“But in the movie what happens to the money? She wondered if they’d ever know. Maybe the answers were buried in the caliche, along with some character who had figured in a story toward the end of the movie. She hadn’t been able to follow the story about the character who was buried in the caliche because she was busy trying to puzzle out what happened to the satchel of money, but the word caliche stuck in her head. It was pronounced ka-lee-chee. Since they lived in New York City and were not about to go dig a hole in Central Park, it didn’t seem like a particularly useful word, but you never know.” -Nora Ephron, “No, But We Saw the Movie”, Shouts and Murmurs, The New Yorker Magazine

caliche ( kuh-LEE-chee ), noun

“Caliche is also known as hardpan, calcrete, duricrust or in India, kankar. It is actually a form of calcium carbonate. The word is Spanish, but comes from the Latin word calx, which means limestone.” -http://desertgardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/caliche___hard_desert_gardening


http://www.goldgold.com/stories/images/drywash4gold/caliche2.gif

“Many southern Arizona soils have layers of caliche either on or under the surface. Caliche is a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime (calcium carbonate, CaCO3).” -http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/soils/caliche.html

Reminding Wallace that long before the governor had ridden segregation to power, he had been a populist, Johnson said: ''You came into office a liberal -- you spent all your life trying to do things for the poor. Now why are you working on this? Why are you off on this Negro thing? . . . What do you want left after you, when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads 'George Wallace -- He Built?' Or do you want a little piece of pine board lying across that harsh caliche soil that reads, 'George Wallace -- He Hated.' '' Samuel G. Freedman, The New York Times, Feb. 6, 2005

“The road winds past brakes of cedar and clumps of lowing Brahman cows, turns into caliche and ends at a small white house behind a picket fence.” -Robert Reinhold, July 1, 1987

“In those days, when I wasn't too busy farming, I earned a little money at other things. I did road work for Fisher County quite a few months one year. One day I was hauling caliche in the county truck to fill in holes in the road by a bridge.” Clarence Edgar Johnson, The Life of Me An Autobiography

“The most desirable way to manage caliche would be to keep plant roots out of the caliche soil. In areas with excessive caliche formations, successful home horticultural plantings can be made by first removing the caliche and replacing it with a soil mixture.” -http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_a/a-127.html

Picture at right: In cross section – annular (ring-shaped) annual growth in tree trunk.


annular (AN-yoo-ler) adjective

ringlike
annulate, annulated adj. having rings or made up of rings
annulation, (an-yoo-LAY-shun) noun, a ring or formation of rings
annulet, (AN-yoo-lit) noun, a small ring
annulose, adj. having rings; ringed
annulus, noun a ring or ringlike part, mark or shape; plurals: annuli, annuluses


These words are all children of a Latin fellow, annulus (ring), and not of that other one, annus (year). The rings seen in the cross sections of sawn down trees and stumps, are both annual rings (yearly) and annular (ring shaped).

Married people usually have at least one annulosefinger, having exchanged annulations at their wedding.

synonyms: circular, ringlike, ringlet

“In a spectacular event known as an annular eclipse, the Moon will move directly in front of the Sun at midday on Tuesday, rendering the Moon as a dark disk ringed by brilliant gold.” The New York Times, May 10, 1994

“The combustion chamber consists of inner and outer casings forming an annular space which contains ten flame tubes.” –Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd, Brochure, (1958)

“One form of the diamond drill makes an annular groove, leaving a central cylindrical plug of stone.” -Edward Henry Knight, Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary,p. 115 (1876)

“(ring shank nail) A term used to define a nail that has annular rings around the shank that hold the nail in place when driven into wood.” –Professional Engineering Inspections, Inc. Dictionary of Terms

“In this place the annular isle was mostly under water, carrying here and there on its submerged line a wooded islet.” –Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas

plutoid (PLOO-toyd) n.

a dwarf planet beyond Neptune in our solar system.

“Pluto is still not a planet, but now it is a plutoid. Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union decreed that Pluto was no longer a planet, but a member of a new category known as dwarf planets, bodies that were large enough to be round, but which did not gravitationally dominate their orbital neighborhoods. On Wednesday, the union announced the creation of the term “plutoid” for a dwarf planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. There is only one plutoid other than Pluto: Eris, the sphere of rock and ice formerly nicknamed Xena that is slightly larger than Pluto. –Kenneth Chang, The New York Times, June 12, 2008

“From now on all similar distant bodies in the solar system will be called "plutoids." That's the decision by the International Astronomical Union, which met last week in Oslo, Norway, and announced the decision Wednesday.” —Seth Borenstein, "Pluto's namesakes: Similar bodies are 'plutoids'," The Associated Press, June 11, 2008


related words: pluto, verb; plutoed, adj. past. part.

to “pluto” is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened when Pluto was demoted from ‘planet’ to ‘dwarf planet’.

