2019 - Day 316/49 - Tuesday...Pink...

So, when I got home very early this morning (about 1:30A.M.), it was really cold outside. I had to do a few things with the water service at the chicken coop and out at the cattle water trough. It was really COLD, and as I was walking out to the back pasture, the wind was blowing about a thousand miles an hour, and the grasses were swirling around, and I thought for sure I was going to have an unpleasant encounter with a coyote or a bear or a hyena or something. All I really rustled up was a couple birds nesting in the grasses, and a generous helping of imagination. I finally got into the bed about 2, and I was up at about 6:30. One thing about sub-freezing temperatures in central Texas; civilization comes to a standstill. Schools were on a two-hour delay start, traffic was not terrible. It is supposed to be colder tonight, and it is not nearly as windy, but I do not have to be out in it, and that is a good thing. The chickens have their heat lamp going, so they will be alright, the cattle don't really give a damn one way or the other, and I am going to get a good nights sleep!

Pink -- Verb. 1a. to perforate in an ornamental pattern. b. to cut a saw-toothed edge on. 2a. pierce, stab. b. to wound by irony, criticism, or ridicule. "On the right-hand pages, small rectangles of fabric with pinked edges were glued in rows." Holly Brubach, The New Yorker, January 23, 1989

Did You Know? Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, includes 13 distinct entries for pink, whereas Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary satisfies itself with the five most common. (Words get distinct entries in dictionaries when they have different etymologies or different parts of speech.) Today's pink, the only verb or the five, is from a Middle English word meaning "to thrust." Of the remaining four, the only pink older than the verb (which dates to 1503) is a 15th-century noun referring to a kind of ship. The next oldest-noun has since 1573 referred to a genus of herbs. The noun referring to the color pink and its related adjective date to 1678 and 1720, respectively. Evidence suggests that a new verb pink-a synonym of the verb pink-slip is also emerging. And now I (kind of) understand why they are called 'pinking' shears.