Annoying stubborn bullies?

Sometimes there are words you think you’ve used, only to find out that after tens of thousands of words, you’ve never written about one of the old ones. When our children were young (elementary school age) I encountered and began using the word contumacious, which refers to someone who is stubbornly perverse or rebellious or willfully or obstinately disobedient. It’s truly a good word to use with children. It not only describes their behavior, but it sometimes even makes them look up the meaning of a word.

I’ve used it for about 20 years, and although there are 135 other posts in this blog, none of them looked at contumacious. Contumacious is the adjective form of contumacy, and came to English about 1600 directly from the Latin word contumaci-, which is the stem of contumax that means “haughty, insolent, obstinate. The noun contumacy came to English in the late 14^th century, from the Latin word contumacia, which means haughty. I don’t know why contumacious came from the stem of contumax rather than from the word contumacia, but that’s what etymonline says. It also says it is the “noun quality of contumax (see contumely).” So let’s see contumely.

Contumely is a noun, even though it looks like an adverb, and also imported to English in the late 14^th century, but from an Old French word contumelie. The Old French got their word from the Latin word contumelia, which means insult and according to etymonline.com “is probably related to contumax.”

Contumelia also spawned the word contumelious, which took 100 years or so to be formed from the Old French word contumelieus. You can be contumelious by using the word contumacious. But avoid being a termagant.

A termagant is a boisterous shrew of a woman, a violent, turbulent or brawling woman. Not the kind you see on “professional” wrestling, but more likely the kind you see in your local purveyor of alcoholic beverages – after midnight. Termagant has a most interesting etymology, having come to English in about 1500 from the Old French name Tervagant, which was used in the Chanson de Roland. The Chanson de Roland (French for Song of Roland) is, according ty Encyclopædia Britannica online, “probably the earliest (c. 1100) chanson de geste and is considered the masterpiece of the genre.” In the interest of clarity, a chanson de geste is “any of the Old French epic poems forming the core of the Charlemagne legends.” Tervagant, though, may also have developed into the name Teruagant or Teruagaunt, which was the name of a Muslim deity that appeared in medieval morality plays.

Now, a termagant is not a nag. A nag, according to the World English Dictionary, is ”a person, especially a woman, who nags.” That helps. What is nagging? Pestering, or hectoring, or constantly annoying or scolding. It arrived in English only in 1828, and was originally “a dialectic word meaning ‘to gnaw’ (1825).” While it can’t be certain, it likely came from Scandinavia, where the Old Norse word for complain is gnaga and the dialectic Swedish and Norwegian for gnaw is nagga.

While we know what pestering is, hectoring is not a word I often hear. While in the late 14^th century it referred to a brave warrior, by the 1650s it referred to, according to Johnson, “a blustering, turbulent, pervicacious, noisy fellow,” it is in reference to the Trojan hero Hector from Homer’s Iliad. It still today refers to a “blustering, domineering person,” a bully.

Johnson’s word pervicacious was new to me. It arrived in English about 1630, from the Latin stem of pervicax, which means stubborn or willful. Interestingly, it is formed from the prefix per-, which indicates “by means of” combined with a form of the word vincere, which means to conquer.  When I looked up its definition I found it means “extremely willful; obstinate; stubborn.” Like contumacious. And the circle of words continues.