In light of last night’s election, in which many House seats changed parties (the exact number is still to be determined as I write), a couple of words come to mind. But since I brought up the degree of change, which is more than in any election since 1948, it doesn’t hurt to look at history. In 1948 the Democrats won 75 seats to take the house from the Republicans in the same surprising election that elected Harry S. Truman as President. In 1932 the Democrats had had an even bigger win, when they took 97 seats in the wave that elected Franklin D. Roosevelt and sent a message to the Republicans and Herbert Hoover. But even that pales in comparison to the election of 1894, when Republicans picked up 130 seats to go from a 124-218 minority to a 254-93 majority.
But this isn’t a blog about politics or elections, it’s a blog about words. What words did this election bring to mind? Hegemony and suzerainty.
With the word suzerainty we are treated to one of what I think is a lexicographer’s joke of a definition: “the position or power of a suzerain.” Ha, ha! Made you look! What’s a suzerain? A feudal lord, or a state in it relation to a semiautonomous state over which it exercises political control. So, while the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last night, that is only one-half of control of the legislative branch of the government, which is only one of three branches of our government. The Republicans have new political power now in 1/6 of the government. (Or in an additional 1/6 of the government if you feel they have control of the Supreme Court.)
Suzerain is a word that came to English in the 15th century from Old French. The Old French word came from Latin, from sursum, which means upward or above, and vertere, which means a turning, and from which we get words such as verse or versus. Sursum, by the way, is a contraction of subversum (up from below). The French added the suffix from souverain, from which we get the word sovereign.
Sovereign (you’ll love this upcoming Latin word) came to English in the 13th century from that Old French word mentioned above (etymonline.com leaves out the v in souverain, with the explanation that Milton spelled it souran, as though it came from the Italian sourano). The Vulgar Latin word from which it came to Old French is superanus, and does not refer to a body part, even though some rulers would seem to warrant that description. Superanus is the Vulgar Latin word for chief or principal, and the super refers to having authority over others, a meaning that remains as the definition of sovereign. (Vulgar doesn’t mean the same in reference to Latin as it does in common usage now. In fact, it refers to common, spoken usage as opposed to literary language.)
The other word which came to mind, hegemony, is one of only four words in my dictionary that begin with heg- that are not proper nouns or an adjective of the proper noun. Hegemony means leadership or dominance, especially of one state or nation over others. (I dubbed my team in fantasy baseball the Hegemons. We made the playoffs but weren’t as hegemonic as the SF Giants, who are World Champions!)
Hegemony comes from the Greek word hegemonia, which means leadership. The word hegemony dates from the 1560s, and by the 1650s had spawned the adjectival form hegemonic. It wasn’t until 1904, however, that the form hegemon appeared in Enlgish. In my dictionary, only hegemony and hegemonic are given.
So now you know what the Republicans and SF Giants have in common.
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