Word To Use Roday: jorum.

Have you heard of Dry January? The said dryness refers not to the weather, nor to an abstention from baths, washing up, or chicken soup, but to the shunning of alcohol in all its forms.

Dry January seems to be partly designed to boost the health, partly to take advantage of a common self-loathing after the excesses of midwinter, partly as a reassurance that alcoholism has not taken hold, partly as an endurance sport, and partly as a platform for smugness and boasting.

Shall I be having a Dry January? Yes, because alcohol gives me migraines, but The Word Den is nonetheless a place for joy and so today I give you the word jorum.

Jorum is a word of magnificent generosity and celebration, for a jorum is a large drinking bowl (or the contents thereof). You can have a jorum of punch, for instance, or a jorum of warming mulled wine. 

If necessary, the punch and the mulled wine don't have to contain alcohol - but what a jorum must contain is something to lift the shrinking hearts of all around. 

Cheers!

Word To Use Today: jorum. This word appeared in the 1700s and probably is named after Jorum, who brought vessels of silver, gold and brass to the King David of the Bible (Samuel 8:10).

PS For the determinedly teetotal and asocial, the Jorum Glacier is in Antarctica.  The UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee so named it because the head of the glacier looks like a punch bowl. 

The only problem is that it's on the thrillingly-named Forbidden

 Plateau, so I doubt there are many package tours to see it.