Good day to you, humble friend, and a kind and calm welcome to today’s journey to An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquests. Straighten that posture, get into position, and get ready to pray, because today’s word is: mantis.

Mantises, or ‘praying mantises’ as they are more commonly known, are an order of insects distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks, and may or may not have wings. All mantises have forelegs that are greatly enlarged and adapted for catching and gripping prey, and are known for their upright posture, while remaining stationary with forearms folded, thus looking as if they are praying. They have stereo vision, and locate their prey by sight, feeding typically on live prey within their reach. They can stalk their prey slowly, or remain stationary and wait for their prey to approach them. Some larger mantises eat smaller individuals of their species, and can even eat lizards, frogs, small birds and fish.

The word ‘mantis’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘prophet’ or ‘soothsayer’. This in turn comes from the Ancient Greek word ‘maínomai’ which means ‘I am mad, raving’. Make of that what you will. Mantises were considered to have supernatural powers by early civilisations, including Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Assyria. For the Greeks, it had the ability to show lost travelers the way home; in the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead the ‘bird-fly’ is a minor god that leads the souls of the dead to the underworld. Today, they are often kept as pets, and are commonly bred by their owners, as they have a lifespan of about one year in total.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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