Oma's Advocaat Recipe

This is my great-grandmother's recipe.

Ingredients

10 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 oz of spirit per serving - can use gin, rum, brandy, or cognac (I prefer genever, or rye)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 dash nutmeg

Process

Crack eggs into a bowl, whisk until mostly uniform. 

Pour in sugar.

Double-boil eggs and sugar, stirring continuously (takes about 3-5 min). 

Add vanilla and nutmeg. 

Blend briefly, serve.

Stir in 1 oz of spirit of choice into 4 oz serving

2017 variant: use 1/2 tsp vanilla, 2 dashes nutmeg, 2 dashes cinammon, 1 dash pumpkin pie spice

2020 variant: use 1 1/2 cups white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar + 2017 variant

Merry Christmas 2020

Halloween Pumpkin 2020

 

Winter (in Blashyrkh) is Coming

 

Late, but not Never (Favorite Death Metal Albums of 2019)

In the last two years or so I've drifted away from seeking out new metal bands. My interests seemed more in line with piano-heavy music like the jazz and hard-bop scenes from the 1930s to the 1960s. I was listening to piano music and playing the piano several hours a day. 

This last July I lost two people in my life. The first, a family member who might have been my earliest musical inspiration for playing piano; and the second, a friend with whom I played in my first metal band. Though neither death surprised me much given some long-standing health issues, they were a lot to swallow within the space of a week. I thought about the music that each of these men enjoyed playing. I felt that the piano side was covered, so maybe it was time to dig back into some metal. 

I aggregated various "best-of" lists from 2019, listened to 22 selections (mostly on my way to funerals) and winnowed down my favorites. My reviews are always critical and sometimes petty, but these are a few of the albums I really enjoyed:

	Abyssal - A Beacon in the Husk This was pretty sludgy, and while it added some thrashy drums and doomy vocals as it progressed, it never lost the shitty guitars which sounded alternately jangly or bassy and slightly out of tune, almost like someone was playing in the next practice space over. This is a sound I like a lot. There are moments of sheer glory, but they are familiar instead of surprising, and I wish I had written them as they seem so natural. Much of the tempo is slow, and frequently this feels vaguely meaningful. The thrashing of the faster sections never reach for that clinical precision of modern technical death metal, instead happily banging away in a garage somewhere. Beacon retains its sliminess with gritty sound and occasionally sloppy songcraft, which somehow lends authenticity to the project. The songs are noisy and ugly and catchy as shit. The album is a little long. After 58 minutes, I was a little exhausted from the pummeling.
	Gatecreeper - Deserted The Boss HM-2 rides again! That classic Swedish death-metal guitar tone was so in my face as this album opened that I felt like I had skipped ahead and missed the classic horror movie sample. The production was moderately clean but had enough dirt in it to keep me interested. The riffing was a little obvious and at times could be said to lack variety or creativity. The D-beat drumming felt immediately familiar and the whammy bar work was another throw back to classic death-metal. It sure sounded big, but it was missing the essential claustrophobia of my favorite early 90s Swedish death metal albums.
	Memoriam - Requiem For Mankind This album jumps right in with melodies reminiscent of an early 2000s death metal sound, clean enough to understand the vocals, grimy enough to rock. The album is chock-full of surface-level hooks, catchy enough, but only a few seem to stick in my mind. While not weird or astonishing, it’s a pretty solid album. Reading a little about the history of this band made a lot of sense towards explaining their sound and their appeal.

Word of the Week 05/17/20: Menhir

From Wikipedia:

A menhir (from Brittonic languages: maen or men, "stone" and hir or hîr, "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large man-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found solely as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar stones. Menhirs' size can vary considerably, but they are generally uneven and squared, often tapering towards the top.

They are widely distributed across Europe, Africa and Asia, but most numerous in Western Europe; particularly in Ireland, Great Britain, Brittany and France, where there are 1,200 menhirs in northwest France alone. They were constructed during many different periods across pre-history as part of the larger megalithic cultures in Europe and near areas.

Some menhirs have been erected next to buildings that often have an early or current religious significance. One example is the South Zeal Menhir in Devon, which formed the basis for a 12th-century monastery built by lay monks. The monastery later became the Oxenham Arms hotel, at South Zeal, and the standing stone remains in place in the ancient snug bar at the hotel.

