Templars and Triskaidekaphobes (fear of 13)

 
"It’s a terrible day for triskaidekaphobes"Adeel Hassan writes for the New York Times — "people scared of the number 13 — and friggatriskaidekaphobes, [people] who fear 13, but only on Fridays. Another term for a fear of Friday the 13th is paraskavedekatriaphobia."

And there's more to the freaky-friday story, but here's the fun poop-scoop for now:

Boss - old French for “a swelling tumor”

Cajole - french for “chatter like a jay” or, be enticed into a caged

Apricot - Arabic for “early ripening (peach)”

Ginko - Japanese for “silver peach”

Saskia - "protector of humankind" in Dutch, or “valley of light"

Zero - an Arabic symbol & cipher for “naught” or empty space. Nothing.
(Also a character in the best Wes Anderson film ever - The Grand Hotel Budapest. . . )

Diatribe - "employment (by Plato) for critical dissertation", or more simply: "the wearing away (of time)"

Apocalypse - Greek "from the good spirit"

Musk - one of the various root words means “testicle” from muska-s (Persian). The testicle may have resembled the mouse “mus"

Testicle “bear witness to male virility” a strange combo of testis “witness” and testament”

Croon - “to bellow like a bull” . . . mountain oysters anyone??? 

Fantastic - from Greek phantazein: “to make visible”

Crucial - Francis Bacon’s reference to the cross roads, derived from "Crux".

Spud - a short or stumpy person. . .

(a spud peeling spuds, hah!)

Bombastic - inflated

Protocol, literally means “first glue” in Greek

Quack - “ignorant pretender” but derived from a shortened form of quacksalver: prattle

Bachelor - young knight (training in arms)

Mausoleum - from Persian King of Caria, Mausolos Satrap. His “magnificent tomb” was built by his wife (and sister!) Artemesia. It was one of the seven wonders of the world.

Cappadocia in Turkey, hold many of these tombs.

Pigin = pidgeon, an English bastardization of the Chinese word for “business”. And they certainly are industrious business people. Last time i traveled to Costa Rica, they had liquor stores there - in the middle of Central America's jungley NOWHERE!

Epiphany - festival of the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles

Fascination - act of bewitching

Pattern - from patron, in the sense of a master giving an example for disciples to copy.

Now for a fascinating pattern in history - its often a misrepresentation of a special date (Friday the 13th) that gets an new sugar coated wrapper (as in the fabled Paul Revere Ride during the Civil War) and this moment the horror associated with Friday the 13th (not even mentioning the Paris incident). I won't go on any further, because this image summarizes the origins of not a word but a modern historic lore -

Right-o Folks,
May the Tao be with you,
Glutenous Gluteus