You know that I am a lover of words, alliteration, onomonopea, all syllables and sounds that glide off the tongue tip as smoothly as gin glides on.

Here’s a good one, a ‘doozie’ to behold: Zeugma.

PRONUNCIATION:
(ZOOG-muh)

Sounds like the car horn of yesteryear, doesn’t it! On a car that, perhaps, delivered ‘bathtub gin’… Let it zoom into your ears.

MEANING:
noun: The use of a word to refer to two or more words, especially in different senses.
Examples: “He caught a fish and a cold” or “She lost her ring and her temper.”

The word I am contemplating in this regard is “justified“.

Example: He felt justified in his actions, and, because he believed, by God, he was, without actions or good deeds.

I wish that a Biblical scholar could sort that one out for me once and for all.

I wish I had my Dad to talk with on the topic, a man who famously sparred with the door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness on a regular basis. It was a social interaction that he thrived on, especially after Mother died. I observed the ‘discussion’ once – it was a draw.

Today is my Dad’s birthday, but he’s passed from this earth. He was a word nerd, too, with aptitude for drawing, music, and math. He engendered laughs. Though we shared an affinity for Saturday Night Fights on TV (yikes, what a way to spend alone time with Dad, when the scrappy siblings I’d fought off all day had to be tucked early to bed with Mother reading endlessly to them…), Dad was built for harmony. He was justified, I am sure.