Words I Found on the Way to Looking Up Another Word

The dictionary is not just a reference book, it is also a place to uncover words you didn’t know existed, or find out things about words you never thought about, or discover forms of words and think “why didn’t I realize this should be a word?”, or remember seeing before but forgot. Those are today’s words – all discovered when looking through the dictionary for other words. This blog wouldn’t exist if I had not used a printed dictionary (had used an online version instead) because it is in the looking alphabetically that I found this information, not in looking at the search results for only the word I was researching. So, here are the nuggets uncovered in panning for other gold.

When looking up the word onomatopoeia for use in the June 20 blog (one of these days I’ll get around to that good word) I found the word omphaloskepsis. It is a noun formed from the combination of two Greek words: omphalo, which is a combining word used in any reference to the navel or the umbilicus (if it’s used before a vowel drop the o), and skepsis, which means a viewing. If you’ve never heard of the phrase “navel gazing” (my wife hadn’t, but then she was never accused of it, unlike her husband) this is the pedantic word for it. Navel gazing is used to describe any inactivity that is completely unproductive. The word came to English in 1925, and with a word developed as late as that one always wonders whether it was coined in response to the development of the phrase rather than to fulfill a language gap. It was preceded by other attempts to describe the same inactivity, those words being omphalopsychite (in 1882) and omphalopsychic (in 1892). Neither other word is found in my dictionary.

Celery was a word I found looking for celerity. I have known the word (and have stalked) celery, so it wasn’t a new discovery. But I wondered if it had a similar etymology (something to do with crispness). While both words came to English from French, that is where their ancestries diverge. The French word céleri came from the Italian word seleri, which was a holdover from the Latin selinon that was just transliterated from the Greek word that was also used for parsley. (Although the etymology of parley says that it originally was called petroselinon in Greek, which comes from the combining of petros, meaning stone, and selinon, meaning celery. Perhaps it’s just a Greek mystery.) It came to English usage in the 1660s (I wonder what it was called in England in the 1650s?) from its use in French, where it was originally called sceleri d’Italie. My dictionary defines celery as a biennial plant of the parsley family. I didn’t know there were biennial plants or that celery was one of them, so even in researching something as mundane as celery I learned something. Goes to show you never know.

Audient is the word that I should have realized must exist but didn’t. In fact, in etymonline.com it doesn’t have a listing. But if you have an audience you have some audient people. (Audient being an adjective that means listening or paying attention.) Dictionary.com even quotes a use by Mrs. Browning (is that Elizabeth Barrett?) where she uses the phrase “audient souls” but I was unable to find the full reference. According to thefreedictionary.com it was especially used for a catechumen in the early church.

Sans-culotte is obviously a French phrase, but its meaning in English needs explanation. Literally translated, the word means “without breeches”. But its definition in English is "revolutionary". My dictionary goes on to say it began use as a “term of contempt, applied by the aristocrats to the republicans of the poorly clad French Revolutionary army, who substituted pantaloons (which we’ve shortened to the word pants) for knee breeches (which are no longer worn except by some purists on the golf course)". It has a secondary meaning of any radical or revolutionary.

Discovery is a wonderful thing.

Now You Know

Back in January (18th – “Phil O’Logue…”) I blogged about pedant and polymath, and made note to myself that some day I should blog on the related words sapient and sagacious. I’ve finally gotten around to it.

Pedant and polymath both have to do with learning and knowledge. So do sapient and sagacious. But where pedant and polymath carry some sense of “a show of learning” (particularly pedant) sagacious and sapient do not.

I have used the adjective forms for comparison, but be aware that the sagacious is the adjective form of the word sagacity. Sagacious appears in about 1600, after about 60 years of the use of the word sagacity. The noun form of sapient, sapience, is recorded from as early as the 1300s, but has fallen into such disuse that it is only found as a final sentence in etymonline.com’s entry on sapient.

As with so many words of that time, sagacity came to English from the Middle French sagacité which came from the Latin sagacitatem (or the nominative sagacitas as my dictionary has it). Sagacitatem is the “quality of being acute” and the root word is sagax or sagacis, which refers to “quick perception”. The dictionary definition is “penetrating intelligence and sound judgment.”

An interesting side meaning came to be in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the word was also used to refer to an acute sense of smell in animals. So that prize bloodhound, hunting dog, or truffle-hunting pig was referred to as having sagacity (or being sagacious).

Sapient means full of knowledge, wise, discerning, and sagacious (my dictionary actually used the one word to define the other). This word came to English a little earlier than sagacity, and according to one source came through Old French (sapient) from Latin (my dictionary says it came to English from Middle English from Latin, but who really cares other than a pedant?) The Latin word is sapientem (nominative sapiens, which is the present participle of sapere). Sapere means “to taste, have taste, or be wise”.

