In Greek myth, the sirens were women with the bodies of birds whose song was so alluring that it enticed men to their death. In the early 19th century, French engineer and physicist Charles Cagniard de la Tour built a device that sent blasts of air through perforated metal disks to make a loud, wailing noise. Having found that the device also produced sound even when submerged, he called his invention the sirène, the source of the English word for such a device, siren. This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
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