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Witch of Agnesi: \ah 'yay zee\ a mathematical formula, the curve of which, on the x y coordinates, resembles a witch's hat.
This simple phrase about a mathematically formula peaked my interest. Interestingly, the mathematician responsible for this is a female named Maria Gaetana Agnesi, b. 1718.
You can find a picture of this curve on wikipedia. The line of the Witch of Agnesi is a beautifully curved line like a gentle hill.
Maria's biography is truly astounding:
She was born in 1718 to the wealthiest family in Milan, Italy. She was a child prodigy, speaking seven languages at age eleven, giving a lecture, in Latin, on the right of women to be educated. They say that she was very shy and also very beautiful. She was a philosopher as well as a professor of mathematics and also became very spiritual. She desired to join a convent but was not allowed to, treating the poor and the sick in her family's home.
witenagemot: [OE: witena: sages or advisers] \wit' ten ag' ah mote\ an Anglo-Saxon council to advise the king
Similar to the current confirmation hearings...
A 'gemot' is an Anglo-Saxon judicial assembly.
Woden: Oden, [Old English, also Old Norse; Woden Odin] the supreme Norse God as well as the chief god of Germanic mythology.
This is the origin of the word ”Wednesday” or Wodensday.
To paraphrase Thoreau in Walden about arranging his life around the days of the week, 'I don't measure my days by heathen gods.’
Frigga is Oden’s wife and is the Norse goddess of marital love and the home. (I'm starting to know wives of notable people, i.e. see Xanthippe.)
frigorific [Latin frigo cold] cold, as in refrigerator.
I would guess that this means that a marriage can either be Frigga-rific or frigor-ific.
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