Hello, Word Lovers!
The bear in one of the best-loved children's books was a real animal, and she came from Canada. Winnie was a cub bought at a railway stop in Ontario in 1914 by a veterinarian on his way to war.
He named her after his home city, Winnipeg, and took her to England. She ended up at London Zoo, where a boy named Christopher Robin fed her and renamed his teddy bear after her. She has been famous for a hundred years. Do you still have your childhood bear?
🌀 Weekly Word Wonder: BRUIN
Pronunciation: BROO-in
Part of speech: Noun
Definition: A bear. The word is used mostly in fables and in poems, and it often means a brown bear in particular.
Origin: English took bruin from Middle Dutch bruin, "brown" — the name given to the bear in the medieval animal epic Reynard the Fox, where Bruin is one of the beasts summoned to the lion's court. It was in English by the fifteenth century, and it has stayed with the animal ever since.
Usage:
1. The little cub from White River grew into a bruin that crowds came to see at London Zoo.
2. Sports teams from Boston to Los Angeles are called Bruins, which is simply the old word for a bear.
📖 What's Special?
Winnie-the-Pooh was published on 14 October 1926 by Methuen in London and E. P. Dutton in the United States. It sold 150,000 copies before the year was out. The stories came from a real household: Christopher Robin's nursery toys, drawn from life by the illustrator E. H. Shepard, and a chapter that began as a story in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve 1925, called "The Wrong Sort of Bees". The book has since been translated into more than 70 languages.
More about the real Winnie...
Harry Colebourn, of the Fort Garry Horse, a Canadian cavalry regiment, paid twenty Canadian dollars for the cub on 24 August 1914 at White River, Ontario, on his way to the army camp at Valcartier, Quebec. When he was posted to France, he left her at London Zoo. She died there on 12 May 1934, aged about twenty. Statues of her stand in Winnipeg and at the zoo.
🧩 Community Puzzle
Jumbled Letters: Unscramble these words.
1. YEHON (The sweet, sticky food that bees make.) →
2. BEARTHINE (To pass the winter in a long, deep sleep.) →
3. OLLABNO (A light bag filled with air or gas, often tied with a string.) →
4. CICNIP (A meal eaten outdoors, often carried in a basket.) →
5. WOLGR (The low, rumbling sound an animal makes when it is angry.) →
Last Week's Answers (Edition #47)
Jumbled Letters
CIYRL — LYRIC
LYDIL — IDYLL
TCONA — CANTO
EPORT — TROPE
KUIHA — HAIKU
Until next week, keep playing.
— The Lexulous Team