De rigueur (duh
ree-GUHR) Required by fashion, custom,
or etiquette. From French de rigueur
(literally, of strictness), from Latin rigor. Ultimately from the Indo-European
root streig- (to stroke or press), which also gave us strait, strike, streak,
strict, stress, and strain. Earliest documented use: 1850.
The Riot Act: Many people were displeased when George I became king of
England in 1714, and his opponents were soon leading rebellions and protests
against him. The British government, anxious to stop the protests, passed a law
called the "Riot Act." It allowed public officials to break up
gatherings of 12 or more people by reading aloud a proclamation, warning those
who heard it that they must disperse within the hour or be guilty of a felony
punishable by death. By 1819, riot act was also being used more generally for
any stern warning or reprimand. Although the law long ago fell into disuse and
was finally repealed in 1973, the term that it generated lives on today.
Laissez-faire or laisser-faire: 1. The practice of noninterference in the affairs of
others.2. The economic policy allowing businesses to operate with little intervention
from the government. From French, literally “allow to do”.
Sacrilegious: Sacrilegious comes to us from sacrilege, which is
ultimately derived from a combination of the Latin words sacer
("sacred") and legere ("to gather" or "to
steal"). Its antecedent in Latin, sacrilegus, meant "one who steals
sacred things." There is no direct relation to religious (which is derived
from the Latin word religiosus, itself from religio, meaning "supernatural
constraint or religious practice"). The apparent resemblance between
sacrilegious and religious is just a coincidence.
“Sometimes
all it takes is the touch of someone new to remind us that there’s so much more
out there, so much more if you just look a little bit longer and a little bit
closer
Henley
Zichova
Girl on a Tractor
Joyce Sutphen
I knew the names of all the cows before
I knew my alphabet, but no matter the
subject; I had mastery of it, and when
it came time to help in the fields, I
learned to drive a tractor at just the right
speed, so that two men, walking
on either side of the moving wagon
could each lift a bale, walk towards
the steadily arriving platform and
simultaneously hoist the hay onto
the rack, walk to the next bale, lift,
turn, and find me there, exactly where
I should be, my hand on the throttle,
carefully measuring out the pace.
