This Week in Word of the Day/3-24-13

qualm \kwahm, kwawm\, noun:

1. an uneasy feeling or pang of conscience as to conduct; compunction: He has no qualms about lying.

2. a sudden feeling of apprehensive uneasiness; misgiving: a sudden qualm about the success of the venture.

3. a sudden sensation or onset of faintness or illness, especially of nausea.

Henry would be the fifth generation to be touched by war in the family’s honorable military tradition. As the surviving combat veterans stood quietly, watching the young man board a plane that would take him to another plane that would eventually deposit him into a blistering hot and barren battlefield, they all squashed shared qualms about the integrity of war and the callous disregard for young lives shown by government leaders. These were hushed conversations reserved only for those that survived to see the other side of military service.

Fathers wanted to warn their sons away from the horrors they faced because of their foolish pride and misplaced sense of duty, but they couldn’t. It would be shameful. War had become an inherited nightmare perpetuated by a code of silence. It was their tragic legacy.

hypothecate \hahy-POTH-i-keyt, hi-\, verb:

1. to pledge to a creditor as security without delivering over; mortgage.

2. to put in pledge by delivery, as stocks given as security for a loan.

Topeka just got a lot cooler when Aaron Jackson successfully worked with Planting Peace to hypothecate* for an $86,000 home catty-corner from the dreaded Westboro Baptist Church. Jackson and friends painted the outside the same colors as the pride rainbow flag and dubbed it the “Equality House.”*

*I don’t actually know the details on whether a loan was used for the house or it was bought outright, but hypothecate was my word of the day, so that’s what I went with. Good job Planting Peace!

primaveral \prahy-muh-VEER-uhl\, adjective:

of, in, or pertaining to the early springtime: primaveral longings to sail around the world.

The primaveral onslaught of pollen makes me want to snort pipe cleaner and take a scrub brush to my eyeballs.

insouciance \in-SOO-see-uhns; Fr. an-soo-SYAHNS\, noun:

the quality of being insouciant; lack of care or concern; indifference.

The painter faced the empty canvas with distracted insouciance. No imagery floated to the foreground of his mind, no inspiration sparked inside his heart. He was cold, spent, and tired.

His art robbed him of so much: family, career, love, security – but he had braved every storm and charged on.

Until that very moment.

As the paint slowly congealed on his wooden palette, he realized he was finally done.

He had promised himself a quiet suicide when he lost “it”, but now that he felt the passion truly and irrevocably extinguished, all he desired was a stable job, a stable life, and to shuffle through his final days bolstered by the knowledge that he had, at least, tried.

serpentine \SUR-puhn-teen, -tahyn\, adjective:

1. having a winding course, as a road; sinuous.

2. of, characteristic of, or resembling a serpent, as in form or movement.

3. shrewd, wily, or cunning.

Wil E. timidly nosed her way under the sheets to poke her owner’s hand to beg a head scratch. A classic omega dog, Wil E. was needy, easily startled, and surprisingly sly and serpentine.

She needed her owner to wake up and start his day so Wil E. could finally enact the plot that would wrestle power from Tobey, the privileged Alpha that lacked the vision and will to fully eradicate the squirrel menace and expand their empire beyond the quarter acre in the backyard.

Her coup could possibly anger her owner and jeopardize her position in the royal court, but she was committed. If her savvy series of political maneuvers and subtle sabotage unfolded perfectly, then she would secure her position as empress of the backyard and she would bring order and justice to a land that had only ever seen darkness and chaos.

preterition \pret-uh-RISH-uhn\, noun:

1. the act of passing by or over; omission; disregard.

2. Law. the passing over by a testator of an heir otherwise entitled to a portion.

3. Calvinistic Theology. the passing over by God of those not elected to salvation or eternal life.

4. Rhetoric. paralipsis.

No reason was given for the preterition, the souls were not offered a chance to look over their sins and virtues listed in the Book of Life. They were simply dismissed and led away to a distant cloud to wait and to watch the chosen file through the Golden Gates. A few souls overheard angels muttering about an expanded eastern wing of “the palace” eating up land that was meant for settlements.

Or maybe it was just the imaginings of bitter believers still stunned they were not welcomed into the bosom of their Creator.

It was clear that the angels were terribly uncomfortable and could not look the souls in the eyes. They refused to engage in conversation or answer questions, instead shrugging apologetically and returning ri huddles, whispering amongst themselves.

The numbers of the outcasts grew from dozens to hundreds to thousands.

No official word ever came down from heaven to what the next step was for the overlooked souls. Days passed. Far below, on the dying Earth, a lake of fire swallowed the condemned by the millions as they were cast down like bread crumbs. Some imagined they could hear the collective screams faintly when the winds changed.

The denied believers wondered when it would be their turn to burn. Others feared worse, that they’d simply been forgotten.

daven \DAH-vuhn\, verb:

to pray.

Stan lived a quiet existence on the northern rim of a muddy lake where the humans rarely wandered. Overrun with weeds and snakes, most of his kin had moved away or died off, but Stan managed just fine. He was clever and resourceful.

The salamander was also unusually soulful for a cold-blooded amphibian, but he mostly kept his ideas to himself. There were a few moonlit conversations with an ancient turtle who was the oldest being the salamander had ever encountered. The turtle was tragically dim, though, and his fixation with fireflies quickly exhausted Stan.

Following the death of his wife, Stan took to a daily daven to no particular deity, just a vague hope that his messages might spread across the ether and reach whatever existence his beloved had slipped into. He sometimes gazed at the stars and thought of them both being reborn as wasps zipping across the lake to harass tiresome humans in their noisy boats, and he would chuckle himself to sleep.