My precious daughter (a senior attending a local high school) came home one day with tears in her eyes.
"Sweetheart, what’s wrong?", I asked and gave her a hug.
"Nothing," she sniffled.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Okay. I love you and I want to help in any way I can. Just let me know," I said with another brief hug.
I began to turn away but was immediately engulfed in a 30-minute, non-stop, emotionally-charged account of a heated conversation between three of her close friends that resulted in all three of them being mad at her and each other. It all stemmed from a single question one of the girls had asked about someone completely unrelated to their group.
The Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for March 29th was uxorial.
of, relating to, or characteristic of a wife
The origins of the word:
With help from "-ial," "-ious," and "-icide," the Latin word "uxor," meaning "wife," has given us the English words "uxorial," "uxorious" (meaning "excessively fond of or submissive to a wife"), and "uxoricide" ("murder of a wife by her husband" or "a wife murderer"). Do we have equivalent "husband" words? Well, sort of. "Maritus" means "husband" in Latin, so "marital" can mean "of or relating to a husband and his role in marriage" (although "maritus" also means "married," and the "of or relating to marriage or the married state" sense of "marital" is far more common). And while "mariticide" is "spouse killing," it can also be specifically "husband-killing."
The Merriam-Webster Word of the day for May 20th was deasil. Note that it is deasil and not diesel (the fuel).
Deasil means clockwise. M-W says...
According to an old custom, you can bring someone good fortune by walking around the person clockwise three times while carrying a torch or candle. In Scottish Gaelic, the word "deiseil" is used for the direction one walks in such a luck-bringing ritual. English speakers modified the spelling to "deasil," and have used the word to describe clockwise motion in a variety of rituals.
Fox News reports that a Georgia State University economist has found that divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing is costing U.S. taxpayers over $112 billion [yes, with a "b"] per year. As a child of divorce I recognize that, while there is a financial cost to society, the greater (and less quantifiable) cost is in the damage it does to the children in those situations.
The most significant part of that damage is stunting of spiritual and personal growth of the children who do not have both parents in the home modeling proper man-woman, husband-wife, father-child, mother-child relationships. Granted, even in homes where both parents are present, there is not always proper modeling of those relationships but the complete absence of one parent or the other makes it especially difficult for the remaining parent.