Fog

 April 21 Word of the Day: Fog

 

Fog estranges the early riser at the undrawing curtain view, softly encumbering roofs and gardens and vision itself whitely with condensation divested of all the usual linearity. Estranges, not exactly, the verb is more like surprises or soothes or gratifies, the way difference envelopes or calmness descends or airiness nubilates before our very eyes. Indeed, makes domestic rather than estranges, makes of our familiar habitation a tranquil mind of belonging, makes of our indigenous present a stillness stiller still, missing any sign of motation. Eftsoons fog has not budged from its former glory of the half-hour previous, glowing increasingly by degrees with niveous splendour, albeit the latitudes are temperate in these parts more given to various pluvious thicknesses on any a time but today; fulsome immensities obstructing cloudiness from cloud abstractedly and rendering the watcher, casting waking looks, into a state of sedate obmutescence. Eftsoons fog as they say is thick, damp, blanketing those waking up with the densest definition of undefined blank, structures their foundations dreamy to vision and gentle against glass; settles across acres of the convenient commonwealth of city, an enigmatist converting nature into watercolours and nursing the ravaged edges with autumnal cool. Eftsoons fog lowers itself lower, raising questions of and amidst more early birds. If fog is neither chimera nor chiliaedron how then to name it or which shape to compare? Surely evaporation is not instincted with animate anatomy nor virtuoso with deity, never let it be said? Eftsoons say ten o’clock fog as they say lifts, if they must, perhaps too quickly unnoticed, vehicles seem cleaner and flora brisker and fauna all whiskers and the epidermis of the wakeful tenses tenderly with sunlight, our epitome of measure. Light blue reaches through and opens wide. Had the humanists amongst us only more time in the day, the answers might be plain to see and dilate upon, as the charming layers of white, not so much layers as penetrable substance, dawdle about treetops and sail idly and without incident above riverbends and reflect in portholes before they pale and unfleck, and suchlike verbs, into the all-purpose atmosphere.

 

[Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]