David Zapatka Friend, fellow bridge enthusiast and reader, Maria Davis, wrote, “I enjoyed your article on thraldom. It’s easier to spot the etymology when the alternative spelling thralldom is used. I have seen thrall and enthralled but thral(l)dom is a word that I had not encountered previously. I came across an interesting word today—percipient. It…
Tag: Word of the Month
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.Features, August 2021
Word of the Month: Thraldom
David Zapatka While reading page 52 of The Labours of Hercules by Alice A. Bailey in my book-reading group, I ran across this sentence. “Let the soul be single in its purpose and freed from the thraldom of matter, and then right action and a right point of view will inevitably be the characteristics of the…
Features, July 2021
Word of the Month: Orbisculate
David Zapatka We’re doing something different this month. We’re going to explore getting a new word into dictionaries. Reader Debbie M. writes, “Hello, I enjoy your column and want to offer a suggestion. ‘Orbisculate’ is a word not yet in the dictionary. I think we should help the young people who are trying to get this…
Features, June 2021
Word of the Month: Enough
David Zapatka Have you had enough? How much is enough? Enough of what? Enough stuff? Enough politics? Enough religion? Enough of some person? Enough of some activity? What does enough really mean? Reader and sister, Judy Haberstroh, says, “I came across this excerpt and thought the word ‘enough’ may be a good one for your column.…
Features, May 2021
Word of the Month: Ontology
David Zapatka Last month’s column on “negentropy” elicited this response from a reader, “My thermodynamics class was at 8 a.m. and I slept through that particular law. Thanks for the review, albeit a little late to do anything with it.” There’s an art to scheduling university classes, and avoiding 8 a.m. classes was one of my…
Features, April 2021
Word of the Month: Negentropy
David Zapatka While reading Starseed Transmissions by Ken Carey, I ran across the word negentropy. I’ve always been fascinated by the word entropy and its meaning so I was immediately intrigued by this related word driving me to research it for this month’s issue. Entropy: noun /ˈentrəpē/ 1. thermodynamics: a measure of the unavailable energy in a…
Features, March 2021
Word of the Month: Librettist
David Zapatka Commenting on the January WOTM column, reader Tom from Arlington, Va. writes, “Here’s a Washington Post article where your word of the month ‘jeremiad’ is used by the paper’s reporter Michael Scherer. In this case, the reporter uses it to describe the words of the chairman of the Nye County Republican Party in Nevada…
Features, February 2021
Word of the Month: Sublime
David Zapatka As my friend Mike Schneider and I were discussing this quote from The Urantia Book recently, “Such spirit-born individuals are so unmotivated in life that they can calmly standby while their fondest ambitions perish and their keenest hopes crash; they positively know that such catastrophes are but the redirecting cataclysms which wreck one’s…
Features, January 2021
Word of the Month: Jeremiad
David Zapatka Dear friend and Wisdom Seeker moderator, Ellen Engel, suggested the word jeremiad for this month’s WOTM. Jeremiad: noun jer·e·mi·ad | ˌjer-ə-ˈmī-əd, -ˌad 1. a prolonged lamentation or complaint 2. a cautionary or angry harangue. 3. a long, literary work, usually in prose, sometimes in verse, where the author bitterly laments the state of society and its…
Features, December 2020
Word of the Month: Cool
David Zapatka After reading last month’s WOTM “groovy,” sister and reader, Debbie Zapatka, wrote, “That was cool, man! Does ‘cool’ have the same sort of history as groovy? A friend at work uses the word groovy all the time.” Sister and reader Judy Haberstroh wrote, “Interesting. The only person I know who still occasionally uses…