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AWADmail Issue 583

I found today's definitions of "apheresis" intriguing. I'm a regular platelet donor at the Red Cross, so it was interesting to learn the origin of the word. But it was particularly interesting to learn the first definition of the word... because everyone at the donor center, including the donors ourselves, refers to the process as "pheresis", meaning of course that the term "apheresis" had been subjected to...apheresis. Never would have known this but for A.Word.A.Day!

From: Joel Holtz (planetholtz cox.net)
Subject: apheresis

There was a gnu that I did know
Who confided he'd been feeling slow.
He saw his vet, an old Jewish guy,
Who ran some tests, looked'm in the eye,
And said, "We've got our diagnosis,
Something we call thrombocytosis.
Your platelet count, it's way too high."
And then he added, with a sigh,
"Gee, apheresis, that"s the key
to get your count where it should be
and relieve you of this misery."

Once he understood the plan
My friend, he panicked and he ran.
With each attempt to change his mind
A new excuse the gnu would find.
Until he finally did relent
So in apheresis the day was spent.
Afterward, he felt renewed
And apologized for being so rude:
"You were right all along, don't you know?"
"Nu", said the vet, "I told you so!"

From: Jo Anne Powell (YoJo1 aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--apheresis

My understanding is that "till" preceded "until" - no?

From: Carlos Cueto-Rejas (ccuetor941 hotmail.com)
subject: syncope

A Spanish example of syncope is Navidad which comes from Natividad or Nativity.

Always enjoy the Word A Day I get in my mail. Seems the day doesn't begin with me if I do not get your "word". Thank you for your constancy (constancia)!

From: Katherine Harper (kharper4 gmail.com)
Subject: syncope

Your example for syncope makes me smile. I earned my bachelor's degree from an Ohio school called The College of Wooster. People who have only seen the name of this liberal-arts institution in writing invariably pronounce it to rhyme with "rooster". My response has always been, "It's really 'Wooster' --as in '-shire sauce'." I have yet to hear anyone make the same error twice.

From: Warren McLean (wmclean pnc.com.au)
Subject: Syncope

Ah, the vagaries of English nameplace syncope. They have Bicester (pronounced Bister), Towcester (Toaster), Gloucester (Gloster), Worcester (Wooster), Alcester (Alster), Leicester (Lester), all of which omit the 'ce' in pronunciation: But then there is Cirencester, pronounced Siren'sester) and not Sirenster.

From: Rudy Rosenberg Sr (rudyrr att.net)
Subject: syncope

When I saw the word, I immediately thought of my departed mother. The word is the same in German, French, and English (and at least in dozens of others), but when Frieda lived in Belgium syncope became part of her daily language and she retained it to the end of her life after she had emigrated to the USA and English became her daily tongue. The French use the expression "tomber en syncope" as common. In the USA "to pass out" is the preferred expression.

Funny how a word can bring back a flash of memory even after 13 years.

From: Jeff Brooke (jeff odysseyreno.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--syncope

The doctor said a micturition syncope was the reason I awoke yards from our tent in the middle of the night. A condition where the bladder is so full that, upon release, the blood flow to the brain is compromised and consciousness is lost. Since then we have referred to this episode as my "synco-pee-pee". I didn't know the first definition of this word but I guess this almost qualifies.

From: Linda Smidt (lindaforgeron gmail.com)
Subject: syncope

I only knew it as a musical term for a certain way of counting, with a "hiccup" so to speak. For example, where one "bar" contains four beats, a syncope is created by lengthening the first beat by a half, and shortening the beat after that. Similar effects can be made in the second beat, creating the "jazzy' beat -- syncope.

From: Greta Dorfman (greta.dorfman gmail.com)
Subject: Syncope

That reminded me of a musical term, syncopation. It's played with a skipped beat. What comes to mind for me as an example of syncopated rhythm is Cajun music, but I notice that wasn't mentioned in Wikipedia.

