be there or be square! What has this straightforward shape done to deserve it? Perhaps it *is* in its shape. All sides are the same, all angles are right, everything is perfect. And we know nobody likes those who have everything together.

But everything is not lost for our humble square. When it comes to describing upright behavior we go to no other than this much-maligned shape. A square deal is a fair and honest transaction, a square meal is a substantial and nourishing meal. We like square shooters, people who are honest and fair. It's best to square up (to pay a bill) and square things away (to put in order). Though sometimes in spite of our best efforts we get back to square one (from one of the games in which we traverse a sequence of squares, such as a board game). At any rate, whatever you do, just don't try to square the circle (attempt the impossible).

In this week's A.Word.A.Day we'll see words with allusions to geometrical shapes.

triangulate

(try-ANG-gyuh-layt)

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

It’s Mother’s Day – MY day – when I am supposed to be the Queen for the Day, waited on hand and foot, breakfast in bed with burnt toast and undone eggs and relishing every single little bite.  

unavailing

(uhn-uh-VAY-ling)

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. -Lee Iacocca, automobile executive (b. 1924)

Good morning, Netizens…

David Horsey has the temerity of a street smart gangster from the East Los Angeles Hood, with testicles the size of footballs. During my observation of him, he has taken on nearly every political and social figure one could ever think of, and the hell of it is, he has gotten away with it unscathed. That is saying something in this age of Fundamentalist kooks from places like Yemen, home of vapid idiots claiming to have insider knowledge of the “true” meaning of Islamic laws and traditions.

Now we have the latest permutation of designer underwear bombs built and designed by Ibrahim Hassan Asiri, a world-reknown bomb designer well-known for his underwear bomb that fizzled in December 2009, when a hapless lad from Africa tried to blow up a plane over Detroit and instead seriously singed his privates. The new-and-improved explosive device, however, never made it onto a plane or even close to a runway, thanks in part to some excellent sleuthing by Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

Putting explosive devices in underwear may seem pretty outlandish to traditional Western thought, until you consider the wacky mindset of Islamic extremists. It doesn't seem the least bit outrageous that they would willingly don a pair of tighty-whities with a little explosive thrown in for good measure. Why worry about ones exploding private parts when good terrorists are going to Paradise where there might be a surplus of willing virgins willing to sacrifice their innocense for a terrorist that, it seems, doesn't have any equipment left on his privacy rack anymore.

If I were Asiri, I would be keeping an ultra-sharp eye on the horizon for any signs of drone aircraft about to pounce on his butt, and put his underwear retail store out of business permanently. I would be my bottom dollar that somewhere the CIA is not only targeting his bombs,, but probably his entire operation.

That might be considered urban renewal for Yemen, after all.

Dave

consuetudinary

(kon-swi-TOOD-n-er-ee, -TYOOD-)

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

discrepant

(di-SKREP-uhnt)

Explore “discrepant” in the Visual Thesaurus.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

(di-SKREP-uhnt)

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

casuistry

(KAZ-oo-i-stree)

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. -Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (1689-1755)

For a change, this week we won't fit words into pigeonholes, we won't put labels on them, we won't assign them to a particular category or arrange them into a theme. We'll just let them be.

The five words we've selected have nothing in common… well, if you try hard enough, you can probably find something, but enjoy this bouquet of assorted words, or a salmagundi of syllables, if you will.

tenable

(TEN-uh-buhl)

Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. -Japanese proverb

satyr

(SAY-tuhr, SAT-uhr)

Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

hector

(HEK-tuhr)

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it. -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

 tartar

(TAHR-tuhr)

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

nestor

Art: Joseph-Désiré Court, 1820

(NES-tuhr)

That sorrow which is the harbinger of joy is preferable to the joy which is followed by sorrow. -Saadi, poet (c.1213-1291) [Gulistan]

Actors act, curators curate, and orators orate. But doctors don't doct^*, victors don't vict, and pastors don't past. Such is the English language. And we certainly don't want ancestors to ancest, traitors to trait, or gators to gate.

This week A.Word.A.Day will feature five people, real and fictional, whose names may appear to be derived from a verb form, but aren't. Mentors, for example, don't ment, though that doesn't prevent people from forming nouns such as 'mentee' and verbs like 'to mentor'.

This week's words are eponyms, a word derived from someone's name.

mentor

(MEN-tohr, -tuhr)

Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. -Washington Irving, writer (1783-1859)

touché

(too-SHAY)

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. -Pablo Picasso, painter, and sculptor (1881-1973)

riposte or ripost

(ri-POST)

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. -Max Beerbohm, essayist, parodist, and caricaturist (1872-1956)

elan

(ay-LAHN^*)

*this syllable is nasal in French

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

Good morning, Netizens…

America's image has taken a severe hit with the scandal of the Secret Service, members of the Armed Forces in Columbia. This gives President Obama yet another mini-crisis that the Republicans can use against him. After thinking a moment, recalling former President Bill Clinton and John Edwards' inept sexual fumbling around while in a public office, I guess my question would be whatever were these men thinking about? Whether from moral principle, fidelity to wives, concern for doing a good job, mere frugality or simple fear of getting caught, there are plenty of men – certainly almost all the men I know – who would not have done what these Secret Service agents did.

Perhaps it only complicates matters further that in Columbia, prostitution is legal. Oh well, let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die. After all, we are armed and paid to take a bullet for the President, are we not? I'm afraid that is not the way most citizens see it.

Dave

forte

(fort, FOHR-tay)

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)