Reading time: Less than 1 minute
Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: halcyon.
I had never known the shameful story of the Hungarian Gold Train until I read Ayelet Waldman’s striking 2014 novel, Love and Treasure. Operating during the Second World War, the famous train carried stolen valuables, taken from Hungarian Jews by the Germans and moved towards Berlin in 1945. American forces managed to seize the train in Austria, but did they return the valuables to their rightful owners (or survivors)? Sadly, no.
The striking story of the train forms the backdrop for Waldman’s sensitive and fascinating novel. The book also gave me my word of the week, halcyon. Let me begin by saying that of course I know that halcyon refers to a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful. But I was curious to learn the root of the word. Where did it originate? Here is how Waldman used it:
I am the son of a dry-goods merchant and the grandson of a simple tailor – a not-uncommon heritage for a Jewish physician of comfortable means in those halcyon days of Israelite assimilation into Magyar society — and so I know women’s clothing well, and this gown of Nan’s cost at least five hundred kronen.
My dictionary of etymology tells me the word dates back to the 1540s and originates from the Latin alcyonei dies, and the Greek alkyonides hemerai, referring to 14 days of calm weather at the winter solstice, when a mythical bird was said to breed in a nest floating on calm seas.
Interestingly enough, the word halcyon (as a noun) also refers to a genus of birds (one is shown in the photo, above) related to the kingfisher.