Interesting Words and Phrases

• fiat accompli
• This concludes my brief, pending your questions.
• dramastic: courtesy of Boatswain's Mate Third Class Baker, a crewmember on the USS Wadsworth, FFG 9, during counter drug operations in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 1999.
  
• You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. — Leon Trotsky
• desuetude - a state of disuse
• Be just and good. (John Adams' personal creed)
• Quod erat demonstrandum (QED): which was to be shown.
• Pro re nata (PRN): as the occassion arises; when necessary, commonly referring to day-wage health care workers. Nurses and therapists may work PRN.
  
• zeitgeist: german, the spirit of the times. From the philosopher Hegel, who literally thought there was a spirit involved, like Christmas Past, except either the spirit drove you or you drove the spirit (second sentence courtesy of my brother).
• naïve: just because of that funny letter after a. Accented characters are standard unicode and available in Mozilla's Composer window by clicking Insert, Characters and Symbols.
• mélange: french, a complex mixture or blend of chemicals, like coffee or wine.
• amanuensis: a stenographer, a secretary, one who writes your words for you when you cannot.
• heuristic: a replicable method or approach for directing one's attention in learning, discovery, or problem-solving. Related to eureka. A view of a problem that illuminates aspects not before seen, a view that may lead to the answer, perhaps in short order.
• So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.——Benjamin Franklin

• What is this life if, full of care,

  We have no time to stand and stare.

  -- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

• If you can make a good set of choppers, you'll never go hungry -- Matt Kahn
• More at Wordie