A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  

Palladian  (puh-LAY-dee-uhn)  adjective  1. Wise or learned.  2.  Relating to wisdom, knowledge, or learning.  3. Of or relating to the classical architectural style of Andrea Palladio.

For 1 & 2:  After Athena (also known as Pallas Athena), a goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology.  Her name has also resulted in other words such as palladium and athenaeum.  Earliest documented use:  1562.
For 3: After Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), Venetian architect.  Earliest documented use:  1731.  

Piccadilly Circus  (pik-uh-dil-ee SUHR-kuhs)  noun:  A place that is very busy, crowded, or noisy.  After Piccadilly Circus, a busy area in London where several roads meet.  The area has tourist attractions, entertainment, shopping, and large illuminated ads.  A circus here means a traffic roundabout, but what about Piccadilly?  It’s named after a tailor who made a fortune selling piccadill/pickadill, a lace collar popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. 

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From:  Sam Long  Subject:  palladian 
Palladium is a common name for large theaters or arenas, because they are (supposed to be) devoted to art and wisdom.  The well-known movie theater and concert hall by that name in New York (opened 1927, torn down 1998) on S. 14th St in Manhattan, seated 3,400.  There is a song (“Just in Time”) in the 1950s Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing, in which the heroine, Ella, sings a little couplet referring to it:

This act could play the Palladium,
Or even the Yankee Stadium!  

Palladium Hall, a student dormitory of New York University, now occupies the site.  There is a much newer Palladium theater, an event venue, in New York City’s Times Square; it seats over 2,000, and opened under that name in 2005.  The London Palladium, a theatre in London, UK, is owned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. 

From:  Jan Breemer  Subject:  baloney detection  The word reminded me of the Baloney Detection Kit once described in the Scientific American Nov/Dec 2001 by Michael Shermer. 
From:  Alta Haywood  Subject:  baloney drop  Lebanon, PA, where bologna is made, has a baloney drop (video, 24 sec.) on New Year’s Eve.  I believe there’s also a pickle drop in Dillsburg.  We’ve seen a taco drop in AZ as well. 
From:  Charles O’Reilly  Subject:  Piccadilly Circus  Railroad buffs cringe at the mention of Grand Central Station.  Trains coming into New York from the north utilize Grand Central Terminal, so named because multiple lines terminate there. No trains pass through, as they might at, say, Pennsylvania Station a little over a mile away.  But the railroad called a predecessor depot (in use for about ten years) Grand Central Station, and there has long been a post office location known as Grand Central Station, named for its proximity to the rail terminal.  Between the name of the old station and frequent media references to the post office in the era prior to the introduction of ZIP codes, the alternate name has stuck in the public consciousness.

From:  Thomas Brennan  Subject:  Piccadilly Circus  In your example of busy places, picky New Yorkers will point out that Grand Central Station is the name of the mid-town post office while Grand Central Terminal is the name of the railroad station.  This nuance was employed as a trick question by Spike Lee, a quintessential New Yorker, in Inside Man, a detective film that featured the “picky” natives of New York City.    

The original posset, which dates back to the Middle Ages and was even referenced in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was a sweet drink akin to eggnog.  Milk or cream, sugar, and spices were spiked with booze and topped with gruel, which formed a thick layer over the drink.  Somewhere in the late 19th century, the term posset became synonymous with a syllabub, a dessert of sweet cream curdled with acid, which is what it’s thought of today.  Alexis deBoschnek  Find recipe taking ten minutes and serving four at https://www.thekitchn.com/lemon-posset-recipe-23520125   

June 6 is UN Russian Language Day, one of six such days established by UNESCO to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity and to promote the equal use of its working languages.  The Russian novelist and poet Alexander Pushkin, regarded as the father of modern Russian literature, was born June 6, 1799.  Wiktionary   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2680  June 7, 2023