Friday, February 5, 2010

distrait \dis-TRAY\, adjective:

• Divided or withdrawn in attention, especially because of anxiety.

Distrait is from Old French, from distraire, "to distract," from Latin distrahere, "to pull apart; to draw away; to distract," from dis- + trahere, "to draw, to pull." It is related to distraught and distracted, which have the same Latin source.

methuselah (meh-THOO-zuh-luh) noun:

1. An extremely old man.
2. An oversized wine bottle holding approx. 6 liters.

EtymologyAfter biblical figure Methuselah, who was said to have lived 969 years.
slurring your text

• when you're so drunk that you're texts are unreadable

(310) heryls so imsd gaonna bea tah the apartty tognlaoit!!!!

(510) chris, u gotta stop slurring your texts.
Trivia
According to author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, what did Sherlock Holmes keep near his fireplace in the toe end of a Persian slipper?

• His pipe tobacco.

History

• United Artists: US film company was founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith; a current version of the studio is owned, in part, by Tom Cruise (1919)
• Reader's Digest: DeWittand Lila Wallace published their first issue of condensed articles; the pocket-sized volume cost 25 cents (1922)
• BBC pips: six short tones used to mark the end of the hour were broadcast for the first time from the Royal Greenwich Observatory (1924)
• Tybee bomb: the US lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Georgia; some 14 nuclear weapons are known to be missing from the US arsenal alone (1958)

Berdays!

• Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850): British PM who modernized the police force; Greek PM Andreas Papandreou (1919-1996) shared this birth date
• Andrew M. Greeley (82): priest and best-selling author; also, writers Ralph E. McGill (1898-1969), William Burroughs (1914-1997), Stephen J. Cannell (69) and Christopher Guest (62)
• Hank Aaron (76): MLB hall-of-famer and No. 2 on the all-time HR list; athletes Roger Staubach (68) and Roberto Alomar (42) also celebrate birthdays today
• Laura Linney (46): SAG-, Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner for John Adams; other actors born today includeJohn Carradine (1906-1988), Stuart Damon (73), David Selby (69), Charlotte Rampling (64), Barbara Hershey (62), Tim Meadows (49), Jennifer Jason Leigh (48) and Jeremy Sumpter (21)