“The verb "to pluto" (preterite and past participle: "plutoed") is a neologism coined in the aftermath of the decision. In January 2007, the American Dialect Society chose "plutoed" as its 2006 Word of the Year, defining "to pluto" as "to demote or devalue someone or something", "as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto

How Dwarf Planet Pluto (now a plutoid) got its name:

“The name Pluto was first suggested by Venetia Burney (later Venetia Phair), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. Venetia was interested in classical mythology as well as astronomy, and considered the name, one of the alternate names of Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, appropriate for such a presumably dark and cold world. She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian of Oxford University's Bodleian Library. Madan passed the name to Professor Herbert Hall Turner, who then cabled it to colleagues in America.



Venetia Burney

“The object was officially named on March 24, 1930. Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a short-list of three: "Minerva" (which was already the name for an asteroid), "Cronus" (which had garnered a bad reputation after being suggested by an unpopular astronomer named Thomas Jefferson Jackson See), and Pluto. Pluto received every vote. The name was announced on May 1, 1930. Upon the announcement, Madan gave Venetia five pounds as a reward. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto

Plutoid pictures: http://www.iau.org/static/archives/images/screen/iau0804a.jpg

derogate (DER-uh-geyt) verb

v.i.
1. to detract from, or take away part from a whole
2. to deviate, go astray from
v.t.
3. to disparage, to belittle

from the past participle of Latin derogare, "to propose to repeal part of a law, to diminish," from de-, "away from" + rogare, "to ask, to ask the people about a law."

related: derogation, noun

Laudare se vani, vituperare stulti, as I do not arrogate, I will not derogate. –Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

“If someone wants to derogate from that and make a choice, then they are free to do it.” - Ciaran Fitzgerald, "Food champion's recipe for success", Irish Times, November 13, 1998

The biggest mistake that can be made in writing about the child-care issue is to use a phrase that derogates mothers who do not choose to pursue careers outside the home. –William Safire, The New York Times, May 29, 2988

“In my view, many people, including legislators and judges, make far too much of blood ties in derogation of ties created by loving effort.” -Randall Kennedy, The Atlantic Magazine, May 1997

“...myth is repudiated by decades of social science data that convincingly establish that being homosexual does not, in itself, derogate from one's ability to participate in and contribute responsibly and positively to society.” -Robert Hanley, The New York Times, Aug. 5, 1999

''Why do too many Americans derogate as losers those parents who put family ahead of career. . . ?'' William Safire, The New York Times, June 30, 2003

These swingers, if they still exist, are not the politically inert, exemplified by the legendary scold who said, "I never vote - it only encourages them." Rather, they are what strategists in both parties secretly derogate as "the unreliables": sometime supporters who can be inveigled to vote if you assuage their guilt while dragging them to the polls. –William Safire, The New York Times, Sept. 1, 2004

mollescent (meh – LES- cent ) adjective

becoming soft or tending to soften.
the mollescent icing was slipping from the cake

[from Latin mollescere, to soften < mollere, to be soft < mollis, soft, flexible]

mollescence, noun: a softening or tendency to soften.
the mollescence of burning candles



“Think of it! The prune, nucleus of a million boarding house jeu-de-mots, the prune, mollescent media for millions of medicinally minded mortals, the prune, . . . “ -Consumers’ Digest, v. Jul-Dec 1937, p. 29

“. . . her skin has the mollescent quality of a downy leaf.” -Brian Howell, “Black on White”, Paumanok Review

“Well aware that the Creole term siwo is used by men to describe a kind, mollescent woman, Béroard appropriates it to characterize a good man (or even a sugar daddy) in her song entitled “Siwo”: “ –Brenda F. Berrian, Awakening Spaces French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music, and Culture, p. 99 (pub. 2000)

“From years of Latin I could see how my name was related to all those words meaning “soft”: mollify, mollescent (the down side of tumescent), mollusk.” Helen Barolini, “How I Learned to Speak Italian”, Chiaroscuro, Essays of Identity, p. 33 (pub. 1999)

