That's the Beauty of It

I had conversation this week with a friend of mine about how I find the words about which I blog. I know where I came up with three of this week’s words, the first of which goes back to 7th Grade when I was flunking Latin.

A Latin teacher was telling us that we can remember Latin easier if we find English words that come from the Latin words we’re trying to learn. The teacher mentioned that we get the word pulchritude from the Latin word pulchra. (In looking up the word pulchritude in the dictionary I came across another word that will find its way into this blog: puissant. It’s not what you may think from the look of it.) Pulchritude comes through Middle English from the Latin word for beautiful, the base word for which is pulcher. A form of the Latin word that comes closest to our spelling is pulchritudo. The word now refers to any physical beauty. The teacher mentioned that if you want to tell a girl she’s beautiful (and I was one of those 7th graders who was still figuring out how to interact with girls) use the word pulchritude.

It was shortly after the aforementioned Latin lesson that I was part of a youth group who were reading a portion of the Easter story. The boy next to me was a shy boy, and he had a longer portion of the story. He asked if I would trade portions with him, which I did. But in his portion was a word I had never seen: sepulcher. I reasoned that it was so similar in spelling to the Latin that I confidently pronounced it with the emphasis on the second syllable. One listener had to stifle her laughter at my unique pronunciation as the word appeared several times in my reading. For some reason, I have since heard it pronounced more with the l and u reversed than correctly (sep-luh-ker, the opposite of the way Bush the younger pronounced nuclear: noo-cyoo-ler.)

Sepulcher comes from Latin through the Old French sepulcre and Middle English. The original Latin word means to bury, giving us the current meaning of a burial vault, tomb or grave.

The third word today comes from a book I read written by Winston Churchill. I purchased the book either at an antique shop or thrift store. It turns out the author was born in St. Louis four years prior to the birth of the British Winston Churchill. Because of the popularity of his historical novels, the American Winston was better known in the 1890s. In correspondence between the two the British Winston suggested he would always use the name Winston S. Churchill when he wrote. (The S is for one of his surnames, Spencer; yes, the same Spencer family as Princess Diana’s, though not direct.)

But you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to find out the word itself. I’m out of space.