Poetry

Two words are poetry enough

"Waxing gibbous" - what a beautiful phrase, nicely iambic. Two words that we understand, but never find their way into our speaking or writing vocabulary.

It's sort of cool that the moon gets its own vocabulary, somehow preserved over centuries.

It is the variability that keeps the moon interesting. See the sidebar.

The inconstant Moon:

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:

Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.

It is my lady, O, it is my love!

Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

(Romeo and Juliet, act two, scene two.)

Moon stuff previously at DJB here.

More

Speaking of such, my favorite phrase is "hoist by his own petard," although it's not so mellifluous as "waxing gibbous." Google here, if you wish. Somewhat literally, it means blown up by one's own bomb. It's generally understood by pedants like myself as meaning to be caught with one's own trap. There's lots of occasions for metaphorical references using those few words.

"Hoist" and "petard" have been preserved in English, not so surprisingly, by Shakespeare hisself, in Hamlet (act three, scene three). I think the phrase is especially delicious because it includes two words that are utterly archaic and otherwise lost.

More than you want to know about petards at Wikipedia here (the etymology comes from the French "to fart").