Getting Ahead by Laying Around

No, not Demi Moore (although that is not to say it doesn't apply to Demi. I have no opinion one way or the other) but demimonde. I first encountered this word in a context which was a replacement for the phrase "slept her way to the top"; I thought I had found another good substitute for a bad phrase. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Demimonde refers to a woman who loses social standing because of sexual promiscuity. In that respect it is exactly the opposite of "sleeping ones way to the top". It is actually derived from two French roots. Monde, in French, means world, as in the Le Monde publication could be translated into English as The World. Monde can also mean society.

Demi is actually a prefix from Middle English and Old French which adapted the Latin word dimidius which means half. For those who use the English system of referring to musical notes, the demisemiquaver might be a familiar use of this prefix. A quaver (in English music) is an eighth note in American, a semiquaver an sixteenthth note, and a demisemiquaver a thirty-second note (not a thirty second note, which lasts much longer). And for those sesquipedalianists( a favorite word of my nephew Philip) there's the word for a sixty-fourth note, the hemidemisemiquaver. (I am not a sesquipedalianist - I am a hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist.)

So demimonde is the losing by half a woman's position in the world or societythrough her promiscuity. Why it doesn't also refer to a man is another subject, Tiger. Perhaps it will someday be applied to both sexes. It certainly seems more common for men than for women.

A sinecure is a job position in the other direction. The juxtaposition of its two definitions are interesting. The first definition is the formal one, and probably gives an idea of the formation to current use. It is a church position that pays a salary without requiring any care for souls. The second definition is an expansion of the first to any position that pays but doesn't require much, if any, work. It is the second definition I've encountered most often, especially in describing government positions.

Sinecure comes from the ecclesiastical Middle Latin, and the sine means without. The cure comes very easily and obviously from the Latin cura, which means care. The interesting part of the definition in my dictionary is that it uses the word "cure" in place of "care", saying that a sinecure doesn't involve "cure" of souls. I think care is the better definition.

At any rate, we don't want either word used of our position, since neither is a compliment. But both may involve sleeping.