September 10, 2014--Gibbous Moon

Yesterday the moon was full. Through our bedroom window, about 4:00 AM, I watched it set over South Bristol. A path of moonlight across Johns Bay led to where I was trying to resume my interrupted sleep. Of course, I thought, one can't expect to have a restful night when the moon is full.

Tonight, happily, it begins to wane. Maybe I'll get some sleep.

Out of curiosity, I looked on line to learn a bit more about phases of the moon. I knew enough to know it goes through phases from New to Full but not much more about the less dramatic ones. Though the Crescent moon is dramatic, made more so because it is an important element in the flags of many Islamic countries from the former Ottoman Empire to today's Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, and Pakistan among others.

But what is the Gibbous moon, a phase I stumbled upon that was unfamiliar to me? First a little etymology, I thought.

From the Latin gibbus it is derived, meaning "hunchbacked."

But when does the moon seem hunchbacked? Well, soon, in a day or two, I read, when slices are daily taken from the illuminated face as the phases slip back toward the time when the moon will have lost all its reflected light--when it reaches its New phase and then, as has been true forever, begins to grow once more toward Full.

It is gibbous when the perfect Full-phase sphere begins to wane and looks ellipsoid or when it waxes, swelling from Crescent. "Swollen," another of gibbous' etymological meanings.

How wonderful, it occurred to me, that we have added to our language rarely-uttered words such as gibbous, originally meaning hunched and applied it first to those thus afflicted, and then, through an act of metaphoric alchemy, in turn used it to help us see beyond the moon mythology or the science, the astrology or the astronomy, as a way to make the otherwise unfathomable, the immense, and impersonal understood in more tactile human terms.