G Spots

It's not what you think. After my post on January 6 I had a message from my brother saying I'd missed a word: garrulous. While it would have fit very well in that blog, I was saving it for this blog. There are three words that begin with the letter G that are about talking or speaking: garrulous, gasconade, and grandiloquent.

Garrulous refers to talking too much, especially about unimportant things. While it can be a synonym of other words for wordiness, it comes with a negative connotation relating to the content, where the other words for wordiness have negative connotations about the wordiness itself. Garrulous comes from the Latin word for chatter, garrulus. So someone who chatters about nothing in particular would be described as garrulous.

Gasconade, on the other hand, is blustering or boastful talk. It comes directly from French (if you add an n) and refers to an area in southwest France (near Spain). Apparently people from that area are known for boasting or being prideful, because that quality has come to be known as gasconade (a noun, whereas garrulous is an adjective). It also has a negative connotation, whereas our third G word is not always negative.

Grandiloquent is an easier word to figure out the meaning of, sounding like a portmanteau formed from grand and eloquence. It's actually formed from the Latin words for great or grand and speak (grandis and loqui; we also get the word eloquence from loqui). Its dictionary definition is bombastic or pompous use of words, but it has softened the harshness of its negative meaning. It can also be used of high-flown rhetoric; don't be surprised to hear it used in a positive sense of President Obama.

One final word that's not a G word but fits along side the last two words: fustian. It refers to pompous or pretentious talk or writing (where the previous two refer to talking only). Its etymology, however, is not as straightforward. Follow me through time to arrive at fustian:

In Latin there was a word for wooden stick, fustis, which by the time of middle Latin became fustaneum. Old French adopted the word and spelled it fustaigne, and then it came to Middle English. How did it change from meaning a wooden stick to mean pompous or pretentious talk? In English it originally meant a coarse cloth made of cotton or linen, and now refers to corduroy or velveteen. So where did fustian come to mean bombastic? There is some not much to go on, but here's what I think: in the 13th and 14th centuries Priests' robes were made of a material known as fustian. At some point the elevated speech of the Priests took name of the material which they wore, and the connection was made. Now, how it came to be a material when in Latin times it was a wooden stick is another discussion. Of that I'm even less sure.

So stay away from these G spots.

You getting this?

Similar in relationship to each other as perspicuity and perspicacity (see Dec. 30, 2009 post) are imply and infer.

Imply is what the communicator does, infer is what the communicatee does.

Communicatee is not a word in my dictionary, but it ought to be. Perhaps someone can suggest a good word in its place: communicant is a religious term and would be close, and "person with whom the communicator is communicating" is too long, so I'm going with communicatee. We have speaker and hearer, we have sender and recipient, but what do we have for the broader communicator?

Anyway, imply has a very old etymology. It comes to us from Middle English through Old French and Latin and before that from Indo-European. Im means in and ply comes from (we think) the Indo-European word plek, which means to plait or wrap together. It is where the Greek word plekein comes from, which means to braid. The idea is that of wrapping into the meaning of the communication an unexpressed thought that requires untangling to understand. It is not the direct indication of the communication, but something hinted at or alluded to.

Infer is when someone assumes and unwraps a meaning from a communication. (It may or may not have been implied.) It comes from the Latin word inferre which means to carry in. When you infer you're carrying in to the communication something that you think was woven in to the previous communication.

My dictionary (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language) provides good explanation of some similar words and further explains the differences:

"Infer suggests the arriving at a decision or opinion by reasoning from known facts or evidence...; deduce, in strict discrimination, implies inference [there's a confluence of our two previous words!] from a general principle by logical reason...; conclude strictly implies an inference that is the final logical result in a process of reasoning."

Conclude and deduce do not refer to communication necessarily, but infer does. In its best usage infer doesn't apply to most of what Sherlock Holmes did but deduce and conclude both do. You can come to a conclusion through deduction that is observation but can only infer from a communication.

Clear as mud?

Gloves or punishment?

