lagan

lagan \LAG-uhn\, noun:

Anything sunk in the sea, but attached to a buoy or the like so that it may be recovered.

But hear what your Grace does not know. In the sea there are three kinds of things: those at the bottom, lagan; those which float, flotsam; those which the sea throws up on the shore, jetsam.

-- Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs

"Wreck" shall include jetsam, flotsam, lagan, and derelict found in or on the shores of the sea or any tidal water.

-- Harry Newsom, The Law of Salvage, Towage, and Pilotage

Lagan is not as well known as its contextual brethren, flotsam and jetsam. The word comes from the Old Norse word lǫgn which meant "a net laid in the sea."

Michiko Dead

Michiko Dead
by Jack Gilbert

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm which is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

Days of Growing Darkness

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
by Mary Oliver

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed. 

"Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness" by Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings. © The Penguin Press, 2012

adiaphorous

Word of the Day 

adiaphorous \ad-ee-AF-er-uhs\, adjective: 

Doing neither good nor harm, as a medicine. 

Sun and Mr. Allworthy are united, but with a difference: the sun, in all his majesty and splendor is, in the words of Boyle, "adiaphorous" unthinking matter, whereas Mr. Allworthy is a moral agent . . . 

-- Jina Politi, The Novel and Its Presuppositions 

. . .which participates of neither extreme, as for example, all those things which, as being neither good nor evil in themselves, we call adiaphorous, or indifferent. 

-- William Watson Goodwin, Plutarch's Morals 

Adiaphorous is derived from the Greek, adiaphoros, meaning 'indifferent.' 

Mulligrubs

mulligrubs \MUHL-i-gruhbz\, noun:

Ill temper; colic; grumpiness.

"That's a comfortable place to be." The barber chuckled. "You're a philosopher, sir, a philosopher." "I am, but I'm a blue one. I have the blue mulligrubs."
-- Brian Lynch, The Winter of Sorrow

Right Rosa Solis, as ever washed mulligrubs out of a moody brain!
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Waverley Novels

It is easy enough to say that a pessimist is a person afflicted with an incurable case of mulligrubs — one whom nothing in all earth or heaven or hades pleases; one who usually deserves nothing, yet grumbles if he gets it.
-- William Cowper Brann, "Beauty and the Beast," Brann: The Iconoclast

This fanciful formation was developed in 1599 as a synonym for 'a fit of the blues' and an alteration of megrims.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”            

― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

Mumpsimus

mump·si·mus  [muhmp-suh-muh s] noun, plural mump·si·mus·es for 2. 
1. adherence to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, memorization, practice, belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy ( opposed to sumpsimus ). 
2. a person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice ( opposed to sumpsimus ). 

Origin: 1520–30;  from a story, which perhaps originated with Erasmus, of an illiterate priest who said mumpsimus  rather than sūmpsimus  (1st plural perfect indicative of Latin sūmere  to pick up; see consume) while reciting the liturgy, and refused to change the word when corrected