[Click for a larger view.]
I took this photograph on Tuesday night. It’s no great shakes — I was just struck by the black-and-whiteness of the sky and the waxing gibbous, not quite full, moon.
From Merriam-Webster:
The adjective gibbous has its origins in the Latin noun gibbus, meaning “hump.” It was adopted into Middle English to describe rounded, convex things. While it has been used to describe the rounded body parts of humans and animals (such as the back of a camel) and to describe the shape of certain flowers (such as snapdragons), the term is most often used to describe the moon: a gibbous moon is one that is between half full and full.
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I learned this word from a Phyllis Whitney book when I was a pre-teen. I remember looking it up in the dictionary, since I had no idea what it meant and the context was useless. I never forgot it.
I love the idea of knowing where you first encountered a word. I probably knew this word as a kid from a How and Why book, but if I did, I had long forgotten it.
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