DAMN (from) Latin damnum, loss or damage. Loss and damage due to one's failure to count one's blessings. In some homes, God's last name.

DARK AGES (from) Middle Ages (from) Latin. A short period in human history during which the Christian church disowned all opinions not its own, eliminated intellect, taste and imagination from art and literature, and claimed knowledge to be a symptom of the end of the world. Learning, especially that known and shared by women, was a punishable crime, often with death. History as we know it has been totally controlled by male Christian Romans for the last 1800 years, and all that does not fit is changed or deleted. The longevity of the Dark Ages is disputable. Of the three dictionaries I have, the 1934 New Century indicates 476 AD to 1000 AD, or to the Renaissance. The 1938 Webster's says 476 AD to the 13th Century, and is not synchronous with the Middle Ages which ends 200 years later. The 1969 American Heritage insists the Middle Ages began with the end of classical civilization and lasted till the revival of learning in the West. Dark Age is an arbitrary designation (like MIDDLE AGE) that changes as the centuries progress, and humans regress. The revival of learning in the West that marked the end of the Dark Ages is epitomized by death and the destruction of resources and people. This is learning in the Roman tradition. In a couple of thousand years, when histories are rewritten to include our time, we will no doubt be included in the Dark Ages.

DARK MEAT (from) chicken legs. So called because white women hesitate to walk into a grocery or butcher's and ask for "thighs."

DEATH (from) life. Birth into the next world.

DEBT (from) credit. Robbery with a pen.

DECLARE (from) Latin declarare, to make clear, from clarus, clear. The first time I heard this word it was preceded with Ah, as in "Ah dee clare." It has long been one of the prevalent expressions of America's South among those who will swear no harder. I have long admired the persons who can swear long and loud and never declare anything nasty.

DEFENCE (from) De rancher's arbitrary straight line boundaries. This was the correct spelling when the U.S. Constitution was written (Preamble, "provide for the common defence"). It was changed to defense so as not to give the erroneous impression that it was ok to defence the West, since fences were so important to taming the "wild" West. Defence is dat defendable part of de boundary that marks de range. Compare DERANGE down the page.

DEFENSE (from) Latin defensa. Offense. Another ANTIETYMOPATHISM.

DEISM (from) Latin deus, god. A world on auto-pilot. My reference dictionary implies deism to be the abandonment of life by the god that created it. Our nation's founding fathers were Deists, so perhaps it fits that they hoped to so carefully compose the Constitution that the republic could also run on auto-pilot. The claim by fundamentalist Christians that this country was founded on the Christian faith is in error. Those who had the guts to cross the Atlantic did so to escape religious persecution on the European side, not to establish the same tyranny over here.

DELICIOUS (from) Latin delicia, pleasure, from delicere, to entice away. That which we find delicious and take great delight in entices us away from what?

DELIGHT (from) Latin delicere, to allure, entice away. From what?

DELIVER (from) Latin de-, completely + liberare, to set free, from liber, free. Completely free from what? MercyBuck Hospital?

DEMOCRACY (from) Greek demokratia (from) demos, common people + -cracy (from) Greek kratos, strength, power. Literally, power of the people. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. A political or social unit based upon this form of rule. A social condition of equality and respect for the individual within the community. A desirable condition that we lose when we fail to participate in the simple process of voting.

"Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from the delusive to the real, and make a new blessed world of us bye and bye." -- Carlyle

DEMON (from) Greek daimon, divine power, divinity, God. The Greeks didn't consider demons to be bad. The God of the Romans was a Greek demon. The Roman word for god is deus, from which comes the word deity, yet Deists are not well respected, even though they wrote the U.S. Constitution! Curiously, Greek demos, common people, and daimon have the same origin, da. There is every possibility that "demons" and "angels" were similar beings to dissimilar cultures once upon a time.

DEMONSTRATE (from) Latin demonstrare, to point out: de-, completely + monstrare, to show, (from) monstrum, divine portent, (from) monere, to warn. To display, describe, illustrate or present. I am sure that in some instances public demonstrations are divine warnings to show certain bureaucratic or commercial interests that the people do have control. For example, "If we don't like a particular good or service, we must demonstrate the controlled use (and non-use) of it in order to control the producers of it."

