Back From Vacation, Part 2

Effete came to English in the 1620s directly from the Latin word effetus, which referred to an exhausted, worn out, unproductive womb. It is formed by combining ex-, which means out, and fetus, which means offspring or childbearing. It was originally used in a figurative sense, and by the 1660s meant merely exhausted. By 1790 it had the meaning of an intellectual or moral exhaustion, which led to the meaning of decadent by the 19th century.


Ennui, which should come as no surprise to you is a French word unchanged in its English use, means a weariness and dissatisfaction resulting from inactivity or lack of interest. A synonym would be boredom, but ennui has a sense of dissatisfaction that the word boredom doesn’t. In the 1660s it was adopted into English, as a French word, and by 1758 no longer received the italicization of a foreign word. In Old French the word was enui, which in the 13th century meant “annoyance”. According to etymonline.com it is “a back formation from enuier.” As to its pronunciation, my dictionary gives both English and French pronunciations, the first syllable in French not having an English counterpart. (For those who wonder, it is similar to saying the word “on” through your nose.) Etymonline.com cites the Oxford English Dictionary as stating: “So far as frequency of use is concerned, the word might be regarded as fully naturalized; but the pronunciation has not been anglicized, there being in fact no English analogy which could serve as a guide.”

In both my dictionary and in etymonline.com it says that the French root has a connection to annoy, but I didn’t find it. (I find that annoying.) Perhaps the sense of annoyance that is part of the meaning of ennui in French couldn’t be left unsaid. Or perhaps the annoyance is with the French, who have a certain je ne sais quoi.

There is another famous quote from Spiro (carrying on from Wednesday’s blog), “nattering nabobs of negativism,” which gives us two other words, natter and nabob.

Natter is a verb intransitive, and means to chatter idly, talk at length, or find fault or scold. According to etymonline.com it means to grumble or fret. In 1829 it was a northern English variant of the dialectical word gnatter, which meant to grumble or chatter, and earlier (in the 18th century) meant “to nibble away.” According to my dictionary, it comes from a “Germanic echoic base, whence Old Norse gnata, ‘to crash noisily’ and German knatter, ‘to clatter’.”

Nabobs, as Spiro used the word, are very rich or important people. I’m sure he meant it sarcastically. Nabob’s primary definition is of a native provincial deputy or governor of the old Mogul Empire in India. Its secondary definition is of a European who has become very rich in India, and Spiro’s meaning (I assume) is the tertiary definition, which had evolved from the first and second definitions by 1764. It originally came to English in 1612 from the Hindu word nawwab or nabab, which came from the Arabic word nuwwab, which is the honorific plural form of naib, which means viceroy or deputy.

I appreciate Spiro Agnew’s sense of alliteration, his spirit of allegory, and his seminal artistry in cynical aphorisms. R.I.P.