Love. Either you hate or you love it. It’s the most powerful thing in the world. It’s the daze word and an excuse for me to share with you my favorite writing on the subject. “Love” by Khail Gibran. (1923)

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It saddens me. It angers me. And more than anything, it’s stupid. Let’s leave the political and religious aspect out of the equation and focus on the stupidity aspect. Throughout history, when books have been burned, the torch wielders ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING.

In 1650, you couldn’t walk into your local bookstore, pick up an iced mochalatasomething and browse the aisles. You couldn’t order that book you’ve been dying to read off Amazon.com. You couldn’t download an illegal copy from the internet. There were no printing presses or expresso book machines. Most people could not even read, so it was almost impossible to find someone who had read the book to tell you what was in the book.

Right or wrong, book burning of the past accomplished something. When the pages turned black and became illegible, they were gone. Up in smoke went the words bound between the covers and the ideas that those words would spark.

Today, in America, it is much harder to kill books or ideas. Nothing will be accomplished should this planned book burning take place. Nothing except the stirring of hate, which fuels a fire hotter than a million burning books.

Ever wondered where the expression “suits you to a T” comes from? Or, why it isn’t “suits you to an A or F? Well, the T in the phrase is short for tittle (also spelled titil). A tittle is the word given to describe the small, intricate stokes needed to write letters in the 17th century when writing was all loopy and swirly and stuff (also known as calligraphy, check out the 17th century letter T pictured above). So, tittle became synonymous with exactness and gave birth to the phrase “suits you to a T”. For my Spanish speaking Wordphiliacs who noticed a similarity between tittle and the Spanish ’tilde’, I say- good eye amigo.

I like all words. Even bad words (shhh). I think even a bad word can be the perfect word for a given situation. But if you looooove bad words you might be maledicent. Maledicent my fellow Wordphiliacs means to be addicted to bad language.

Sunny Delight or Sunny D as it is called now, is sponsoring a book spree to put books in schools across the country. To help out, all you need to do is save the labels for your bottles and send them in. Check here for all the juicy details (pun intended).

The daze word is sabbatical. I thought it would make a great lead into my first post in a month of Sundays ( don’t you just love Southern vernacular? I do, sho’ nuff). I could have chosen from a variety of words. I could have chose vacation, hiatus, recess, furlough, or hibernation for my Wordphiliacs who like a little metaphoricalness. But let’s face it, sabbatical sounds way cooler than any of those.

So what’s up with the picture of the guy climbing the mountain, you ask? Well, while there are several words that describe a leave of absence, there is slight difference in implication. Sabbatical conjures up, for me, an undertaking; conquering something on an internal level; going off to do something other people might not understand. And so we have mountain climbing dude. Besides, I would like to see you find a picture of a sabbatical.

Today’s word comes from the Urban Dictionary. I picked it because I thought it was pretty funny.

Child supervision, my fellow wordphiliacs is when an older person, especially a parent, needs a tech-savvy kid to help him/her with computers or other electronic devices. Let’s see child supervision in a sentence:

“Jimmy, could you send your kid over to help me with my facebook? I’m afraid I might get a virus without some child supervision.”

I’ve heard the phrase ‘making money hand over fist’ many times. Unfortunately, it was not being used to describe me. If I had to guess where the phrase came from without doing any research, I would have probably said the phrase originated with games shows. I imagine a person in one of those money filled booths with money swirling all around them, quickly grabbing at it ‘hand over fist’ in a desperate effort to get all the money before the buzzer sounds and the off limit money floats slowly to the ground.

But I would have been wrong. The phrase ‘hand over fist’ originates from seaman who had to reach the rigging of sailboats by climbing ‘hand over hand’ up a thick rope. This same ‘hand over hand’ action was needed to haul in big catches. Being able to do this efficiently was a source of pride for many sailors. Around the beginning of the 19th century, the phrase morphed into ‘hand over fist’. ‘Hand over fist’ soon began to describe a person rising up the ropes in business rapidly and hauling in big catches (lotsa moolah).

Are you a spelunker? Yes? No? Maybe, if you knew what one was? Don’t worry being a spelunker is all that bad. Although it does sound like the nickname the kid in third grade, who nobody wants to sit by, would have. In fact, some people think it’s the only way to be. Me, myself, I’ll pass. A spelunker, my fellow wordphiliacs is a person who explores caves, especially as a hobby.

I love Starbucks’ coffee fraps. And when I say love, that is not an exaggeration. You could probably inveigle me into almost anything if you had one of those cool, sweet, coffee treats. Helping you move, babysitting your eight kids, or driving the get away car just doesn’t seem like a bad idea when a coffee frappucino is involved.

Inveigle, if you don’t know,means to entice or persuade by guile.