Today's words are examples of deficiencies in wikipedia entries. Search for gantlet on Wikipedia and you get gauntlet or gantlet, with meanings conflated (more on conflate in a future blog) into the one word with two spellings. I prefer to differentiate between the two words, two meanings, and two etymologies. They are not forms of the same word, but two distinctly different meanings usually attached to two distinct phrases.

Gauntlet comes from the days of knights, and suits of armor, and comes from Old French. Gantlet has a military history, but comes from the Swedish. There is enough similarity in the challenges each involves that it is understandable that they would get confused and used in each others' place. In fact, the misuse has happened to such a degree that they will likely both be accepted for each other soon (if not already). My dictionary already lists each as an alternative spelling for the other.

But to know the difference, while it may be pedantry (see last week's blogs) is still instructive. Both words are usually found in phrases that give a sense to their meaning.

To "run the gantlet" (no u) is a form of punishment (more common of yore in the military, now in fraternities) whereby soldiers would form two lines with a lane in between and the person being punished would have to run down the lane while soldiers pummeled them with fists, hands, or other objects (like clubs). While there is no indication that I could find that the practice originated in Sweden, the term is definitely Swedish, coming from two Swedish words: gata, meaning lane, and lopp, meaning run. It first came into English as gantelope, but after a couple of centuries evolved into gantlet. Its first written use dates to the diary of the 1st Earl of Shaftsbury in 1646.

To "throw down the gauntlet" (with u) goes back further, to the 1400s and the age of knights. It is the piece of armor that would cover the hand, like a metal glove. It comes from the Middle French words for glove (gant) and the diminutive suffix -ette. Apparently the way one knight would challenge another knight to a fight was by throwing his own gauntlet to the ground. If the challenged knight agreed to fight, he would "pick up the gauntlet", a phrase still used, though gauntlets have always and still are thrown down more than they're picked up. The first recorded use of the phrase "throw down the gauntlet" was in 1548, in Hall's "Chronicles of Richard III".

So, if you are looking for a challenge, try keeping the usages of gantlet and gauntlet distinct. And stay away from those clubbing Swedes...

Getting automatic notice of new blogs

I just found out that you won't get automatic updates to the my blog easily. I will try adding emails to notify automatically, but there is a limit of ten emails.

You can get updates by subscribing through http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/erUQ

It will post automatically to your Yahoo, Google, Twitter, Facebook or other page.

Good luck.

Short

Since last week's words dealt with wordiness, let's look at some words which describe the opposite characteristic. We still have some other words for wordiness to discuss (G words, since Sunday was about P words). There seem to be more words for wordiness than for shortness of expression. Go figure.

While there are words relating to wordiness that can be used in a negative sense, none of today's words have much if any negativity to them. Apparently we aren't bothered too much by people using too few words. Perhaps Calvin Coolidge didn't have many detractors of his expressiveness. I remember a story about a dinner when the guest next to Calvin said to him "I have a bet with someone that I can get you to say more than two words." Calvin responded "You lose". Calvin was definitely laconic.

Laconic means brief in speech or expression, using few words. It is used to refer to speech more so than writing, and is derived from a Latin word describing someone from the Greek area of Laconia. Laconia is the area in southern Greece of which Sparta was the ancient capital. How it came to mean "of few words" is not as obvious. Certainly the Spartans were known for their disdain of anything but the bare necessities (hence its use as an adjective in English), but how did the area of Laconia become associated with the use of few words? The closest description I could come up with is reference in a 1998 article by Howard Bloom to Xenophon, who wrote "you would sooner hear a cry from a stone statue" than from a Spartan young person, and "even in the streets they...should proceed in silence." (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2495/1.html)

Sententious has a much different and only slightly less obscure derivation. While the word comes pretty directly from the Latin word sententiosis, which comes from the Latin word sententia, for sententia's definition we're directed to the word sentence. There we find that sententia means "way of thinking, opinion, sentiment." So how did it a way of thinking, opinion, sentiment come to mean expressing much in few words? One can only imagine that as certain individuals thought before they spoke (a less and less common attribute, it seems) there needed to be a word to describe the final pronouncements they would make. Often coming in only one sentence, these thoughtful statements came to be described as sententious. Etymology.com says that sententiosis doesn't mean "way of thinking" but "full of meaning, pithy". Not much more explanation there. Apparently etymology.com is being sententious.