Where menhirs appear in groups, often in a circular, oval, henge or horseshoe formation, they are sometimes called megalithic monuments. These are sites of ancient religious ceremonies, sometimes containing burial chambers. The exact function of menhirs has provoked more debate than practically any other issue in European pre-history. Over the centuries, they have variously been thought to have been used by Druids for human sacrifice, used as territorial markers, or elements of a complex ideological system, or functioned as early calendars. Until the nineteenth century, antiquarians did not have substantial knowledge of prehistory, and their only reference points were provided by classical literature. The developments of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology have significantly advanced scientific knowledge in this area.

The word menhir was adopted from French by 19th-century archaeologists. The introduction of the word into general archaeological usage has been attributed to the 18th-century French military officer Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne. It is a combination of two words of the Breton language: maen and hir. In modern Welsh, they are described as maen hir, or "long stone".

Almost nothing is known of the social organization or religious beliefs of the people who erected the menhirs. There is not even any trace of these people's language; however we do know that they buried their dead and had the skills to grow cereal, farm and make pottery, stone tools and jewelry. Identifying their uses remains speculative. Until recently, menhirs were associated with the Beaker people, who inhabited Europe during the European late Neolithic and early Bronze Age—later third millennium BC, c. 2800–1800 BC. However, recent research into the age of megaliths in Brittany strongly suggests a far older origin, perhaps back to six to seven thousand years ago.

Many menhirs are engraved with megalithic art. This often turned them into anthropomorphic stelae, although images of objects such as stone axes, ploughs, shepherd crooks and yokes were common. With the exception of the stone axe, none of these motifs are definite, and the name used to describe them is largely for convenience. Some menhirs were broken up and incorporated into later passage graves, where they had new megalithic art carved with little regard for the previous pictures. It is not known if this re-use was deliberate or if the passage grave builders just saw menhirs as a convenient source of stone (Le Roux 1992).

During the Middle Ages, standing stones were believed to have been built by the giants who lived before the biblical flood. Many of the megaliths were destroyed or defaced by early Christians; it is estimated that some 50,000 megaliths once stood in Northern Europe, where almost 10,000 now remain.

From the Provence & Beyond site:

In France, Brittany stands out in the distribution of menhirs by virtue of both the density of monuments and the diversity of types. The largest surviving menhir in the world is located in Locmariaquer, Brittany, and is known as the Grand Menhir Brisé (Great Broken Menhir). Once nearly 20 meters high, today, it lies fractured into four pieces, but would have weighed near 330 tons when intact.

Alignments of menhirs are common, the most famous being the Carnac stones in Brittany, where more than 3000 individual menhirs are arranged in four groups, and arrayed in rows stretching across four kilometres. Each set is organised with the tallest stones at the western end, and shorter ones at the eastern end. Some end with a semicircular cromlech, but many have since fallen or been destroyed.

The second largest concentration of menhirs in France is at the Cham des Bondons, located on high open limestone plain in the granitic Cévennes. The site is today protected by the Parc National des Cévennes. From the time pastoralism was established, the site was kept open by controlled burning and grazing.

From the Si Belle Villa site:

A Menhir is a tall, vertically placed standing stone, whilst a Dolmen is a table-like structure comprising a large slab laid horizontally on two smaller stone supports (orthostats). When there are a number of dolmens side by side, it is described in French as a covered passageway. The entrance is usually protected by a Menhir positioned within a few metres and which has ‘magical’ qualities.

What was the purpose of menhirs? Firstly, they come in different shapes: convex, triangular, trapezoid or oval. Convex menhirs mark the entrance to a dolmen, carefully positioned to allow the rays of the rising sun to light the end of the chamber once a year, on either a solstice or an equinox. Thus they are astronomical monuments. It seems that triangular menhirs indicate routes, a map, directions… whilst ovals designate a border, a watershed, or indeed a memorial to a notable event in that place in the past.

Word of the Week 05/10/20: Concatenation

From Merriam-Webster:

A group of things linked together or occurring together in a way that produces a particular result or effect.

From Vocabulary.com:

1. A series of things depending on each other as if linked together

Concatenation refers to a series of things — ideas, events, animals — that are somehow interconnected, individual parts that are linked to form a single unit, like the links in a chain.

