S:
168 pages...the largest section so far. Now for some salacious tales salient to our Saturnalian times...
salacious
salient
Salisbury steak
salt, salary
salami
Saturday, Saturn, saturnalia, saturnine
Scheherazade
Schadenfreude
schlemiel
schmuck
schmo
schleppe
schnozzle
schtick
shiksa
satyriasis
saxophone
sedan
seersucker
seleh
selenium
self
semester
September
sesquipedalian
sgraffito
shakti, shaktism
shandy, shandy gaff
Shih Tzu
shillelagh
sitar
smack dab
smegma
soprano
spaghetti, spaghetto
spangled
Spanish
spatter
spoon drift
sprachgefuhl
spume, spumoni
squaroot
squeeze
squeg
stadium
STD
sternutation, sternutator
stertor, stertorious
strait
strickle
strutheous, ratite
stygian
suede
Svedberg Unit
swagger
swanherd
syrinx, Syrinx
syzygy
salacious: [ L salir, to leap; Old French sailor, to rush forward] lascivious, lustful, lecherous
salient [same as for salacious] important, noticeable, prominent, conspicuous.
Salisbury steak: ground up steak. From J. H. Salisbury, an English physician, 1800's.
My Uncle Ray and Aunt Patsy smiled sweetly when they told me this story: They were very naive when they were first married…a sweet, shy couple living in Wichita Falls, Texas. On their honeymoon, they saw a restaurant that advertised "Salisbury Steak" and they giddily decided to treat themselves to this incredible delicacy.
salt [sal, salt] i.e salary
salami: [Italian, salare to salt]
Saturday: [L. saturnus Saturn, Old English daeg day]
saturnalia an unrestrained, licentious celebration (Dec 17)
saturnine cold, gloomy, sardonic, slow to act
Saturn: the 6th planet; Roman god of agriculture.
I obviously need to learn more about this planet associated with a day of weekend fun and relaxation. Saturn is associated with authority, planning, hard work, civility, responsibility, foresight and is also associated with being morose, cold and melancholic. Sort of a Puritan view of Saturday I would think, perhaps how Nathanial Hawthorne spent his Saturdays (an exquisite writer, by the way). I think all of our Saturdays are more “Saturnalian” than “Saturnine.”
So far, the etymology of our weekdays has not been a walk in the park (Wednesday for Woden or Oden, Tuesday for Tiw, god of war, and Thursday for Thor, thunder). I think I'll stick with Sunday.
Saturn was leader of the Titans in Greek mythology.
Scheherazade: the Queen (wife of the Sultan) and narrator of One Thousand and One Nights. \sha hair' a zahd\
This Persian book has had incredibly widespread influence on literature and music, being mentioned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Proust, Barth, Yeats, Flaubert, and Thackary among many others. Hard to imagine this. This is also the name of a symphony by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
The story includes such cultural icons as Ali Baba, Sinbad and Aladdin.
The plot of the story goes: The King’s wife was unfaithful to him so he decided to marry a new virgin each day, having the previous day’s wife killed so that she could not be unfaithful to him. (A misogynistic tale if ever there was one. Apropos… Perhaps they didn’t have marriage counseling back then.) After 1,000 wives, the 1,001st was Scheherazade, who asked to tell a story to her sister that night. She stopped the story midway as dawn approached and that King had her continue the next evening, being mesmerized by the stories. At the end of 1,001 nights, he had fallen in love with her and they remained married.
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