Hey, Grammar Girl listeners, this is Kathy Doyle, Vice President of McMillan Podcasts

and the Quick and Dirty Tips Network, filling in for Mignon this week.

It seems she caught a terrible cold while visiting us here in New York City a few days ago.

Feel better soon, Mignon.

It's an honor beyond words, no pun intended, to be helping you out this week.

So Grammar Girl listeners, up first today, we have a Quick and Dirty tip about the spring

equinox, a meeting middle about the Irish language in honor of St. Patrick's Day, and

a great family word story.

Wednesday, March 20th, is the spring equinox.

And that means what exactly?

The spring equinox is one of two days during the year when day and night are about the

same length.

This happens when the earth rotates in such a way that the sun is lined up exactly

with the equator.

In that 24 hour period, the earth's axis is tilted neither toward the sun nor away

from it.

Everyone on the planet gets the same amount of sunshine and the same amount of dark.

The word equinox, as you might guess, comes from two Latin words, achy meaning equal and

knocked meaning night.

The root word achy can be found in lots of similar words describing things of equal balance,

like equivalent, equidistant, and equitable.

Knocked can be found in several words evoking night.

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