Though we may be divided by seas, by cultures, and by religion, the language of music is universal.

You may read the above sentence and wonder why I put “religion” in there. There’s a method to my madness.

When I looked up the A to Z Challenge word of the day in my thesaurus, I got “worldwide.” My initial thought was the Internet, naturally. But then I glanced at the synonyms and got a bit of a shock. The first one is “catholic.” How in the *ahem* heck, I thought, is “catholic” a synonym in the same list as “pandemic”? I immediately looked it up in the dictionary.

According to the English Oxford, it originates from the following:

“Late Middle English: from Old French catholique or late Latin catholicus, from Greek katholikos ‘universal’, from kata ‘in respect of’ + holos ‘whole’.”

It’s an adjective, defined as:

“Including a wide variety of things; all-embracing.”

For example, “‘her tastes are pretty catholic’”

Back to my original sentence. So by rights, I could get away with writing, “Though we may be divided by seas, by cultures, and by religion, the language of music is catholic.”

What do you think?

***
Hey, guess what? My A to Z Challenge-inspired novelette, “All Good Stories” is available internationally! It’s a romantic comedy about two best friends who belong together – Xavier knows it, but Jupiter has her eye on another guy: a shady character named Bob.

“A delightful read!!” ~ Cheryl Lynn Roberts, 4 stars, Amazon Canada review

“A short funny tale of two friends” ~ Ritu, 4 stars, Amazon UK review

“Quirky and charming.” ~ Bobby Underwood, #11 top reviewers on Goodreads – 5 stars

Click the picture to find it on Kindle, or get it on Kobo here: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/all-good-stories