I know you'd really rather not be privy to my views,
and that we disagree is something no one would call news.
But silence when one ought to speak makes cowards out of men;
what's mightier than sword by far? Behold, the humble pen.
So though you don't appreciate it, still I'll carry on;
my job it is to be concerned— you're my Ucalegon.
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Author Notes
Today's word: Ucalegon (n.) a neighbour whose house is on fire.
Ucalegon was a counsellor in ancient Troy who had his house set on fire. Apparently, in the late seventeenth century, someone decided we needed a specific word in English to describe such an individual. Who'd have thought?
My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.
Thanks for reading.
Image by LukeBam06 [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or FAL], from Wikimedia Commons
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