“The extensive poetical remains by Catullus offer evidence as to the changed mollescent character of the Romans.” -The Classical Journal, Classical Ass. of the Middle West and South, p. 22 (pub. 1905)

“Monastic weather before you arrived,
years too late, but I recognized you.
Mollescent lips, in an ancient rite,
claimed me, calmed me. I became yours.”
- Dom Moraes, In Cinnamon Shade, New and Selectied Poems, p. 133, (pub. 2001)

“On the other hand what more common than for a ‘molly-coddle’ to change a good housewife into a novel-reading, lecture-haunting, shop-visiting “gad-about.” In the was the long-continued attrition of Mr. Stichen’s manner had served to foster in Madame a tendency to a state of quiet mollescence, which, as his spirits began to feel the pressure of wealth, and every crack and cranny of his mind to be as it were caulked up with bank-notes, began in her to develop itself into a most lady-like style – a style, as Hamilton Boggs said, perfectly comme il faut.” William Starbuck Mayo, Never Again, p. 274 (pub. 1873)

“So here we might dispense with her
Gina being a female
But she was more than that
Being an incipience a correlative
An instigation of the reaction of man
From the palpable to the transcendent
Mollescent irritant of his fantasy
Gina has her use Being useful
contentedly conscious
She flowered in Empyrean
From which no well-mated woman ever returns “
-Mina Loy (1882-1966), The Effectual Marriage or The Insipid Narrative of Gina and Miovanni


“To the question ‘does mollescence of the brain ever get well?’ he give as a reply a vague statement (unintelligible, from its conciseness, it must be to those who have not previously studied the very difficult subject) of the opinions of Cruveilhier and Sims.” The British and Foreign Medical Review , Dr. Gross’s Elements of Pathological Anatomy, p. 72 (pub. 1847)

“No wonder that some students seem like human blotters, absorbing in their mollescent brains the thoughts of those who tell them what to think.” - The Classical Weekly, v. 10, 1916-1917, p. 193 (pub. 1917)

“The important properties contributed by perfluoroether polymer oils such as high lubricity, epidermal substantivity and emolliancy make them highly desirable as active components in many formulations for the treatment of animals and plants, particularly in hair and skin formulations for superior conditioning and mollescent affects.” -http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/5779944.html

pyro - (PAHY-roh), prefix

Pyro, a prefix relating to heat or fire, stands at the beginning of many words. Standing alone it is slang for a pyromanic (a pyro started the forest fire ) or for pyrotechnics (lets scoot over to the park and watch the pyros tonight).

pyrocephalus - a genus of Tyrannidae
pyrochemical - of chemical change at high temperatures
pyroclastic - of volcanic origin, volcaniclastic
pyroconductivity - conductivity by the application of heat, esp. in unconductive solids
pyroelectricity - electrification or polarity caused by heat changes in some crystals
pyrogen - a substance which causes one's temperature to rise, as a bacterial toxin
pyrography - the art of burning designs in wood , leather or other materials
pyrokinesis - ability to set objects on fire by concentration of psychic power
pyrolator - a fire worshiper
pyrolatry - the worship of fire
pyrology - the science of fire
pyrolysis - subjection of organic compounds to high temperatures (cooking?)
pyromancy - divination by fire
pyromania - a compulsion to set things on fire
pyrophobia - abnormal fear of fire
pyrosis - heartburn
pyrotechnics - art of making and or displaying fireworks
pyrotherapy - treatment by inducing artificial fever
pyrotic - relating to heartburn

- and many other words, especially in chemical science.

picture at right: "a corncrib plonker"

plonk (plongk) , plonking, plonked

verb:
1. to place or put oneself or something with a dull un-resonant noise and rather clumsily
2. to make dull sounds by plucking stringed instruments or dropping the hands on keyboard instruments.

noun:
1. a abrupt non-resonant sound; the noise of something dropping
2. a cheap or inferior wine

Plonk is not the past tense of plink, as in plink-plank-plonk; but possibly is from the French blanc as used with vin blanc, white wine. Blanc and plonk sound almost the same esp. when the B of blanc has a plosive quality.

