Anniversary part 1

There were those who thought it would be fugacious and frangible, but it has turned out to be irrefragably puissant. It is not a litote to say that its multifarious efflorescence has been supernal rather than specious. We did not abjure and as a result have accreted recondite benisons.

I’m writing, of course, about that which Dovie and I celebrate today: 29 years of marriage. There is much which can and should be said about the spending of half my life (so far; the percentage will now begin to exceed that mark) with my sweetheart, and much which need not be revisited. But as we look at the above paragraph it will have to suffice for this year’s description. (And it will take two blogs. It would fill a book to adequately describe these 29 years.)

It was on our wedding day that a quondam girlfriend of mine approached me to say that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t tell me her concern that we were being rash and that the marriage wouldn’t last. (Quondam means former or at one time, and came in the 1530s directly from the Latin word quondam that means formerly.) She didn’t use the words fugacious or frangible, but that’s what she meant.

Fugacious came to English in the 1630s from the Latin word fugax, from which we also get fugitive. Fugax means to flee. Fugacious means fleeting or passing away quickly, ephemeral.

Frangible arrived in English in the mid-15th century from the Middle French word frangible, which came from the Middle Latin word frangibilis, which developed from the Latin word frangere, which means “to break”. It means breakable or fragile. So how is it different from fragile (and which is the “good word” for this meaning)? My dictionary has one of those wonderful usage paragraphs after fragile that explains the difference:

Fragile implies such delicacy of structure as to be easily broken…; frangible adds to this the connotation of liability to being broken because of the use to which the thing is put…; brittle implies such inelasticity as to be easily broken or shattered by pressure or a blow…; crisp suggests a desirable sort of brittleness…; friable is applied to something that is easily crumbled or crushed into powder.

Back to our marriage. It has been irrefragably puissant. The -frag- in irrefragable comes from the same Latin word, fragere, as frangible; the actual Late Latin word is irrefragabilis. So we know that frag means break. The ir- means “not” and the refragabilis means to oppose or contest. So irrefragable, when it came to English in the 1530s, meant cannot be contested or refuted. It still does.

Puissant (pronounced pyoo-is-ent or pwis-nt) means powerful or strong, and comes to English from Middle French (again in the mid-15th century). The Middle French word puissant came from an earlier form, poissant, which was derived from the stem word for “being able”, poeir. It’s the word from which we get the word power. Our marriage has had surprising puissance.