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AWADmail Issue 631

Sponsor's message: It's Officially Free. This week's Email of the Week winner, Robert Wasko (see below) -- as well as all AWADers worldwide -- can now make their own terrific fun word-nerd party for nothing. Introducing our best-selling One Up! -- The Wicked/Smart Word Game as a downloadable PDF, absolutely gratis. Hurree y'up.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

Utah Language School Fires Blogger For Promoting Homophone Agenda
Wonkette
WebCite

How I Created the Languages for Game of Thrones
OUP Blog
WebCite

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Song based on this week's words

For those who are unaware, one of the AWAD followers, Irving N. Webster-Berlin (awadreviewsongs gmail.com), has been performing a song each week based on the given week's AWAD list. This week's song is based on this news article. See if the song -- located here -- can help you learn and remember the week's words.

From: Darrell Hugueley (cmshugueley hotmail.com)
Subject: Harbinger

Thanks for one more insight into the genius of Shakespeare's wordplay. When Macbeth tells Duncan that he will be the harbinger, he is informing Duncan both that he will be his willing host and that he will himself signal his ultimate doom.

From: Brooke Richards (brooker renovatechnology.com)
Subject: Harbinger

My absolute favorite memory of the word harbinger is from the original 1968 film The Planet of the Apes. Near the end of the film, in response to Taylor's (Charlton Heston) question about the apes' hatred of humans, Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) reads from the sacred scrolls of the ancient ape law-giver:

"Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death." (video, 1 min.)

From: David Micklethwait (Micklethwait hotmail.com)
Subject: Harbinger

When I was at a school by the Thames, in the nineteen-fifties, rowing races took place on the river. A boy would be sent ahead, on a bicycle and provided with a megaphone, to make sure that other boats pulled in to the bank for the race to pass. He was called the "harbinger", and might say that he was unavailable for anything else that afternoon, because he was "harbinging".

When I read today's quotation from Ogden Nash "To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up", it brought me back to my daughter's wedding nearly four years ago. I quoted Nash's lines as advice to the groom in my "Father of the Bride" speech. I complemented them with the following lines I wrote as advice to the bride: Follow this convention/When about to speak from the heart./If you want undivided attention,/Wait for the commercials to start.

From: Dr. G. Nadarajan (dr.g.nadarajan gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--garble

In this age of multifunction device usage, 'garbled texting' can be a harbinger of a 'stroke in evolution'. Neurologists call garbled texting dystextia, a sign of neuronal disorder.

From: Barbara Reid (b.reid32 gmail.com)
Subject: Pabulum

My father was born in Merseyside, UK in 1897, and in his early childhood had 'pobs' for breakfast - a sort of gruel; this would be long before the three Canadian doctors produced their baby food. In Birmingham, UK, 'pobbies' has been cereal/gruel for generations.

From: Dave Gellert (djgellert sherwin.com)
Subject: Pabulum

This word always makes me think of the phrase "pabulum for the masses" when describing the inane reality shows on television, such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo