TRINITY UNITED CHURCH

277 Iroquois St W Moose Jaw, SK

Next Service: May 28th, 2023 10:30am

Rev. Walter Engel

Gyver that aired from 2016 to 2021, starring Lucas Till, who preferred to fight crime with ingenious feats of engineering rather than lethal force. Nothing like the original though.]

In the early 1990s MacGyver began to be used as a slang verb meaning to make, form, or repair something with what was conveniently on hand. In 2022 MacGyver was added to dictionaries due to its popularity of usage. Anyone who used ingenious thinking and improvised methods and contraptions was said to MacGyver a solution.

I received a present a few years ago – the Wallet MacGyver. It is a piece of metal about the size of a credit card that claims to have 46 functions, from bottle opener to eyeglass screwdriver, from cable bender to 15mm hex wrench, from a wire cutter to nail puller, and so on. It can come in handy in various situations.

The TV show Hawaii Five-O, starring Jack Lord, ran from 1968 to 1980. It centred on a special Hawaiian state police task force called Five-O. (The remake version starring Alex O’Loughlin aired from 2010 to 2020.) A popular assumption is that Five-O is some sort of police code, but the show’s writers were simply paying respect to Hawaii’s status as the 50th state in 1959. However, the term Five-O has entered the English language as a slang for law enforcement despite its original intent.

The practice of giving someone a gift you had previously received has probably been around ever since gifts have been given. But calling it regifting became popular thanks to the TV show Seinfeld. In a 1995 episode a label-maker was received as a gift and then given to someone else. The topic of discussion centred around the morality of regifting. Merriam-Webster indicated the episode was the first use of the term which has now become popular in Western culture.

In the Bible it is recorded that “Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore, it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” (Genesis 10:8-9) In a 1940 Looney Tunes episode, Bugs Bunny called Elmer Fudd a poor little nimrod, a sarcastic reference to Fudd’s skills as a hunter. Since then, the term has been used in lieu of a bumbling fool.

The paparazzi are freelance photographers who aggressively pursue celebrities for the purpose of taking candid photographs. The term probably derived from the 1960 Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita. In the film there was a fearless and determined news photographer named Paparazzo, played by Walter Santesso, who was always on the hunt for a profitable shot. In 1961 Time magazine labelled aggressive photographers as paparazzi, comparing them to a ravenous wolfpack.

You never know where words might come from.

Columnist John Kreutzwieser loves to research words and writes this weekly Word Wisdom column for Moose Jaw Express/MooseJawToday.com. He has an interest in the usage, origin, and relevance of words for society today. Greek and Latin form the basis of many words, with ancient Hebrew shedding light on word usage.

John would like to know if anyone has a sincere interest in a relevant word that he could possibly research for an upcoming column. If so, please send your requests to wordwisdom2021@gmail.com . Words will be selected according to relevance and research criteria. We cannot confirm that all words will be used.

Moose Jaw woman wins $1.4M jackpot playing VLT machine

By Moose Jaw Express staff

A Moose Jaw woman walked away with over $1.4 million after winning big at a Saskatchewan VLT.

Tammy Topinka was awarded $1,436,484.22 after winning the grand jackpot on Vault Breaker at Bugsy’s Irish Pub on May 14.

“I was ready to faint. I couldn’t believe it,” Topinka said in a news release.

“At first, I thought I had won $14,000. The guy sitting beside me had to tell me that I had actually won the jackpot.”

Topinka said she hopes to pay some bills and put some money away for retirement with her winnings.

“We also have some home improvements in mind – a new central air conditioner, fence and dishwasher,” she said.

The province-wide jackpot has awarded over $29 million to 31 winners since June 2017, Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC) said in its release.

The Vault Breaker province-wide grand jackpot has now been reset to $500,000, WCLC noted.