Sunday Rest: myrrh. Word Not To Use Today.

I mean, look at it; listen to it; consider the meaning of it.

All right: now tell me what idiot decided to spell myrrh, well, myrrh? Why not mer? Or merr, if he were feeling expansive?

And if he just had to put all those stupid letters in it, then why not pronounce it, sensibly, myra? 

Hey, and while I'm here, who decided that a word that sounds like a cow with gut-rot is ideal for describing a perfume?

Above all, can it really have been a wise man who decided that a substance used in the preparation of dead bodies for burial was a suitable gift for a newly-born baby?



(Balthazar was the one who turned up with the myrrh. Yes, the one who's wearing a scarlet dress with pink stockings.)

As the old song says:

Myrrh is mine its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in a stone-cold tomb.

I mean, myrrh may have been a prophetic choice; it may have been a philosophically valid choice; but wise? Old Balthazar would have been better off taking a packet of mince pies: it would have been just as prophetic, and not so flipping dampening!

Word Not To Use Today: myrrh. This word comes from the Old English myrre, from the Greek murrha, and before that from the Akkadian murrū.