9 December 2012
rime
[RAHYM]
noun
A coating of tiny, white, granular ice particles, caused by the rapid freezing of water droplets.
Example:
The Chief’s follow spot cast a light like a rime of ice into the murk, and mom swam inside this circle across the entire length of the lake.
— Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
When it got real fierce, when your very speech would freeze as it emanated from your lips and blow back in stinging rime against the cheeks, we hung close to the tepees and ate the dried meat taken the summer before and stored in rawhide parfleches and pemmican, the greasier the better on account of a bellyful of melting fat will warm you sooner and stick longer than most anything I know.
— Thomas Berger, Little Big Man
Origin
Rime, also known as hoarfrost, comes from the Old English hrim. Used mainly in Northern England and Scotland for centuries, it was revived in literature in the 19th century.
Today’s aphorism
‘Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society’.
– Albert Einstein
On this day
9 December 1906 – birth of Sir Douglas Nichols KCVO, OBE. Aboriginal activist, raising awareness of aboriginal issues, including treating aborigines with dignity and as people. He played for Carlton football club in the A-grade Victorian Football League (VFL), leaving after racist treatment and joining the Northcote football club in the Victorian Football Association (VFA). Nicholls became a minister and social worker. In 1957, he was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 1972 he was the first aborigine to be knighted. In 1976, he became the 28th governor of South Australia, the first aborigine to be appointed to a vice-regal position. He died on 4 June 1988.
9 December 1947 – Deputy Prime Minister of India, Sandar Valiabbhai Patel announces that India and Pakistan have reached an agreement on the borders of the two countries following partition … except for the issue of Kashmir, which is unresolved to this day.
9 December 1990 – Polish dissident, Solidarity union leader and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Lech Walesa wins Polish presidential election in a landslide. Solidarity was the Soviet Bloc’s first independent trade union. Walesa presided over Poland’s transition from a communist state to a post-communist state.