{"id":7003,"date":"2025-06-21T14:18:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T14:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=7003"},"modified":"2025-06-21T14:25:48","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T14:25:48","slug":"word-of-the-day-succor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/06\/21\/word-of-the-day-succor\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Succor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to Words Coach (https:\/\/www.wordscoach.com\/dictionary<\/a>) is succor<\/em>. Succor<\/em>, which is also sometimes spelled succour,<\/em> is officially pronounced \/ \u02c8s\u028ck \u0259r \/, with the vowel in the second syllable reduced to schwa as is the rule in English pronunciation (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/succor). But I have to say that I often hear people pronounce it more like \/ \u02c8s\u028ck \u02cc\u0254r \/, with a secondary emphasis on the second syllable. I would guess that people say it that way so that it is not confused with sucker<\/em>, which is a homophone for succor<\/em> but which, especially in American slang, means something quite different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what does succor<\/em> mean? It\u2019s a noun that means \u201chelp; relief; aid; assistance\u201d or \u201ca person or thing that gives help, relief, aid\u201d (ibid.). It can also be a verb meaning \u201cto help or relieve\u201d (ibid.). Etymonline.com says that the word appears in the English language \u201cc. 1200, socour<\/em>, earlier socours<\/em> \u2018aid, help,\u2019 from Anglo-French succors<\/em> \u2018help, aid,\u2019 Old French socors<\/em>, sucurres<\/em> \u2018aid, help, assistance\u2019 (Modern French secours<\/em>), from Medieval Latin succursus<\/em> \u2018help, assistance,\u2019 from past participle of Latin succurrere<\/em> \u2018run to help, hasten to the aid of.\u2019 This is from assimilated form of sub<\/em> \u2018up to\u2019 (see sub-<\/strong><\/a>) + currere<\/em> \u2018to run\u2019 (from PIE root *kers-<\/strong><\/a> \u2018to run\u2019). The final -s<\/em> was mistaken in English as a plural inflection and dropped late 13c. The meaning \u2018one who aids or helps\u2019 is from c. 1300. Stanyhurst’s \u2018Aeneid\u2019 has succoress<\/em> \u2018a female helper.\u2019 The story that speakeasy queen \u2018Texas\u2019 Guinan once greeted her lawyer with \u2018Hello, succor<\/em>\u2019 is, h\u00e9las<\/em>, unconfirmed\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=succor<\/a>). The Greek word h\u00e9las<\/em> means \u201cunfortunately,\u201d and I\u2019m guessing that if Texas Guinan did say such a thing to her lawyer, the spelling would have been sucker<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618) was \u201can Anglo-Irish alchemist, translator, poet and historian\u201d; he \u201ctranslated into English The First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis<\/em> (Leiden, 1582), to give practical proof of the feasibility of Gabriel Harvey’s theory that classical rules of prosody could be successfully applied to English poetry. The translation is considered by the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica<\/em> an unconscious burlesque of the original in a jargon arranged in what the writer called hexameters\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Stanyhurst<\/a>). It begins,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now manhood and garbroyls I chaunt, and martial horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I blaze thee captayne first from Troy cittye repairing,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lyke wandring pilgrim too famosed Italie trudging,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And coast of Lauyn: soust wyth tempestuus hurlwynd<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On land and sailing, bi Gods predestinat order. (https:\/\/link.springer.com\/chapter\/10.1057\/9781137401496_7)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever read The Aeneid, whether in Latin or in translation, you might find some humor in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today is a personal posting, so if you don\u2019t like personal postings, you might want to stop here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January, my mother-in-law, 97 years old, went to the hospital with abdominal pain. After several tests and a couple of CT scans, the doctors told us that she had colon cancer in her secum. We consulted the person who had medical power of attorney, who is a doctor, and he agreed with the conclusion that there was no point doing any further medical testing as even a colonoscopy would likely kill her, and that any treatment of the cancer\u2014surgery, chemotherapy, radiation\u2014would also likely kill her. So we were allowed to bring her home in what is called home hospice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Home hospice requires that someone be in the house with her pretty much 24\/7. So my wife and I moved in with her, and we\u2019ve been here the last 5\u00bd months. The medical organization that helped us with her care here in Western North Carolina is called Care Partners, and they were indeed partners with us. In addition to having a nurse visit us regularly to take vital signs and otherwise check on my mother-in-law, they sent a hygienist to give her bed baths. They also sent, several times, a social worker and a chaplain. Interestingly, the latter two were not really there for my mother-in-law but primarily for my wife, who had primary responsibility for caring for her mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother-in-law died this morning. She was in her bed, in her bedroom, in her home. She was relaxed (the nurse told us what to look for to determine whether she was relaxed or in distress). We believe she was as comfortable as could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, when my wife went to give her some medication to help her stay relaxed and calm, she woke up briefly and said, \u201cI\u2019m ready to go.\u201d We have no idea what she meant. Perhaps she awoke from a dream in which she was getting ready to go somewhere. Perhaps she thought we were getting her up to go somewhere. Or perhaps she was telling her husband, who died about 2\u00bd years ago. He died in a hospice setting, and the last thing he said to the doctor who was caring for him was, \u201cI\u2019m ready to go, and you\u2019re making it hard for me \u2018cause you\u2019re taking such good care of me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been various kinds of succor for us over these last 5\u00bd months. We were blessed that we were able to retire a couple of years ago\u2014we couldn\u2019t have done this had we been working. We were blessed by our own children who came to visit us at times with our grandchildren, and who took care of our home while we have been absent. We were blessed by the thoughts and prayers of friends, old and new. But there was a special succor provided by the professionals at Care Partners. They had been total strangers to us before January. They treated us like family, or like family in a good way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s one more person to thank: \u201cFor in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted\u201d (Hebrews 2:18). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is the logo of the Care Partners organization (https:\/\/m.bbb.org\/prod\/ProfileImages\/e6f20bdb-5992-4eac-9e94-b427edbe8c41.jpeg<\/a>), taken from the website of the Better Business Bureau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to Words Coach (https:\/\/www.wordscoach.com\/dictionary) is succor. Succor, which is also sometimes spelled succour, is officially pronounced \/ \u02c8s\u028ck \u0259r \/, with the vowel in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[809,238,395,284,808],"class_list":["post-7003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-care-partners","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","tag-succor","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7003","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=7003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7005,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7003\/revisions\/7005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}