• felicity •
Pronunciation: fê-li-sê-tee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Happiness, joy. 2. Good fortune, a boon, or a stroke of luck. 3. Gracefulness, beauty, especially in the use of language.
Notes: Today's Good Word is phonetically so beautiful and bears such a pleasant meaning, that it was once a popular name. Today it is at the center of a family of related words, such as the adjective felicitous and the verb felicitate "to make happy". Should you ever need a synonym of felicitous that rhymes with delicious, you might try felicious (keeping in mind that it hasn't been much used since the 18th century).
In Play: We often wish someone the felicities of a particular holiday or celebration: "Felix dropped by to deliver a bouquet of flowers and wish us every felicity for the Christmas season." However, this word has a particularly felicitous relationship with writing style: "The felicities in Marv Ulla's writing style are so numerous and exquisite as to suggest he may have a brilliant career as a novelist."
Word History: Today's word came from French félicité "happiness", which evolved from Latin felicitas "happy, fortunate". Beneath this noun lies another noun, felix "lucky, auspicious", borrowed as a name in English, as in Felix Unger of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple", and Felix the Cat, of comic book fame. The root fel- would seem to be related to Latin fellare "to suckle" and to filius "son" and filia "daughter". The same root with a different ancient suffix, -m, may underlie femina "woman", origin of English feminine, and its diminutive femella, which gave us female.
FELICITY
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FELICITY
• The Good Dr. Goodword
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
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Whadabout dese tree cats, man?
Fritz the Cat:
Fat Freddy's Cat (Fat Freddy Scat!)
Krazy Kat
Short of Gailr's Dom good feline companion, these are the only other three worth mentioning.
Fritz the Cat:
Fat Freddy's Cat (Fat Freddy Scat!)
Krazy Kat
Short of Gailr's Dom good feline companion, these are the only other three worth mentioning.
Regards//Larry
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
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