“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare
Some third or fourth cousin five times removed on Ancestry sent me a message, “Were you baby Rose?” And I had to admit, I was; I was actually called “Posie” when I was little. That was my nickname.
No one has called me that in decades, even though I’ve come to like it. To me, a posey is a small group of wildflowers, colorful and sweet, all tied together in a bow. But when I looked it up, most dictionaries say that posey is an adjective that means pretentious, someone looking for admiration, a poser!
“…characteristic of or being a poser, especially in being trendy or fashionable in a superficial way.”
You might wonder about its etymology. In French, posey means exactly what I thought it meant, a petit bouquet of flowers: “A small bunch of flowers typically given as a gift and often held together by a string around the flower stems.” And not surprisingly, if you spell it P O S Y in English, it means a small floral bouquet, like a tussie-mussie?!
The meaning of many words can be lost in translation, but the funniest news today is what Mark Zuckerberg decided to rename his company’s brand – “Meta.” Young people on Twitter were saying their elders would never figure out its meaning, and maybe they’re right. To me, meta always meant thinking about thinking. It was an academic word, used in academic circles, to get at the underlying currents of concepts. So I looked it up too, according to Merriam Webster, meta means:
“…showing or suggesting an explicit awareness of itself or oneself as a member of its category : cleverly self-referential…. concerning or providing information about members of its own category.”
Like say, writing news about the news? I guess the Facebook genius forgot to hire a proofreader, because the word meta, in Hebrew, means DEAD!
“Facebook’s announcement that it is changing its name to Meta has caused quite the stir in Israel where the word sounds like the Hebrew word for “dead”.
To be precise, Meta is pronounced like the feminine form of the Hebrew word.
A number of people have taken to Twitter to share their take on the name under the hashtag #FacebookDead.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59090067
Well, Facebook is dead to me. It’s been a few weeks and I’m doing just fine without it, although the Bride told me she signed me up for a Facebook neighborhood group that basically does some old-fashioned bartering. You need a baby humidifier, and someone nearby has one to give you! They need a dog gate, and you’ve got one for them. The idea is to consume less, and meet and connect with your neighbors. Huh, these younguns’!
So, even though I was feeling sick and achy from my Moderna booster shot this week, I packed up some old clothes and brought a box to the Bride’s house to add to the group. She was busy trimming hedges. I told her she could borrow her Dad’s electric trimmer, but she said it was a good workout. Like raking leaves instead of blowing them into your neighbor’s yard.
Her beautiful yard is peppered with skeletons and plastic grave stones for Halloween. I even added a French Bulldog skellie to the mix. This year the Grands will be Dracula and a Storm Trooper, and they’ll actually get to go Trick or Treating. Which means we’ll be giving out the candy again.
Maybe I should dress up as Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, with a posey nosegay of flowers on my dress? Happy Halloween Y’all!
MountainMornings 
I love this post and I, too, have used the word posey for a small bouquet of flowers tied with a ribbon.
We’re just old fashioned I guess! Thanks Sheila!
My favorite comment about the name change is Andy Borowitz writing that zMark Zuckerberg is going to change his name to Mother Theresa!
Enjoyed your column as always.
Thanks so much Esther! It’s Ada’s yahrtzeit tomorrow and she would have loved that!
ring-a-ring-a-rosies
a pocket full of posies. And I have had Ada on my mind.
Yes, it’s a cold and rainy day here but her memory keeps me warm.