Terse also comes from a Latin word, tersus, which means "wiped clean". It's easy to see how it can come to refer to a sentence or statement "wiped clean" of anything superfluous. While the dictionary suggests it also means "concise in a polished, smooth way" its use as that kind of compliment isn't something I've encountered very often.

Enough said.

Phil O'Logue, or (if you prefer) "P" words

Today's springboard word comes from the pages of the Sunday Comics. While comics are not normally a source of words with two syllables let alone a source for this blog, nonetheless there it was - in a funny comic called Frazz, by Jeff Mallett. The comic uses the old (as in 1964-vintage Top-10 song) joke about what you call an ant that gets stepped on, and updates it to refer to the response of the teacher, who is characterized as a pedant. It was a nice turn of joke.

So what, exactly, is a pedant? A friend of mine from the 80s (we're catching up to this century) first used the phrase, saying to me "Larry, only a pedant knows what a pedant is." I felt a bit ashamed that I didn't know, until I read the definition: "someone who puts unnecessary stress on trivial points of learning, displaying a scholarship lacking in sense of proportion." I've grown so much since that jab, and now can display scholarship in such greater lack of proportion to what I could then! Live and learn, I say.

Anyway, pedant comes as a direct transliteration from the French word for schoolmaster, and still maintains a strong tie to teaching. (It can also mean a teacher who holds arbitrarily to exact adherence to a narrow set of rules. English, anyone?) It comes originally from the Greek, from the same root word from which we get pedagogy, the pedantic word for teaching.

In contradistinction (a word I actually used last week; I started to use it, stopped and tried to think of a better word but couldn't, so went ahead with it) to pedant, which has a smallness about it, polymath has no negative connotation by definitiion. It sometimes can be used in a negative way, but normally someone would use pedant if they wanted to express a negative comment about someone's learning and show of it, and pedant is more familiar than polymath. (At least I hear it more...)

Polymath comes pretty directly from the Greek polymathes (no relation to Johnny Mathis) which means simply "knowing much". In my reading this week I ran across the word in reference to Ernest van den Haag. The writer may have been a pedant or trying to qualify as a polymath himself, but he used it as a compliment.

The third word is slightly off-subject, but consider it an extra, like a mint at the end of the meal. Before deciding to blog I thought maybe I would write these as an article in newpaper or magazine, under the nom de plume (we'll get to this word) Phil O'Logue. The word philology comes from two Greek words: philien, meaning to love, and logos, meaning a word. It is a lovely word for a love of words and learning. Eventually a philologist might be known as a polymath, that is if the person doesn't become too demonstrative or narrow about it and become a pedant.

Look alike

There are several shows on television this year that have as their theme either making normal people look like some celebrity or a celebrity look like a normal person. (Was that Gene Simmons I saw working in a dry cleaners?) The concept is not a new one, if you know the story of the Prince and the Pauper. In 1993 there were even two movies with a doppelganger theme (Drew Barrymore in Doppelganger and Kevin Klein in Dave). There are several good words that can be used in lieu of look-alike.

I always associate doppelganger with Hitler, probably because the first time I encountered the word was in reference to his having (today's research indicates as many as six) doppelgangers who were trained to look, walk, and talk like Adolf. It adds to my confusion that the word has a German origin and that Hitler was a paperhanger, which sounds like doppelganger and would make a good rhyme in a poem about Hitler. (There's a thought I bet you've never had - a poem about Hitler.)

Anyway, doppelganger comes from two German words: doppel and ganger. (Go figure.) Doppel means double and ganger means goer. So doppelganger refers to a "double" who "goes" in someone's place. Simple and straightforward, eh? But my dictionary can't be that simple. It says the definition is "the supposed ghostly double or wraith of a living person." I must admit I've never heard it used that way. (See this space later for a discourse on ghost/wraith/specter.) I've always seen it used in reference to someone who looks enough like someone to act in their stead. It often refers to the conscious replacement of the original person with someone visually indistinguishable from them.