DEPEND (from) Latin de-, down + pendere, to hang, "to hang down." To rely, as for support or aid. For example, "To depend too much on federal money for everything is to swim (for years) in the deep end."

DERANGE (from) Old French desrengier : de- (sense of undoing) + reng, renc, line. Messing with the (straight) line. To remove from the range. Anyone who has built wire fences around the range knows that it is much easier to build them in straight lines. The importance of fences to the development of the American West is undisputed, except by the great herds of buffalo, elk, deer, horses, naturalists, environmentalists, etc., that desire to roam freely on the range. In America anyone who messes with the fences is obviously deranged.

DEVELOPMENT (from) Commerce. The application and construction of long-term concrete, glass, steel and plastic upon fertile flatlands in order to reap short-term profits. The long-term protection of valuable soils (buried under above mentioned products) from the toxic wastes of commerce. The monetary impetus for the necessary spread of Capitalism.

DEVIL (from) Greek diabolos, from Greek, slanderer, from diaballein, to slander, set at variance, "throw across": dia-, across + ballein, to throw. A necessary (d)evil carried around the world and thrown across cultural barriers by Christian missionaries who invented him. Served with rum, the devil assists self-serving primitive pagans in the discovery of their sinful ways. The missionary then "saves" the sinner from the (d)evil by preaching against the very things he introduced to the poor devil in the first place.

DIAL A CRICKET (from) a toll fee number. A phone service for urbanites so they won't forget what their primitive rural ancestors used to enjoy at sunset on beautiful summer evenings under the spreading chestnut trees.

DIAPER (from) Medieval Greek dia- thoroughly + aspros, white. Not for very long.

DICTIONARY (from) Latin dicere, to say. A time-relative artistic reflection of language and its use.

"A dictionary is a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work." -- Ambrose Bierce

DIET (from) Greek diaita, mode of life, regimen, from diaitan, to lead one's life. Anything taken or provided regularly. More than just what we eat, it is a way of making us feel guilty about what and how we eat. One of these days some brilliant physician is going to discover that diet has some remote connection to cancer, but don't hold your breath waiting.

"It has been said that 'we are what we eat,' or better, that 'we are what we assimilate,' but be advised that we are also what we do not eliminate. Woo Pig Sooie!" -- Roger Henry

DISGUSTO (from) Latin dis- (negative) + gustus, taste. What the tasteless go for with vigorous enjoyment.

DISLODGE (from) Latin, dis- (reversal) + logier, to lodge, from loge, shed. A country club that visitors claim to be more than just a shed in the woods. The value of the club is relative to the amounts paid to attend. For example, "You frequent dislodge and you will dislodge lots of bucks from you wallet."

DISMALL (from) Commerce. The mall with 75 empty stores that no one frequents anymore.

DISPOSE (from) Latin dis-, in different directions + ponere, to put. To arrange. To eat or drink. For example, "If we don't dispose of our differences and arrange the proper direction of our municipal garbage, we may have to eat it."

DOCTOR (from) Latin docere, to teach. Someone who feels akin to God, having spent many years in the creation of a superior state of mind. Commonly, a less than healthy drug advocate who is supported by disease, since s/he rarely meets anyone who is well.

"Most of what we eat is superfluous. Hence, we only live off a quarter of what we eat; doctors live off the other three quarters." -- Found on an ancient Egyptian papyrus

DOUBLESPEAK (from) George Orwell. A trick done with forked tongues out of either, or both, sides of the mouth.

DRUGS (from) Urine samples. Refined plant derivatives formerly used for religious and health purposes and now predominantly used for medical and recreational purposes. The object of billions of dollars in important international trade to pay the interest on Third World loans to American banks, and millions of dollars in domestic drug enforcement actions. "Drug" is a relative term, depending on whether you are old or young, ill or bored, rich or poor. For example, "Committee on Drug Abuse: A meeting where men with unlimited alcohol, tobacco and prescription drug allowances discuss the crime of, and punishment for, the use of plant substances they have never even seen, let alone experience."

"The curative power of medicines often consists not so much in the spirit that is hidden in them as in the spirit in which they are taken." -- Parcelsus (16th Century)