Although this term can refer to the period before any major flood, it most often means the Noachian flood.  And out of that comes its meaning of extremely old or ancient.  I love the sound of the word itself — the great downward and backward cast of your tongue on the forth syllable has something of a deluge feel to it, I think.  And then, of course, there are wonderful applications such as this example given in the Princeton dictionary:   “a ramshackle antediluvian tenement.”

I would caution writers that this is an adjective very difficult to pull off without sounding pedantic.  If you want my advice, save it for casual conversation such as, “My, that tenement is ramshackle and antediluvian.”

Stat, the instruction yelled out by doctors, means right away, immediately.  It is an abbreviation of the Latin word statim.

A very important related phrase: subsiste sermonem statim, which means, “Stop speaking immediately!”

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Sometimes I just want to share a favorite poem. These mean so much to me, and I am half joyful, half jealous that they can mean something to someone else, too. But if I can be the one to introduce you to it, then I am two thirds joyful. If I had understood my stats lecture this week I could tell you the probability of those two events, but instead I give you the wistful pleading of Yeats.

Aedh Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

The Convert by G. K. Chesterton

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.