Cacography

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 199:

cacography

Surely you know that cacophony is "harsh sound." In that same vein, cacography is both "bad spelling" or "bad handwriting."  I take this to mean that when you attempt to sit down and read something border on chicken-scratch illegibility, your head begins to hurt... like your reaction to hearing the classic horror-sound of fingernails a-clawing on a chalk board.  In other words, harshness of writing.  When I come across passages in a novel that could have been better edited, I cringe in the same way. 

Adamantine

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 198:

adamantine

This adjective describes something or someone that is unyielding, inflexible or unbreakable... or very adamant.  This is from the Latin word adamanitus, which means "hard as steel." Peter Oborne of the Daily Telegraph describes the late Baroness Thatcher thus: "The magnificence of Thatcher was her adamantine refusal to accept the conventional wisdom of her age."  (Emphasis mine.)  And this woman, hard as steel, will not be forgotten for quite sometime.  If the United States elects a woman into the office of President, she will have to be as strong as Britain's only female prime minister.  It is not a job for wilting flowers.

Margaret Thatcher on the cover of Time Magazine

Bernard Bujold - LeStudio1

Virga

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 197:

virga

Virga is a mass of streaks, wisps or stripes of rain appearing to hang underneath a cloud, but evaporating before reaching the ground.  This is the Latin word for "rod" or "stripe."  While out and about yesterday, I saw many a virga looming overhead, an eerie, ghostly premonition of the thunderstorms that would arrive later in the night.  Weather, in case you couldn't tell, fascinates me in its changeability - the mood swings of the region, the continent and the world.  There is still so little we know about the workings of the atmosphere; imagination will always fill in the gaps of our knowledge.

Virgas by Francois Roche