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ATONEMENT

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 10:45 pm
by Dr. Goodword
• atonement •

Pronunciation: ê-ton-mênt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, mass

Meaning: 1. Making up for past misdeeds, transgressions; making amends for an injury or offense. 2. Reconciliation, especially the reconciliation between God and humans.

Notes: Today is Yom Kippur, the final day of the Jewish High Holidays (literally, the Days of Awe), the ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur. In Hebrew Yom Kippur means "Day of Atonement" and is the holiest day of the Jewish year. In Leviticus, the high priest chose two goats, one to be sacrificed and the other serve as the (e)scapegoat or Azazel. The high priest laid his hands upon the Azazel, symbolically endowing it with the sins of Israel, then sent the goat into the desert, carrying all those sins with it. That is why today scapegoat refers to someone who is blamed for the sins of others. Today we wish all our Jewish readers, "Gut Yom Tov!"

In Play: Although atonement is generally associated with religion, lay applications of this word abound: "How can I atone for forgetting the kids and leaving them at the supermarker?" At base this word refers to the price of forgiveness: "Francine told me that she would accept a new Mercedes as atonement for my smoking the cigars in the

Word History: Today's word is an early 16th century creation from at + one under the influence of Latin ad-una-mentum "unity". It was assisted by the prior existence of the verb, to one "to make one, unite"; onement was already used by Bible translator John Wyclif in the 14th century. This noun was influenced by such frequent phrases "set at one" and "put at one", so that atonement began to replace onement early in the 16th century. Atone, formed by back derivation from atonement, began to replace the verb, to one about 1550. Later on, at+one was reanalyzed as a+tone, giving the current misleading pronunciation

Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:35 pm
by Perry
Why it is called fasting, when in fact time seems to crawl by, I don't know. When I was a coffee addict, the headaches used to be awful. Now it isn't so bad. Also, since I understand the Hebrew we pray in, I don't get as listless as some others do during services.

Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:43 pm
by Bailey
Perry, re: fasting; I found that the first three days All I thought about was the FEAST I was going to have when it ended, by day four I had so much energy I never wanted to eat again.
I enjoy fasting for my health

mark fast-is-not-quick Bailey

Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 4:25 pm
by Stargzer
Because it is a strict Lunar calendar, the Islamic calendar has what would be termed an "Undocumented Feature" in the language of computers. Since no days are inserted into the calendar to align it with the seasons, Ramadan, the month of sunrise-to-sunset fasting, rotates around the year over the course of the centuries, so that some years Ramadan occurs in the winter when the days are short, and in other years in the summer when the days are longer.

I wonder how it is handled in the Polar regions. the Land of the Midnight Sun, when "day" can last for over two months? :shock:

At Finland's northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 days during summer. At Nordkapp in Norway, what is normally denoted as the northermost point in Europe, there are 76 days (from 14 May to 30 July) of proper midnight sun and an additional few days with partial sun before and after.