I’m sure you’re wondering if this is the same Latin root from which we get homo sapiens. (Maybe you’re not, but I haven’t reached my word limit yet.) Here is the entry from etymonline.com’s explanation of homo sapiens:

[It first appeared in] 1802, in William Turton's translation of Linnæus, coined in Mod.L. [Modern Latin – I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing, did you?] from Latin. homo "man" (technically "male human," but in logical and scholastic writing "human being") + sapiens, present participle of sapere "be wise." Used since in various Latin or pseudo-Latin combinations intended to emphasize some aspect of humanity, cf. Henri Bergson's Homo faber "man the tool-maker," in "L'Evolution Créatrice" (1907). Homo as a genus of the order Primates is first recorded 1797.

So in current usage, what’s the difference (what’s the good word)? I have seen sagacity/sagacious used for an acute insight or knowledge, whereas sapient merely as awareness or a normal level of knowledge. On a spectrum I would put it as ignorant/dumb/knowledgeable/sapient/sagacious.

Don't Even Think of Disagreeing with This

Sometimes you can argue a point and sometimes you can’t. Those times you can’t there are several words that might be helpful to know: asseveration, irrefragable, ineluctable, and apodictic.

An asseveration is similar in form and in meaning to assertion. It comes from the Latin word severus, from which we get the word severe (go figure). It means strict and severe. The Latin added the prefix ad- which means “to” and developed the word asseverare, which means “to swear solemnly, act with earnestness, or assert strongly. Its entry into English in the 1550s came with an exaggerated meaning, and means a vehement assertion, or to state positively or seriously. The idea is that there is no room for disagreement. Which brings us to the word irrefragable.

If the word irrefragable sounds familiar, you’re undoubtedly remembering the word from July 11. Irrefragable comes from the Latin root word fragari, which refers to a contest or opposition. The re- in Latin is the same as the ir- in English; it is a negating prefix. As the word came to English from Late Latin (by which time it was irrefragabilis) in the 1530s it was used to refer to that which cannot be refutable. In that respect it is a synonym for irrefutable; the difference is that irrefutable deals with an inability to be able to reason differently. Irrefragable refers to the inability to oppose in any manner – including, one supposes, physically (as in the contest from which its meaning derives). By the way, in my dictionary it is the word above irrefrangible, which is the word above irrefutable, making it easy to compare the three.

Unlike irrefutable and irrefrangible, there is no word refragable.

In the same way there is no word electable, only ineluctable. The Latin root word is similar to fragari in its meaning: it is luctari, which means to struggle. Add an ex-, which means out, lose the x and you have eluctari. Add another prefix, in-, meaning “not” and you get a Latin word ineluctari that means that which cannot be resisted by struggling. Its English counterpart (which arrived in 1623) means certain, inevitable, unavoidable or inescapable. No sense even trying. There is a sense of struggling against it that remains, which is why it’s a good word to use when you wish you could get out of something but know there’s no use trying.

Our final word today is apodictic. An asseveration that can be shown or proven but doesn’t need to be is apodictic. Apodictic is an adjective describing that which is absolutely certain or necessarily true. It is a Greek word, the apo- meaning ”from”, and deiknynai meaning “to show”. Provability is a component in the meaning. It entered English in the 1650s and has the presumption of clearly demonstrated. If you have an opinion or contention that is so obvious as to thwart any opposing view, it is apodictic.

I’m sure you agree; it’s apodictic.

No Time to Waste

Last week I used the word fugacious, and some would have used the word celerity or the word alacrity. All three have to do with speed, but what do they each mean and what is the good word for various uses?

I was doing an appearance on Sacramento & Company, a local television show that has a “word of the day” and the word was alacrity. The contest was to use the word correctly during the program and win a prize package. (I won an umbrella.)

Alacrity is a noun that means eager willingness or readiness, often manifested by quick, lively action. It comes originally from Latin, from the word alacritas or alacritatem, which means liveliness. It was adopted into Old French where it was alacrite, then into Middle English, where we got it in about 1500. It refers to quick action quickly taken.

As mentioned last week, anything that is fugacious is something that is short-lived, fleeting, or appears and disappears quickly. Botanically, it refers to a bloom that falls off soon after it blooms. It’s pronounced like fugue, rather than like fugitive (the word with which it shares a connection). Enough on this word; I’ll be fugacious about fugacious.

Celerity is a noun that comes to us from Middle French (célérité) which got it from Latin (celeritas). Celer in Latin means swift. And celerity means swiftness in acting or moving. It doesn’t have the connotation of quick reaction that alacrity does, and can last longer than fugacity. It’s possible that it has an older history, since there are several primitive Indo-European roots (PIEs, they’re called) that are similar, to cel or kel. Sanskrit has the word carati that means “goes”, Greek has keles that means “fast horse or ship”, Lithuanian has the word sulys that means “a gallop” and Old High German has the word scelo that means “stallion”. So you can see how many languages have a similar word that has a similar meaning; but it is one thing to see a connection and another thing to be able to track the connection. It’s only to Latin through French that proof exists of a connection in word development. While célérité was used in France in the 14th century, it wasn’t until the late 15th century that it was brought into English. (And it has a different etymology from celery, which will have to wait for another day and blog.)

So fugacious refers to something that appears and disappears quickly. Alacrity refers to a quick activity engaged upon with no delay. Celerity is much more a synonym for speed, but would be used for speed when talking about action rather than movement. (Although it can be used for movement, too.) I’ve most often heard it used for human activity of the will rather than pure speed (like a car or a stallion). Use it in referring to people and the speed with which they should or have accomplished something.

Anniversary part 2

So our marriage has been irrefutably strong; not that we haven’t had our problems, but it’s not a litote to say its efflorescence has been supernal rather than specious.

A litote a form of speech taken directly from the Greek word litotes, which is a form of the word litos that means smooth, plain, small, or meager. The speech form is defined as an understatement for effect, and is usually made in the negative (as in “not a few regrets”).

Efflorescence is a relatively late addition to English, having come in the 1620s from the French efflorescence. The French got the word from Latin, where it was efflorescentum. Florescere means to begin to blossom, and efflorescence means 1. a flowering or blooming, 2. the time of flowering, or 3. the peak or fulfillment, as of a career. It is in the third sense that I used the word.

Supernal in 12th century Old French was formed from the Latin word supernus, which means situated above, or celestial. It was first used in English in 1447, and means heavenly or divine, the antithesis of infernal. My dictionary defines it as of, from, or as though from the heavens.

Specious is a word whose meaning has changed dramatically over time. It comes from the Latin word speciosus, which means “good-looking or beautiful” and is a form of the Latin word species, which means “appearance” and from which we get our word species. When specious first was used in English (in the 1400s) it retained the meaning of good-looking or pleasing to the sight. But in 1612 it was used pejoratively as only appearing to be good. That usage (in my dictionary) is now listed as obsolete, and current usage is to use specious to describe that which is “seeming to be good, sound, correct, logical, etc., without really being so; plausible but not genuine.”

My final sentence about our marriage is that we did not abjure and have accreted blessings.
Abjure means to give up rights on oath, renounce, or recant. It came to English through Middle French in the early 15th century. The Middle French word was abjurer, and came from the Latin word abjurare. The Latin word was formed from ab-, which means “away”, and jurare, which means “to swear”. (It’s the same word from which we get jury.)

There were times when abjuring our original oath was tempting, and perhaps even a part of our private consideration. There was one time when Dovie and I sat in a rest stop on the Pennsylvania turnpike and considered it. But we decided to persevere, and over time have grown together and stronger in our marriage as a result.

And also as a result we have accreted recondite benisons. Accrete is a back formation of accretion, which came to English in the 1610s from the Latin word accretionem. Accretionem is “a noun of action” and means “a growing larger.” Accrete means to grow by being added to, or to grow together, or adhere. I think all three definitions apply to our marriage.

Anniversary part 1

There were those who thought it would be fugacious and frangible, but it has turned out to be irrefragably puissant. It is not a litote to say that its multifarious efflorescence has been supernal rather than specious. We did not abjure and as a result have accreted recondite benisons.

I’m writing, of course, about that which Dovie and I celebrate today: 29 years of marriage. There is much which can and should be said about the spending of half my life (so far; the percentage will now begin to exceed that mark) with my sweetheart, and much which need not be revisited. But as we look at the above paragraph it will have to suffice for this year’s description. (And it will take two blogs. It would fill a book to adequately describe these 29 years.)

It was on our wedding day that a quondam girlfriend of mine approached me to say that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t tell me her concern that we were being rash and that the marriage wouldn’t last. (Quondam means former or at one time, and came in the 1530s directly from the Latin word quondam that means formerly.) She didn’t use the words fugacious or frangible, but that’s what she meant.

Fugacious came to English in the 1630s from the Latin word fugax, from which we also get fugitive. Fugax means to flee. Fugacious means fleeting or passing away quickly, ephemeral.

Frangible arrived in English in the mid-15th century from the Middle French word frangible, which came from the Middle Latin word frangibilis, which developed from the Latin word frangere, which means “to break”. It means breakable or fragile. So how is it different from fragile (and which is the “good word” for this meaning)? My dictionary has one of those wonderful usage paragraphs after fragile that explains the difference:

Fragile implies such delicacy of structure as to be easily broken…; frangible adds to this the connotation of liability to being broken because of the use to which the thing is put…; brittle implies such inelasticity as to be easily broken or shattered by pressure or a blow…; crisp suggests a desirable sort of brittleness…; friable is applied to something that is easily crumbled or crushed into powder.

Back to our marriage. It has been irrefragably puissant. The -frag- in irrefragable comes from the same Latin word, fragere, as frangible; the actual Late Latin word is irrefragabilis. So we know that frag means break. The ir- means “not” and the refragabilis means to oppose or contest. So irrefragable, when it came to English in the 1530s, meant cannot be contested or refuted. It still does.

Puissant (pronounced pyoo-is-ent or pwis-nt) means powerful or strong, and comes to English from Middle French (again in the mid-15th century). The Middle French word puissant came from an earlier form, poissant, which was derived from the stem word for “being able”, poeir. It’s the word from which we get the word power. Our marriage has had surprising puissance.

One Step Over the Line

Time to discuss some words that have similar but different meanings. What’s the good word for different usages? Today, let’s look at encroach, infringe and impinge.

Infringe means “to break (a law or agreement); fail to observe the terms of; violate.” But I’ve almost never heard the word used without the addition of “on”, and when that happens the meaning changes slightly to “to break in on; encroach or trespass on (the rights, patents, etc. of others.)”


Infringe comes from the Latin infringere, which means to break off, impair, or violate. It came to English in the mid-15th century, and meant to break off for centuries. It wasn’t until 1760 that the usage (with “on”) occurred. At that point it was similar or synonymous with encroach.


Impinge means either “to strike, hit or dash, or to touch (on or upon), or have an effect (like an idea that impinges on one’s mind” or, secondly, to “make inroads or encroach (on or upon the property or rights of another).”


Impinge also comes from Latin, from impingere, which comes from in-, meaning in, and pangere, meaning to strike. Pangere comes from an IndoEuropean base word from which we get the word fang, although etymonline.com suggests it more closely aligns with impact (as in impacted teeth). It came to English in the 1530s, but as with infringe didn’t take the second meaning (of encroach) until 1758. There’s no indication of whether the encroaching taxation dispute between the colonies and England had an influence on the changing usage of either of these words.


Speaking of encroaching, encroach means to trespass or intrude especially in a gradual or sneaking way. It also means to advance beyond the proper, original, or customary limits; make inroads (in or upon).


Encroach comes from the Old French word encrochier, where the en- means in and croche refers to a hook. It was brought into Middle English as encrochen. It is the oldest English word of the three, having arrived in the early 14th century, and even developed the sense of trespass in the 1530s, about the time the word impinge arrived.


So what’s the good word today? Infringe, almost always used with “on”, means to intellectually or legally overstep someone else’s rights. Encroach has a more physical meaning. (If you sneak over a line, you encroach, you don’t infringe.) Impinge is a more active and quick word for infringe, which could be gradual. Encroach can be quick or gradual.


This shouldn’t have infringed on your day too much, and certainly didn’t impinge, although something may have impinged your mind. Nothing would have encroached, but be careful that you don’t encroach on another lane as you drive today; you wouldn’t want to be struck or dashed off the road and have to find out what law might infringe your freedom.

Celebrate Undependence Day!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. So says the Declaration of Independence in its second paragraph.

Or does it say inalienable? The inalienable/unalienable issue dogged even Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration.

The website ushistory.org/declaration/unalienable has as in-depth a treatise on the subject as I’ve seen. It explains that even Jefferson wavered between in- and un-, having used the former in several of his drafts of the document, but settling on the latter for the final parchment copy, which is on display in Washington, D.C.

The website quotes a footnote in the book “The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas” by Carl Lotus Becker, which was published in 1922:

The Rough Draft reads "[inherent &] inalienable." There is no indication that Congress changed "inalienable" to "unalienable"; but the latter form appears in the text in the rough Journal, in the corrected Journal, and in the parchment copy. John Adams, in making his copy of the Rough Draft, wrote " unalienable." Adams was one of the committee which supervised the printing of the text adopted by Congress, and it may have been at his suggestion that the change was made in printing.

