I’m working on a new podcast (nearly everything TBA) where I need to do some research on definitions and etymology. Therefore I decided to double up and use some of that research for a little block segment.
Once a week —probably Thursdays— I will release a mini word-Kraken upon the world. And here is baby Kraken number one.
Aphemeral
adjective
Not constituting a full 24-hour day. From the Greek. The Greek prefix “A” means “not” or “the opposite”. Attached to the Greek word “hemeral”, meaning day, we get “not day”.
My favorite actual use of the word comes from the ground scratching March 1999 publication of a Poultry Science magazine article entitled, “Ahemeral lighting of turkey breeder hens: Early age at lighting and reproductive performance” by T.D. Siops and E.R. Neely.
TANGENT: I had never seen the last name Siops before, so it looked like a great rabbit hole to jump down. Disturbingly, the first mention of the word, SCIOPS, denoted it as the former name for the secret and central U.S. contingency plan for waging a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, also known innocuously as the Single Integrated Operational Plan.
But according to the fabulous name research website, Forebears, Siops is noted as the 1,551,568th most common surname in the world with only 133 people having this name worldwide. The most people with this name live in Poland at 61 with a deliciously paradoxical next most populous being New Guinea with 58. The third most populous is a precipitative drop off to 6 Siopses living in the US.
As far as Siops’s co-writer, E.D. Neely, there are 6-times more Neelies in the Bahamas alone that Siopses in the entire world. Coming in as the 15,584th most common name in the world, the Neelies sure seem productive. Good on you Neelies!
And Siopses, you need to get working on it. Looks like you need to get past your lackadaisical ahemeral work schedule.
There are just over 2600 people in the world with my last name. Just to keep things honest.
