Ouroboros to you!

Ouroboros kind of sounds like a greeting to me or perhaps the name of an important piece of lawnmower (as in "The ouroboros broke and I need to fix it ASAP").

However, the dictionary cleared things up for me.

As stated by the Oxford English Dictionary Ouroboros (also spelled uroborus) is:

The symbol, usu. in the form of a circle, of a snake (or dragon) eating its tail.

and may have first be written in: 1940 by H.G. Baynes in Mythol. of Soul vi. 221 "Thus the uroborus symbol represents our psychic continuity with the immemorial past."

One of the great things about being a part of IR is reading everything that comes across my desk and the opportunity to learn new words. I love to learn a new word because once I learn it, I start to see it everywhere: on the sides of buses, in poems, in prose, in shiny coupons in the Sunday paper.

I wonder if I will start seeing this word, or depictions of it, when I leave the office today.

10 points* for anyone who writes it into a poem. 15 points for anyone who finds it in a poem. 20 points for anyone who finds the word graffiti-ed on a brick wall.

---Alessandra


*Please note these points have no monetary or tangible, redeemable value, but supply a large amount of good-happy feelings (exact amount is at the digression of the winner of said points).