2019 - Day 175/190 - Monday...Epithet...

Complaint Department, this is Bill, how may I help you? It's dark outside and the sun is coming out. Is it hot enough for you? I was on hold for 47 minutes. It's not morning, it's afternoon. It's not the heat, it's the stupidity. Does this dress make my butt look big? I know you close in five minutes, but I'll get there in about 30 minutes, can you wait for me? It really was not a terrible ay, it was just raining and thundering and lightning all day. Until just the last fifteen minutes. The sun is out and it is a lovely evening. In the last twenty-four hours we've had a little over 2.25" of rain, and there is supposed to be more overnight. It's totally okay with me. The girls are not particularly afraid of thunder and lightning, but they were curious. I at least hope they were curious, because since it was raining outside, there was no way in hell they would step foot off the back porch. So, we went from the bedroom to the couch. Callie was perfectly happy to sleep on the couch, the white girl was anxious, so she kept coming and going. I am hoping for a little more sleep tonight.

Epithet -- Noun. 1a. a characterizing word or phrase used in place of a name. 2a. a disparaging or abusive word or phrase. "The United States, Henry Kissinger once observed, is 'probably the only country in which the term "realist" can be used as a perjorative epithet.'" Jacob Heilbrunn, Politico, September/October 2017

Did You Know? Nowadays, epithet is usually used negatively, with the meaning "a derogatory word or phrase," but it wasn't always that way. Epithet comes to us via Latin from the Greek noun epitheton and ultimately derives from epitithenai, meaning "to put on" or "to add." In the oldest sense, an epithet is simply a descriptive word or phrase, especially one joined by fixed association to the name of someone or something (as in "Peter the Great" or the stock Homeric phrases "gray-eyed Athena" and "wine-dark sea"). Alternatively, epithets may be used in place of a name (as in "the Peacemaker" or "the Eternal"). These neutral meanings of epithet are still in use, but today the word is more often used in its negative "term of disparagement" sense.