Unruly calendar of mixed up days… More like “U” is the 21st letter of the alphabet. Today is the 23rd day of National Poetry Month and this will be my 24th post – so, yeah, cattywumpus<\/a> ought to be the word of the day. And despite what Merriam-Webster has to say about it, that<\/em> is my preferred dialectical spelling variant.<\/p>\n I actually had no idea what the origin and definition of the word was, when I used it in my last post. I have always used it, and heard it used, in its second sense: askew, awry, catercornered. It “probably” comes from the word “catamount,” which takes its origins from “cat-a-mountain” and refers to any of a number of wildcats. So, I suppose “cattywumpus” is as good a spelling as any and well describes what a room might look like if you trapped a mountain lion in it.<\/p>\n Speaking of colorful, regional words and phrases, I thought of another one, yesterday afternoon, while walking in the park with a friend. Storms surrounded us, but we were confident that we could get in a round or two\u2014each one being 1.7 miles\u2014before the rain drove us to shelter. As we walked, bright patches of blue appeared between the clouds and wedged enough space for sunshine to hold the rain at bay. My grandmother used to say that if there was “enough blue to make a Dutchman’s breeches” then it wouldn’t rain. I told my friend this, and for the first time ever, I thought to examine the origins of a phrase that I’d thought was just a quaint, Southern colloquialism.<\/p>\n But apparently, the phrase dates to the 1600s! See the following for some fascinating details and side-alleys down the rabbit hole:<\/p>\n Dutch sailors during the Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars of the 17th century wore wide-legged, baggy trousers. So the saying goes that if there was enough blue sky to patch a pair, the cloud cover was breaking up enough and meant good weather to come.<\/p>\n Who’d dare to skin a cat that’s gone a-wumpus, Down the rabbit hole in search of the origins of a few old expressions and an unruly poem presents itself. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137991107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":{"highlight_sharing":"default","image_sharing":"default","headline_sharing":"default"},"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[2717,2716,2788,2787,2779,2725,2772,2792,2728],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-137991041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","category-writing","tag-a2zchallenge","tag-atozchallenge","tag-pad","tag-poem-a-day","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-prompts","tag-poets-northwest","tag-stafford-challenge"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 19:52:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137991041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137991041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137991041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137991109,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137991041\/revisions\/137991109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137991107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137991041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137991041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137991041"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=137991041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Unruly<\/h2>\n
\nor drive a bull, unruly, from a china shop?
\nThey’d say that it’s a Herculean task, and yet
\nonly one intrepid soul can tame\u2014no other\u2014
\na tantrum’s tempest, willful wild rumpus
\ntwisting like an eight-legged octopod
\ntornado in a bag. Fiercely firm but gently set…
\nHer name, as you must surely know, is Mother.<\/p>\nOther National Poetry Month Posts<\/h2>\n
Your Turn!<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"