Wednesday December 19, 2019
corbie messenger
PRONUNCIATION: (KOR-bee mes-uhn-juhr)
MEANING: noun: A messenger who does not arrive or return in time.
ETYMOLOGY: noun: From allusion to the crow that Noah had sent out from his ark. From corbin (raven), from Old French corbin, from Latin corvus (raven, crow). Earliest documented use: 1525.
NOTES: In the Bible, after months of floating around, Noah has his ark parked on Mt. Ararat. He picks a raven from his menagerie to go scout the scene. The bird never returns. Then Noah picks a dove and the dove does dutifully return. The moral of the story?
All you need is Dove.
But let’s not be too hard on the raven. Every body is beautiful.
Everyday moisture is the key to beautiful skin Yes, but “forty days and forty nights” of moisture is a little too much.
USAGE: “I will be no corbie-messenger in mine old age — your message to your son shall be done as truly by me as if it concerned another man’s neck.” Walter Scott; The Abbott; Archibald Constable and John Ballantyne; 1820.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. -John Milton, poet (9 Dec 1608-1674)
tktorme 