#72

Quotidian WORD : (noun)
A word that you are supposed to use all day long. In as many ways as possible.



http://www.storyofstuff.com/

#71

The pansy or pansy violet is a plant cultivated as a garden flower. Pansies are derived from Viola tricolor also called the Heartsease or 'Johnny Jump Up'. However, many garden varieties are hybrids and are referred to as Viola × wittrockiana but sometimes they are listed under the name Viola tricolor hortensis. The name "pansy" also appears as part of the common name of a number of wildflowers belonging, like the cultivated pansy, to the genus Viola. Some unrelated species, such as the Pansy Monkeyflower, also have "pansy" in their name.

The name pansy is derived from the French word pensée meaning "thought", and was so named because the flower resembles a human face; in August it nods forward as if deep in thought. Because of this the pansy has long been a symbol of Freethought[1] and has been used in the literature of the American Secular Union. Humanists use it too, as the pansy's current appearance was developed from the Heartsease by two centuries of intentional crossbreeding of wild plant hybrids. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) uses the pansy symbol extensively in its lapel pins and literature.

The word "pansy" has indicated an effeminate male since Elizabethan times and its usage as a disparaging term for a man or boy who is effeminate (as well as for an avowedly homosexual man) is still used. (There is a queercore musical band called Pansy Division, drawing on this association.) The word "ponce" (which has now come to mean a pimp) and the adjective "poncey" (effeminate) also derive from "pansy".

The pansy remains a favorite image in the arts, culture, and crafts, from needlepoint to ceramics. It is also the flower of Osaka, Japan.

* In 1827, Pierre-Joseph Redouté painted Bouquet of Pansies.
* In 1926, Georgia O'Keeffe created a famous painting of a black pansy called simply, Pansy. She followed with White Pansy in 1927.
* D. H. Lawrence wrote a book of poetry entitled Pansies: Poems by D. H. Lawrence.
* In William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, the juice of a pansy blossom ("before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound, and maidens call it love-in-idleness") is a love potion: "the juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, will make or man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees." (Act II, Scene I see also: Oberon at II, i). Since the cultivated pansy had not yet been developed, "pansy" here means the wild Heartsease, and the idea of using it as a love potion was no doubt suggested by that name. The folkloric language of flowers is more traditional than scientific, with conventional interpretations, similar to the clichés about animals such as the "clever fox" or "wise owl". Ophelia's oft-quoted line, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts", in Hamlet (Act IV, Scene V) comes from this tradition: if a maiden found a honeyflower and a pansy left for her by an admirer, it would mean "I am thinking of our forbidden love" in symbol rather than in writing.

#70

camarilla \kam-uh-RIL-uh; -REE-yuh\, noun:
A group of secret and often scheming advisers, as of a king; a cabal or clique.

Mr Kiselev likened Yeltsin's entourage to a "camarilla" . . . which would turn Russia "into a gigantic banana republic corrupted from top to bottom by a rotten clique of demagogues".
-- Marcus Warren, "Moguls at war over control of Kremlin", Daily Telegraph, July 23, 1999

The arrest in October 1976 of Mao's radical camarilla, the so-called Gang of Four, led by his maniacal widow, Jiang Qing, was the second "liberation," delivering the Chinese from the most extreme forms of ideological conditioning.
-- Willem Van Kemenade, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc.


Camarilla comes from Spanish, literally, "a small room," from Late Latin camera, "chamber" ("vault; arched roof" in Latin), from Greek kamara, "vault."

#69

nonagenarian \non-uh-juh-NAIR-ee-uhn; no-nuh-\, noun:
A ninety year old person; someone whose age is in the nineties.

There seemed to be relatively few octogenarians and nonagenarians alive in the early 1930s. Contrast that with my current practice, in which I see a great number of patients in their eighties and nineties.
-- Stephen L. Richmond, "Tales from the Death Certificate", Physician Assistant, January 1999

Good health is essential, of course--a gift that none of these nonagenarians, having outlived friends and loved ones, takes for granted.
-- Roy Huffman, "Working Past 90", Fortune, November 13, 2000


Nonagenarian derives from Latin nonagenarius, "containing or consisting of ninety," from nonageni-, "ninety each", ultimately from novem, "nine," as in November, originally the ninth month of the old Roman calendar.


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Highest Recorded Number of Children
The highest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69, to the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782) of Shuya, Russia. Between 1725 and 1765, in a total of 27 confinements, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets. 67 of them survived infancy.

#68

Chromophobia - Fear of colors.

#67

http://www.isittuesday.com/

#66

scrabble \SKRAB-uhl\, intransitive verb:

1. To scrape or scratch with the hands or feet.
2. To struggle by or as if by scraping or scratching.
3. To proceed by clawing with the hands and feet; to scramble.
4. To make irregular, crooked, or unmeaning marks; to scribble; to scrawl.

transitive verb:
1. To mark with irregular lines or letters; to scribble on or over.
2. To make or obtain by scraping together hastily.

noun:
1. The act or an instance of scrabbling.
2. A scribble.

Mice kept me awake by scrabbling in the uncovered garbage can.
-- Edith Anderson, Love in Exile

Rather frantically I scrabble for the recollection of what exactly it does give me.
-- Robert McLiam Wilson, Ripley Bogle

In the huddle they'd talk about running "post patterns," and they'd scrabble plays in the grass.
-- George Plimpton, quoted in The Last Patrician, by Michael Knox Beran

Heard by Maidment but not seen, the dog, called Rosie, yawned, then pushed herself on to her feet, slipping about on the polished boards with a scrabble of paws.
-- William Trevor, Death in Summer


Scrabble derives from Dutch schrabbelen, from Middle Dutch, frequentative of schrabben, "to scrape; to scratch."





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