Wednesday, December 8, 2010

bespoke \bih-SPOHK\, adjective:

1. Made to individual order; custom-made.

2. Of the making or selling such clothes.

3. (Archaic:) Engaged to be married; spoken for.

Bespoke is an artifact of the archaic English verb bespeak, "to arrange beforehand."

Urban Dictionary Cover-Up

• The act of scrambling onto UrbanDictionary.com to quickly find out the definition of a word, usually when used over texts or IM. Used to cover up the fact that you did not know the meaning of the word prior to its use. Commonly abbreviated to UDCU.

Person A: "yo dude, that jam was live last night."

Person B: *quickly does an urban dictionary cover-up*

"yeah, that was a pretty cool party."

Trivia

For what sport did country singer Garth Brooks receive a partial athletic scholarship from Oklahoma State University?

• Javelin throwing. Brooks, who attended OSU from 1981 to 1984, gave up javelin competition after he failed to make the Big Eight Conference finals in his senior year.

History

• Immaculate Conception: the belief that the Virgin Mary was born free of sin was defined as a dogma by Pope Pius IX (1854)
• World War II: the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the US entered into WWII (1941)
• CIS: the Commonwealth of Independent States was established instead of the USSR by Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (1991)
• NAFTA: Canadian-Mexican-US trade pact was signed into law by US President Bill Clinton (1993)

Birthdays

• Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587): Scottish queen; also, Sweden's queen Christina (1626-1689)
• Eli Whitney (1765-1825): inventor of the cotton gin; plus, auto manufacturer William Durant (1861-1947)
• Diego Rivera (1886-1957): muralist
• James Thurber (1894-1961): writer, cartoonist, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
• Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925-1990): all-round entertainer, he sang, danced, acted and did impressions; also, actors Lee J. Cobb (1911-1976), Maximilian Schell (80), David Carradine (1936-2009), John Rubinstein (64), Kim Basinger (57), Teri Hatcher (46), Matthew Laborteaux (44) and Dominic Monaghan (34)
• James Galway (71): virtuoso flutist; other musicians born on this date include Jim Morrison (1943-1971), Gregg Allman (63), Warren Cuccurullo (54) and Sinead O'Connor (44)