“Apotropaic,” to take a less cheery example, is an adjective that means “turning away evil”: it is used of superstitious rites that are intended to avert bad luck—such as the custom, common among Eastern European Jews of my grandparents’ era, of tying a red ribbon around the wrist of an infant in order to keep the Evil Eye away. Oh, my mother loved you so much, my mother will occasionally say to me, even now, when she took you to the park she would tie a red ribbon around your wrist!
