ford

A simple but largely unused word, aside from all brand-name connotations. A ford is any place on a river or lake or stream that is suitable to be crossed on foot. Ford is also the noun that refers to attempting to execute this maneuver, as I well remember from playing The Oregon Trail as a kid in school. This game is one of the hallmarks of my generation's school memories. We all played it, and one of the decisions one has to make in playing this game is how to cross a river upon reaching it; you can caulk the wagon and float it across, pay for a ferry, wait for help from a native, or attempt to ford the river. This last was my favored option, despite the fact that it was often unwise, given the depth of the river, which was always provided. I lost many fictitious pounds of food, boxes of bullets, oxen and even family members to failed fords across the river, but "ford" is our word today, just to show there are no hard feelings.

Last week's theme: Maybe this theme was a little hard, that's why I tried to give some hints there at the end. I guess the fact that I came back to the blog late in the week after weeks without posting screwed things up a bit; I did five words in two days rather than one per day for five. Apologies, once again, but onward to the theme! Each word was the name of one of the supposed seven deadly sins with a single letter changed. The names of those sins, as you can probably guess now, are "lust," "greed," "wrath," "sloth," and "pride." I don't really consider them sins anyway. They can certainly lead to sin, I guess, but they're all pretty much human nature, in my opinion.