“ . . . but a few mistakenly objected to my use of the slang verb plonk. Though wine lovers use the noun to derogate cheap wine, and musicians use it to mean "an abrupt vibratory sound associated with plucking a string," I used the verb sense of "to walk with heavy footsteps," like Mary Shelley's Monster, and intend to continue plonking through. “ –William Safire, The New York Times, Dec. 18, 2000

“Finally a ball landed in the pocket in front of the left fielder with a satisfying plonk. One out.” -William Zinsser, Field of Tin, The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2001

“You can imagine in the old days when pros used wood rackets, which made a delicate ''plonk,'' why tennis on grass -- watching or playing it -- seemed downright pastoral.” Michael Kimmelman, Movies, The New York Times, July 6, 2007

“He recounts the downfall of "the plink-plonk man," a musician accompanied by a dancing monkey. One day the plink-plonk man's monkey escapes into a tree, where it performs a tiny striptease, divesting itself of its costume piece by piece; Martin watches the musician collecting the little clothes and "folding them as he might those of a child." - Sophie Harrison, Fortunate Son, The New York Times, April 9, 2006

“Somehow Waller did make the pipe organ swing. (There is a great moment during his recording of "Sugar" on the Camden organ, accompanying the blues singer Alberta Hunter, when she chimes in during his solo, "Plonk that thing, Fats!") “ -Stephen Budiansky, Resurrecting Fats, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2000

“The fur lining of the trenchcoat was itself dark blue, almost black. The label said Bill Blass. The coat was my size. I plonked down the nine dollars, plus tax. When I got back to the house, I tried on my new coat in front of a full-length mirror. It was perfect. “ -Calvin Trillin, Rag Time, The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 2006

“Suddenly, a sandy-haired, balding man with a pensioner’s forlorn pink bulb on the end of his nose plonked down two plates in front of us.” -Zadie Smith, Hanwell in Hell, The New Yorker, Sept. 27, 2004


With a label like that its got to be plonk.

“As a result of my adventures in boxed wine, my husband and I have had some success exploring the realm of drinkable plonk. I think my medial orbitofrontal cortex is struggling with this new development, but it is balanced by the financial lobe...” -M. P. Dunleavey, The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2008

“Gold in short supply? Silver will do. Fine wines scarce? Plonk will do. But a shortage of chocolate? What's the world to do?” -Jan M. Rosen, The New York Times, May 10, 1998

canard (kun – NAHRD ) noun

1. a baseless , deliberately misleading story, hoax or rumor
2. a duck for eating
3. on airplanes a short forward wing, or an airplane having such wings
4. a term used in mathematics

Etymology. Before 1850, from French "a hoax," literally "a duck," said by Littré to be from the phrase vendre un canard à moitié "to half-sell a duck," thus, from some long-forgotten joke, "to cheat." From Old French quanart, probably echoic of a duck's quack. – online etymology dictionary

I think I got carried away with the quotations! Be sure and look at those preceded by smilies.

“Main courses include steamed baby snapper fillets with king prawn, coriander gremolata and rice noodles, and an assiette de canard — duck breast with hoisin sauce, rillettes cannelloni and a foie gras custard.” -Stuart Emmrich, ‘Sydney’s Beachside Cuisine’ The New York Times, Feb. 24, 2008

“Elsewhere, our hero lectures to a group of prisoners about the ''Mona Lisa.'' There the old canard about the portrait as Leonardo in drag appears, . . . . Again, we know that the sitter was a woman from contemporary documents, . . . “ -Bruce Boucher, NYTimes, 3 Aug 2003

“On the first page, Lady Antonia dismisses the cake quotation as a canard, saying that it was first said about 100 years earlier about a Spanish princess who married Louis XIV and was repeated about other princesses through the 18th century. “ Mel Gussow, Review of “Marie Antoinette: The Journey,” NYTimes, 04 Sep 2001

“Yankees really adopt pinstripes because they made Babe Ruth look slimmer? Not really. But just because the oft-told story is a canard doesn't mean ballplayers are outside fashion's ineluctable pull.” -Guy Trebay, NYTimes, 24 Oct 2000

“Also, much must be forgiven a historian who writes of the egregious Titus Oates that he ''was eventually hoist on his own canard,'' and of Queen Anne that her pleasures were ''limited to gambling and dining, losing pounds at one set of tables and gaining them at the other.'' “ -Paul S. Seaver, NYTimes, 21 Sep 1997

“There are those who seem to think that a book party in the home of a famous person gets preferential treatment in this column. We call this a canard, within a lie, within a falsehood, within a calumny bordering on libel -- cooked up by a jealous author we have yet to mention. “ Joyce Wadler et al, NYTimes, 22 Jun 2004

