Incorporeal Works

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me

The Word of the Day for July 31, 2009 is:

tribulation • \trib-yuh-LAY-shun\ • noun

: distress or suffering resulting from oppression or persecution; also : a trying experience

Felix’s Example Sentence:

A tremendous diversity of interpretations of biblical mentions of tribulations either having afflicted Christians, or not having occurred yet, have arisen since the books of the Bible were codified in the first few centuries after the fall of Jerusalem.

Did you know?

The writer and Christian scholar Thomas More, in his 1534 work “A dialoge of comforte against tribulation,” defined the title word as “euery such thing as troubleth and greueth [grieveth] a man either in bodye or mynde.” These days, however, the word “tribulation” is typically used as a plural count noun, paired with its alliterative partner “trial,” and relates less to oppression and more to any kind of uphill struggle. “Tribulation” derives via Middle English and Old French from the Latin verb “tribulare” (to oppress or afflict), related to “tribulum,” a noun meaning “threshing board.”

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me

The Word of the Day for July 30, 2009 is:
jackleg • \JACK-leg\ • adjective

1 a : characterized by unscrupulousness, dishonesty, or lack of professional standards
* b : lacking skill or training : amateur

2 : designed as a temporary expedient : makeshift

Felix’s Example Sentence:

The jackleg “deck carpenter” built a ramp to nowhere off the deck he was working on for my wife, then disappeared after she refused to pay him yet more money.

Did you know?

Don’t call someone “jackleg” unless you’re prepared for that person to get angry with you. Throughout its more than 150-year-old history in English, “jackleg” has most often been used as a term of contempt and deprecation, particularly in reference to lawyers and preachers. Its form echoes that of the similar “blackleg,” an older term for a cheating gambler or a worker opposed to union policies. Etymologists know that “blackleg” appeared over a hundred years before “jackleg,” but they don’t have any verifiable theories about the origin of either term.

…courtesy of Merriam-Webster, with minor modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for July 29, 2009 is:
con amore • \kahn-uh-MOR-ee\ • adverb

*1 : with love, devotion, or zest

2 : in a tender manner — used as a direction in music

Felix’s Example Sentence:

Pedro gazed con amore on his wife Carmelita, as she served up a delicious serving of chili con carne.

Did you know?

“No matter what the object is, whether business, pleasures, or the fine arts; whoever pursues them to any purpose must do so con amore.” Wise words — and the 18th-century Englishman who wrote them under the pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne may have been drawing on his own experience. At the time those words were written (around 1740), the author, whose real name was William Melmoth, had recently abandoned the practice of law to pursue his interest in writing and classical scholarship, which were apparently his true loves. In any case, by making use of “con amore,” a term borrowed from Italian, Melmoth gave us the first known use of the word in English prose.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

The body dies; the body’s beauty lives,
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of Winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden’s choral.

Poetry makes puzzles out of words, puzzles I have spent many happy hours trying to unravel, sometimes to my satisfaction, many times not, but the process, always pleasure, absorbs interest and makes distractions distant. The above six lines are from a poem by Wallace Stevens titled “Peter Quince at the Clavier“. I have been reading this poem at irregular intervals over thirty years. It still delights me, and confuses in fitful measures. The words flow like the wind, like the scarves of Susanna, the young woman bathing in the evening in a garden pool. Susanna’s story is in the apocryphal books of the Bible, attached to the Book of Daniel. A rousing story in itself, in Williams’s hands it acquires a sensuous music always rewarding to me.

Susanna is spied upon by a pair of old men whose lust is at odds with the dignity of age. She refuses their advances, is charged in revenge by them with a liason with a young man, and endures a public hearing. A searching cross examination of the old men by Daniel clears her, and condemns them.

So much for the material worked to a different purpose by Williams. His poem weaves musings on beauty, transitory nature, passion, memory and music, always music, the clavier of the title is the language of the poem. I have read that this poem has been set to music several times. I have heard none of the pieces, but it seems right that the music of these words should have been matched by notes, chords, measures to be heard as accompaniment to the poetry.

