WOTD - Pogonip, Methuselah - Dec. 31, Jan. 1

The Word of the Day for December 31, 2007 is:

pogonip • \PAH-guh-nip\ • noun
: a dense winter fog containing frozen particles that is formed in deep mountain valleys of the western United States

Example Sentence:
"The white wafer sun sports a halo, and nearby hills are veiled in pogonip." (Bill Croke, The American Spectator, March 1997)

Did you know?
Readers of The Old Farmer's Almanac might recognize the odd-sounding warning, "Beware the pogonip!" So what's a pogonip? In the mountains of the western United States, the fog condenses into tiny, biting ice particles in extremely cold weather. The English-speaking settlers who encountered this unpleasant and sometimes scary phenomenon when they went out West in the 1800s needed a word for it. They borrowed "payinappih" ("cloud") from Shoshone, altering it to "pogonip."
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The Word of the Day for January 01, 2008 is:

Methuselah • \muh-THOO-zuh-luh\ • noun
1 : an ancestor of Noah held to have lived 969 years
*2 : an oversize wine bottle holding about six liters

Example Sentence:
William's colleagues brought him a Methuselah of champagne to celebrate his retirement, and there was still half a bottle left after all the glasses were poured.

Did you know?
What do Jeroboam, Methuselah, Salmanazar, Balthazar, and Nebuchadnezzar have in common? Larger-than-life biblical figures all, yes (four kings and a venerable patriarch), but they're all also names of oversized wine bottles. A Jeroboam is the equivalent of about four 750-milliliter bottles (about 3 liters). One Methuselah holds about eight standard bottles' worth, a Salmanazar 12, a Balthazar 16, and a Nebuchadnezzar a whopping 20. No one knows who decided to use those names for bottles, but we do know that by the 1800s "Jeroboam" was being used for large goblets or "enormous bottles of fabulous content." Later, sometime early in the 20th century, "Methuselah" and all the other names were chosen for specific bottle sizes.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.