A scythe (/ˈsaɪð/ or /ˈsaɪθ/) is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or reaping crops. It has largely been replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia. The Grim Reaper and the Greek Titan Cronus are often depicted carrying or wielding a scythe.

Etymology

"Scythe" derives from Old English siðe. In Middle English and after it was usually spelt sithe or sythe. However, in the 15th century some writers began to use the sc- spelling as they thought (wrongly) the word was related to the Latin scindere (meaning "to cut"). Nevertheless, the sithe spelling lingered and notably appears in Noah Webster's dictionaries.

Structure

A scythe consists of a wooden shaft about 170 centimetres (67 in) long called a snaith, snath, snathe or sned (modern versions are sometimes made from metal or plastic). The snath may be straight, or with an "S" curve, but the more sophisticated versions are curved in three dimensions, allowing the mower to stand more upright. The snath has either one or two short handles at right angles to it – usually one near the upper end and always another roughly in the middle. A long, curved blade about 60 to 90 centimetres (24 to 35 in)) long is mounted at the lower end, perpendicular to the snath. Scythes always have the blade projecting from the left side of the snath when in use, with the edge towards the mower. In principle a left-handed scythe could be made, but it could not be used together with right-handed scythes in a team of mowers, as the left-handed mower would be mowing in the opposite direction.

Mini-Cons are a human-sized race and faction of power-enhancing transforming robots first introduced in various Transformers series. Pioneered for the Transformers: Armada toy line, Mini-Cons have since been sold under the Transformers: Energon, Transformers: Universe, Transformers: Cybertron and Transformers: Classic lines. In some cases, the word may also be spelled "Minicon" and they are known as "Microns" in Japan.

Unicron Trilogy

Mini-Cons are a race of small, roughly human-sized Transformers capable of powerlinxing with a larger Transformer to impart extra abilities or greatly increase their strength. Their origins vary depending on the continuity in which they appear. Sometimes, they are creations of Unicron and other times they are creations of the Last Autobot or the descendants of Micronus Prime. However, there are times where their origins are not explained and are portrayed in different characterizations.

Throughout the different incarnations of the Transformers franchise, the Mini-Cons origins, characteristics and personalities vary, depending on continuity. For example, in the original Armada cartoon, Unicron created the Mini-Cons to be mindless tools, sent to Cybertron as an agitating element to the Transformers' civil war. The power-enhancing "smart tools" would be unleashed upon the populace, who would snap them up and bond with them, and the war would only get more destructive, as Unicron drank in the negative psychic energies from the death and destruction. As the Mini-Cons had been designed to form mental bonds with other life forms, when the human Rad touched the Mini-Con who he knew from the future as High Wire, High Wire apparently formed his bond then, with Rad and through the Mini-Cons' shared "soul dimension", the Linkage, sentience and free will spread throughout the Mini-Cons, forming "souls", and crippling Unicron's plans drastically. Most Mini-Cons had limited verbal capabilities, causing much controversy among fandom.

A Slayer, in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (both created by Joss Whedon), is a young female bestowed with mystical powers that originate from the essence of a pure-demon, which gives her superhuman senses, strength, agility, resilience and speed in the fight against forces of darkness. She occasionally receives prophetic dreams in the few hours that she sleeps.

The opening narration in the Buffy series states "Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer."

While, in the series, they are commonly referred to as "Vampire Slayers", even by Watchers and vampires themselves, the Slayer may operate as a defender against any and all supernatural threats.

The reputation of the Slayer is well-known and revered, even throughout other dimensions. The notion of The Slayer has been compared to the equivalent of a Demonic "Boogey-Man," incredibly feared and considered by most to be essentially unconquerable.

Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.

Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively informative, prosaic forms of writing. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a fundamental creative act employing language.

Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of speech such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.

Poetry is a form of literature.

Poetry may also refer to:

Poetry (founded as, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse), published in Chicago since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Don Share, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000, and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately 100,000 submissions. It is sometimes referred to as Poetry—Chicago.

Poetry has been financed since 2003 with a $200 million bequest from Ruth Lilly.

History

The magazine was founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, an author who was then working as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune. She wrote at that time:

"The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free from entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written. Nor will the magazine promise to limit its editorial comments to one set of opinions."

Illusions (formerly called "Nemesis II") is a stand-alone production album created by Thomas J. Bergersen from Two Steps From Hell, and was released in 2011. It features vocal performances by Vladislava Vasileva, Elitsa Todorova, Merethe Soltvedt, Kate St. Pierre, Jenifer Thigpen and Colin O'Malley and samples from Troels Brun Folmann's Tonehammer library, as well as instrumental performances by the cellist Tina Guo and the Capellen Orchestra. The CD contains 19 tracks. The album cover and artwork are designed by Jesper Krijgsman. The album is available for download on iTunes, Amazon and CDBaby. The CD has been released physically on March 13, 2012.

On January 24, 2013 Illusions was released on ExtremeMusic.com to clients promoting motion picture advertising. This version contains 18 alternate versions of many pieces, which makes 37 tracks in total.

Track listing

Use in media

Thomas Bergersen's music has been licensed for several trailers.