It is now that time of year,
When everyone seems full of cheer.
But we should know there’s trouble there,
Some of whom have no joy to share.
At midnight’s stroke on New Year’s Eve,
Let us 2011 start to weave.
My resolution for our newest year,
Will be blessings for all of you - my dears!
photo from: http://themistressofspices.files.wordpress.com/
..... what can I say, I've been "waxing poetical" recently! AND that brings up .. where the heck did that phrase come from anyway?
FROM ANSWERBAG.COM:
One can wax poetic, lyrical, eloquent, philosophical, etc. It's all pretty much the same thing. But finding the origins of this phrase is a bit tricky.
One sense of wax (as an intransitive verb) is to pass into a mood or state.
In this sense one could understand the phrase wax poetic (or sarcastic, or whatever) and this would certainly lead one to doubt whether this phrase is an idiom (as I had been thinking) because it can be taken literally.
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary suggests that wax (in this sense) has a Germanic origin: wachsen (to grow). The interesting thing about this relationship is that wachsen never has an attribute, i.e. neither wax poetic nor grow old translate.
The Encarta online dictionary's suggestion is that this sense of wax is from Old English weaxan, and ultimately from an Indo-European base meaning �to increase,� which is also the ancestor of English "augment" and "eke."
The American Heritage Dictionary agrees, adding that this word is an offshoot of the Indo-European Language family's root fragment "aug", from whence we get words like augment, inaugurate, auxilliary, august, and auction.
Hope that helps a bit!
******** um, not really! :-)
Nice thoughts for the new year! :-)
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was the first explanation, now I'm thinking the "aug" etymology looks like the answer.