A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface on July 21, 1969.  We’ll see words that have their origin in the moon.

superlunary  (soo-puhr-LOON-uh-ree)  adjective  1.  Situated beyond the moon.  2.  Celestial; exalted.  From Latin superlunaris, from super- (above) + luna (moon).  Earliest documented use:  1614.  The opposite is sublunary.

meniscus  (mi-NIS-kuhs)  noun  1.  The curved surface of a column of liquid.  2.  Something having a crescent-shape.  3.  A lens that is concave on one side and convex on the other.  4.  A thin cartilage disk between bones in a joint, such as in a knee or wrist.  From Latin, from Greek meniskos (crescent), diminutive of mene (moon).  Earliest documented use:  1686.

moonstruck  (MOON-struhk)  adjective  1.In a dreamy state.  2.  Romantically dazed.  3.  From the belief that a person behaving erratically was under the influence of the moon.  From moon + struck, past participle of strike, from Old English strican.  Earliest documented use:  1674.

lunule  (LOON-yool)  noun  1.  The crescent-shaped whitish area at the base of the fingernail.  2.  Any crescent-shaped mark, object, etc.  From French lunule, From Latin lunula, diminutive of luna (moon).  Earliest documented use:  1737.  Also known as lunula.

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From:  Bob Creutz  Chinese mooncakes are a delicacy.  Common at one of the most important Chinese festivals (Autumn Festival).  Often given as gifts.  Mooncake from the television series Final Space is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.  I also think it is enjoyable to simply say the word mooncake.  Mooncake.

From:  Scott A Long  Just a heads up we landed on the moon on July 20th not the 21st.  I know this because it is my birthday and I’m named after Neil.  Hmm . . .  so, the Washington Post got it wrong then?  I have the original article from the Post framed saying Neil stepped on the moon at 10:58 pm on the 20th.  Well, sometimes two people can differ and both can be right.  The earthly borders and time zones don’t mean much in outer space.  When we rise above those boundaries, we use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  UTC is not really a time zone, but a time standard.  It’s five hours ahead of New York, and for practical purposes, it’s synonymous with GMT.  So, in UTC, we landed on the moon on July 20 and stepped out onto the lunar surface on July 21.
Happy Birthday! - Anu Garg

From:  Norman Holler  As a soft addition this week’s matters of the moon theme, I’d like to offer this little story.  Starting in the late 80s, I’d often place myself in Big Sur, California, for months at a time, often between late Autumn and early Spring.  My lovely long-time companion would, because of work circumstances, remain in the Yukon.  We would do occasional phone calls, but as a full moon approached, we would set ourselves up for a special date possibility to “meet on the moon”.  In that, we would arrange a time to call, or at least hold each other in our thoughts, as we looked at the full moon together, knowing that the other was there in spirit, albeit 24 degrees of latitude apart.  We wouldn’t always get clear skies together, but when we did, we knew that we were having a sweet spot shared experience.  Ahh, ain’t love grand?  BTW, my mate and I did the start of our story with our “first walk” along the Yukon River, on a blue moon, May 1988.  No visible moon on that late light night in The North.  The idea is free to the world, and I invite you all to use it as you wish.  PS:  As a jazzy little moonbeam lift to your day, I offer Moondance by Van Morrison.

From:  Jered L. Hock   Great words.  And one must not forget lunette:  a crescent or half-moon shape (rounded at the top and straight horizontal at the bottom).  The term is typically applied to a window.  I know because I was involved in raising funds to relead and restore the stained glass of three lunettes in a 120-year-old building, at a pretty penny.
From:  Neal Sanders  The moon has also been taking “bullets” for us for the past couple of billion years.  90% of those craters you see would have been for Earth had the moon not stepped in the way.  And, the ones on the dark side of the moon--many of them of enormous size--have been formed since the moon achieved synchronous rotation a billion years ago.



Helen Sword, author of Stylish Academic Writing, says that nouns when formed with other parts of speech are called nominalizations.  Sounds fancy, but you see them all the time, particularly in this crazy Internet world where grammar and "dictionary status" are often played fast and loose.  Sword writes:  Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism.  You’ve created a new noun:   implacability, calibration, cronyism.  Sometimes we make them up—Brooklynification, Disneyfication, blogism—but many versions of these are well established and dictionary-approved.  They are hiding in our midst!  (Gentrification, corporatism, politicization, and so on).  As evidence of the horror and widespread destruction they wreak, and also because it's just catchier than nominalization, itself a nominalization, Sword refers to such words as zombie nouns.  Jen Doll   https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/07/zombie-words-are-coming-your-brains/325522/



BURIED VERBS AND ZOMBIE NOUNS  Concise writing avoids buried verbs and "zombie" nouns.  Buried verbs are those that are needlessly converted to wordy noun expressions.  This happens when verbs such as acquire, establish, and develop are made into nouns such as acquisition, establishment, and development.  Such nouns often end in -tion, -ment, and -ance.  See examples at https://www.cengage.com/bcomm/guffey/newsletter/archives/2012-08/12086.html



Jean-Jacques Megel-Nuber’s first drawing of his imagined bookstore on wheels had little in common with its final design.  “It looked like the cabins in a Christmas market," says Megel-Nuber, who is from the Alsace region of eastern France, known for its festive seasonal markets.  He had originally thought about opening a brick-and-mortar bookshop but decided he wanted one that could travel to French country towns whose bookstores have often closed.  He also wanted a space where he could live during his travels.  The tiny house also had to be constructed to support a stock of around 3,000 books, weighing some 1,300 pounds.  To counter the library's weight, most of the bookshelves line the wall opposite a large metal structure surrounding the entrance.  He takes books down from upper shelves while traveling to lower the vehicle's center of gravity.  Emma Jacobs  https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/tiny-traveling-french-bookstore  Thank you, Muse reader!



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2129  July 26, 2019