If you think about a chain, you can imagine the individual links — they move separately, yet are linked so they always move together as well. This aptly describes concatenation, the state of several things being bound together. We can see the meaning from the word's source, the Latin concatenare. It comes from catenare, "to make a chain, to link," which itself comes from catena, "a chain." Add the prefix con-, meaning "together," and we get the meaning "to link together."

Word of the Week 05/03/20: Facetious

From Merriam-Webster:

1. Joking or jesting often inappropriately
2. Meant to be humorous or funny

Facetious stresses a desire to produce laughter and may be derogatory in implying dubious or ill-timed attempts at wit or humor.

Facetious came to English from the Middle French word facetieux "joke, jesting remark", which traces to the Latin word facetia, meaning "cleverness, wit," in plural sense, "amusing things, jests."

From Dictionary.com:

1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally
2. amusing; humorous
3. lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous

From Urban Dictionary:

Along with abstemious, facetious is one of two words in the English language containing all five vowels in alphabetical order.

Word of the Week 04/26/20: Astroturfing

From Wikipedia:

Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection. The term astroturfing is derived from AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to resemble natural grass, as a play on the word "grassroots". The implication behind the use of the term is that instead of a "true" or "natural" grassroots effort behind the activity in question, there is a "fake" or "artificial" appearance of support.

Although the term "astroturfing" was not yet developed, an early example of the practice was in Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. In the play, Cassius writes fake letters from "the public" to convince Brutus to assassinate Caesar. The term "astroturfing" was first coined in 1985 by Texas Democratic Party senator Lloyd Bentsen when he said, "a fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass roots and AstroTurf... this is generated mail." Bentsen was describing a "mountain of cards and letters" sent to his office to promote insurance industry interests.

Word of the Week 04/19/20: Sublimation

From Vocabulary.com:

1. (chemistry) A change directly from the solid to the gaseous state without becoming liquid
2. (psychology) Modifying the natural expression of an impulse or instinct (especially a sexual one) to one that is socially acceptable

When anything solid turns into a gas without first becoming liquid, that’s sublimation. When the surface layer of snow or ice turns into fog or steam without melting, this is an example of sublimation.

From Merriam-Webster:

Sublimate has had several meanings as a verb (including “to elevate to a place of honor” and “to give a more elevated character to”) before coming to its common meaning today, which is “to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable.”

To sublimate is to change the form, but not the essence. Physically speaking, it means to transform solid to vapor; psychologically, it means changing the outlet, or means, of expression from something base and inappropriate to something more positive or acceptable. The word sublimate comes from the Latin verb sublimare, which means "to lift up" or "raise" and which is also the ancestor of our sublime.

From Wikipedia:

In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism, in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse.

Sigmund Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity and civilization, allowing people to function normally in culturally acceptable ways. He defined sublimation as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being "an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an "important" part in civilized life." Wade and Travis present a similar view, stating that sublimation occurs when displacement "serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose, as in the creation of art or inventions."

Word of the Week 04/12/20: Sinecure

From Merriam-Webster:

An office or position that requires little or no work and that usually provides an income.

The word sinecure first referred to "an ecclesiastical benefice without cure of souls"—that is, a church position in which the job-holder did not have to tend to the spiritual care and instruction of church members. Such sinecures were virtually done away with by the end of the 19th century, but by then the word had acquired a broader sense referring to any paid position with few or no responsibilities.

From Wikipedia:

A sinecure (from Latin sine = ’without’ and cura = ’care’) is an office – carrying a salary or otherwise generating income – that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval church, where it signified a post without any responsibility for the ’cure [care] of souls’, the regular liturgical and pastoral functions of a cleric, but came to be applied to any post, secular or ecclesiastical, that involved little or no actual work. Sinecures have historically provided a potent tool for governments or monarchs to distribute patronage, while recipients are able to store up titles and easy salaries.

A sinecure is not necessarily a figurehead, which generally requires active participation in government, albeit with a lack of power.

A sinecure can also be given to an individual whose primary job is in another office, but requires a sinecure title to perform that job. For example, the Government House Leader in Canada is often given a sinecure ministry position so that he or she may become a member of the Cabinet.

