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Todays Word

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

writing on the wall

PRONUNCIATION:

(RY-ting ahn thuh WAWL) 

MEANING:

noun: A clear sign of impending decline or disaster.

ETYMOLOGY:

From write, from Old English writan + wall, from Old English weall, from Latin vallum (rampart), from vallus (stake). Earliest documented use: 1663.

NOTES:

In the Biblical story told in Daniel 5, the haughty King Belshazzar throws a big party. While everyone is feasting, a disembodied hand appears and writes a warning on the wall. The term is also used in the form handwriting on the wall.
The moral of the story: At a party, read the room. Also, read the doom.

USAGE:

“My mother, her sister, and parents arrived in 1934 from Germany; my grandmother saw the writing on the wall early. Nobody else in her family was persuaded that Hitler’s rise was not a temporary aberration, and they stayed behind.”
Liora Moriel; The New Revisioning; The Jerusalem Report (Israel); Jun 26, 2023.

Todays Thought

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. 

-Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (17 Jul 1921-1944)

Todays Thought

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full. 

-Marcel Proust, novelist (10 Jul 1871-1922)

Todays Thought

I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. 

-Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)

Todays Thought

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. 

-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1 Jul 1742-1799)

Epic Accordion Rendition of Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor