Mark Twain passage of boat, was a measure on the sounding line. Twain is an archaic term for "two", as in "The veil of the temple was rent in twain." The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain", meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass." Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In "Life on the Mississippi", he wrote: Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot
Witch (word) Ælfred", which date to about 890: In the homilies of the Old English grammarian Ælfric, dating to the late 10th century we find: In both these examples "wiccan" is the plural noun, not an adjective. The adjective "fulan" (foul) can mean "physically unclean" as well as "morally or spiritually unclean" or "wicked". In Old English glossaries the words "wicce" and "wicca" are used to gloss such Latin terms as "augur", "hariolus", "conjector", and "pythonyssa", all of which mean "diviner", "soothsayer", which suggests a possible role of fortune-teller for the witch in Anglo-Saxon times. The word "wicca" is associated with animistic