Wanderlust
I can't afford to travel this summer, but I can take a mini-tour through my stat counter. Hello, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco! Hello, Anchorage, Helsinki, Madison, Bridgeport! What's shakin', Shelby, Aurora, Grand Rapids, DeKalb? Pleasure to light up your screens, Coral Springs, Lincoln, Surrey, Bellevue! Yours too, Bloomington, Mountain View, Grass Valley, the Bronx! My dictionary says the etymologies of conjure and congeries are unrelated, but I'm not buying it.
Comments
Minneapolis here, too. :)
My dictionary also says the etymologies of "conjure" and "congeries" (a word with which I wasn't previously familiar) are unrelated. I wouldn't have guessed they would be related, though of course these things can always surprise one. * Curious how you happened to be looking at the two words, if you care to say anything?
Posted by: Lyle Daggett | August 11, 2007 11:50 PM
Hello, Minneapolis! I remember that when I first heard the word congeries in a poetry class (the definition in rhetoric more narrowly denotes a word heap), it seemed to make a lot of sense, given the power of that technique to conjure up an emotion or a mental image--to cast a spell, you might say. So I was struck, when I looked in the dictionary, curious as to their common root, to find they're not thought to be related at all.
The following, from MacBeth, comes immediately to mind. See what you think...
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,--
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Posted by: Ginger Heatter | August 12, 2007 12:37 AM