For people living in Massachusetts April 19th is more than the day of the Boston Marathon, it’s Patriots Day — the day and date in 1775 when the British army, stationed in Boston, sent a force across the Charles River in the dark of night, planning a surprise march to Lexington to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and from there to Concord to seize gunpowder and other supplies stored by the disaffected citizenry.
A friend told me about a new word, apricity – “It means the sunshine on a cold winter day. Something like that.” Later I looked for the word in my Merriam-Webster dictionary. It wasn’t there. The words went from from apre’-ski to apricot but no apricity. I searched online and discovered, Yes, there is a word apricity, a rare word that was first recorded in 1623 by Henry Cockeram. he said the word meant the warmness of the sun in winter.
We appreciate Great Novels, especially Great British Novels, but every now and then our attention flags. And this isn’t limited to Great British Novels; there are also Great Russian Novels in which we’ve found our attention wandering. There are even some Great American Novels —