Author: admindavid
word o’the day – bagelling
Kenin, who began the year ranked No. 15 in the world, is a twenty-one-year-old who hadn’t yet won a match on the W.T.A. tour when Muguruza won Wimbledon. But she rose steadily through the rankings in 2018, and last summer she scored upset wins over Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Ashleigh Barty. In the fourth round in Melbourne, she dropped the first set to Coco Gauff, who had a full stadium roaring for every point she won and every error Kenin made. Kenin fed on it, or seemed to: she won the match going away, bagelling Gauff in the final set.
past participle. bagelled or bageled. DEFINITIONS1. 1. to beat someone by six games to nil in a set of tennis.
Talent
Old English talente, talentan (as a unit of weight), from Latin talenta, plural of talentum ‘weight, sum of money’, from Greek talanton . talent (sense 1) is a figurative use with biblical allusion to the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30)
never before did i realize that the sense of talent as a ‘special gift or ability’ comes from that parable
The use of the word “talent” to mean “gift or skill” in English and other languages originated from an interpretation of this parable sometime late in the 13th century – Wikipedia
— i mean, i think i should’ve been told — or found out on my own — long ago, because i am curious: what did they say when they wanted someone with talent, before the parable?
i just checked. Talent is one of those words that is the same in many languages . . . i assume those languages touched by Latin (Talentum) . . . were they also touched by christianity? was that a necessary step to this new, abstract concept as ‘talent’?
‘Talent’ is not a mere coinage, but the fruit of intentional literary technique, the metaphor that the ability of a human is quantifiable and valuable (able to valuated). Who else could do, has done this? Hazard a guess that would include Shakespeare, O’Henry, Dickens, and oops, let me add P.G. Wodehouse?
I already resolved that every poem should be an experiment,
but now i see, over and above that
every metaphor should make a new word (and a new concept)
not by portmonteau
but by expanding the meaning of the facial word
What color is your bible?
to the best of my recollection
there were only 3 colors of bibles
the covers i mean
black, white, & red
so black was standard, default
white was for testaments or girls
but i don’t remember why people
had red bibles
was it the mark of extra-devotion
perhaps to the sangularly aspects
of christian theosophy
Prague Crime Novels
Prague is a strange city where nobody can be trusted or is who they seem at first to be.
https://crimereads.com/crime-novels-set-in-prague/
Pavel Kohout’s The Widow Killer, Milos Urban’s The Seven Churches, Benjamin Black (of course, really John Banville), Philip Kerr’s Berlin cop Bernie Gunther, Laurent Binet’s 2010 bestseller HHhH Binet, Rob Hart’s The Woman from Prague, John Connolly’s The Black Angel, Kelly Jones’s Lost and Found in Prague, Simon Mawer’s Prague Spring, And finally, Prague’s leading literary son, Franz Kafka and The Trial . . .
and not for nuthin’, my own collection includes Umberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery
