Heeeeere's Johnny!

A recent email string among some of my Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) chapter colleagues concerned our next meeting's guest and his introduction. The program chair is unable to introduce him and asked if I would. She informed others that I would be doing the introduction and added a comment bringing into question whether my use of obscure words might inhibit understanding.



My reply was simply "apopemtic inchoate" or "panegyric inchoate" (I forget which) which drove at least one of them to the dictionary and probably several in another direction. (See Feb. 15th's blog for inchoate.)



Apopemtic was not the right word to use; it comes from the Greek word apopemtikos, a form of the verb apopempein which means to send off. Apo is a prefix for away, and pempein means to send. So apopemtic would be better used for a communication made when sending away, not when welcoming; valedictory comes close, as does benediction.



Benison is a word I've only recently encountered that fits in this category. (It suffers in spoken English from being difficult to distinguish from the word for deer meat, which probably deserves a blog along with mutton and beef because of their interesting etymology.) While apopemtic uses the word valedictory in its definition, benison uses benediction. Both benison and benediction have the same Latin root (benedictio, "bene" for good, "dicere" for to speak), but benison came to English from a less direct root. Its introduction to English is ascribed to about 1300, which would put it during the time of the Norman invasion of England (along with the words beef and mutton - can't wait to do that blog). If you take the Latin word benedictus, run it through the Old French beneisson and then through the Middle English benisoun you arrive at this word. Why you would use it in place of benediction, I don't know; maybe it's less churchy.



What word should I have used? Panegyric would have been acceptable. It actually would be slightly incorrect, coming as it does from the Greek words for all (pan) and to bring together (ageirein). The Greek word means to bring a group together; panegyris refers to a public meeting. It was brought into Latin as panegyricus, then into French as panegyrique, from which we get our word. It has come to mean a formal speech at which someone or something is praised or honored, with a secondary definition of that praise itself. So an introduction could be a panegyric, but a panegyric need not be an introduction.



An even better word would have been exordium, which also comes from Latin. Exo means from, ordiri means beginning; ordiri refers to the act of doing the warping to begin to weave. Technically an exordium would be the opening part of a speech or writing, not the introduction of the speaker or book.



So, stay tuned as I continue my search for the pedantic word for introduction.



In the mean time, I'll just have to settle for the word introduction.