May was a very bad month for progress. Between the Stanley Cup playoffs and other extracurriculars, I failed to read much for days on end. June looks like it will be the same but I am going to try to reach the half-way point by the end of the month.Interesting words of the month:
MACADAM- I always assumed that macadam and asphalt were the same thing but they’re not. Many people use them interchangeably but they are slightly different substances. Also, macadam is named after the person who invented the process that yields the paving surface we know today.
MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING- My dictionary dated this term to 1984, which I thought was too recent. Turns out the term actually dates to 1977. Still younger than I thought but it makes sense given the technological advancements that came about in the 70s.
MALARIA- The word itself means ‘bad air.’ It makes sense for it to be name as such, since it affected people mostly in tropical regions. The dainty Europeans, not accustomed to the steamy weather of the tropic regions they sought to explore and exploit, naturally assumed the disease came from something in the air. They didn’t realize that malaria wasn’t from bad air itself, but rather the mosquitos transmitting microorganisms between meals.
MARGARITA- Here’s another one that didn’t seem old enough to me. My dictionary dates it to 1963 but MW online now dates it to 1956. That makes a little more sense but I still expected it to come from the 1920s when rich Americans were living large and traveling to exotic Latin American locations.
MARSHMALLOW- While we mostly know this word to refer to the sometimes fluffy, sometimes gooey confection, the marshmallow is actually an African herb. It was used for several medicinal purposes and the root was eventually used to create a confection. The junk food marshmallows no longer contain any marshmallow root though.
MARTINI- This drink’s name comes from the Spanish surname Martinez. It’s much older than Margarita though. MW online dates it back to 1894.
MENNONITE- I never knew that Mennonites were named after a person, though that probably should have made sense. Menno Simons started out as a Roman Catholic priest but later rejected Catholicism to become an Anabaptist leader. His teachings became popular enough for his followers to be known as Mennonites. Pennsylvania has sizeable populations of both Mennonites and Amish (who broke away from their Mennonite peers in 1693). It’s always nice to incorporate a little of the local flavor into these posts.
MENSHEVIK- These guys were the minority party in Russia in the years leading up to the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II and establishment of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks sought to use force to overthrow the government and institute their socialist ideologies. The Mensheviks, on the other hand, thought socialism would be more successful if it was introduced a little bit at a time, much like gradually turning up the water temperature instead of throwing a live frog into boiling water. The Bolsheviks won out and forced millions into socialism but we know how that worked for the Soviet Union. The Menshevik philosophy seems alive and well in many nations across the globe, including our own.
MESOTHELIOMA- I should know better than to post something potentially controversial in any of these posts but I have to be honest here. I apologize if this sounds insensitive but when commercials raising awareness of this cancer first hit the airwaves, the name mesothelioma sounded more like a spell from Harry Potter than a medical condition.
Page Count: 772/1600 (48.25%)
Countdown to the Letter N: 37 pages
