Tuesday, March 8, 2011

puckish \PUHK-ish\, adjective:

• Whimsical; mischievous; impish.

Puckish comes from Puck, the name of a mischievous sprite in English folklore, from Middle English pouke, "goblin," from Old English puca.

Words with friends with benefits

• When in the course of playing a member of the opposite sex in words with friends. You or they play provocative words as if to drop hints.

Boy played sex for 13 points

Girl played blow for 16 points

Boy played tit for 8 points

Dude, she must be a words with friends with benefits

Trivia

What good-humored performer accepted a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress while clutching her previously won Best Actress Oscar?

• Halle Berry, in 2005. The Razzie Award was for Catwoman (2004); the Oscar was for Monster’s Ball (2001).

Today's Holidays

• International Women's Day
• Fat Tuesday

History

• Gnadenhutten massacre: nearly 100 Native American converts to Christianity were murdered by militiamen during the American Revolution in revenge for raids carried out by other Native Americans (1782)
• New York Stock Exchange: the world's largest stock exchange by dollar volume received its constitution and its name (1817)
• FBI: 9 men from the US Secret Service were moved to the Justice Department, forming the Bureau of Investigation — later to become the FBI (1909)
• February Revolution: broke out in Russia — February 23 in the Julian calendar; it brought an end to the reign of Tsar Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty (1917)
• cloture: the US Senate voted in a method of bringing endless debates — filibusters — to an end (1917)
• Nelson Pillar: Dublin's granite column topped with a statue of Lord Nelson, the British hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, was destroyed by an IRA bomb (1966)

Birthdays

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935): Supreme Court justice known as "the Great Dissenter"
• Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932): author of The Wind in the Willows
• Otto Hahn (1879-1968): Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist; and, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Edward Calvin Kendall (1886-1972)
• Jim Bouton (72): baseball player who wrote Ball Four
• Aidan Quinn (52): actor, Songcatcher, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; other actors born on this date include Claire Trevor (1909-2000), Alan Hale, Jr. (1918-1990), Cyd Charisse (1922-2008), Sue Ann Langdon (75), Lynn Redgrave (1943-2010), Camryn Manheim (50), Andrea Parker (41), Freddie Prinze, Jr. (35) and James Van Der Beek (34)
• Mickey Dolenz (66): drummer and singer with The Monkees; also, musicians Randy Meisner (65), and Bob, Clint and Dave Moffatt (all 27)