In one Southeast Asian culture, it was thought to be the progeny of shooting stars; in others it was said to heal the sick and call down spirits.
Yet this does not seem to be the average response to the summit.Among the multitude of academics, journalists, entrepreneurs and environmental activists drawn to the summit to give scientific lectures, hawk technologies or paint themselves green and jump up and down, spirits appear to be high.
Bodies break down, spirits lag, the sun bakes.
If you leave here and are met with hatred, intolerance, oppression, and bigotry from people who want to build walls, take away rights and tear down spirits, please remember what it was like this weekend--the times that you felt impassioned, enlightened, welcomed, informed, safe, included, happy, encouraged, accepted, and loved".
Inevitably, living in the North, he sensed "a battened-down spirit that wanted to walk taller".
Think of it as a Snapchat for Twitter, complete with its own emphemeral imagery (for Snapchat's cute ghost, substitute an equally hard-to-pin-down spirit).
Don't feel down in spirit!
It finally wore down my spirit.
It will also capture and, possibly, pin down the spirit of something that is about to disappear for ever.
In 1845, Frederick Douglass argued that getting slaves drunk was "the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection".
