The Random Text Says: ""
Beleagured By The Quiddity That Is My Diary
November 17th, 2001 - 10:32 a.m.
I'm Currently Avoiding:I don't know...as usual I have little to nothing to update about, but I'll put something here anyway because of that stupid compulsion I have to update. Nobody updates on the weekend anyway, damn them. Don't they know I need something to read on the weekends too?
quiddity (n. KWIH-duh-tee)
1 : whatever makes something the type that it is : essence
2 a: a trifling point : quibble b: crotchet, eccentricity
When it comes to synonyms of quiddity, the Q's have it. Consider quintessence, a synonym of the essence of a thing sense of quiddity (this oldest sense of quiddity dates from the 14th century). Quibble and quodlibet are synonyms of the trifling point sense; that meaning of quiddity arose from the subtler points of 16th-century academic arguments. And quirk, like quiddity, can refer to a person's eccentricities. Of course, quiddity also derives from a Q word, the Latin pronoun quis, which is one of two Latin words for who (the other is qui). Quid, the neuter form of quis, gave rise to the Medieval Latin quidditas, which means essence, a term that was essential to the development of the English quiddity.
beleaguer (v. bih-LEE-gur)
1 : to surround with an army so as to prevent escape
: besiege, beset
2 : to hem in : bottle up
3 : to subject to oppressive or grievous forces : harass
We created beleaguer from the Dutch word belegeren in the 16th century. "[Military men] will not vouchsafe . . . to use our ancient terms belonging to matters of war, but do call a camp by the Dutch name," commented the English soldier and diplomat Sir John Smyth. The word for camp that he was referring to is leaguer. That term in turn comes from Dutch leger, which is one of the building blocks of belegeren (literally, to camp around). But neither leaguer nor beleaguer were in fact utterly foreign. Old English leger, the source of our modern lair, is related to the Dutch word. And the Old English be- (about, around), as seen in besiege and beset, is related to the Dutch prefix be- in belegeren.
Yesterday or the day before, something like that, I saw this woman with tiger stripe pants. They were very eye-catching. Only thing remarkable about her, really. I don't really see the point to mentioning that, but maybe I'm just curious why they have things like that. Is there a point to wearing clothes so visually fascinating that the person wearing them fades into the background?
I took a bath earlier and decided that life would be much better if people had wings and gills. Then nobody would ever drown and there wouldn't be any plane crashes because people would just individual fly places and they wouldn't have to depend on stupid things like airline schedules or places actually having airports. And people wouldn't have to do stupid things like fly south in order to get to a desintation in the northwest. It would be interesting. Just like a combination VCR/DVD player would be interesting, but will never ever happen. I have all these good ideas that never come true, damn society. Maybe I'll just have to craft my own society then. That's a thought..a whole other society for my weird brain to deal with. Hmm. Well then, I have to go to bed or something now...and in another 20 minutes, it'll be noon.
Feeling lucky? Choose an Entry At RANDOM! Yes. Random. Randomosity is cool...come on, you know you want to... Well, if you don't subscribe to peer pressure, then just go Back or Forward with the Dragons below:
Read Older Rants / Take the Current Poll / Visit the Polls Page / Sign The *NEW* Message Board
Prev | List | Random | Next Powered by RingSurf! |
And I like it that way.
