But back to the original subject: Buckley’s words.
Anaphora – the rhetorical device of repeating the same phrase at the beginning of verses, sentences, or paragraphs. It comes through Latin from Greek. Anaphora in Greek means “a carrying back”. It was first used in English in the 1580s.
Since we're on the subject of rhetorical devices, allow me another diversion from the subject. A friend recently forwarded to me an email about the word paraprosdokian phrases, which are phrases with an unexpected final word. Wikipedia lists one example as a quote from Will Rogers: “I belong to no organized party; I’m a Democrat.” (There are a number of them listed, and the email contained a list of them, too. Check them out if you need a chuckle.)
The interesting thing about the word paraprosdokian is that, while listed in Wikipedia as a figure of speech, it is not found in my dictionary or in dictionary.com or in etymonline.com. On July 21, 2008, socyberty.com cites its etymology as coming from the Greek prefix para- (meaning above or beyond) and prosdokian, meaning expectation. Later on it says “When a paraprosdokian is particularly good it will change the meaning of the first part of a phrase by playing on a word’s potential double meaning. This can create what is known as a syllepsis. This is where the primary verb of a sentence can change meaning according to the other words in the sentence.” (Read more: http://socyberty.com/languages/in-pursuit-of-the-perfect-paraprosdokian/#ixzz10dy95hhV.)
Syllepsis also comes to English through Latin originally from Greek, without any change in spelling. In Greek syn- is the root prefix and means “together”, while the word lepsis means “a taking”. So, a word taken together in describing two or more words though it can only agree with one is a syllepsis. My dictionary uses as an example “either they or I am wrong.” Socyberty uses an example from Alanis Morisette.
Back to paraprosdokian. Google produced about 26,400 results when searching for the word, so it’s all over the internet, even if not in my dictionary or etymological resources. I found a resource, www.writing.com, that had an entry from 2005 and literaryzone.com/?p=32 had an entry from 2007, but other than the three mentioned here all of the first 40 search results that had dates were from 2010, so I have concluded this is a relatively new word. Where did it come from?
Someone else will need to do more research to ultimately determine where the word come from. It seems to have appeared recently, and is likely a combining of two Greek words. In Michael Fontaine’s book, “Funny Words in Plautine Comedy”, published by Oxford University Press in 2010, he writes “Ancient theorists call this facetious and sudden reversal of expectations a para prosdokian (Greek para prosdokian, Latin praeter exspectationem, ‘contrary to expectation, surprise turn, switcheroo’.)” Discussions of classical literature have numerous references to the phrase para prosdokian (two separate Greek words). It seems that only recently have the words been combined into one and become descriptive of the same technique in English comedy as was used frequently in classical Greek and even in Shakespeare. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do.
Speaking of comedy, there is a great site called Uncyclopedia, and a wonderful “history” of Paraprosdokian that I highly encourage you read. (It alters Rogers’ phrase at the beginning by saying Paraprosdokian was not a citizen of any organized nation – he was Greek. Another line – “He was a skilled archer, although he did occasionally miss his wife.”)
More on Buckley's words on Sunday...
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Sesquipedalian Buckley Part I
I was reading a copy of National Review this week and came across the following in a review by Mona Charon of a book about William F. Buckley (the title of which begins with “Athwart History” and ends with “Omnibus” 14 words later:
Bill Buckley is perhaps best remembered as the leading sesquipedalian columnist in America. Though this became fodder for late-night comedy and even a Disney movie portrayal, it’s worth pausing to consider the sniper-like precision with which he deployed his prodigious vocabulary….Describing Oliver North’s star turn before the congressional committee investigating Iran/Contra, he noted that a minority of viewers came away determined to punish North’s “contumacious bravura.” That sums it up.
Your humble reviewer confesses that she cheerfully turned to the dictionary several times in the course of reading these essays and learned that “supernal” means celestial or heavently (Bill Buckley knew a lot of words about heaven), that “anaphora” refers to the rhetorical device of repeating the same phrase at the beginning of several verses, sentences, or paragraphs (used in reference to Jesse Jackson), and that “velleity” is the lowest level of volition. “Psephologists” study election returns.
Do you know what a “palinode” is? No, it’s not a paean to the former governor of Alaska….Webster’s had is. “1: An ode or song recanting or retracting something in an earlier poem. 2: a formal retraction.”
Let’s begin to inspect the words from this short excerpt. It will take all of this week.