Susanna in her bath finds melody;

In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of Springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

She leaves her bath, shivering in the winds that flow like her scarves, and in a blare of horn music, the elders are upon her. The noise of her attendant Byzantines sound like tambourines, but the accusations of the elders isolate Susanna from the regard of others.

There follows a meditation on beauty and mortality that reverses conventions on beauty and immortality;

Beauty is momentary in the mind –
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

Susanna’s physical beauty has taken on a life of its own and caused her near destruction, and through the intervention of Daniel taken the lives of the morally corrupt elders. In the mind, beauty is a concept no longer lived than the intellectual construct, definition, elucidation – cold words – formed in the mind. The physical blow that physical beauty can deal lives on, and is replicated in the beauty of Susanna’s successors.

Mortality claims the individuals, the maidens of the lines first listed here, but their celebration lives on, not as a quantitative thought, but as a moment in a long line of moments when beauty lives in the flesh, and is immortal.

…courtesy of Merriam-Webster, with minor modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for July 26, 2009 is:

verbatim • \ver-BAY-tim\ • adverb

: in the exact words : word for word

Felix’s Example Sentence:

In the Nero Wolfe series of detective stories written by Rex Stout, Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin, could repeat long conversations verbatim, a great asset for a detective.

Did you know?

Latin has a phrase for “exactly as written”: “verbatim ac litteratim,” which literally means “word for word and letter for letter.” Like the “verbatim” in that Latin phrase, the English “verbatim” means “word for word.” As you may have noticed, there’s a “verb” in “verbatim” — and that’s no mere coincidence. Both “verb” and “verbatim” are derived from the Latin word for “word,” which is “verbum.” Other common English words that share this root include “adverb,” “proverb,” and “verbose.” Even the word “word” itself is related. “Verbatim” can also be an adjective meaning “being in or following the exact words” (as in “a verbatim report”) and a rarer noun referring to an account, translation, or report that follows the original word for word.

…courtesy of Merriam-Webster, with minor modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for July 23, 2009 is:
skosh • \SKOHSH\ • noun

: a small amount : bit, smidgen

Felix’s Example Sentence:

A proper, very dry, martini needs only a skosh of vermouth for the true devotee of that drink.

Did you know?

The word “skosh” comes from the Japanese word “sukoshi,” which is pronounced “skoh shee” and means “a tiny bit” or “a small amount.” The Japanese word was shortened by U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan after World War II. Later, in the Korean War, a small soldier was often nicknamed “Skosh.” In civilian-speak, “skosh” can be used as a noun (as in our example sentence) or adverbially (as in “I’m a skosh tired”).

Buried among ranting comments, mostly from obsessive bloggers, this piece from the New York Times summarizes the anti-Obama “birther” conspiracy fringe movement, and the problem it presents to Republicans:

The group who keep insisting that Obama was born not in Hawaii, but Kenya, and is thus ineligible to be president — were a consistent side plot to the 2008 election. But even with Mr. Obama firmly ensconced in the Oval Office — and even with copies of Mr. Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate in circulation — the birthers’ passion does not seem to be fading away. Just ask Delaware Representative Mike Castle, a moderate Republican who faced an angry town hall meeting full of people who insisted Mr. Obama was Kenyan-born. MSNBC posted the video on its “Hardball” program.

Legislation has already been introduced in the House that would compel presidential candidates to prove their American citizenship; Chris Matthews recently interviewed Representative John Campbell, one of the legislation’s sponsors. (For his part, Mr. Campbell said that the bill was not about Mr. Obama, and pressed by Mr. Matthews, said he believed the president was a U.S. citizen.)

Now, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh are getting behind the birthers. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder takes a look at the Republican party’s choices when it comes to the group: “If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.”

Those who cannot accept, for whatever reason, the fact of a convincing electoral victory last November by Barack Hussein Obama continue to pursue what amounts to a conspiracy theory