Getting to the Bare Truth

As I was first developing the list of words on which I would blog I was reading a mystery book or story (I don’t remember which) set in Paris, and there were three words used that I’d never encountered: ecdysiast, integuement, and valetudinarian.

The hero of the tale was chasing his nemesis into an establishment where he encountered an ecdysiast. I could tell from the context that the woman referred to as such was engaged in doing a strip-tease. It turns out that the word is relatively recent, being coined in 1940 by H.L. Mencken. He took it from ecdysis, which came from the Greek word ekdysis, which is used specifically of snakes when they shed their skin/integument and means “a stripping or casting off”. So he took a perfectly good word (ecdysis) and sullied it. Shame on him.

Integument is a word that refers to the outer covering of something, like a husk, hull, shell, or skin. The word comes from the Latin word integumetum, formed from in- (in or upon) and tegere (to cover). It’s an old word, having been used in English since the 1610s, but it was new to me.

Another new word to me was valetudinarian. It comes pretty directly from the Latin, from the word valetudinarius. In Latin it referred to someone who is sickly, infirm, or an invalid. Interestingly, the word is formed from the Latin word for strong: valere.

The etymology of the English usage is interesting. It first was used in the 1580s in the adjectival form valetudinary, meaning sickly. In 1703 the word valetudinarian was first used in print, and referred to someone who “is constantly concerned with their own ailments”. It still retains the same meaning, but also has gained the meaning of a sickly person. So whether you’re constantly sick or just constantly concerned with being sick, you’re a valetudinarian.

But what about the adjective? Valetudinary has almost ceased to exist, and the noun valetudinarian now can also be used as an adjective.

A valetudinarian differs from a hypochondriac in that a hypochondriac has an “abnormal anxiety over one’s health, often with imaginary illnesses and severe melancholy.” A valetudinarian may have a lot of anxiety, but the illnesses are not imaginary.

Hypochondriac originally referred to the hypochondrium, which is the area of the abdomen on either side directly below the bottom rib. Hypochondria has a long history, going back to its Greek root word, hypokhondria. In case you care, hypokhondria is a neuter plural word formed from the word hypo- (meaning “under”) and khondros (meaning cartilage of the breastbone). By the time of Late Latin it was spelled By the time of Late Latin it was spelled hypochondria and (according to etymonline.come) reflected the “ancient belief that the viscera of the hypochondria were the seat of melancholy.”

When the word came to English use in 1373 it referred to only the upper abdomen. By 1668 it had fused the ancient belief with a new meaning, and had come to refer to a depression or melancholy without cause. That sense remained and in 1839 gained the additional meaning of any illness alleged that has no cause (or now, any basis in fact).

It still retains the meaning of location, according to the dictionary, but almost all uses I’ve encountered refer to imaginary illnesses.

Better to be a valetudinarian than a hypochondriac (although not by much) and better to be either of those than an ecdysiast.