by Dwane | Jun 9, 2023 | English, Vocabulary
Mercurial: Flighty, unpredictable, changeable, full of fire or vigor, lively, quick. You never know your place with mercurial people. They are unpredictable. We can also use mercurial to describe items related to the metal mercury. I like the old name for mercury,...
by Dwane | Jun 8, 2023 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Apotheosis In the old days, the Romans worshipped their political leaders. Thank goodness we don’t do that anymore. Oh, wait a minute… Anyway, their leaders would sometimes become “gods”. There was a verb for the process. Apotheon: to deify, to make someone a god....
by Dwane | Jun 7, 2023 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Antediluvian Antediluvian is a word we use to describe the period before the Flood described in the book of Genesis. Ur, for example, was a city in antediluvian times. We also use antediluvian as an adjective to describe something hopelessly old-fashioned. For...
by Dwane | May 15, 2023 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Eucharist: the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion, the bread and wine used in Holy Communion. This word made its way into English after a long journey through Greek, Latin, and French. In Old French, Eucharist was eucariste. Before that, in Latin, it was...
by Dwane | May 12, 2023 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Eucatastrophe: a sudden turn of events for good. Eucatastrophe happens when all seems lost, and at the last moment, all is saved. J.R.R. Tolkien came up with this word. He combined the Greek prefix eu (good) with catastrophe. In one of his essays, he called the...
by Dwane | May 11, 2023 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Ignite: to start a fire, to light up. In a Latin class today, we learned the Latin word for fire, ignis. From ignis, English derives the words ignite (to start a fire), ignition (this is why some grandpa’s ‘fire’ up the truck), igneous (rock formed via intense, fiery...
