from wordsmith.org

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. -John Adams, 2nd US president (30 Oct 1735-1826)

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Quote:

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. -Sarah Kendzior, journalist and author (b. 1 Sep 1978)

(From AWAD.)

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When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)

A.W.A.D.
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Today's word:

pecksniff

PRONUNCIATION:
(PEK-snif)

MEANING:
noun: A hypocritical person who pretends to have high moral principles.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Seth Pecksniff, a character in Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit (serialized 1843-1844). Earliest documented use: 1844. The adjectival form is pecksniffian.

NOTES:
Pecksniff sounds like a man who moralizes in public and misbehaves in private. Which, spoiler alert, he does.

But Pecksniff, seriously? If a character’s name is Pecksniff, his moral downfall feels less like a character arc and more like a destiny. With a name like this, you have given them no hope. They’re doomed from page one. See nominative determinism.

It’s not just Dickens. The Harry Potter world has Voldemort (from French vol de mort: flight of death), 101 Dalmatians has Cruella de Vil, and so on. Heroes, on the other hand, get regular names like Oliver Twist or Harry Potter.

A.Word.A.Day
with #AnuGarg

Eight billion people. That’s a lot of humanity -- and a lot of personality! One can never have too many words, especially words to describe people.

Sometimes a single word just won’t cut it when summing up someone’s essence. This week’s words might help. Who in your life, at work, or beyond fits one or more of these words?

nefandous

PRONUNCIATION:
(nuh-FAN-duhs)

MEANING:
adjective: So wicked as to defy description: abominable, appalling.

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Today's #AWAD #AWordADay: ELSEWHEN
with Anu Garg

❛❛ Unlike a #BlackHole — a region of #SpaceTime from which you cannot escape if you get too close — a #Wormhole is a region into which you would disappear only to reappear #elsewhere or #elsewhen. ❜❜ 2001 May 20 #WaPo

🔗 https://Wordsmith.org/words/elsewhen.html 2025 Jan 06
🔗 https://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Anu_Garg … #AnuGarg

#Community #TimeTravel #Research #vocabulary #lexicon #words #glossary #English #Time #Kronodon

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.

-Turkish proverb

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#Quotes #AWAD #Wilderness #WilliamCowper

I would like this, too, but I cannot help but feel for those unhappy or oppressed or troubled. I just can't help it.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore. -William Cowper, poet (26 Nov 1731-1800)

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia
(23 Jul 1892-1975)

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