05/24/04’s illustrious band:

Materteral

Brought to you by A Word A Day (www.wordsmith.org) .

"Materteral (muh-TUHR-tuhr-uhl) adjective, also materterine


Characteristic of, or in the manner of, an aunt.


[From classical Latin matertera (maternal aunt), from mater (mother).]

This word is the feminine counterpart of the word avuncular (like an uncle). The word materteral has its origin in maternal aunt, but now it could be applied to aunts on both sides, just as the word aunt originally meant paternal aunt, from Latin amita (father's sister), from amare (to love), but now applies to aunts of all kinds."

That's me -- Materteral Media. I can't wait to become Super Aunt to Sister-san and Chef Jeff's baby, due in September. Mother Media and I have taken to referring to this future child as Bob, since we won't know until Birth Day whether I have a niece or a nephew. I realize that Bob sounds like a boy's name, but in our family, Bob is the name for anyone you don't really know, but want to refer to in a not-impersonal way. I mean, we can't call the kid "it," can we? Nor Cletus the Fetus, like my friends Mark and Paula did when they were expecting. And the generic Baby is already overdone. So Bob it is until we hear otherwise.

Mother Media, soon to be Grandmother Media, is spending a couple weeks with me here at Sensational Acres, in case you hadn't heard. She and I have already done some shopping for Bob at the finest European clothing establishment the Mall of America has to offer. I'm learning a whole new materteral vocabulary. I now know what a onesie is, for instance, and that you shouldn't call a onesie a singlet, because that's what wrestlers wear. Both often come with cranial accessories; the onesie looks good with a primary-colored sun bonnet, while the singlet requires regulation headgear modeled after Princess Leia's hair.

Stay tuned next week, when your humble, materteral narrator expounds upon the finer points of footies vs. sockies.

Today around the world: May 24 is Day of Slavonic Script (Education Day) in Bulgaria. I knew a Bulgarian couple once: Todor and Latinka. Todor, a bosom buddy of my ex-husband's, was a pompous, oily, alcoholic, smoke-spewing jackass. The lovely Latinka, his unfortunate wife, was super-smart, softspoken in half a dozen languages, and a timid driver. She also smoked, but I still liked her a heck of a lot better than her husband. They had us over for New Year's Eve one time and served pickled fish and some other salty stuff, and vodka. And nothing else. Wow. I lost track of them when I split with my ex. I hope Latinka has left Todor by now and started her own international Internet design company or something.

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