Not sure what I cherish more – getting a surprise gift from a semi-anonymous source (a thousand thanks to B’s BFF)….) or reading said gift, which turns out to make me laugh out loud while learning.

The book, written by Mark Forsyth, is called Etymologicon – A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. More of a spiraling, tumbling, somersaulting romp through numerous languages of the world, if you ask me. It helped distract me from yesterday’s news of yet another cruel and despicable presidential act – the rescinding of DACA. I spare you my cynical thoughts and instead share with you what I now learned about the roots of the word cynicism.

Loosely quoted: “The Cynics were a school of ancient greek philosophy, founded by Antisthenes and made famous by Diogenes. Cynic meant doglike. Diogenes taught and debated at a gymnasium called Cynosarge, Gymnasium of the White Dog, because a white dog had once defaced a sacrifice there, running away with a piece of meat. Diogenes, not being a native Athenian, was forced to teach at this Dog’s Gymnasiusm, which is how one hungry and ownerless canine gave his name to a whole philosophical movement. A fun litte result of this is that any cynical female is, etymologically speaking, a bitch.”

And speaking of dogs, it sure feels like the dog days, although they only last through mid – August, that hot, oppressive part of late summer. I now learn that people thought that Sirius, the Dog star, second brightest in the sky after the sun, combined its light with the sun for added heat (it cannot be seen during late summer when it rises and sets at the same time as the sun.) Sirius means scorching in Greek – and the only thing I know of these days that enjoys this heat is the sunflower……