This Week in Word of the Day/3-10-13

bibelot \BIB-loh; Fr. beebuh-LOH\, noun:

a small object of curiosity, beauty, or rarity.

Precious bibelots rained in from all over the globe: ivory hair pins, gold snuff boxes, trinkets once owned by royal families. She loved the little things dearly, each one, crafting stories of romance, adventure, and harrowing tragedy to track their journey to her front door.

But she missed her husband’s warm breath on her neck. She missed the way he bounded from the bed to turn off the alarm and rushed into the day with infectious enthusiasm.

She would never suggest that he should rein in his ambitions, but a little more time together would do so much to lift her spirits.

indite \in-DAHYT\, verb:

1. to compose or write, as a poem.

2. to treat in a literary composition.

3. Obsolete. to dictate.

4. Obsolete. to prescribe.

Long into the night, his mind spun. Words, metaphors, movements, turns, phrases, timing – inditing desperately in hopes that she would stay if he could just continue to create. She was slipping, her eyes always turned away, her thoughts ever outside any moment they should have shared. He sent the ballads out like bloodhounds to the darkened bars and the shadowed alleys to sniff out the deep hole that swallowed her wandering heart and bring it back home.

But there was never any going back, not after where she’d been.

rialto \ree-AL-toh\, noun:

an exchange or mart.

Frank’s early to mid-twenties were spent prize-fighting and bartending his way through Central and South America. His late twenties saw a brief stint of combat in Vietnam followed by a long stint as a drug runner throughout Indo-China. Frank enjoyed a few months as kept man, then as a stocker at a rialto in Venice to pay off the gambling debts his lover left him when she was whisked back to America by her husband.

Three years were devoted to deep sea fishing where he survived two capsizings. Neither were his fault, but no other crew would let him near their boat. After four years searching Israel for oil hidden deep under the ground with a crazy Christian zealot, he finally earned enough money to return to America. Instead he joined a millionaire eccentric for a trip up Mount Everest. The man fell to his death after only three days, so Frank wasted three years wandering the Himalayas and lost eighty pounds and killed four bandits in the process.

Frank finally settled down with a beautiful Tibetan girl and tried his hand at farming. On Frank’s forty-eighth birthday, his wife died at the hands of Chinese army regulars. Frank caught and killed two of the men and fled under a torrent of gunfire.

In India, he tried to calm his soul by falling in with a cult built around a charismatic yogi. Frank served as the man’s bodyguard and, more than a few times, his lover.

Frank finally bought that plane ticket at fifty-three and returned home to find his family devastated by bad fortune. His mother welcomed her only living offspring with open arms. She died three years later, but not before teaching Frank everything he needed to know about managing a bottling factory.

At seventy, Frank retired a wealthy man and tried his hand at writing. It never came through like he wanted, but that was okay. It all just seemed like bragging anyway.

tertiary \TUR-shee-er-ee, TUR-shuh-ree\, adjective:

1. of the third order, rank, stage, formation, etc.; third.

2. Chemistry. A. noting or containing a carbon atom united to three other carbon atoms. B. formed by replacement of three atoms or groups.

3. (initial capital letter) Geology. noting or pertaining to the period forming the earlier part of the Cenozoic Era, occurring from 65 million to 2 million years ago, characterized by the development and proliferation of mammals.

4. Ornithology. tertial.

5. Ecclesiastical. noting or pertaining to a branch, or third order, of certain religious orders that consists of lay members living in community (regular tertiaries) or living in the world (secular tertiaries).

noun:

1. (initial capital letter) Geology. the Tertiary Period or System.

2. Ornithology. a tertial feather.

3. (often initial capital letter) Ecclesiastical. a member of a tertiary branch of a religious order.

4. tertiary color.

Following the revolution, many of the churches blessed with Petrov’s lush and inspired murals were destroyed or converted into party offices. Some clergy’s hastily built secondary walls to hide the masterpieces, others stood their ground against party officials, only to never be seen again.

So many urged the artist to flee or to shift his talents to propaganda posters, but instead he took to the streets, painting graffiti by lamplight throughout the streets of Stalingrad. Icons appeared overnight, then were painted over by noon.

Petrov knew they would catch him eventually, that his fate was to die in Siberia, but when stalking the moonlit streets with a bucket of paint and an overused brush, he felt the angels whispering like never before.

scupper \SKUHP-er\, verb:

1. Informal. to prevent from happening or succeeding; ruin; wreck.

2. Military. to overwhelm; surprise and destroy, disable, or massacre.

Dakota took the news with a brave smile. The role of Mrs. Claus in the fifth grade musical should have been hers, yet it was unjustly awarded to Lacey, a talentless bimbo that got caught kissing a fourth grader behind the cafeteria.

And so she set in motion a devious plan to set the world back in order, to right this grievous wrong by ruthlessly scuppering the production.

After four weeks of sabotage, misinformation, and fermenting social unrest, the fifth grade music teacher watched an all out melee ensue on stage while Dakota stood by with a satisfied smile.

“I – I just can’t do this this anymore,” the teacher muttered, lips trembling and tears streaking eyeliner down her cheeks.

“But Santa!” Dakota erupted as she strode to center stage. “Christmas must go on!”

Slowly the rumble grew quiet. Santa adjusted his torn beard.

“Christmas must go on!” Dakota repeated holding her hand out to Santa.

“Yes, you are right, Mrs. Claus,” Santa replied, taking Dakota’s hand. “The children must have their toys!”

And Dakota’s coup d’état was complete.

linchpin \LINCH-pin\, noun:

1. something that holds the various elements of a complicated structure together: The monarchy was the linchpin of the nation’s traditions and society.

2. a pin inserted through the end of an axletree to keep the wheel on.

Just yesterday, Clint was a humble barista at a coffee shop. Today, his mastery of Missile Command on the Atari 2600 made him the critical linchpin in an intricate intergalactic plot to assassinate the mutant clone of Adolf Hitler before the madman could rally a vast Martian military empire to overwhelm the Earth.

“This is why I hate online dating,” Clint grumbled as he cracked his knuckles, then clutched the joystick.

haberdashery \HAB-er-dash-uh-ree\, noun:

1. a retail shop dealing in men’s furnishings, as shirts, ties, gloves, socks, and hats.

2. the goods sold there.

Pretenses were dropped immediately within the marriage between Melvin, the proprietor of a quite modern and fashionable haberdashery, and Lucille, a robust and brazen suffragette.

Upon crossing the threshold, Melvin excused himself to a separate bedroom to unpack. A kindly agreement was struck that they would always exude a vibrant romantic union when among family and “uninitiated” friends, even as offspring failed to materialize. “Visitors” were to be welcomed discretely through the servants’ entrance and they must never risk messy encounters that would give ammunition to restless gossips.

But it was not a loveless marriage. On the contrary, Melvin and Lucille were deeply devoted to one another, if not as a mating alliance, then as a rich and enduring friendship between two peers with no need for the illusion that the wold demanded outside the walls of their merry homestead.