This new series—“Wordbirds”—arises from a journey I am taking through my Webster’s 3rd Dictionary. What I’m doing: I look on the first page for each letter, and the first word that flies up at me (because I don’t know it, because I just think it’s interesting, etc.) becomes the subject for that day’s doggerel. I will move through letter z, then work my way back again, the second time using the last page of each letter’s section of Webster's. Let’s see what happens ...
Words that flew into my life from Webster’s 3rd …
nabal/Nabal noun (rhymes with table)
a churlish or niggardly man (from Nabal, wealthy sheep owner in 1st Samuel, who refused to pay tribute to King David for protection of his flocks)
Old Nabal surely had the bucks
To pay King David. “Taxing sucks!”
He told the baffled King,
Who now had heard most everything.
In history—so many tales
Of starts and ends, of laughs and wails.
But this one really gives a jolt:
Was this the birth of tax revolt?