"Sweven" is an archaic word, meaning dream or vision.

It comes from the Old English word, swefn, which meant, "sleep," as well as"dream" or "vision." Sweven moved along nicely through Middle English butthen got bogged down later and was rarely spoken to the point that it is nowconsidered to be a crusty old rarely used archaic word even though you canstill find it in your dictionary. Since it has two meanings, sweven coversmore territory than dream or vision alone. Perhaps lexicographers have hopesthat it will resurge in contemporary English.

"I have a sweven!" quoth Martin Luther King Junior.

That would have done it!

SPIT

The word "spit," among other things, means a perfect likeness as in the expression, "He's the very spit and image of his father." Somewhere alongthe line people mistook the conjunction, "and," for the suffix, "ing". That was an easy mistake to make when "spit and" got apococized to "spit an'."In turn, spit an' then got misunderstood to be spittin'. Antiapocopizingformalists then put the "g" back on spittin' making it spitting. Then, witha nod to the vernacular, populists re-apocopized "spitting" back to "spittin'." Now you know why "spitting image" doesn't make sense.

"Duh!" [is all you have to add to spit an' to get back to the truth.]

My darling, dear... . how I loved thee,
Your spit did surge, straight up to heaven;
Blah-blah, blah-blear... . blah-blah, blah-blee,
How can I purge this fruitless sweven?

Just for fun, I typed my little poem into the automatic translating machine
and clicked Japanese. Then I copied the Japanese translation and entered it
into the machine to be translated back to English. Here's what I got:

My tenderized wild game....Respectfully, I ate you with passion,
Your saliva spurted directly up God's derrière;
Boring-mediocre, uneventful - bad eyesight... .boring-boring, mediocre cheese,
Impossible bowel-movement dream of dried fruit?

© 2004__Muldoon Elder