Welcome

My name is David Burrows and I am a freelance translator of Spanish into English. This blog contains some of my favourite words, a (mostly) amusing explanation of said words as well as some of my musings about translation. I hope you enjoy it.

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Halcyon

Adjective - Denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.
Noun - 1)A mythical bird said by ancient writers to breed in a nest floating at sea at the winter solstice, charming the wind and waves into calm. 2)A tropical Asian and African kingfisher with brightly coloured plumage.
Origin- Late Middle English (in the mythological sense): via Latin from the Greek alkuōn 'kingfisher' (also halkuōn, by association with hals 'sea' and kuōn 'conceiving').

"I am the new improved Halcyon version 7.0 with brightly coloured lasers. Fear me!"

I chose this one because I always want to pronounce it wrongly (that Y is somehow in the wrong place) and because I didn't really know what it meant. What a pleasant surprise: not only does it have two meanings but the first contains the word 'idyllically' and the second refers to a mythical bird. What more could you want? Well, perhaps another definition with something to do with microchips or advanced technology, seeing as it sounds like a futuristic word. I imagine something like: 3) A fully robotic Asian kingfisher with brightly coloured laser eyes.
Yet another example of why they should employ me to write dictionary definitions.

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