Aquarius 14 (A train entering a tunnel)

[sdh3]

THEME 1: PASSAGE

• The keyword entering descends from the Indo-European (IE) root en- which means “in.” One of its paronyms is entrance which can mean “a means or point by which to enter.” Synonyms of entrance include passage and passageway.

• The keyword tunnel entered the English language in the mid-15th century with the meaning “funnel-shaped net for catching birds.” The sense of the word as a tube or pipe developed in the mid-16th century and by the mid-18th century lead to its meaning as an underground passage. Among its many definitions are “an underground tunnel” and “to construct a passageway through or under.”

THEME 2: LITERARY & RHETORICAL FORMS

• The keyword train descends from the IE root tragh- which means ”to draw, drag, or move.” Among its paronyms are several terms associated with writing and rhetoric. These include tract (a leaflet or pamphlet containing a declaration or appeal, especially one put out by a religious or political group), abstract (a statement summarizing the important points of a text), and treatise (a systematic, usually extensive written discourse on a subject).

• One of the paronyms of entering is episode, a “portion of a narrative that relates an event or a series of connected events and forms a coherent story in itself” and “a separate part of a serialized work, such as a novel or play.” Another of its paronyms is introduction which refers to “the part at the beginning of a book, report, etc. that gives a general idea of what it is about.”

• Notably, the first theme, PASSAGE, also has literary or rhetorical significance: one of its definitions is “a segment of a written work or speech.”