Today’s word of the day, courtesy of Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary), is fugacious. Pronounced / fyuˈgeɪ ʃəs /, in everyday usage this adjective means “fleeting; transient” while in botany it means “falling or fading early” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fugacious). I’m not a biologist, so I have to admit that this is a new word for me.

Samuel Johnson, in the 1773 edition of his Dictionary, defined fugacious as “Volatile,” though he gives no quotations from source material as he usually does (https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=fugacious). Merriam-Webster defines it as “lasting a short time : evanescent” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fugacious). Then it explains, “The word fugacious is too rare and unusual to qualify as vanilla, but the vanilla plant itself can be useful for recalling its meaning. Fugacious (which comes from Latin fugax, meaning ‘swift, fleeting,’ and ultimately from fugere, ‘to run away’) describes the ephemeral—that is, those things in life that last only a brief time before fleeing or fading away. The word is often used to describe immaterial things, such as emotions, but botanists like to apply the word to plant parts (such as seeds, fruits, petals, and leaflets) that are quickly shed or dropped. Vanilla plants, for example, are said to have fugacious blossoms, as their flowers last only a single day during the blooming season. You may remember this the next time you’re baking with vanilla, and perhaps wishing that its rich, fugacious aroma would linger just a little bit longer” (ibid.).

Etymonline.com says that it meant “’fleeing, likely to flee,’ 1630s, with -ous + Latin fugaci-, stem of fugax ‘apt to flee, timid, shy,’ figuratively ‘transitory, fleeting,’ from Fugere ‘to flee’” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/fugacious), though the meaning has clearly changed over time. It’s related to fugitive, which appears in English in the “late 14c., ‘one who flees, a runaway, a fugitive from justice, an outlaw,’ from fugitive (adj.). Old French fugitive also was used as a noun meaning ‘fugitive person,’ and Latin fugitivus (adj.) commonly also was used as a noun meaning ‘a runaway, fugitive slave, deserter’” (ibid.). Here is another thing I have learned from taking on the word fugacious: I have heard the expression tempus fugit for many, many years, and I knew that it means “time flies,” but I have always assumed that fugit must mean something like “goes away really fast.” Now I know that the expression means, “Time flees,” or “Time runs away or escapes.” “The expression comes from line 284 of book 3 of Virgil‘s Georgics, where it appears as fugit irreparabile tempus: ‘it escapes, irretrievable time’” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempus_fugit). Learn something new every day.

On this day in 1939, the “Musical film ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, and Margaret Hamilton, opens at Loew’s Capitol Theatre, NYC” (https://www.onthisday.com/events/august/17).

I’m going to make an assumption, and that is that you already know about “The Wizard of Oz,” the movie. You have probably seen it on television. So I’ll just share a few random facts.

First, it was a critical success when it was released in 1939, garnering five Academy Award nominations and winning two (both for music). But it was not a commercial success. In fact, it didn’t begin earning money until it was re-released in 1949. Part of the reason it didn’t earn a profit initially was that it was the most expensive film MGM had made to date, costing $2.7M. So here’s something to think about if you’re younger than me: if you missed seeing the movie at the local movie theater, then you missed seeing the movie. There was no Blockbuster or Netflix, no streaming service. You had to wait around until it came back to the theater, which it might never do.

In 1956, it was broadcast on television for the first time: “MGM sold CBS the rights to televise the film for $225,000 (equivalent to $1.93 million in 2023) per broadcast. It was first shown on television on November 3, 1956, as the last installment of the Ford Star Jubilee. It was a ratings success, with a Nielsen rating of 33.9 and an audience share of 53%. It was repeated on December 13, 1959, and gained an even larger television audience, with a Nielsen rating of 36.5 and an audience share of 58%. It became an annual television tradition” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz).

In 1980, the movie was released on videocassette, and then later on in a DVD format and a Blu-ray format, but that just made the film more available and therefore, in a sense, cheaper. I say cheaper because in the 1960s, people looked forward to the annual event that was the playing of “The Wizard of Oz” on TV.

And it wasn’t the only annual event on television. In 1957, CBS broadcast, live, a musical version of Cinderella written by Rogers and Hammerstein, the only musical by them that was written exclusively for TV. It starred Julie Andrews, and “The broadcast was viewed by more than 100 million people” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(Rodgers_and_Hammerstein_musical)), but because it was a live production, and because video recording was not all that sophisticatedin 1957, it was not shown again. Instead, it was produced again in 1965 starring Lesley Ann Warren. And that second version also became an annual event that people looked forward to. And, I have to admit, Lesley Ann Warren was my first crush even though she was a decade older than I was.

Don’t get me wrong. While I may feel a bit nostalgic about the old days, I wouldn’t want to return to them. I like streaming services. I wouldn’t even want to go back to VHS tapes or DVDs. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to vinyl despite what some younger people have to say.

But it doesn’t really seem that long ago when the magic of “The Wizard of Oz” or “Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” caused my parents to let me and and my siblings stay up a little later than usual. Those were fugacious days.

Today’s image is from “The Wizard of Oz,” a scene in which the Wicked Witch is sending the flying monkeys to kidnap Dorothy, proving that time is not the only thing that flies (https://rachelhauck.com/fly-fly-fly/).