Sinecure, properly a term of ecclesiastical law for a benefice without the cure of souls, arose in the English Church when the rector had no cure of souls nor resided in the parish, the work of the incumbent being performed by a vicar. Such sinecure rectories were expressly granted by the patron. They were abolished by parliament under the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act of 1840.

Other ecclesiastical sinecures were certain cathedral dignities to which no spiritual functions attached or incumbencies where by reason of depopulation and the like, the parishioners disappeared or the parish church was allowed to decay. Such cases eventually ceased to exist.

The term is also used of any office or place to which salary emoluments or dignity, but no duties are attached. The British civil service and the royal household, for example, were loaded with innumerable offices which, by lapse of time, had become sinecures and were only kept as the reward of political services or to secure voting power in parliament. They were prevalent in the 18th century, but were gradually abolished by statutes during that and the following centuries.

Word of the Week 04/05/20: Anodyne

From Merriam-Webster:

1. serving to alleviate pain
2. not likely to offend or arouse tensions
3. something that soothes, calms, or comforts

Anodyne came to English via Latin from Greek anōdynos ("without pain"), and it has been used as both an adjective and a noun ("something that relieves pain") since the 16th century. It has sometimes been used of things that dull or lull the senses and render painful experiences less so. Edmund Burke used it this way, for example, in 1790 when he referred to flattery as an "anodyne draft of oblivion" that renders one (in this particular case, the deposed king Louis XVI) forgetful of the flatterer's true feelings. In the 1930s, a newer second sense began appearing in our vocabulary. Now, in addition to describing things that dull pain, anodyne can also refer to that which doesn't cause discomfort in the first place.

From Wikipedia:

An anodyne is a drug used to lessen pain through reducing the sensitivity of the brain or nervous system. The term was common in medicine before the 20th century, but such drugs are now more often known as analgesics or painkillers.

Etymologically, the term covers any substance that reduces pain, but the term was used more restrictively by doctors. Some definitions restrict the term to topical medications, including herbal simples such as onion, lily, root of mallows, leaves of violet, and elderberry. Other definitions include ingested narcotics, hypnotics, and opioids. In the 19th century, the primary anodynes were opium, henbane, hemlock, tobacco, nightshade, and chloroform.

In literary usage, the word has escaped its strictly medical meaning to convey anything "soothing or relaxing" (since the 18th century) or even anything "non-contentious", "blandly agreeable", or unlikely to cause offense or debate.

Word of the Week 03/29/20: Bathos

From Merriam-Webster:

1a. the sudden appearance of the commonplace in otherwise elevated matter or style
1b. anticlimax
2. exceptional commonplaceness
3. insincere or overdone pathos

The English use of the word bathos allegedly originates with the satirical essay "ΠΕΡΙ ΒΑΘΟΥΣ / or Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry / Written in the Year 1727" (first published March, 1728), by "Martinus Scriblerus," a fictional literary hack created by Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot, Jonathan Swift, and other members of the Scriblerus Club; authorship of the essay is usually ascribed to Pope. The Greek title (Perì báthous, "Concerning depth") echoes the title of the classical treatise "On the Sublime" (Perì hýpsous, literally, "Concerning height"), dated to the 1st century A.D. and formerly attributed to the 3rd century rhetorician Cassius Longinus. In Pope's essay, bathos—which, in the inverted perspective of the hack author, is a favorable quality—is used broadly to characterize literary passages deemed coarse or pedestrian for a genre such as epic poetry. The idea that bathos involves a shift from elevated to low is never stated explicitly—rather, a genre such as epic is by its nature elevated and the poetic execution (ironically praised by Scriblerus) is of low quality.

From LiteraryDevices.net:

Bathos is a literary term derived from a Greek word meaning “depth.” Bathos is the act of a writer or a poet falling into inconsequential and absurd metaphors, descriptions, or ideas in an effort to be increasingly emotional or passionate.

The term was used by Alexander Pope to explain the blunders committed inadvertently by unskilled writers or poets. However, later on, comic writers used it intentionally to create humorous effects. The most commonly used bathos involves a sequence of items that descend from worthiness to silliness.

