{"id":6558,"date":"2024-03-01T14:55:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T14:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6558"},"modified":"2024-03-01T14:58:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T14:58:03","slug":"word-of-the-day-forsaken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2024\/03\/01\/word-of-the-day-forsaken\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Forsaken"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day is forsaken<\/em>. Forsaken<\/em> is the past participle of the verb to forsake<\/em>, and thus it can be part of a verb phrase or used adjectivally. For instance, in the passive voice, one might say, \u201cJoseph was forsaken by his brothers.\u201d As an adjective, it would lack the auxiliary verb and be something like, \u201cThe ship arrived at the forsaken planet.\u201d Forsaken<\/em> means \u201cdeserted, abandoned, forlorn\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/forsaken<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Etymonline says that the word first appeared in English as an adjective in the \u201cmid-13c., past-participle adjective from forsake<\/a>\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=forsaken<\/a>). So we have to go to forsake<\/em> to learn more: \u201cOld English forsacan<\/em> \u2018object to, oppose, refuse, deny; give up, renounce\u2019 (past tense forsoc<\/em>, past participle forsacen<\/em>), from for-<\/a> \u2018completely\u2019 + sacan<\/em> \u2018to struggle, dispute, wrangle; accuse, blame\u2019 (see sake<\/a>). Related: Forsaking<\/em>. Similar formation in Old Saxon farsakan<\/em>, Dutch verzaken<\/em>, Old High German farsahhan<\/em> \u2018deny, repudiate,\u2019 Danish forsage<\/em> \u2018give up, refuse\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/forsake<\/a>). But when did sake<\/em> mean \u201cstruggle, dispute, wrangle,\u201d etc.? Here is what the website says about sake<\/em>: \u201cMiddle English sake<\/em> \u2018strife, discord, enmity, dispute; legal dispute; blame, sin, guilt;\u2019 from Old English sacu<\/em> \u2018a cause at law, crime, dispute, guilt,\u2019 from Proto-Germanic *sako<\/em> \u2018affair, thing, charge, accusation\u2019 (source also of Old Norse s\u00f6k<\/em> \u2018charge, lawsuit, effect, cause,\u2019 Old Frisian seke<\/em> \u2018strife, dispute, matter, thing,\u2019 Dutch zaak<\/em> \u2018lawsuit, cause, sake, thing,\u2019 German Sache<\/em> \u2018thing, matter, affair, cause\u2019), from PIE root *sag<\/em>– \u2018to investigate, seek out\u2019\u201d (ibid.). The site further says that the OE and ME meaning of sake<\/em> \u201chas been taken over by case<\/a> and cause<\/a> [the noun form], and it survives largely in phrases for the sake of<\/em><\/strong> and for _______’s sake<\/em><\/strong> \u2018out of consideration or regard for\u2019 a person or thing (c. 1200, as for God’s sake<\/em>, early 14c.), both those formations are said to be probably from Norse, as their like has not been found in Old English\u201d (ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in Nashville, TN, today, though I\u2019ll be leaving for home shortly. We\u2019re at a Hampton Inn on Crestmore Blvd. with our daughter, who is here meeting with the Tennessee Valley Authority. We just came along for the ride. She had a dinner last night, a networking session as part of the meeting with people from TVA. So my wife and I were on our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found out that there is a Cheesecake Factory nearby, but it wasn\u2019t until we were actually mapping our way to dinner that we discovered that the restaurant, as well as the mall to which it is attached, was just a three-minute walk from the hotel. Other restaurants, such as Emmy Squared and North Italia, are in the same mall complex, as well as other restaurants and food places. The place is called The Mall at Green Hills, and it bills itself as Nashville\u2019s Premier Shopping Destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walked across a parking lot and found the outskirts of the mall, a movie theater and Emmy Squared, along with a jewelry store, separate from the main mall building. Then we passed by a bakery, featuring a cupcake sale for February 29, Leap Day, where you could get $2.29 off a single cupcake. It made us wonder how much a cupcake cost. There was a salad shop called Chopt. Then we came to North Italia and Cheesecake Factory. Between them was an entrance to the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, it is an actual mall. I thought malls were similar to dinosaurs, already extinct, but here is a mall calling itself the premier shopping destination. I think the owners connect \u201cpremier\u201d