From: Steven Szalaj (szjsings mac.com)
Subject: Syncope

There is the story of the sot who again came home very late from work. He needed a good story to explain his tardiness when his spouse greeted him. He grabbed the dictionary and quickly found a word he knew she wouldn't know. When confronted, he told her that he had fallen ill at work and had been to the doctor who told him he had "syncopation". She then looked up the word and found it to mean "irregular rhythmic movement from bar to bar".

From: Mary Hansel Parlin (mparlin cotterschools.org)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--aspirate

Aspirate: also a form of prayer, exhaling a word/thought.

From: Ronald Holden (inyourglass gmail.com)
Subject: 'Enry

'Enry's life was all frustration,
Never could improve his station.
For 'Enry was a lazy bloke
It showed whenever 'Enry spoke:
He lacked the proper haspiration

From: Bryon Satterfield (bryons mindspring.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--aspirate

As a dentist, I use the word aspirate many times throughout my working day as continual instruction to my dental assistant. Most often, I need improved visibility. Patient comfort is also a primary objective.

In my first year of real practice, the patient was a lawyer, with a wry sense of humor, it turns out. After his procedure, when he could talk again, he said to me very seriously and thoughtfully, "One day I'm going to write a book titled, 'Aspirators I have known.' "

From: Kyle Evans (kyle kyle-evans.com)
Subject: Prolepsis

Prolepsis is also a grammatical construction in Ancient Greek, in which the subject of a dependent clause is "anticipated" and placed in the main clause instead. It is also known as the "lilies of the field" construction, after the famous Bible verse (Matthew 6:28) in which the prolepsis has commonly been carried over into English translations:

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." (Instead of "consider how the lilies of the field grow."

From: Taylor Rosenberg (machitainparadise gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--agglutinate

Having recently returned from a wonderful trip to Iceland, I'm still in thrall over the agglutinated language that is Icelandic. For example, that infamous volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, that brought air travel in Europe to a standstill in 2010, means island + mountain + glacier. While it's very descriptive to speakers of that impossible to pronounce language, it makes it very, very difficult for the rest of humanity to even try it!

The native speakers will never run out of the opportunity to laugh because foreigners just don't have the tongue elasticity to attempt all those agglutinated words. Plus the Icelandic alphabet has a few extra letters that do not exist in English so it really boggles the mind. By the way, the closest approximation we could come up with to pronounce that impossible word was AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl-uh. That would be an astounding shibboleth to loose on an enemy.

From: Ingrid Trausch (ingridet earthlink.net)
Subject: agglutinate

Hungarian is also heavily agglutinative, and very long single-word sentences are common. Add a different logic for word order in a sentence, one completely different from English, and and you get one of earth's most difficult languages for an outsider to learn.

Although I grew up in a Hungarian-English household and consider myself fluent in both, I find that after hanging out with my relatives, my English gets twisted and for a while, like Yoda, backwards speaking am I.

From: Peirce Hammond (peirce_hammond ed.gov)
Subject: agglutinate

The newest form of agglutinating language is still in flux -- computerese. Words are run together without spaces, particularly as names of sites or domains. There is also a natural phase-in of the agglutinated words as e-mail becomes email or Web-site becomes Website (and then website). Sometimes the "glue" seems to be somewhat caustic, eating up letters in the process. For example A.Word.A.Day has morphed into AWAD.

From: Art Wegweiser (art bmwcsregistry.org)
Subject: Agglutinated organisms

My professional specialty as a geologist is micropaleontology (teeny tiny fossils). In particular I am especially fond of a group called Foraminifera. These are relatives of the amoeba but produce (sometimes) elaborate shells about the size of a pinhead. Two major groups exist -- one calcareous (carbonate shells) and the AGGLUTINATED whose shells are made of bits of silt they gather and glue together. They are in all modern oceans in a great diversity of species and in the record back to the Devonian Period.