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Fire Escape Partners
3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (noun)
[SIE-nah-shoor', SIN-ah-shoor'] 
1. something that is a center of attention and admiration or attraction: "Dave may have been the cynosure of the league in high school, but at the college level, he's going to have to learn to share the ball."
2. something that serves to guide or direct
adjective form: cynosural
Origin:
Approximately 1601; borrowed from Middle French, 'cynosure'; from Latin, 'Cynosura Ursa Minor': a constellation containing the North Star; from Greek, 'kynosoura': literally, dog's tail ('kyon,' genitive 'kynos': dog + 'oura': tail). In action:
"Suspicion stalks fame; incredulity stalks great fame. At least three times--at the ages of eleven, twenty-three, and fifty-two--Helen Keller was assaulted by accusation, doubt, and overt disbelief. She was the butt of skeptics and the cynosure of idolaters. Mark Twain compared her to Joan of Arc, and pronounced her 'fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare and the rest of the immortals.' Her renown, he said, would endure a thousand years.
It has, so far, lasted more than a hundred, while steadily dimming. Fifty years ago, even twenty, nearly every ten-year-old knew who Helen Keller was. 'The Story of My Life,' her youthful autobiography, was on the reading lists of most schools, and its author was popularly understood to be a heroine of uncommon grace and courage, a sort of worldly saint. Much of that worshipfulness has receded. No one nowadays, without intending satire, would place her alongside Caesar and Napoleon; and, in an era of earnest disabilities legislation, who would think to charge a stone-blind, stone-deaf woman with faking her experience?
Yet as a child she was accused of plagiarism, and in maturity of 'verbalism'--substituting parroted words for firsthand perception. All this came about because she was at once liberated by language and in bondage to it, in a way few other human beings can fathom. The merely blind have the window of their ears, the merely deaf listen through their eyes. For Helen Keller there was no ameliorating 'merely'; what she suffered was a totality of exclusion."
Cynthia Ozick. "What Helen Keller Saw," The New Yorker (June 9, 2003).
"Funny Cide has understandably been the cynosure of the racing world as he bids to win the Belmont Stakes and complete a sweep of the Triple Crown. But neither he, nor his arch rival, Empire Maker, nor any other 3-year-old in America this year has won races as impressively as the late-blooming colt Dynever.
By the end of the year, Dynever might be recognized as the best horse of his generation. He could develop into a champion on grass as well as dirt. Though it is uncertain if he is seasoned enough to defeat his tough, battle-tested rivals at Belmont Park, his presence adds an intriguing element to an already compelling attraction."
Andrew Beyer. "Dynever Hopes To Take Bloom Off Funny Cide," The Washington Post (June 6, 2003).
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