Portable Magic
Reading, for me, is entertainment and an escape from the real world. But it can also inform and stretch the boundaries of the life I live.
Currently reading
Duel of Eagles - page 93/431
I love learning new words. Today I learned "alameda" and "morganatic".
Alameda: I thought this was a place name, and had no idea it had a Spanish origin. Growing up in Houston, it was just the "Alameda Mall", which was THE MALL to go to when I was a kid. Except, it turns out that this is one of those weird Texas mispronunciations. It’s actually the Almeda Mall, and I thoroughly enjoyed this retro look at it on this blog post. I mean, how vintage Texas can you get than this photo of a woman in a Woolworths, posing with a toy cowboy hat and a toy assault rifle?
Actually, “alameda” means a tree-lined street or avenue. In this book, it’s used for a street in San Antonio de Béxar.
Morganatic: a marriage between people of unequal social rank, where the lower ranked spouse and their children have no rights to the higher-ranked spouse’s title or property. Sometimes called a “left-handed marriage”. Used to describe the proposed (and rejected) union from 27 year old Santa Anna’s courtship of the Mexican emperor Iturbide’s 60 year old sister, Doña Nicolasa. Santa Anna responded to the rejection by leading a revolt against Iturbide. Men and their egos, hmmm?
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