to high prices because all of the stores in this mall were elite. The anchor stores were Nordstroms, Dillards, and Macy\u2019s. In between were stores like Burberry, Chanel, Crate and Barrel, Everything but Water, Dolce and Gabbana, Saint Laurent, Swarovski, North Face, Tesla, State and Liberty, Tempur-Pedic, and many more. We didn\u2019t actually go into any of these stores for fear that just walking into one of them would drain our bank account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the thing. As we walked by these fairly large retail spaces, we noticed that each one had only 1 or 2 or 3, or as many as 5, people inside, and all of those people were employees. You could tell by the way they were putting clothing away, or wearing something that said \u201cemployee,\u201d or just standing around and chatting or looking at their phones. In a few of the smaller stores, we saw nobody. There were no customers in these stores. I mean, I sort of could understand. When we walked by State and Liberty, a men\u2019s clothing store, I saw on a mannequin pants so tight that I wonder how a guy could walk while wearing them. But how can a store pay rent at Nashville\u2019s Premier Shopping Destination, much less the hourly wage of the employees, if nobody is in the store buying the products?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I realize that it was a weekday evening, not the weekend. And I realize that it was the end of February, not October or November. But why would you have three, four, or even five people working in your store if you\u2019re not selling anything?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We saw a food-selling kiosk with the name Woops! My wife wondered why someone would choose that name, so when we saw the kiosk, we stopped and asked. A very nice, friendly woman was there to answer our questions. She told us that the mall has been around since 1955, and that it had been enlarged several times over the last 69 years. My wife remarked that it looked very new and modern, and the woman agreed, but she also pointed out that the skylight above her kiosk leaks at times. She pointed out that the mall is busier on weekends and around the holidays, but then she also said that the prices of the stores were too high for her to buy anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woops! sells macaroons. It got its name from a catering event, where the caterer ran out of macaroons and said, \u201cWoops.\u201d It was not an inspiring story. The macaroons were colorful, but the kiosk\u2019s placing calorie counts on the little cards identifying each kind of macaroon made the cookies less enticing. Still, knowing that the macaroons would be expensive, I suggested that my wife could get one if she wanted. They had tiramisu, and my wife likes coffee. I said, \u201cDo you want to get one?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman on the other side of the counter said, \u201cThe smallest amount we sell is a box of six, and that\u2019s $24 dollars.\u201d My wife didn\u2019t seem to hear her. \u201cDid you say $6 for 24 or $24 for 6?\u201d The woman said that she had said the latter. For any who might be math challenged, that comes out to $4 for each little, tiny cookie, cookies smaller than your average Oreo. We didn\u2019t buy any macaroons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure what to make of what I saw. On the one hand, the fact that there are stores that sell $4 cookies and $10,000 pocketbooks makes me think that people are doing fine. But the fact that the stores in the Mall at Green Hills is devoid of actual customers, at least on a Thursday night, makes me think that things are not going well for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image today comes from https:\/\/www.onlyinyourstate.com\/usa\/abandoned-malls-usa\/<\/a>. The Randall Park Mall, in Randall, Ohio, \u201cwas the largest shopping center in the world. With over 2 million square feet of real estate, the mall was a maze of hallways and corridors.\u201d It \u201cincluded three 14-story apartments and a performing arts center.\u201d The mall opened in 1976 and closed in 2009. Now it is forsaken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day is forsaken. Forsaken is the past participle of the verb to forsake, and thus it can be part of a verb phrase or used adjectivally. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,591,284,592],"class_list":["post-6558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-forsaken","tag-linguistics","tag-mall","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6561,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions\/6561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}