From LiteraryDevices.com:

Alexander Pope created the term bathos in 1727 originally to criticize bad novelists and poets. The word bathos comes from the Greek word for “depth,” and Pope used this meaning both ironically and to imply a sense of the author “sinking” by using such ridiculous lines. The definition of bathos that he gave then was of attempts at appealing to the reader’s or audience’s emotions (i.e., pathos), but failing at creating a sense of the sublime to such an extent that the attempt becomes amusing. Bathos also has a sense of anticlimax because the reader expects a certain tone to continue—especially a lofty or grandiose tone—which quickly is replaced with a vulgar or common tone. 

ed note: pronounced Bay-thahss

Word of the Week 03/22/20: Bastion

From Dictionary.com:

1. Fortification. a projecting portion of a rampart or fortification that forms an irregular pentagon attached at the base to the main work.
2. a fortified place.
3. anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc
4. a place or system in which something (such as an old-fashioned idea) continues to survive

From Collins Dictionary:

If a system or organization is described as a bastion of a particular way of life, it is seen as being important and effective in defending that way of life. Bastion can be used both when you think that this way of life should be ended and when you think it should be defended.

From Merriam-Webster:

Bastion is constructed of etymological building blocks that are very similar to those of "bastille" (a word now used as a general term for a prison, but best known as the name of the Parisian fortress-turned-prison stormed by an angry mob at the start of the French Revolution). The history of "bastion" can be traced through Middle French to the Italian bastione, from bastia "small quadrangular fortress" (from an Upper Italian counterpart to Tuscan bastita, from feminine past participle of bastire "to build," probably borrowed from Old Occitan bastir "to weave, build," "Bastir" and "bastire" are themselves of Germanic origin and akin to the Old High German word besten, meaning "to patch."

Word of the Week 03/15/20: Ersatz

From Merriam-Webster:

An artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.

Ersatz can be traced back in English to 1875, but it really came into prominence during World War I. Borrowed from German, where ersatz is a noun meaning "substitute," the word was frequently applied as an adjective in English to items like coffee (from acorns) and flour (from potatoes) - ersatz products resulting from the privations of war. By the time World War II came around, bringing with it a resurgence of the word along with more substitute products, ersatz was wholly entrenched in the language. Today, ersatz can be applied to almost anything that seems like an artificial imitation.

From Cambridge Dictionary:

Used instead of something else, usually because the other thing is too expensive or rare.

Word of the Week 03/08/20: Salient

From Merriam-Webster:

1: moving by leaps or springs
2: jetting upward
3a: projecting beyond a line, surface, or level
  b: standing out conspicuously

Salient applies to something of significance that merits the attention given it.

Salient first popped up in English in the mid-17th century, and in its earliest English uses meant "moving by leaps or springs" (as in "a salient cheetah") or "spouting forth" (as in "a salient fountain"). Those senses aren't too much of a jump from the word's parent, the Latin verb salire, which means "to leap." Salire has leaped into many English words; it's also an ancestor of somersault and sally, as well as Salientia, the name for an order of amphibians that includes frogs, toads, and other notable jumpers. Today, salient is usually used to describe things that are physically prominent (such as a salient nose) or that stand out figuratively (such as the salient features of a painting).

From Macmillan Dictionary:

A salient fact, issue, or feature is one that is especially noticeable or relevant.

ed note: pronounced SAIL-ee-uhnt, though related to the verb sally as in 'sally forth'

Word of the Week 03/01/20: Specious

From Dictionary.com:

1. apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible
2. pleasing to the eye but deceptive

From Wiktionary:

1. Seemingly well-reasoned, plausible or true, but actually fallacious.
2. Employing fallacious but deceptively plausible arguments; deceitful.
3. Having an attractive appearance intended to generate a favorable response; deceptively attractive.
4. (obsolete) Beautiful, pleasing to look at.

From Merriam-Webster:

Specious traces to the Latin word speciosus, meaning "beautiful" or "plausible," and Middle English speakers used it to mean "visually pleasing." But by the 17th century, specious had begun to suggest an attractiveness that was superficial or deceptive, and, subsequently, the word's neutral "pleasing" sense faded into obsolescence.

Word of the Week 02/23/20: Matriculate

From Dictionary.com:

1. to enroll in a college or university as a candidate for a degree.
2. to register (a coat of arms), used especially in Scottish heraldry.

From Quick and Dirty Tips.com:

Matriculate is most commonly used as a verb meaning to enroll in or be admitted to a group such as a college, university, or program. When it is used in this way, it is usually followed by a preposition such as at, into, or to.