Simulacrum is different in that, while doppelganger always refers to a person, simulacrum doesn't have the same restriction. Coming directly from the same root word as simulate rather than through the French like similar, the Latin word simul translates as together with, or likewise. The interesting thing about simulacrum is its range of meanings. The first definition listed is "an image or likeness." The second definition becomes a little fuzzier in similarity: "a vague representation, semblance." The third definition is of "a mere pretense, a sham", which is how I've seen it used most often.

As often happens, the second definition sent me on a hunt for semblance/resemblance. The two words either have the same meaning or not. English isn't always clean. One of the definitions of semblance IS resemblance, but I don't buy that. In my mind a semblance is a faint similarity, reduced from greater similarity, or what's left of an original. At least that's common usage. The dictionary defines semblance as a copy or representation, real or fake. The dictionary definition of resemblance and I agree that a resemblance is a strong similarity but not the original. Another usage difference it that we use resemblance more often with people than with other uses; semblance more often with other uses than with people.

So, you may have a resemblance to someone, and if you are enough of a doppelganger you could get a job outside of Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. As for simulacrum, watch for its use by Republicans in describing "a simulacrum of health-care reform", although what's left after the House and Senate get through in conference committee will likely be only a semblance of what Obama wanted.

Crocodile Tears

In another attempt to provide you with the good word that means the same thing as a more familiar phrase, let's look at crocodile tears. Well, not actually at crocodile tears, but at the expression. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_tear), the phrase has a quite lengthy history, having been found first in French around 1400 and used by Shakespeare twice.

The expression does not, as some presume, come from the belief that crocodiles cannot cry. They actually can cry, although since I flunked biology it's better for me not to explain too much. The earliest reference to the phrase (in the French work The Voyage and Travail of Sir John Maundeville - circa 1400) is to a belief that crocodiles "slay men, and then, weeping, eat them."

Crocodile tears has since come to mean crying in a way that is exaggerated or ridiculous, which is part of the definition of the adjective lugubrious. Lugubrious comes very directly from the Latin word for mourn, lugubris. Add an ou (oh, you!) and there you are. Lugubrious is the word you're looking for when someone's crying seems to be exaggerated or ridiculous.

In the aforementioned wikipedia reference it makes mention to the biological source of tears in crocodiles, the lacrimal glands. Look up lacrimal in my dictionary and it says "same as lachrymal". Big help, isn't it?

Why the change from one spelling to another? My guess is that the ch and y have something to do with a transliteration from the Greek, because the Greek letter chi could by either ch or c and upsilon would be transliterated as y (but not i; here is where my contention falters). I couldn't find any explanation; if you have one, feel free to comment. (Watch for the appearance of the spelling lacrimose, not yet in my dictionary but increasingly seen in public.) But two words below lacrimal is the word lacrimatory, with reference to the alternate spelling lachrymatory. That word has an interesting etymology.

A lachrymatory is a small vase used in Roman times to catch the tears of mourners and placed in the tomb as a sign of respect to the departed. (Thank you, lachrymatory.com - a site for collectors of these beautiful vases.) While the practice seemed most common in Roman times there is a reference in Ps. 56:8 to putting tears in a bottle, so the practice is quite old.

The word below lachrymatory in my dictionary is the adjective lachrymose; we've finally arrived at our second word of the day. (Sometimes my train of thought meanders, sometimes it just derails.) Lachrymose comes from the Latin word for tear, lacrimosus. It doesn't have any connotation of insincerity. If someone is crying easily or heavily they are lachrymose.

So, today's words are not uplifting, but hopefully they're interesting and useful. You can always try telling a child "quit being lugubrious or I'll give you something to be lachrymose about" and see what happens.

Words for Wordiness

At a recent Rotary meeting I was referred to by a friend as someone who enjoyed talking. Today’s words relate to what my friend was talking about. (I commented to someone older that we used to use the phrase “vaccinated with a phonograph needle,” but somehow the technology of mp3 players doesn’t translate. It will soon be a useless phrase, relegated to the dustbin of history.)

