Small worlds, small words

About once a year comes a perigean full Moon, an event popularly called a Supermoon because the Moon is nearest and thus appears largest.

This diagram of the Moon’s distance, on page 91 of Astronomical Calendar 2024, shows the annual wave-like pattern, in which the relation of the full (or new) moment to the perigee of the Moon’s orbit determines how close the perigee is. The reason is that, at the full and new moments, the Sun, also, is in a line with Moon and Earth and adds its tidal influence.

The Moon looks even larger as it climbs from the eastern hoirozn, because of another well[known but more mysterious effect, the Moon Illusion.

And, at the opposite horizon, comet A3 is still showing its Sun-driven tail.

Language Delights and Curiosities Department

Small words tend to be the largest, in that they have the most numerous and most powerful functions. Look at the size of the entry in an English dictionary for in, or its equivalents in a Latin or Greek or Arabic dictionary. Any word is liable to overflow from its first sense into others, and this happens most abundantly with the shortest and most used. The long words more recently pieced together, astrophysics, geomorphology, disestablishmentarianism, are likely to remain inside their single tight definitions.

Sometimes I’m struck by not only the power of a small word but by its aptness, though that is an aesthetic and therefore subjective judgment.

It: perfect, for its efficient shortness, but probably also the network of subconscious associations. Bit, grit, itch, insect??

So: so much content in two letters! It can play the roles of yes (which in many languages is the same word) and therefore. It can summarize a mass that went before it, and imply as mass that is to follow.

Whether it refers backward or forward can be in doubt. I heard myself say: “I did so accidentally.” The meaning was clear in context, but grammatically it could be construed as “very accidentally.”

The drawn-out Ssso… that means “After hearing your lengthy presentation, what is our conclusion? What is to be done?”#

The So-so that, in answer to a question such as “Was ut good?” or “Was the tide high?” is equivalent to a fluttering odf the hand; “Middling.”

The So what? that means “I don’t care; it’s not important.” As when Donald Trump was told that Mike Pence and his security detail were in fear of their lives from the mob attacking the Capitol.

There was a time, in my student days, when “Are you so?” had a coded meaning, such as when muttered by a stranger in a bar perhaps flashing a copy of Against the Law.

“And is my name among them? [those who love the Lord]” “Nay, not so.”  – Leigh Hunt, Abou Ben Adhem.

“And is it so, maidy?”  – the farmer in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, skeptical of her description of the starry sky.

“‘All that’, replied Don Quixote [after listening to a long speech undermining his belief in knight errantry], ‘could be so; but it is not…”

__________

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.

ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.

One way: right-click, and choose ”View image” or ”Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose ”Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it.  If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version. Or, if you click ‘Refresh’ or press function key 5, you’ll see the latest version.