G Spots

It's not what you think. After my post on January 6 I had a message from my brother saying I'd missed a word: garrulous. While it would have fit very well in that blog, I was saving it for this blog. There are three words that begin with the letter G that are about talking or speaking: garrulous, gasconade, and grandiloquent.

Garrulous refers to talking too much, especially about unimportant things. While it can be a synonym of other words for wordiness, it comes with a negative connotation relating to the content, where the other words for wordiness have negative connotations about the wordiness itself. Garrulous comes from the Latin word for chatter, garrulus. So someone who chatters about nothing in particular would be described as garrulous.

Gasconade, on the other hand, is blustering or boastful talk. It comes directly from French (if you add an n) and refers to an area in southwest France (near Spain). Apparently people from that area are known for boasting or being prideful, because that quality has come to be known as gasconade (a noun, whereas garrulous is an adjective). It also has a negative connotation, whereas our third G word is not always negative.

Grandiloquent is an easier word to figure out the meaning of, sounding like a portmanteau formed from grand and eloquence. It's actually formed from the Latin words for great or grand and speak (grandis and loqui; we also get the word eloquence from loqui). Its dictionary definition is bombastic or pompous use of words, but it has softened the harshness of its negative meaning. It can also be used of high-flown rhetoric; don't be surprised to hear it used in a positive sense of President Obama.

One final word that's not a G word but fits along side the last two words: fustian. It refers to pompous or pretentious talk or writing (where the previous two refer to talking only). Its etymology, however, is not as straightforward. Follow me through time to arrive at fustian:

In Latin there was a word for wooden stick, fustis, which by the time of middle Latin became fustaneum. Old French adopted the word and spelled it fustaigne, and then it came to Middle English. How did it change from meaning a wooden stick to mean pompous or pretentious talk? In English it originally meant a coarse cloth made of cotton or linen, and now refers to corduroy or velveteen. So where did fustian come to mean bombastic? There is some not much to go on, but here's what I think: in the 13th and 14th centuries Priests' robes were made of a material known as fustian. At some point the elevated speech of the Priests took name of the material which they wore, and the connection was made. Now, how it came to be a material when in Latin times it was a wooden stick is another discussion. Of that I'm even less sure.

So stay away from these G spots.