Friday, April 06, 2007

The state of things...

(14:54:16) primaluxsum: it's weird when you remember shit you haven't thought about in a long ass time

(14:54:23) primaluxsum: i was driving chris to work

(14:54:28) primaluxsum: and near his work there's this big field

(14:54:38) primaluxsum: and he's like "oh wow i've never noticed that field before"

(14:55:29) primaluxsum: and i was like "oh yeah they haven't developed it. there used to be a house on it and when valerie was in high school this kid she knew lived there and then his mom shot him and his little brothers and they all died so they razed the house and the field has been empty ever since"

(14:55:40) primaluxsum: and i had totally forgotten about that up until then




The other day I was talking to Byron and he was looking up anathema in the dictionary. Then he chanced upon the word crepuscular. It basically means relating to twilight and it reminded him of this movie we had watched together, A Very Long Engagement, because a lot of that movie takes place in a no-man's land in WWI and a trench called Bingo Crepuscule.

Now let's hop on over to yesterday. I subscribe to the Word of the Day email from yourdictionary.com and when I checked it that morning the "word of the day" was.....crepuscular. I mean, obviously, why wouldn't it be really? Ha. The funnier aspect was that it was the word of the day for April 4th, but for some reason I didn't receive the email until yesterday.



WOTD:Crepuscular (Adjective) [krê-'pês-kyu-lê(r)]
Definition: Pertaining to crepuscule, twilight; dim or weak in terms of visibility.
Usage: Today's word is an adjective more appealing than the noun (crepuscule) it is derived from. "Twilight" certainly is a more beautiful way to describe the light at dusk than "crepuscule" but "crepuscular" has its charms.
Suggested Usage: Today's word should come to mind in any situation characterized by dimness: "I'm afraid that reading the fine print of this contract demands too much of my crepuscular vision." The term fits many other legal situations, too, "Your honor, in the crepuscular light of the bar, it was easy to mistake my wallet for the wallet of the guy sitting next to me." The judge's vision would have to be crepuscular for him to not see through that excuse.
Etymology: Latin crepusculum "twilight," diminutive of creper "dark." The suffix -ul- is found in several other borrowings from Latin, e.g. "homunculus" and "miniscule." The origin of the root crep- is unclear but it might be related to the cor- "bellow, squawk" of cornix "crow" and corvus "raven" (akin to English "crow" and "to crow") if it acquired an association with darkness because of the color of these birds. However, the semantic relation cannot be established unequivocally.



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