Descry* these D words!
Welcome to Round 7 of ABC Wednesday. The meme was started by Mrs. Denise Nesbitt, and people from all over the world come together to play and share their entries. Each week word(s) beginning with the designated letter are selected and illustrate through a photo, poem or prose. My twist on the meme is selecting unusual words and pairing them with photos of familiar things in my world. I’ll be pulling words from sources here, here and, of course, here.
Let’s get unusual…
starting with the letter D
The letter we know today as a D…the fourth letter of our alphabet began when the Egyptians used the symbol in the list above to represent a hand (Egyptian word: deret or the sound of D). When the Phoenicians adopted parts of Egyptian writing, they couldn’t figure out that the symbol meant a hand. Thinking it looked like a tent opening, they called it a daleth…their word for “door.” The Greeks adopted many Phoenician names with their alphabet, and the Phoenician aleph became alpha, beth became beta and daleth turned into…as all you sorority and fraternity sorts know…delta. Evidently, the Greeks were much better at drawing and the shape was refined to look more like a triangle. Why is was tipped in later versions of the Greek alphabet is anyone’s guess. Eventually, the Romans adopted a softer version of the tipped delta and, tada!, we have our letter D.
Keeping with the ancient theme, this week I also give you:
daffadowndilly: an archaic and poetic variation on daffodil.
Daffodils are my all-time favorite spring flower. Their heady scent can fill a room. But did you know their stems are toxic to other flowers if you mix them in the same vase?
dumbledore: an Old English word for an insect that flies with a loud humming noise.
Evidently, the headmaster at Hogwarts was named after a bug.
*descry: to discover; perceive; detect.; circa 1300s, probably from the Old French word descrier “publish,” or from the Latin word, describere to “describe.”
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