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AWADmail Issue 525

Sponsor's message: This week's Email of the Week is from Creede Lambard (see below), who will get a pretty cheap education as well as FREE (ONEUPMAN)SHIPPING on any of the many treasures of our Miltonic mind.

From: David Dashiell (davedash3 yahoo.com)
Subject: Fey
Def: 1. Strange; unconventional; otherworldly. 2. Doomed. 3. Able to see the future.

There is another, not very PC meaning of fey, at least in the US -- effeminate -- and as a gay man, I suspect it has been used to describe me more than once. My mother's friends would say "he's a bit fey" to describe a less than conventionally masculine man. I've always wondered if the "fairy" associations of fey ("fairy fay" and "Morgan le Fay" for instance) had something to do with it, as well perhaps as the close sound of the two words...

From: Jerry Alfred (jerry73 frontier.com)
Subject: fisc
Def: A state treasury; exchequer.

This word, pronounced "fisk", means fish in Swedish. I've often thought some reports from the exchequer sounded "fishy".

From: Laird Nelson (lariat256 gmail.com)
Subject: Purl
Def: To flow with a rippling motion; The reverse of a knit stitch; A decorative border.

Purl also can be a warm or hot beverage commonly made of gin, ale, ginger, and sugar, but you would probably have to be a Dickens nut to make the connection. Or a hard drinker. Or both.

From: Craig Nielsen (craig.r.nielsen denbury.com)
Subject: Short Words

A confident person doesn't need big words ... "If it is to be, it is up to me."

Where I used to work we would play a game called "One Pulse Words" where the goal of the game was to just use words with no more than one 'pulse' to them. It would drive some of the folks we worked with nuts when we used these words of just one pulse, on and on and on. Try it and see if you can send that clod in the next cube up the wall.

From: Rhonda Hudson (Highfocus aol.com)
Subject: The power of word

Thanks for the words. I forward them to my 86-year-old father, a retired professor, and it has brought our relationship to a place it never has been in the past. The power of words!