paronomasia \,pa-rə-nō-‘mā-zh(ē-)ə, ,pa-,rä-nə-‘mā-\ n : a play on words : pun
No matter how hard Willow tried to program the Buffybot with effective verbal wit, its attempts at paronomasias were incoherent at best.

Double Bonus Word Day!

At the sight of Buffy’s moue, Spike couldn’t resist the urge to osculate her.

moue \‘mü\ n : a little grimace : pout

“Moue” is one of two similar-sounding words in English that refer to a pout or grimace; the other is “mow,” which is pronounced to rhyme either with “no” or “now.”  “Mow” and “moue” share the same origin (the Anglo-French mouwe) and a distant relationship to a Middle Dutch word for a protruding lip.  (They do not, however, share a relationship to the word “mouth,” which derives from Old English mūth.)  While use of “moue” in English traces back only a little more than 150 years, “mow” dates all the way back to the 14^th century.  “Moue” has also seen occasional use as a verb.

osculate \‘äs-kyə-,lāt\ v : to kiss

“Osculate” comes from the Latin noun osculum, meaning “kiss” or “little mouth.”  It was included in a dictionary of “hard” words in 1656, but we have no evidence that anyone actually used it until the 19^th century, except for scientists who used it with the different meaning “to contact.”

kittel \‘ki-t^əl\ n : a white cotton or linen robe worn by Orthodox Jews on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and at the Passover Seder
Determined to earn an A in Mr. Whitmore’s health class, Willow spent all night sewing a tiny kittel for her egg baby to demonstrate that she taught it religious values.

Kittels have long been made of cotton, and if you follow the threads of the words “kittel” and “cotton” back far enough into history, you will find that both seem to have come from quţn, the Arabic word for “cotton.”  In the case of “kittel,” we can follow the thread with relative certainty back through Yiddish to the Middle High German work kietel, meaning “cotton or hempen outer garment.”  However, “cotton” can be traced directly to quţn.

nychthemeron \nik-‘the-mə-,rän\ n : a full period of a night and a day
At the suggestion of Mr. Bogarty at the magic shop, Tara purified the moonstone by burying it in sand for one nychthemeron before using it for spellcasting.

This 24-hour term brings together the Greek root nykt- or nyx-, meaning “night,” and the Greek word hemera, meaning “day.”  Another English descendant of nykt-/nyx- is “nyctalopia,” meaning “night blindness” (adding alaos, meaning “blind,” and op- or ops, meaning “eye”).  Hemera has other English offspring, including “hemerocallis,” another name for the daylily (from hemera plus kallos, meaning “beauty”).

Tidbit: The red hemerocallis is one of my favorite flowers.  Here's a pic. :-)

Why I love Ringer:

• The plot has so many twists and turns that you barely recover from a bad case of whiplash by the time the next episode airs.
• It's managed to surprise me, whereas with most shows, I guess what's gonna happen next before the writers do. :-P
• Bridget is an ex-stripper drug addict, who's on the run from an organized crime lord, got her nephew killed, steals her sister's identity, and bangs her brother-in-law--and she's the GOOD twin!
• Siobhan is nicknamed "Shiv" (slang for a makeshift knife usually found in prisons), a moniker I find fitting since she's a back-stabbing, diabolical fiend.
• In a dream sequence, Siobhan wonders why Andrew loves Bridget when he didn't love her.
  Siobhan: What do you have that I don't?
  Bridget: Um...a soul?*
• Sarah Michelle Gellar kept calling it "Ring-ger" in the promos, but eventually started pronouncing only one "g", presumably having gotten my telepathic signals that two "g's" was annoying the crap outta me.
• It's resurrected the over-the-top, soap-opera-iness of the prime-time dramas of my childhood, like Falcon Crest, Dynasty, and Dallas.
• The costumers take great pains to dress SMG in the finest couture, but she's so short that she inevitably winds up looking like she's been playing in mommy's closet.
• After double-crossing Mr. Carpenter, Catherine leaves him a sticky note with a post script that says, "You're an idiot!"
• Andrew wears suspenders.
• There's not a single character who hasn't lied, cheated, stolen, manipulated, and/or committed murder.
• It's decadently ridiculous, and I eat that shit up like double chocolate cake. :-P

*Okay, she didn't really say that, but she would have if I'd written the script.