Logorrhea is the first and best word (for my money) of today’s list. From two Greek words meaning word and flow, thanks to diarrhea it has a less savory connotation than simply a flow of words. There is an uncontrollable sense to the word that also applies to diarrhea. The phrase “diarrhea of the mouth” is often used by those who don’t know the word logorrhea. It refers to the kind of person who might say "help me, I've started talking and I can't stop."

Prolix has a very similar meaning from the Latin words for forth and flow. It has the meaning of tiresome or long-winded, and an intentional quality that logorrhea doesn’t have. It’s still not a compliment, but it isn’t as much of a malady.

Voluble is the word my friend indicated she meant. She meant nothing negative, simply glib or facile in communication. In more words, it means making use of a lot of words.

Persiflage has the most interesting etymology. It comes from a French word (hence the pronunciation of the last syllable is a soft a and g - the dictionary has it "azh", which isn't much help if you don't speak French) that means to banter, which is pretty much what I just did. But that French word comes from per (a Latin word for through) and siffler, a word for hissing or whistling. It is the same root word from which we get sibilant, which is any consonent that has a hissing sound, like an s or sh or that zh mentioned above. So if it comes from words meaning through hissing or bantering, what does persiflage mean? It has a pretty good range, meaning any kind of writing or speaking that is light, frivolous or flippant. If the communication has gravitas it can't be persiflage.

One final word today. I encountered this word for the first time when I was asked to do a column for my Junior High School newspaper. The faculty advisor suggested we call the column "Loquacious Larry". (Maybe that's when I began to collect words!) Loquacious refers to the spoken word, coming from the Latin word for speak, and means very talkative; the noun form uses the qualifier "especially when excessive." Which, coming full circle, is what our invocator at yesterday's Rotary was accused of being.

And I will sign off before I can be accused of any of these characteristics. (Maybe I'm too late already.)

Getting Ahead by Laying Around

No, not Demi Moore (although that is not to say it doesn't apply to Demi. I have no opinion one way or the other) but demimonde. I first encountered this word in a context which was a replacement for the phrase "slept her way to the top"; I thought I had found another good substitute for a bad phrase. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Demimonde refers to a woman who loses social standing because of sexual promiscuity. In that respect it is exactly the opposite of "sleeping ones way to the top". It is actually derived from two French roots. Monde, in French, means world, as in the Le Monde publication could be translated into English as The World. Monde can also mean society.

Demi is actually a prefix from Middle English and Old French which adapted the Latin word dimidius which means half. For those who use the English system of referring to musical notes, the demisemiquaver might be a familiar use of this prefix. A quaver (in English music) is an eighth note in American, a semiquaver an sixteenthth note, and a demisemiquaver a thirty-second note (not a thirty second note, which lasts much longer). And for those sesquipedalianists( a favorite word of my nephew Philip) there's the word for a sixty-fourth note, the hemidemisemiquaver. (I am not a sesquipedalianist - I am a hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist.)

So demimonde is the losing by half a woman's position in the world or societythrough her promiscuity. Why it doesn't also refer to a man is another subject, Tiger. Perhaps it will someday be applied to both sexes. It certainly seems more common for men than for women.

A sinecure is a job position in the other direction. The juxtaposition of its two definitions are interesting. The first definition is the formal one, and probably gives an idea of the formation to current use. It is a church position that pays a salary without requiring any care for souls. The second definition is an expansion of the first to any position that pays but doesn't require much, if any, work. It is the second definition I've encountered most often, especially in describing government positions.

Sinecure comes from the ecclesiastical Middle Latin, and the sine means without. The cure comes very easily and obviously from the Latin cura, which means care. The interesting part of the definition in my dictionary is that it uses the word "cure" in place of "care", saying that a sinecure doesn't involve "cure" of souls. I think care is the better definition.

At any rate, we don't want either word used of our position, since neither is a compliment. But both may involve sleeping.