That's what Momford called it, though the excerpts were in Italian , so he probably meant La Cenerentola (blessed relief, considering the aboMInable mis-stressing that it's routinely subjected to by English speakers – but that's neither here nor there). Now where was I before I so rudely interrupted myself?...
... at the Greek National Opera 'a big hug for Greece', which set me thinking about big hugs.
The reception desk at a French camp-site is marked Accueil. Suppressing your possible cynicism about French tourism, try to imagine 'Mine Host', standing by the desk with a beatific smile and his arms extended in a gesture of welcome – promising a big hug.
Last autumn (? can't find it, though the subject matter should make the search quite easy) I wrote about 'accumulate', and talked about a heap (or cumulus to give the Latin) of dead leaves. A similar 'acc-' word is this accueil, although there is no attested instance of the Vulgar Latin (so it's conventionally preceded by a diffident '*' (although it's confidently known to have existed, because of its many descendants in the Romance languages): *ACCOLLARE.
When a knight was welcomed to the ...knightate? ...he was given a big hug; his liege lord wrapped his arms around his neck (think of our 'collar'). He embraced him, to use another physical metaphor, which I haven't time to pursue.
And so we come to accolade, quite appropriate in this week of Nobel prizes. Those Swedish grandees are echoing that welcoming embrace – or to use Andrew Momford's phrase 'a big hug'.
News from the word-face
I had planned to do all the U* vowel-pairs in one release, but progress on UA and UE has been slower than expected. So I've decided to put out a 'Special Home Straight Release' – V4.1. But I've run out of Kindle Direct Publishing's free days; so there has to be a small charge. This also gives me the chance to repair the missing -EE- section. It should be there early tomorrow, but here's something to be going on with:
b
Update: 2017.01.05.12:20 – A few format tweaks, and deleted old footer.
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