“The old canard that George Washington could have been king is simply nonsense: a revolutionary movement that sought to decapitate the executive branch of government was not about to make anyone king, not even Washington.” - Kenneth R. Bowling, Jan, 2005
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=170571115837756

“The cops were wrong. And they must have known that they were wrong, that the picture they were creating of youngsters climbing on top of cars and blocking vehicular and pedestrian traffic was completely false. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, carried the canard further. That had to have been deliberate, too. “ -Bob Herbert, The New York Times, Feb. 16, 2008

“But Mr. Levin's film, unlike Michael Moore's, provides few clear answers to the questions it stirs, though Mr. Levin takes pains to refute the canard that no Jews died at the World Trade Center.” -David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, Oct. 9, 2005

“Finally, the old canard that the Emancipation Proclamation freed not a single slave, repeated by Bennett, could not be more wrong. From Jan. 1, 1863, freedom would march southward with the Union Army, which became an army of liberation. Once the war was over, the proclamation would cease to have any legal force. That is why Lincoln endorsed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, and won re-election on that platform in 1864.” –James M. McPherson, NYTimes, 27 Aug 2000

“The rear-wing design, known as ''canard'' for the French word for duck because of its unexpected ''backwards'' look, with its smaller wings in front of the larger ones, . . . . “ -Seth Mydans, NYTimes, 17 Apr 1984

“"You know how some aircraft have fins up by the nose?" Dr. Robison asked. "Those are canard fins.” -William J. Broad, NYTimes, 30 Aug 1994

“The idea that atheists, secular humanists, agnostics and other free thinkers are not ''nice'' or, as is often more bluntly put, ''cannot be moral without a belief in God'' is highly offensive to the millions of Americans who are nonbelievers. To have this canard perpetuated by an evolutionary biologist who must surely know better is surprising and disappointing.” -Lois Porter, To the Editor, NYTimes, 31 Dec 2002

“. . . Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained doctor who refused to criticize a federal abstinence program that catered to the religious right by spreading the canard that sweat and tears could transmit AIDS. Senator Frist is now a lame duck, . . . “ -Frank Rich, NYTimes, 17 Dec 2006

“-- speaking very basic, atrociously pronounced French that nevertheless seemed to get me where I needed to go. (And won approving smiles from the Parisians I'd always supposed would laugh disdainfully at such incompetence. So much for that canard.)” -Daisann McLane, NYTimes, 19 Jan 2003

“One theory in vogue on the Cape is that Sigmund Freud took his patients with him on vacation in Austria and Bavaria, insuring no interruption in their daily analysis…. This may be a canard, even if Freud did see an occasional patient during the summer.” -Elizabeth Bumiller, NYTimes, 26 May 1996

“The greatest canard of all is that people want the truth. Actually, what we want is to confirm conclusions we've already reached, based on speculation, fashion, group identity, emotion, and raw self-interest. We tell ourselves we're out to discover the truth, but mostly we're just pushing the story line toward the conclusion we desire. Truth isn't even in the game.” - William Powers, “Warmed-Over Truth”, The Atlantic Monthly, 29 Mar 2001

"Analysis of a canard mechanism by which excitatory synaptic coupling can synchronize neurons at low firing frequencies," -SIAM J. Appl. Math., 65: 69-92, 2004.

“The officials were from the Institute of Heraldry, the government's chief guardian of insignia and heraldic tradition, and they were dismissing an oft-repeated canard about the presidential seal. According to legend, the eagle in the seal faced the arrow-holding talon in times of war and switched its stern gaze toward the olive branch in times of peace. The eagle's glare did indeed get reversed — just once, by President Harry S. Truman in 1945. But only, it turns out, to correct the grievous heraldic error that President Rutherford B. Hayes had made 65 years before, when he designed the first seal to adorn White House invitations. “ -Erik Eckholm, NYTimes, June 13, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/washington/13heraldry.html?scp=32&sq=canard&st=nyt

psychopomp (SAHY-koh-pomp) , noun and adjective

1. Mythology, a leader or guide of souls to the afterlife
2. Psychology, a symbolic mediator between the conscious and subconscious realms
3. a person who acts as a spiritual guide of a living person's soul. OED

[from the Greek word psychopompos, literally meaning the "guide of souls"]

psychopompic, adj.
psychopompically, adv.

In Greek mythology Charon ferried the boat across the river Styx to the afterlife if the soul of the newly dead could pay for the trip. Otherwise it must wander the bank of the river 100 years. A coin to pay Charon was put on or in the mouth of the dead. In Roman mythology Hermes and Mercury were psychopomps.


