WordWealth: zephyr

zeph·yr , n.

It was Beevor's editor at Penguin who suggested a study of Stalingrad. She foresaw modest sales of 5,000 or so; an expectation surpassed, literally, a hundredfold. Beevor owes his acclaim above all to his individual gifts, but he also rode a little zephyr of the Zeitgeist. As the veterans' generation of the Second World War began to fade away, so the yarns of old stagers became rare chunks of living history. Much aided by Hollywood and TV, those bands of brothers marched back into the mainstream. Beevor himself visited the set of the Stalingrad epic Enemy at the Gates, and was amused and bemused by the moviemakers' version of hell on the Volga. —— Boyd Tonkin, 'An Unlikely Winner in the Battle for Our Bookshelves'; Independent; May 04, 2002

Stand under this tree and see how finely its leaves are cut against the sky, —as it were, only a few sharp points extending from a midrib. They look like double, treble, or quadruple crosses. They are far more ethereal than the less deeply scolloped Oak-leaves. They have so little leafy terra firma that they appear melting away in the light, and scarcely obstruct our view. The leaves of very young plants are, like those of full-grown Oaks of other species, more entire, simple, and lumpish in their outlines; but these, raised high on old trees, have solved the leafy problem. Lifted higher and higher, and sublimated more and more, putting off some earthiness and cultivating more intimacy with the light each year, they have at length the least possible amount of earthy matter, and the greatest spread and grasp of skyey influences. There they dance, arm in arm with the light,—tripping it on fantastic points, fit partners in those aërial halls. So intimately mingled are they with it, that, what with their slenderness and their glossy surfaces, you can hardly tell at last what in the dance is leaf and what is light. And when no zephyr stirs, they are at most but a rich tracery to the forest-windows. —— H. D. Thoreau, 'Autumnal Tints'; Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most that Thomson says on this subject in his "Autumn" is contained in the lines; The Atlantic; Oct 1862

As of this morning, the sheds that gave the world such automotive legends – and nightmares – as the Zephyr, Zodiac, Corsair, Cortina, Capri, Granada, Sierra and Fiesta will be silent. The bulldozers will move in to demolish the assembly plant in months. —— Cahal Milmo, 'Last Fiesta Marks End of the Party for Motortown'; Independent; Feb 21, 2002

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