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Sep 9, 2008
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Chinese puzzle
Toronto blessing
Bristol fashion
Roman nose
Glasgow kiss

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Toronto blessing

PRONUNCIATION:
(tuh-RON-toh BLES-ing)

MEANING:
noun: A form of religious rapture marked by outbreaks of mass fainting, laughter, shaking, weeping, fainting, speaking in tongues, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Toronto, Canada, where the phenomenon was experienced in a church in Jan 1994.

USAGE:
"[The movie Pan's Labyrinth] was received in awestruck rapture by the world's press, and left me feeling a little like a Roman Catholic prelate at a pentecostal ceremony, smiling with thin politeness while all around congregants were getting a Toronto Blessing full in the face."
Peter Bradshaw; Hellboy II: The Golden Army; The Guardian (London, UK); Aug 15, 2008.

"We'd have the Toronto Blessing 24/7, hooting away at our own puffed-up selves, and our imagined separation from others -- and laughing in the final realization that we're all in this together."
Geoff Olson; The Great Whatever; Vancouver Sun (Canada); Apr 14, 2001.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. -Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978)

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