A Big Cheer For CVS

In a nation that has become absorbed by outrageous greed, it's not often we hear about anyone, let alone corporations with millionaire and billionaire investors wondering where their next million or billion will come from, giving up income, but that's just what we recently heard from the nation's second largest drugstore chain, "CVS." The company made the decision to stop selling tobacco products. Amazing! When corporations make decisions like this, they should be commended, and we should be happy to do so. I salute you, CVS!

WORD HISTORY:
Cheer-This word goes back to Indo European "ker/kher," which meant "head." This gave Greek "kara," with the same meaning, and this then was borrowed by Latin as "cara,"  but with the more specific meaning "face." This gave Old French, a heavily Latin-based language, "chiere" ("face"), which was carried to England by the Normans, where it altered to "chere." This was borrowed into English as "cheer" in the late 1100s or early 1200s, but with the added meaning "mood, state of mind as determined by facial expression," which was not specific to being either good or bad, but by the 15th Century it had come to mean a positive mood. This then produced the verb form, "to cheer." The meaning, "a shout of approval or encouragement" (or the verb "to shout" such) didn't take place until around the first quarter of the 1700s.