Sometimes I’ll hear or read a phrase and think, “That would make a great title for something!” Here are a few I’ve collected so far:
Potential Titles
The Edge of Awareness
Thank you, Helen Dunlop
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Hills Like Green Elephants
From “Atapuerca: The Face of an Ancestral Child” by Robert Kunzig, Discover, December 1997
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An endangered Buddha contemplates oblivion
Caption on cover of July 1997 Scientific American
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Fleshquake
A tremor of the body, Richard Coxe’s Pronouncing Dictionary, 1813
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The Preferment
Probation. Young unmarried women are said to be on their preferment when they are waiting to be preferred by some young man.
Sidney Addy’s Sheffield Glossary of Words, I888
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Minnyng Days
Minnyng days, says Blount, [are] days which our ancestors called their month’s mind, their year’s mind, and the like, being the days whereon their souls (after their deaths) were had in special remembrance, and some office obsequies said for them, as obits, dirges, &c. This word is still retained in Lancashire, but elsewhere they are called anniversary days. The common expression of “having a month’s mind,” implying a longing desire, is evidently derived from hence.
John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1813
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The Tyromancer
tyromancy – divining by the coagulation of cheese
Great Man of Cheese!
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Water of Jealousy
If a husband had no proof but only suspected his wife of infidelity, he might take her before a judge to be examined and if she denied it she was given the “water of jealousy” to drink. In this water some of the dust of the sanctuary was mixed, and the priest said to the woman “If thou has gone aside, may God make this water bitter to thee and bring on all the curses written in this law.”
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Peonies and Eagles
from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by C. Sagan & A. Druyan, pg. 23
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A Tribe of Dust Motes Dancing
From the following quote from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by C. Sagan & A. Druyan, pg. 75
“In a shaft of sunlight, even when the air is still, you can sometimes see a tribe of dust motes dancing.”
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Various Forms of Happiness
from “Seeing” by Annie Dillard, part of her book Pilgrim at Timber Creek
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