Novenber* (for November*)

Ven—though it has no place in our word of the month here—is shorthand for venerable (which isn't a bad modifier to one's moniker in case one's looking to have one). We have lots of "venerable" people (saints and rulers, mostly), along with some "venerable" religious orders. There's a World War II aircraft carrier, the HMS Venerable, and apparently a ship or two that are similarly dubbed. There is even, among the humblest of God's creatures, one called the Venerable Dart Moth (Agrotis venerabilis), who kind of looks like he's wearing a furry little bishop's cloak. Before November concludes its reign, let us all pay homage to our most venerable Typo, found eight times today in OhioLINK, and 294 times in WorldCat.

(The Immaculate Conception of the Venerable One, or of Soult, copy in Notre-Dame Basilica, Geneva, Switzerland, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid