A less gibbous moon

Probably not many life partners were discussing a gibbous moon this evening, but Linda and I were. As we headed out for dinner I motioned to a cloud-veiled moon hanging low over the Stanford campus and intoned, with some authority,” That, dear, is a gibbous moon.”

Only problem is, it wasn’t. For some reason, I’ve had it stuck in my mind, probably for decades, that gibbous referred to “hazy” or “obscured.” Linda replied that she thought that gibbous referred to the shape or phase of the moon, which, indeed, proves to be correct (less than full, more than half).

Later in the evening, as we departed the Mayfield Café, I observed that the moon was “less gibbous,” given a clearing sky. Wrong on both occasions, it would seem…