Yankee from Olympus

One of the first books I finished this year is a biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Supreme Court Justice who served longer than any other Supreme Court Justice in history. He served the north in the Civil War (where he had opportunity to meet Abraham Lincoln) and resigned after Franklin D. Roosevelt became President. The book is entitled "Yankee from Olympus" and had several new words for me.

The first word I encountered (or at least the one that starting me keeping track) was ferule. In talking about education in the early 1800s in Boston, the book uses the word ferule to discuss the corporal punishment exacted on students by their instructors, and mentions the ferule, or rod, cane, or flat piece of wood (like a ruler) that was "for punishing children, especially by striking them on the hand" (dictionary.com). 

The word arrived in English in the 1590s, from the Middle English word for the fennel plant, ferula, which came from the same word in Latin that meant whip, reed, rod, or staff. Be careful that you only give it one “r” because adding a second “r” changes it to refer to the metal cap on the rod, not the rod itself.

The second word, syllabub, (it was spelled sillabub in the book, the less commonly accepted spelling) refers to a warm spiced drink made of milk mixed with rum, port, brandy, or wine. I mentioned this word to an associate and she was excited to use it in the context of a night out with friends where one of them had a syllabub and didn’t know it.

The word comes to English in the 1530s, but we have no idea whence it came. (Whence means “from where” and to say “from whence” is arguably – they really do argue about it - tantamount to saying ATM machine; it’s redundancy again in my opinion.) Its frothy nature as a drink gave rise, apparently, to the secondary usage that flourished beginning in 1706, of “floridly vapid prose”, according to etymonline.com. I am not often accused of being syllabub, but maybe someday…

The third word for today is palanquin. (Whence doesn’t count.) A palanquin is something you’ll likely envision (once I give you its definition) but never knew the word for it. Its etymology gives some clue to its meaning, so I’ll leave the definition to last.

Palanquin arrived in English in the 1580s from the Portuguese, where it was spelled with a final m. Apparently the Portuguese, world travelers that they were, adopted it from the Malaysian/Javanese word palangki. According to etymonline.com it ultimately came from the Sanskrit word palyanka-s, created from combining the words pari (meaning “around”) and ancati (meaning “it bends or curves”). So the meaning may have originally meant “that which bends around the body.” When you add the Spanish word palanca (which came from the Latin word phalange that referred to a pole to carry a burden) you have the complete background on this word.

So what’s the definition? A palanquin is that box or chair on a platform supported by poles that is used to carry Kings and Pharoahs around. Or, as dictionaries put it, “a covered or boxlike litter.” But it should never be confused with a litter box.