Monday, May 24, 2010

adumbrate \a-DUHM-breyt\, verb:

1. To foreshadow; prefigure.

2. To produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch.

3. To darken or conceal partially; overshadow.

Adumbrate derives from Latin adumbrare, "to sketch" (literally, "to shade towards," hence "to foreshadow or prefigure"), from ad-, "towards" + umbrare, "to shade," from umbra, "shadow."

Airplane Talker

1. A person who stands within the confines of your personal space bubble (causing extreme discomfort) to hold an ordinary conversation, like someone sitting next to you on an airplane would.

2. A person who speaks louder than the current conversation calls for, as if they are trying to talk over a plane's engines.

1. Your friend, over there, is a total airplane talker.

Trivia

What sexy male Hollywood heartthrob’s middle name is Tiffany?

• Richard Gere’s.

History

• "What hath God wrought?": inventor Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the first telegraph message; it went from Washington, DC, to Baltimore and it quoted Numbers 23:23 (1844)

• Crosley Field: hosted MLB's first nighttime game played under lights; Cincinnati's Reds beat Philadelphia's Phillies, 2-1 (1935)
• Concorde: supersonic passenger aircraft began flying to Washington, DC (1976)
• James Jeffords: Republican senator became an Independent, giving control of the US Senate to the Democrats (2001)

Birthdays

• Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736): physicist and instrument-maker who developed the temperature scale and the mercury thermometer
• Queen Victoria (1819-1901): Britain's longest-reigning queen
• Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950): founder of Het Volk who became prime minister of South Africa
• Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984): Nobel Prize-winning novelist, The Silent Don

• Bob Dylan (69): singer/songwriter; plus, musicians Patti LaBelle (66), Rosanne Cash (55), Heavy D (43) and Big Tyme (29)
• Jim Broadbent (61): actor, Iris, Moulin Rouge, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; also, actors Tommy Chong (72), Gary Burghoff (70), Priscilla Presley (65), Alfred Molina (57), Kristin Scott Thomas (50), John C. Reilly (45), Eric Close (42) and Bryan Greenberg (32)