Wednesday, April 22, 2009

invidious \in-VID-ee-uhs\, adjective:

1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will.
2. Containing or implying a slight.
3. Envious.

Invidious is from Latin invidiosus, "envious, hateful, causing hate or ill-feeling," from invidia, "envy," from invidere, "to look upon with the evil eye, to look maliciously upon, to envy," from in-, "upon" + videre, "to look at, to see."

opposite marriage

• The P.C. way to specify the legal union of a man and a woman, as made popular by Miss California at the 2009 Miss USA pageant.

MISS CALIFORNIA: "We live in a land that you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage"

Trivia

What oft-photographed tourist attraction—depicted as a state’s symbol on its commemorative U.S. quarter—collapsed overnight in 2003?

• The Old Man of the Mountain, the 40-foot-tall stone outcropping that resembled a gnarled face in Franconia Notch State Park in New Hampshire.

Today in History:

• Henry VIII: much-married king of England ascended to the throne (1509)
• "In God We Trust": US Congress mandated that all minted coins bear this inscription (1864)
• Oklahoma Land Rush: began officially at noon with thousands of homesteaders staking their claims (1889)
• Earth Day a day when some 140 nations celebrate the environment.

Today's Birthdays:

• J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967): physicist who headed the Manhattan Project
• Isabella I (1451-1504): queen who sponsored Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World; also, world leader Vladimir I. Lenin (1870-1924)
• Henry Fielding (1707-1754): novelist playwright, Tom Jones; plus, authors Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) and Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): German philosopher of the Enlightenment
• Peter Frampton (59): rock musician, Fingerprints; also, musicians Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), Charles Mingus (1922-1979) and Glen Campbell (73)
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan (43): actor, Grey's Anatomy, Weeds; also, actors Jack Nicholson (72), Ryan Stiles (50), and Ingo Rademacher and Eric Mabius (both 38)