Hysteron Proteron

For no real reason, I wrote a silly rhyming word on my whiteboard at work.

“Boogie woogie”

Some coworkers added to it.  “Loosie-goosie”  “humbug” “hankie-pankie”

Another colleague came by and wrote “hysteron proteron.”  It was awkward, because this colleague thinks I’m literate and expected me to know the term.  Whereas I’d never seen it before.  His explanation was cursory, we were both embarrassed, so I looked it up more after he left.

It’s a rhetorical figure where you invert a sequence to emphasize the more important latter part of the sequence or just to add a flourish.

Born and bred

The article I read translated it (pretty loosely, I think) as “first last.”

This was earlier this week.

That night, I read a Nevil Shute book where one guy gets a cold.  Why?  Well, he sheepishly admits, he joined a great club called the Hysteron Proteron where they live one day backwards.  They start with a formal dinner early in the morning and end with a little breakfast and he ended up outside in the damp at an unusual hour.

OK.  That wouldn’t be the first time I learn a new word and start seeing it everywhere.  Though its a highly unusual new word.

The next morning we read D&C 29 which spends verses and verses on the gospel saying that the first shall be last, and the last first.

I don’t understand why.  I am already the kind of person who is going to think a verse about the first being last is important because I have a taste for the mysterious and for paradox.  I don’t need any supernatural highlighting.

I sometimes think that reality is just kinda filled with meaning and connection and some of it is directed from above with a purpose and some of it is just kinda there.

***

I dreamed and it felt like a significant dream about a man who went online as ‘nurnin.’  But I don’t known any nurnins.