Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread
We're here every morning between 6:30 and 7:00. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanent or just once in awhile. With the autopublish feature you can set it and forget it. Quite often the diarist de jour shows up much later, that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments.
Doing one of these diaries is a good way to get your feet wet if you have been hesitant about writing a diary. You can write as much or as little as you want. The audience here is always supportive.
Last week I wrote a Morning Open Thread diary in which I introduced the newest canine member of our family, a young springer spaniel named Gidget whom we adopted through the Southeastern English Springer Rescue group. Gidget came to us already named. I was very familiar with the Gidget movies and television series, so I went to Wikipedia to provide a link explaining the Gidget series for those who are either too young or did not remember it. From that link, I learned something new. Follow over the orange Danish du kos for the rest of the story.
When I was growing up in the fifties, television was not a huge part of our lives. I was eight years old before we even got out first tv, and back then there was only one station. That station was often not on during the day in those early years, and my father controlled what every one watched when it was on. There was something very good about not having television as a strong influence during my elementary school years.
My family had invested in an encyclopedia and so when we would ask a question about nearly anything, my Mom or Dad would help us look it up in the encyclopedia. It was the same thing with words, either spelling or meanings. We were encouraged to look them up in the dictionary. I did not realize it then, but my parents were very smart to make us to look things up.
Over the years, I have also realized just how little I know about nearly anything. Coming here to dkos has expanded my knowledge base enormously and I love learning new things. None of us are ever too old to learn.
So when I looked up the Wikipedia link for Gidget, I learned two new things. The first was that the character Gidget was from a book that author, Frederick Kohner, wrote based upon his teenaged daughter. The second thing I learned was that the name Gidget was an amalgamation of the words "girl" and "midget." Well, that makes sense, because the title of the book was "Gidget, The Little Girl With Big Ideas."
But the biggest thing I learned was a new word. Yes, even us older folks can learn new words.
The name Gidget is a "portmanteau." Well, knock me over with a feather. I thought a portmanteau was fancy name for a suitcase. Well, it is. But a "portmanteau" is also a blend of two words to form a new word. In this case, Gidget was the blending of "girl" and "midget." All this set my mind racing to find other "portmanteaus." Well, lo and behold, Wikipedia has an entry listing portmanteaus. Some of them are obvious, such as smog, skort, or guesstimate. But others are words I have taken for granted without realizing they were portmanteaus.
So the word of the day is "portmanteau."
What is on your mind today?