Sunday, February 10, 2019

2019 - Day 41/324 - Sunday...Meliorism...

Still cool (not really cold), still drizzly, still cloudy and grey, still at the Texas REALTORS® Winter Meeting. This is the door of a house my parents bought new in about 1955 or 1957. $12,700. Three bedrooms, one bath, no garage. One living, one dining, full basement (not finished). I went through fourth grade in that school district, and really have no idea about what happened to any of the folks that lived around us. I still know many of the neighbors names, and I have connected with one of the neighborhood kids from that time. Interesting how things work out, how lives change, and how life goes on, even surviving all the changes. From the look of those bricks, I had not yet developed my CDO affliction.

Meliorism -- Noun: the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment. "Among the pleasures of Thomas's writing were not only the style but also a reassuring meliorism." Michale Skube, The Washington Post, May 31, 1992

Did You Know? In 1877, British novelist George Elliot believed she had coined meliorist when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 'meliorist' except myself." Her contemporaries credited her with coining both meliorist and meliorism, and one of her letters contains the first documented use of meliorism, but meliorist had been around for 40 years before she started using it. Whoever coined it drew on the Latin melior, meaning "better." It is likely that the English coinages were also influenced by another melior descendant, meliorate, a synonym of ameliorate ("to make better").

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