HALCYON

[Dr. Goodword]

• halcyon •

Pronunciation: hæl-si-ên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, Adjective

Meaning: 1. [Noun] A mythical bird of ancient Greece that nested on the seas, calming them with magical powers until its eggs hatched 2. [Noun] The kingfisher, which was confused with the mythical bird. 3. [Adjective] Calm, tranquil, placid.

Notes: The spelling of this Greek word (see Word History) is unusual for English so that prefixing or suffixing it would be difficult. There is a sponge called alcyonium because it resembles the halcyon's nest with an adjective alcyonic. However, halcyon may be used as an adjective without suffixation, so an additional suffix would be redundant. Remember the [cy] in the middle of it; it sounds a lot like [si]—but it isn't.

In Play: When you think of total relaxation, this Good Word should rush to mind: "After a halcyon respite on a Caribbean lagoon, adjusting to the pernicious traffic of Los Angeles proved difficult for Sandy Beach." Calm and tranquility, of course, are found in many places other than the sea: "The halcyon expression on Gertrude's face let Wesley know that everything was under control".

Word History: Today's word is Greek halkyon "kingfisher, halcyon" with the [k] softened to the [s] sound by Latin and French. This word started out as a compound noun containing Greek hals "salt, sea" + kuon "conceiving, being pregnant", the present participle of kuo "to conceive", somewhat remindful of the halcyon's mythical habits. This stem apparently goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "swelling" and, by implication, "hollow place", for it is phonologically related to the Latin adjective cavus "hollow, dug out", which came to English via French as cave.

[skinem]

I'm still waiting for my halcyon days...
As you can see from my picture, I need them.
As you can see from my picture, I don't think I'm capable of having any halcyon days.

[Stargzer]

Back in very ancient times, back before The Internet, Ethernet, or the IBM PC, there was a company called Halcyon, Inc. that made and sold a line of data link analyzers. We used these to troubleshoot data communications lines to find the source of a problem. They had a video display and allowed you to monitor and capture live data or simulate traffic to diagnose a problem. As LANs came into use they were pretty much replaced by the Network General Sniffer and other PC-based devices. I'm sure I could still program either of the models we use, the 801A and the 803. We eventually replaced ours with Atlantic Research analyzers.

They were all very handy tools that brought peace of mind!