Month: July 2020

The Dog Days start today. Well, it depends who you ask, really. But if you ask the Book of Common Prayer the Dog Days start today, and that’s good enough for me. Dog Days have nothing directly to do with dogs: they are named after the Dog Star, also called Sirius, which is …

A fainéant is an idler and a sluggard. Somehow you can surmise that without bothering to dig out your dictionary. Fainéants sound lazy. Why, dear inactive reader, did you suspect immediately that a fainéant was a lazybones, a lie-a-bed, and a lotos-eater? Perhaps it was the suggestion of faint, with …