It rained in Austin this afternoon, places got a nice little downpour. I got in it on my way to Rollingwood, and it lasted until I got onto North MoPac. Not a drop at the Edge of Nowhere. Not. A. Drop. There was some interesting lightning, though. I was on my way out to the chicken coop, and I thought I was about to get struck. But, just the loud, not the strike. I have friends in East Texas (Houston, Beaumont and points further east. Everything is flooded, there are places that have received over forty inches of rain in the last 24 hours. Bush Intercontinental Airport got as much rain yesterday, in an hour-and-a-half, as they get in the entire month of September. Austin in the rain may as well be Austin in an ice storm. I am pretty sure the groceries are cleaned out of milk, twinkies, beer and wine. This is the view, forward and back, on Capital of Texas Highway at the Pennybacker Bridge at about 3:30 this afternoon. Crazy!Tergiversation -- Noun. 1. evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement. Equivocation. 2. desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith. "The fluctuations, tergiversations and retractions of English Marxists...are also looked at with deadly effect. Julian Symons, The New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1989
Did You Know? The Latin verb tergiversari means "to show reluctance," and it comes from the combination of tergum, meaning "back," and versare, meaning "to turn." Tergiversari gave English the noun tergiversation and the verb tergiversate ("to engage in tergiversation'). Tergiversation is the slightly older term, having been around since at least 1570; the first known use of tergiversate dates from 1590. There's also the much rarer adjective tergiversate ("tending to evade"), as well as the noun tergiversator ("one that tergiversates").
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