madeleine

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The Word of the Day for September 29 is:

madeleine   \MAD-uh-lun\   noun
     1 : a small rich shell-shaped cake
    *2 : one that evokes a memory

Example sentence:
     The crack of the bat and the sight of his son running the bases were 
madeleines for Tom, calling up memories of the great times he had playing the 
game in his youth.

Did you know?  
     The madeleine is said to have been named after a 19th-century French cook 
named Madeleine Paumier, but it was the French author Marcel Proust who 
immortalized the pastry in his 1913 book _Swann's Way_, the first volume of his 
seven-part novel _Remembrance of Things Past_. In that work, a taste of 
tea-soaked cake evokes a surge of memory and nostalgia. As more and more 
readers chewed on the profound mnemonic power attributed to a mere morsel of 
cake, the word "madeleine" itself became a designation for anything that evokes 
a memory. 
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





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