A slight issue with the internets meant that Monday’s WOTD lazed around as a draft instead of winging its way to your inbox. So! Belated, as it is, enjoy:

9 December 2013

largesse

[lahr-jes, lahr-jis]

noun

1. generous bestowal of gifts.
2. the gift or gifts, as of money, so bestowed.
3. Obsolete . generosity; liberality.

Also, lar·gesse.

Example

The public is subject to ‘market discipline’, however, multinationals continue to enjoy the largesse of the Bank.

Origin:
1175–1225; Middle English largesse < Old French; see large, -ice

Can be confused: large, largess.

Anagram

ears legs

Today’s aphorism

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.

– Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors

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.