Sunday, March 28, 2010

portentous \por-TEN-tus\, adjective:

1. Foreboding; foreshadowing, especially foreshadowing ill; ominous.

2. Marvelous; prodigious; wonderful; as, a beast of portentous size.

3. Pompous.

Portentous is from Latin portentosus, from portendere, to stretch out before or into the future, to predict, from por- (variant of pro-), before + tendere, to stretch out.

pen you in

• A play on the phrase "pencil you in" but adds additional emphasis on the intention of the commitment.

remley: hey wanna get some sushi tomorrow?

erica: most deff. i will pen you into my schedule.

Trivia

According to the New Testament, how many people did Jesus feed with five loaves of bread and two fishes?

• 5,000, as recounted in Mark 6:38–44.

History

• Andrew Jackson: US president was censured by the Senate for his actions in the Bank War; the censure was later expunged from the record (1834)
• Virginia Woolf: distinguished novelist, critic and essayist (A Room Of One's Own) committed suicide by drowning; she had been suffering from depression and bouts of mental illness for many years (1941)
• Three Mile Island: the most serious nuclear accident in US history took place at a power station in Pennsylvania (1979)

Birthdays

• Aristide Briand (1862-1932): French PM who served 11 times as premier and held 26 ministerial posts; he proposed the Kellogg-Briand Pact
• August Busch (1899-1989): businessman who built Anheuser-Busch into world's largest brewery
• Mario Vargas Llosa (74): writer who made an unsuccessful bid for president of Peru; plus, writers Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) and Russell Banks (70)
• Vince Vaughn (40): comic actor, Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up; also, actors Onoe Shoroku II (1913-1989), Conchata Ferrell (67), Ken Howard (66), Dianne Wiest (62), Annie Wersching (33) and Julia Stiles (29)
• Kate Gosselin (35): reality-show mom, Jon and Kate Plus Eight
• Lady Gaga (24): singer/songwriter and fashionista; also, musicians Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991) and Reba McEntire (55)