“Saint Michael the Archangel. . . . He also figures in images of the Day of Judgement, where he is the Psychopomp, conducting the souls and frustrating the devils' attempts to unbalance the scales used in the Psychostasy or "weighing of souls." http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/michael.html

“In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man (or woman), or sometimes as a helpful animal. –www.wikipedia.com

“Nazare will look closely at the poem, considering it against the backdrop of Poe’s own explanatory essay on “The Raven” and his Gothic tales. The titular raven, Nazare suggests, is not just some generic “bird of ill omen” but a psychopomp — a bird (according to mythological lore) that conducts human souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. In re-reading “The Raven” we might recognize that the speaker is not simply a bereaved lover plagued by “mournful and never-ending remembrance.” He faces something else entirely.” -www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/851, 14 Nov 2008

“Within the nocturnal vision, a typical image of courtly romance stands out: that of the white hart. This fairy character embodies the symbol of the psychopomp animal which drives the soul—as well as the predestined hero figure—to the Afterlife. . . .” -Luca Orecchini, Folkloric Segments in a Novella by Giovanni Boccaccio, Upenn Working Papers in Romance Languages, p. 42 (1988-99)

“. . . to a special degree Socrates and Plato speak in the name of the light, showing what vision for change may be understood to be. In their ways, these are all psychopomps or agents of change. " Robert M. Cooper, “Psychopomps and Change-Agents, or Can Virtue Be Taught?”, Theology Today Symposium On How People Change

“In his "Last Poem," and in Etruscan Places, the writer [D. H. Lawrence] prepares himself for the last transfiguration, the final "ingress of the unknown." Cataclysmic apocalyptic surrender gives place to a synergetic cooperation of the self with its destiny; the poems themselves function as the poet's psychopomp, and enact his own rites of passage through dissolution and possible renewal.” -Sarah Urang, “Kindled in the flame the apocalyptic scene in D. H. Lawrence,” thesis, Columbia University Libraries (1980)

“The typewriter, in short, acts as a psychopomp, moving information from one physical location (the hand) to another (the page).” –ENGL 758A: Inscribing Media, University of Maryland, 14 March 2006

oneirism (o-NIE-riz’m ) noun

1. absentminded dreaming while awake, reverie
2. Medical: abnormal dreamlike consciousness, often with disturbing illusions while awake

Origin: Greek Oneiros, dream

[syn: reverie, revery, daydream, daydreaming, oneirism, air castle, castle in the air, castle in Spain]

“oneirophrenia n. A dreamlike state of consciousness. Also called oneirism.[From Greek oneiros a dream + phren mind, originally midriff, the supposed seat of the soul + -ia indicating a condition or quality] – A Dictionary of Psychology, Oxford University Press 2001

Read the famous short story of oneirism: The Secrect Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber, pub. in New Yorker Mag. 1939

“Form and pattern in Horwood's book are gentle, with many open spaces: thresholds of oneirism, of daydreaming, in the company of warm people and lovely places.” -Judith Maclean Miller, The Antigonish Review 114, http://www.antigonishreview.com/bi-114/114-miller.html[/size}

“Movies are the most advanced emanation of 20th century global oneirism.” [size:8pt]–anon.

“ Browse Yan Dsoloh's body of work: From his works emerge several sets of themes ; the surrealism of Dali, the mystical oneirism of Bosch, distressed expressionism of Munch and the religious iconography of Chagall.” - http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/y/yandsoloh/

“When Agnes Beecham's 9-year-old daughter Rosa began telling fantastic stories about a visitor from another planet living in the basement, she dismissed them as childhood oneirism.” http://www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/details.php?id=818

“On first look at Robin Ward's Otherkin paintings, what quickly comes to mind are Alfred Tennyson's lines describing the “mild-eyed melancholy Lotus-Eaters” being deep asleep… yet all awake.” In Ward's paintings and drawings at Lisa Dent Gallery, listless animals occupy ascetic anti-landscapes in a kind of morphine inertia of private oneirism and collective isolation.” -Jordan Essoe, “Robin Ward at Lisa Dent Gallery” Artweek Magazine, April 2005

“Between the outer and inner layers of glass is a tantalizing trapped space, inaccessible to the public. Its function is to prevent condensation, but its effect is to provoke a state of exquisite oneirism.” –Irene Cheng, Frieze Magazine, Issue 104, Jan.-Feb. 2007