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Obscurely obscured
If you were in the wrong place for watching a full moon or an eclipse it could be due to “obnubilation.” The sky can be obnubilated any time, of course, not just when there’s an eclipse. Skies have been potentially obnubilated since the late 1500s when the word “obnubilate” appeared in English. It’s derived from… Continue reading
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Thick as a brick
A “pachyderm” is an elephant. Quite a large sort of animal in most people’s opinions. And although elephants don’t, strictly speaking, have toes, the term “pachydactyl” means a type of animal (often a bird) that has large toes or talons. An ostrich, for example. Or the Road Runner from the cartoons. Another group of animals… Continue reading
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Vitus Bering
You’ve probably heard of the Bering Sea, the region of the northern Pacific Ocean that separates Asia from North America. The narrow part of the separation is the Bering Strait. In the Bering Strait, near the Asia or western side, you can find Bering Island. And if you travel east from Bering Island, across the… Continue reading
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August 5 (and I’m not making it up)
The USS Maddox was a destroyer operating in the Gulf of Tonkin — next to Vietnam — in August 1964. Its mission was to “collect signal intelligence.” When somebody else’s ship does the same thing, the US calls it “spying.” Aboard the Maddox they saw North Vietnamese gunboats on their radar, and on August 4,… Continue reading
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Down to the sea in…words
Nautical affairs have contributed a huge number of words to English over the centuries. If you define “nautical affairs” broadly enough, that would include ships, sailors’ jargon, and even books and stories set in seagoing contexts. Patrick O’Brian wrote historical novels set on 18th century British naval ships, so his works certainly qualify. The books… Continue reading
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August 4
August 4 is the birthday of John Fitch. He was a fighter pilot in WWII, based in north Africa. He and his squadron slept in tents, but being fighter pilots themselves, they felt pretty vulnerable to enemy fighter planes that could strafe the camp with machine gun fire. They didn’t have many resources to protect… Continue reading
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In Top Form
At the Olympics (at least the winter version), some events begin at the peak of a mountain. All Olympic events are so competitive an athlete needs to deliver a peak performance in order to win a medal. A few of the athletes — and some of the fans — have a hairline featuring a widow’s… Continue reading
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August 3, probably not Arbor Day
Back in 1941, Louis Koch, a retired businessman was from Evansville, Indiana, visited Santa Claus, another Indiana town. It’s not clear whether it had taken him until his retirement to first visit a town with an interesting name just 40 miles away, but maybe he’d been busy. He evidently brought some kids with him, or… Continue reading
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“I’m not wearing a hat”
Hoods have been part of people’s wardrobes for a very long time. Long enough for some interesting etymology to show up. One interesting bit is “liripipe” — which is sometimes written as “liripoop”, although nobody seems to know why. If you wore a hood back in medieval England, you might have attached an ornamental dangly… Continue reading
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Have some cake
What do a fancy crocheted border, a cake, and gentleness have in common? They’ve all been known as the same thing: “mignardise.” Pronounced “min-yar-dize”, it’s a word that dates back to the 1600s, and as the spelling suggests, it was borrowed directly from French. The original meaning of “mignardise” was gentle behavior — particularly in… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
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