17 May 2013

vicissitude

[vi-sis-i-tood, -tyood]

noun
1. a change or variation occurring in the course of something.
2. interchange or alternation, as of states or things.
3. vicissitudes, successive, alternating, or changing phases or conditions, as of life or fortune; ups and downs: They remained friends through the vicissitudes of 40 years.
4. regular change or succession of one state or thing to another.
5. change; mutation; mutability.

Origin:
1560–70; < Latin vicissitūdō, equivalent to viciss ( im ) in turn (perhaps by syncope < *vice-cessim; vice in the place of (see vice3 ) + cessim giving way, adv. derivative of cēdere to go, proceed) + -i- -i- -tūdō -tude

Related forms
vi·cis·si·tu·di·nous, adjective

Today’s aphorism

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

– Dante Alighieri

On this day

17 May 2000 – Thomas Blanton Jr and Bobby Frank Cherry, former Ku Klux Klan members, are arrested and charged with murder for the 1963 bombing of a church in Alabama which killed four girls. The two men were sentenced to life in prison.

17 May 2012 – Disco singer, Donna Summer dies from lung cancer. She was born on 31 December 1948.