Quick post today to tell you all to check out an amazing giveaway hosted on Suzanne Woods Fisher’s blog, celebrating historical fiction. She has 10 authors on for 10 days! I’ll be up on Friday. In the meantime, be sure to check out these other awesome authors!
Also, Relz Reviews has a giveaway of A Name Unknown going on right now, along with a fun character spotlight of both Rosemary and Peter (by popular demand, LOL).
My dearest daughter suggested this word of the week, because she thought it was such a fun word to say. 😉
So, bamboozle.
This will be rather quick, because etymologists aren’t entirely sure where it came from, LOL. What they can tell you for certain is that it’s been both a noun and a verb first recorded in 1703, bearing the same meaning that it does today.
But where did it come from? That’s a bit of a mystery. It could be from the Scottish bombaze, which means “confound or perplex.” But it could also be from the French embabouiner, which means “to make a fool of.” (Literally, “baboon.”)
Either way, this “cheat, swindle” word is a lot of fun to say. 😉
Last week we passed an idyllic seven days at the beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I expected to have a great time–and I did. I had a fabulous time. We generally do. But as a mama, I’ve also known my fair share of vacation frustrations.
Because you don’t get a break from mommy responsibilities, right? Even now, when my kids are older, it isn’t as though they’re adults, out doing their own thing. They want me to build a sandcastle. And dig a moat. And dig a hole. And build a wall. Swim again, whether I’m ready to move or not. They still need to eat (the nerve!) and have someone to remind them to do those oh-so-crazy things like shower and brush their teeth.
I admit it. There have been times–many of them–on vacation or holidays when I had in mind what I wanted to do, and I got a bit frustrated when that went by the wayside in favor of what they wanted me to do.
I was determined to do it differently this time. And so I told myself from the start that if the kids wanted to build, we’d build. If they wanted to hunt for shells, off we’d go. I’d set aside my desires for this vacation and instead focus on theirs.
Crazy thing. Wanna take a guess how that went?
I had an absolute blast. And–and–I ended up with more time to do what I wanted (which is to say, read, LOL) than I ever have before on a vacation since those kiddos came along.
As I was contemplating this toward the end of the week, I realized it was a surrender, that decision. Not a surrender to them, but a surrender of me. I was still Mama, still the one with veto power, and yes, I still said things like, “Sure, sweetie, but can you give five minutes to warm up first?” But I’d already put that I-want on hold in my mind. It wasn’t there, it wasn’t allowed. And because I’d already dealt with it, it left me with this beautiful, sweet thing: peace.
I rather wish it hadn’t taken me so many years to figure this out–but isn’t that just like us, in life and in faith? How often do we cling to what we want to do, what we want to accomplish, what we want to be, when the treasure lies in letting it go? Giving it up and instead listening for what God will whisper?
Because when the Lord holds out His hand to me and says, “Let’s build something,” I don’t want to sigh and scowl at Him. I don’t want to be thinking, Really? Now? Don’t you know I’m busy with this other work?
I want to put my hand in His and see what we can create together. I want to let go of all the frustrations from interruptions and disappointments and give myself over to the Joy He prepares in every moment. I want to find that treasure hidden under the sand.
I want to store away hours of laughter with my family. I want to build memories for them like I have of my own childhood. I want to follow the Lord wherever He leads me. I want to stop and look at seashells, so carefully fashioned by His hand. I want to hear His whisper in the rush of the surf, or the breath of the wind, or in the silence of the night. And I want to remember that when I put aside me, I gain something oh-so-much better.
Us.
I’ve just returned from a week of vacation in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina . . . which means my schedule is bursting with things that need done.
Now, as it happens, I knew from some of my writing projects that schedule would not have been a word used in such a way until fairly recent history. So I thought I’d share some of that today, while I’m battling to get mine into order. 😉
Schedule comes to English via French (“strip of paper with writing on it”), Latin (“strip of paper”), and originally Greek (“splinter or strip”). So even in those moves from language to language we see a progression of the idea, right? When it joined the English tongue in the 14th century, it meant “a ticket, label, or slip of paper with writing on it.” This sense is still preserved in our tax system–the “schedule” being a piece of paper attached to the main document, an appendix.
So how did it come to mean “a plan of procedure”? Well we have the railroads to thank for that. They would employ schedules–slips of paper–with their timetables written on them. Hence, everyone soon called the timetable schedule rather than the paper it was on.
Interestingly, even the pronunciation has changed a lot over the centuries! For hundreds of years, everyone pronounced it “sed-yul.” But the British modified it to “shed-yul” in imitation of the French at some point, while Americans–at the insistence of Webster and his dictionary–reverted to the Greek pronunciation of “sked-yul.”
Now back I go to mine. 😉
Short and sweet–and funny!–word today. =)
Amused. We all know what it means, right? “Entertained. Aroused to mirth.” And today, that’s true. But did you know that the word originally meant “distracted, diverted, cheated”??? Truth!
When amused entered the language around 1600, that was its meaning, and it continued as such until around 1727, when that sense of “distracting someone, playing a trick on them, cheating them,” took on a more positive connotation–that we were instead “pleasantly diverted.”
Amusing to see how words change over time, isn’t it. 😉
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.