A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

unicorn  (YOO-nih-korn)  noun  1.  A mythical horse-like creature with a horn on the forehead.  2.  Something or someone rare or unusual:  highly desirable but hard or impossible to find.  3. A startup valued at one billion dollars or more.  From Latin unicornis, from uni- (single) + cornu (horn), ultimately from the Indo-European root ker- (horn, head), which also gave us cornucopia, carrot, cranium, cornea, cervix, and cancer.  Earliest documented use:  1225.

bunyip  (BUHN-yip)  noun  An impostor.  adjective  Counterfeit; phony.  After bunyip, a large mythical creature of Australian Aboriginal legend, who lives in swamps, riverbeds, etc.  The word is from Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of the Aboriginal people in Victoria.  Earliest documented use:  1848.

gremlin  (GREM-lin)  noun  A source of trouble, especially problems of technical nature.  Of uncertain origin.  Perhaps from an alteration of the word goblin or from Irish gruaimin (a gloomy person).  Earliest documented use:  1929.   Originally, the word gremlin was Royal Air Force slang for a low-level employee.  From there it evolved to refer to a mythical creature responsible for problems in aircraft.  The word was popularized by the novelist Roald Dahl, a former fighter pilot with the RAF, when he published his children’s book The Gremlins in 1943.  It’s not certain how the term was coined.

Bigfoot  (BIG-foot)   noun:  A prominent person in a commanding position, especially a journalist.  verb tr.:  To dominate or to take control of a situation from someone.  verb intr.:  To behave in an authoritative, domineering manner.  Bigfoot is a nickname for a Sasquatch, a large, ape-like mythical creature who lives in a remote wilderness, especially the Pacific Northwest region of the US and Canada.  Earliest documented use:  1833.

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From:  Helen Ross  The unicorn is an emblem on the Royal Arms of Scotland, while the lion is an emblem for England. I am reminded of the nursery rhyme, The Lion and the Unicorn.  “The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown/The lion beat the unicorn all around the town.”  The lion still does exactly that, being stronger in voting power.

From:  Judith Judson  An obsolete usage of unicorn is to describe a three-horse team (video, 2 min.), two wheelers and one leader in front--thus making a triangle.  It was a difficult feat to control such a rig, and therefore (as we know from Georgette Heyer’s Regency novel The Unknown Ajax), it could also be called “Sudden Death”.  We commonly think of a three-horse team as the Russian troika, but that is driven with three horses abreast.

From:  Eric Kisch  Numerous tales of the bunyip in written literature appeared in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  These included a story in Andrew Lang’s The Brown Fairy Book (1904).  The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek is a contemporary Australian children’s picture book about a bunyip.  Alexander Bunyip, created by children’s author and illustrator Michael Salmon, first appeared in print in The Monster That Ate Canberra in 1972.  Alexander Bunyip went on to appear in many other books and a live-action television series, Alexander Bunyip’s Billabong.  A statue of Alexander is planned for the Gungahlin Library.  The word bunyip has been used in other Australian contexts, including The Bunyip newspaper as the banner of a local weekly newspaper published in the town of Gawler, South Australia.  First published as a pamphlet by the Gawler Humbug Society in 1863, the name was chosen because “the Bunyip is the true type of Australian Humbug!”  The word is also used in numerous other Australian contexts, including the House of the Gentle Bunyip in Clifton Hill, Victoria.  There is also a coin-operated bunyip at Murray Bridge, South Australia, at Sturt Reserve on the town’s riverfront.  Bunyips appear in Naomi Novik’s fantasy novel Tongues of Serpents.  It also makes an appearance as the primary threat to the treasure seekers in the Bengali novel called Chander Pahar by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.

From:  Roberta M. Eisenberg  There used to be a car model called a Gremlin.  My uncle had one--orange.  We all called it The Shoe.  Perhaps the name of the car foretold its demise.
From:  Jim Tang   The 1963 Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (video, 9 min.), made great use of William Shatner’s acting chops to place the gremlin on an airliner.  Specifically, on the port wing as he tore up the engine.  Rod Serling, like Roald Dahl, had ties to aviation, although his were jumping out of them as a decorated WWII US Army paratrooper.  His brother Robert is renowned for aviation writing that centers more on the airline builders, airplane manufacturers, and pilots.  Gremlins still inhabit airplanes, even more so as we move further into the computer age.  When they finally replace human beings in the cockpit, only the gremlins will remain.
From:  M.M. Serpento   Here’s a real estate definition (a variation on McMansion):  To bigfoot is to replace a house similar to others in the neighborhood with a much larger house.  Often done by buying two side-by-side lots and demolishing the existing houses.  Bigfoot houses: The new trend in metro Detroit’s compact communities  AWADmailissue 954

A 118-year-old ham, which is reportedly the oldest in the world, was originally cured in 1902 by the Gwaltney Foods meat company before it was lost in storage.  On its rediscovery two decades later, the elated Pembroke D. Gwaltney Jr. made the piece of pork his “pet ham.”  He put a brass collar on it and paraded it around various expositions to prove to customers his meat could be kept without being refrigerated.  The dry curing process used to create the ham involved salting the meat and draining the blood, which allows for a longer shelf life and a richer flavor.  Supposedly, microbiologists say the ham is technically still edible.  However, it isn’t a delicacy anyone would enjoy pigging out on, as the taste and sensory experience of the cured ham may not appeal to modern palates.  The ham is housed in the Isle of Wight County Museum, which is also home to the world’s oldest peanut.  It occupies a climate-controlled display case with two other hams, one of which is purportedly the largest ham in the world.  See picture at https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/worlds-oldest-edible-ham 

“When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.”  “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible.  The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.”  “The species greatest harvest ― words.”  David Brin  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14078.David_Brin  Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American scientist and author of science fiction.  He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards.  His novel The Postman was adapted as a feature film and starred Kevin Costner in 1997.  Brin's nonfiction book The Transparent Society won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association and the McGannon Communication Award.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin 

Eighteen five-ingredient Thanksgiving recipes  Margaux Laskey  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/dining/five-ingredient-thanksgiving-recipes.html 

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ (1922–2015) was an English actor, singer and author.  With a career spanning nearly seven decades, Lee was well known for portraying villains and became best known for his role as Count Dracula in a sequence of Hammer Horror films.  His other film roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002–2005), and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014).  Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011, and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013.  Lee credited three films “for bringing me to the fore” as an actor, A Tale of Two Cities (1958), in which he played the villainous marquis, and two horror films, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958).  He considered his best performance to be that of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the biopic Jinnah (1998), and his best film to be the British cult film The Wicker Man (1973).  He frequently appeared opposite his friend Peter Cushing in many horror films, and late in his career had roles in five Tim Burton films.  Always noted as an actor for his deep, strong voice, Lee was also known for his singing ability, recording various opera and musical pieces between 1986 and 1998, and the symphonic metal album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross in 2010, after having worked with several metal bands since 2005.  The heavy metal follow-up Charlemagne: The Omens of Death was released on 27 May 2013, Lee's 91st birthday.  He was honoured with the "Spirit of Metal" award at the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards ceremony.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lee 

HERE ARE THE WINNERS OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS  Liberty Hardy  https://bookriot.com/2020-national-book-awards/  Read speech by Walter Mosley (winner of "The Medal for Distinguished Contribution  to American Letters")  from National Book Awards  https://lithub.com/read-walter-mosleys-incredible-speech-from-last-nights-national-book-awards/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2288  November 23, 2020