So what’s the difference? USHistory.org quotes The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style from Houghton Mifflin Company as saying there is no difference.

Etymonline.com only acknowledges inalienable, saying it was used first in the 1640s. My dictionary doesn’t list unalienable except in the list of un-prefix words. It defines inalienable as that which cannot be taken away. Dictionary.com lists them as synonyms.

According to http://www.gemworld.com/USA-Unalienable, which cites chapter and verse of legal precedent:

You can surrender, sell or transfer inalienable rights if you consent either actually or constructively. Inalienable rights are not inherent in man and can be alienated by government. Persons have inalienable rights. Most state constitutions recognize only inalienable rights.

Using substantial legal reference, radio host Alfred Adask writes on his website http://adask.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/unalienable-vs-inalienable/

Clearly, the words are not synonymous. While “inalienable” rights can’t be “lawfully” transferred “to another,” they might nevertheless be waived by the holder or perhaps “unlawfully” (privately??) “transferred” to someone else. However, those rights which are “unalienable” are absolutely incapable of being transferred lawfully, unlawfully, administratively, privately or by implication or operation of law.

My research online has indicated that the sites making the most vociferous contention that there is a substantial difference are conservative or libertarian (at best). One site had a comment that said it should be un-a-lien-a-ble, with the emphasis of pronunciation on the lien (one syllable as in the claim to property, not lee-en as in alien). Others suggest the difference between the two is a comment on the source – that inalienable rights come from man, unalienable ones come from God. I found a lot that could only be substantiated through other blogs or couldn’t be substantiated at all.

The prefix difference, if you don’t remember, is covered in “Be Ept”, my blog for December 26, 2009.

Is there a difference? It is not the intent of this blog to weigh in politically, only in usage, and whether there was any usage difference in the 18th century I cannot say. It could be that the prefix was changed to be American rather than English, but the best explanations of the difference legally I cite above. It made a difference to the patriots of 1776, and that’s good enough for me. It is unalienable rights in the declaration, and those are what I celebrate today.

World Cup Soccer

I was getting online to check my fantasy baseball team, and the lead story was by Martin Rogers of Yahoo sports. It was a column on the etymology of the word soccer. Some of you may think that Americans call it soccer to distinguish it from American Football and that the term soccer is an American invention.

On the contrary. According to Rogers’ article:

To trace the origin of “soccer” we must go all the way back to 1863, and a meeting of gentlemen at a London pub, who congregated with the purpose of standardizing the rules of “football,” which was in its infant years as an organized sport but was growing rapidly in popularity.

Those assembled became the founding members of the Football Association (which still oversees the game in England to this day). And they decided to call their code Association Football, to differentiate it from Rugby Football.

A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. [Clive Toye, the founder of the North American Soccer League, explained] “They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer. So there you are."

So the term is English. My online resource, etymonline.com, adds that in 1889 it was spelled socca, in 1891 it was spelled socker, and in 1895 took the current spelling. Then etymonline.com makes an unusual aside for a scholarly resource: “they hardly could have taken the first three letters of Assoc.”

Games where a ball is kicked around, like soccer and rugby, have existed since Roman times, and kicking a ball around was known to take place during the Han dynasty in China (2nd century B.C.). In 1331 King Edward III passed a law to suppress the playing of the game, which had become more akin to jousting than sport. The first recorded game was in 1409, and by 1424 Scotland had a statute forbidding its play. Reference to the ball itself didn’t come until 1486, and by 1630 the game had reached great popularity in England.

Historyofsports.net recounts a different series of events leading to the name soccer:

In 1815, the renowned English school, Eton College, laid down a code of conduct regarding football for other schools and universities to follow. This set of rules came to be known as Cambridge Rules, which were diligently followed by most of the educational institutions by 1848. Football was now divided into two separate games - those who followed the Cambridge rules and those who followed the rules laid down by the Rugby school. The Rugby school allowed shoving, tripping, shin kicking and using hands while handling the ball.

On October 26th, 1863, eleven clubs in London sent their body of eminent members for a federation meeting in the Freemason’s Tavern to streamline a single set of fundamental rules that would govern the matches played amongst them. The meeting was quite eventful, as it led to the creation of The Football Association. The Rugby school did not agree with the outcome and so there was a split on December 8th, 1863, where the Rugby Football and The Football Association parted ways. The Football Association laid down strict rules in 1869, which discouraged any kind of handling of the ball. This laid down the norm of the basic rule of Soccer that is the essence of the modern game.

So for those of you still watching the World Cup even though England, the United States, and Mexico have been eliminated, now you know it’s acceptable and even historical to call it soccer. (You may feel like socking the refs.)