From Merriam-Webster:

Anybody who has had basic Latin knows that alma mater, a fancy term for the school you attended, comes from a phrase that means "fostering mother." If mater is "mother," then matriculate probably has something to do with a school nurturing you just like good old mom, right? Not exactly. If you go back far enough, matriculate is distantly related to the Latin mater, but its maternal associations were lost long ago. It is more closely related to Late Latin matricula, which means "public roll or register," and it has more to do with being enrolled than being mothered.

Medieval Latin matriculatus, past participle of matriculare, from Late Latin matricula public roll, diminutive of matric-, matrix list

Word of the Week 02/16/20: Dudgeon

From Merriam-Webster:

A fit or state of indignation —often used in the phrase in high dudgeon

Offense, Resentment, Umbrage, Pique, Dudgeon, Huff mean an emotional response to or an emotional state resulting from a slight or indignity. Offense implies hurt displeasure. Resentment suggests lasting indignation or ill will. Umbrage may suggest hurt pride, resentment, or suspicion of another's motives. Pique applies to a transient feeling of wounded vanity. Dudgeon suggests an angry fit of indignation. Huff implies a peevish short-lived spell of anger usually at a petty cause.

Middle English dogeon, from Anglo-French digeon, dogeon

From Wiktionary:

Origin uncertain; perhaps from Welsh dygen (“anger, grudge”)

From Grammarphobia.com:

Dudgeon originally meant the handle of a dagger. Some word detectives have tried to link dudgeon with dygen, a Welsh word that means malice or resentment, but the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t see a connection. The most likely theory is that the expression “in high dudgeon” originally had something to do with grabbing a dagger in anger. Interestingly, two similar-sounding words, bludgeon and curmudgeon, are also etymological mysteries. The word first showed up in the 15th century in the sense of the wood used to make the handle of a knife or dagger. Later, it came to mean the hilt or handle itself.

Shakespeare has Macbeth use the word in reference to the hilt of a dagger: “I see thee still, / And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, / Which was not so before,” but decades before Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in the early 1600s, dudgeon was being used to mean a feeling of anger or resentment.

The first citation in the OED for dudgeon used in this sense is from a 1573 entry in  The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey: “Who seem’d to take it in marvelus great duggin.” (Harvey was an English writer and his book contained a collection of draft letters.)

The first OED example of “high” and “dudgeon” linked together are in Hudibras (1663), a mock heroic poem by Samuel Butler: “When civil dudgeon first grew high, / And men fell out they knew not why; / When hard words, jealousies, and fears, / Set folks together by the ears.” (The author of the poem was a 17th-century poet and satirist, not the better-known Victorian novelist of the same name.)

The OED’s first citation for the most common use of dudgeon today is from an 1885 issue of the Manchester Examiner: “[He] resigned his position as reporter of the Committee in high dudgeon.”

Word of the Week 02/09/20: Fugue

From Collins Dictionary:

1. a polyphonic composition based upon one, two, or more themes, which are enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and gradually built up into a complex form having somewhat distinct divisions or stages of development and a marked climax at the end
2. a period during which a person suffers from loss of memory, often begins a new life, and, upon recovery, remembers nothing of the amnesic phase

From Merriam-Webster:

Bach and Handel composed many fugues for harpsichord and organ in which the various parts (or voices) seem to flee from and chase each other in an intricate dance. Each part, after it has stated the theme or melody, apparently flees from the next part, which takes up the same theme and sets off in pursuit. Simple rounds such as "Three Blind Mice" or "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" could be called fugues for children, but a true fugue can be long and extremely complex.

Probably from Italian fuga flight, fugue, from Latin, flight, from fugere

Word of the Week 02/02/20: Gish

From Wiktionary:

1. (fantasy role-playing games) A character that is skilled in both physical combat and the use of magic.
2. (slang) An outsider.

The term originates in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game, where it originally referred to a Githyanki fighter/wizard combination. Gish is still an official term used in D&D referring to this, but is also used to refer to any character who has a martial/spellcasting combination of abilities.

