Friday's Word Is Quincunx

I thought I would start with one word today, before we get onto regular postings as it looks like there is plenty of bad, and/or bloody stories to work with, and we have been doing pretty light postings all week.
So have a good Friday, and the word is~~Quincunx.

Quincunx (noun)
Pronunciation: ['kwing-kungks]
Definition: Five objects arranged so that four are at the corners of a square or rectangle and one is at the center; the pattern of "five" on a 6-sided die.
Usage: Sir Francis Galton used a box with a triangular arrangement of pegs inside which he called a quincunx in order to explore laws of variation. Beads dropped from the top of the box hit each peg with equal probability of going left to right. But at the bottom of the triangle, the beads form a bell curve, suggesting that variation leads to mediocrity. The pinball machine works along the same principles: any ball that hits a series of obstacles is more likely to end up in the middle, where the gap between the flippers lies, than on either side. The ball travels quincuncially (the adverb).
Suggested Usage: "Aurora blamed her divorce from George on a quincunx in their horoscopes." Yes, the quincunx is important in astrology, where it means two planets are 150 degrees from each other and have very little in common. In Christianity, the quincunx means the four wounds in Jesus' hands and feet, plus the spear through the side. To the ancient Greeks, the quincunx signified divine perfection—the four elements of fire, water, earth and air, plus the fifth, mystery element, the quintessence.
Etymology: From the Latin for "five ounces," from quinque "five" + uncia "ounce, a twelfth part." Latin "quinque" [kwenkwe] originates in the Indo-European root *penkwe after an anticipatory assimilation of the [p] to the final [kw]. German fünf "five" is expected. English "five" suffers a loss of the nasal [n] which did not drop out of "finger," originally meaning a "fiver." Russian pjat' "five"comes from *penti and Greek penta provides the name of the five-sided Pentagon.

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