Word of the Week 01/26/20: Fiat

From the Cambridge Dictionary:

The giving of orders by someone who has complete authority

From Merriam-Webster:

1: a command or act of will that creates something without (or as if without) further effort
2: an authoritative determination
3: an authoritative or arbitrary order

Latin, let it be done, 3rd singular present subjunctive of fieri to become, be done

From Vocabulary.com:

A legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge)

Word of the Week 01/19/20: Gambit

From Wikipedia:

A gambit (from ancient Italian gambetto, meaning "to trip") is a chess opening in which a player, more often White, sacrifices material, usually a pawn, with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. Gambits are often said to be offered to an opponent, and that offer is then said to be either accepted or declined. If a player who is offered a gambit captures the piece (and thus gains material) the gambit is said to be accepted. If the player who was offered the gambit ignores it and instead continues to develop his pieces, then the gambit is said to be declined.

The word "gambit" was originally applied to chess openings in 1561 by Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, from an Italian expression dare il gambetto (to put a leg forward in order to trip someone). López studied this maneuver, and so the Italian word gained the Spanish form gambito that led to French gambit, which has influenced the English spelling of the word. The broader sense of "opening move meant to gain advantage" was first recorded in English in 1855.

"Gambit" is also sometimes used to describe similar tactics used by politicians or business people in a struggle with rivals in their respective fields.

From Dictionary.com:

A remark made to open or redirect a conversation.

From Merriam-Webster:

In 1656, a chess handbook was published that was said to have almost a hundred illustrated "gambetts." That early spelling of "gambit" is close to the Italian word, gambetto, from which it is derived. "Gambetto" was used for an act of tripping-especially one that gave an advantage, as in wrestling. The original chess gambit is an opening in which a bishop's pawn is sacrificed to gain some advantage, but the name is now applied to many other chess openings.

Borrowed from Spanish gambito, borrowed from Italian gambetto, literally, "act of tripping someone," from gamba "leg" (going back to Late Latin) + -etto, diminutive suffix

Word of the Week 01/12/20: Dissemble

From Wiktionary:

1. To disguise or conceal something.
2. To feign.
3. To deliberately ignore something; to pretend not to notice.
4. To falsely hide one's opinions or feelings.

From Merriam-Webster:

Dissemble (from Latin dissimulare, meaning "to hide or conceal") stresses the intent to deceive, especially about one's own thoughts or feelings, and often implies that the deception is something that would warrant censure if discovered.

From Vocabulary.com:

To dissemble is to hide under a false appearance, to deceive. Dissemble is a little more complicated than a straight lie or denial. When you dissemble, you disguise your true intentions or feelings behind a false appearance. To dissemble is to pretend that you don't know something, to pretend that you think one way when you act another way.

Word of the Week 01/05/20: Verisimilitude

From Wiktionary:

1. The property of seeming true, of resembling reality; resemblance to reality, realism.
2. A statement which merely appears to be true.
3. (fiction) Faithfulness to its own rules; internal cohesion.

From Vocabulary.com:

Verisimilitude comes from the Latin verisimilitudo "likeness to truth" and is used to describe stories. 

From LiteraryDevices.net:

The theory of verisimilitude comes from a Platonic and Aristotelian dramatic theory called “mimesis.” According to this theory, a work of art should convince the audience by imitating and representing nature, and having a basis in reality. The playwright, conforming to the above-mentioned theory, had to draw themes from sources well-known to the common people of his time, and maintain the unities of action, place, and time. Besides, he had to bring a realistic union between the style and the subject.

The theory of verisimilitude leads to the idea of “suspension of disbelief,” or “willing suspension of disbelief,” a term coined in 1817 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was of the opinion that, if a writer was able to fill his work with a “human interest and a semblance of truth,” the readers would willingly suspend or delay their judgment in relation to the doubtfulness of a narrative.

First Life Takes Time, then Time Takes Life - 2019 Wrap-Up

- now the next move's up to me*

What happened to 2019? My mind is falling apart and I don't remember anything of significance this year. A fatalism has taken hold of me and I accept what I'm told, things for the way they are. Of all the famous deaths this year, none surprised me, not one shook me out of my complacency. They could all have died years ago for the difference it would have made in my life. Or maybe some of them should have died years ago, but somehow...

Bob Einstein aka Super Dave Osborne
Luke Perry
Dick Dale
Peter Mayhew
Dr John
Rip Torn
Rutger Hauer