Sesquipedalian – while I mentioned it on Jan. 3, along with its transmogrified (see Mar. 17 blog) form hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist, I’ve never gone through the research on it that I do with most words. I also reread the blog from Sept. 1 and to my surprise I didn’t even make reference to it there. The word has quite a distinguished history, having been used by Horace in his Ars Poetica, a poetic treatise on poetry. In lines 96-97 you find the phrase containing the first known use of the word:
The phrase, for those of you not fluent in Latin, was translated in 2005 by A.S. Kline as:
And Latin was good enough for people until 1615, when it was first used in English. The Latin word comes from two words: sesqui- and pes. Sesqui- is a prefix meaning 50% more, and pes is the Latin word for the length of a foot. So the literal translation is “foot-and-a-half” and in Horace’s use refers to uerba, or words, so it is a foot-and-a-half long adjective used to describe foot-and-a-half long words.
Horace’s tongue-in-cheek usage is the same way it is used today. And if you really want to express the pedantry (see Jan. 18 blog) of long words, add prefixes like hyper- (over, beyond, extra) and poly- (many, a lot), to syllabic (referring to syllables) and combine it with sesquipedalian to get an even longer word describing long words, hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalian.
On Wednesday we’ll get to other words from the review of Buckley’s essays. Stay tuned.
Bill Buckley is perhaps best remembered as the leading sesquipedalian columnist in America. Though this became fodder for late-night comedy and even a Disney movie portrayal, it’s worth pausing to consider the sniper-like precision with which he deployed his prodigious vocabulary….Describing Oliver North’s star turn before the congressional committee investigating Iran/Contra, he noted that a minority of viewers came away determined to punish North’s “contumacious bravura.” That sums it up.
Your humble reviewer confesses that she cheerfully turned to the dictionary several times in the course of reading these essays and learned that “supernal” means celestial or heavently (Bill Buckley knew a lot of words about heaven), that “anaphora” refers to the rhetorical device of repeating the same phrase at the beginning of several verses, sentences, or paragraphs (used in reference to Jesse Jackson), and that “velleity” is the lowest level of volition. “Psephologists” study election returns.
Do you know what a “palinode” is? No, it’s not a paean to the former governor of Alaska….Webster’s had is. “1: An ode or song recanting or retracting something in an earlier poem. 2: a formal retraction.”
Let’s begin to inspect the words from this short excerpt. It will take all of this week.
Sesquipedalian – while I mentioned it on Jan. 3, along with its transmogrified (see Mar. 17 blog) form hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist, I’ve never gone through the research on it that I do with most words. I also reread the blog from Sept. 1 and to my surprise I didn’t even make reference to it there. The word has quite a distinguished history, having been used by Horace in his Ars Poetica, a poetic treatise on poetry. In lines 96-97 you find the phrase containing the first known use of the word:
…cum pauper et exul uterque
proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia uerba,
The phrase, for those of you not fluent in Latin, was translated in 2005 by A.S. Kline as:
One exiled, one a beggar, lament in common prose,
Eschewing bombast, and sesquipedalian words,
And Latin was good enough for people until 1615, when it was first used in English. The Latin word comes from two words: sesqui- and pes. Sesqui- is a prefix meaning 50% more, and pes is the Latin word for the length of a foot. So the literal translation is “foot-and-a-half” and in Horace’s use refers to uerba, or words, so it is a foot-and-a-half long adjective used to describe foot-and-a-half long words.
Horace’s tongue-in-cheek usage is the same way it is used today. And if you really want to express the pedantry (see Jan. 18 blog) of long words, add prefixes like hyper- (over, beyond, extra) and poly- (many, a lot), to syllabic (referring to syllables) and combine it with sesquipedalian to get an even longer word describing long words, hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalian.
On Wednesday we’ll get to other words from the review of Buckley’s essays. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Small but Growing
Last week I was telling someone about my ancestry, and about how fecund my ancestors were. I had to look up the word to make sure I used it correctly. It was as recent as my grandfather’s generation for whom the adjective fecund is appropriate. My father was one of at six children (Lucille, Vernon, Lenora, Kernan, and Naomi I’ve met; one other died as a young child.) Fecund means fruitful or fertile, prolific or productive.
Fecund came to English in the early 15th century from Old French. The Old French word fecond came from the Latin word fecundus. The speculation is that the word came to Latin from a primitive indo-european root word that means “to suck or suckle”. According to my dictionary the root word is the one from which we get the word fetus.
A similar good word is superfetation. I think I came across the word superfetation when the Octomom was in the headlines. Superfetation is the fertilization of an ovum during a pregnancy already in existence. The word immediately above superfetation in my dictionary is the word superfecundation, which refers to the fertilization of more than one ovum at separate times during the same ovulation period.
Since fecund and superfetation didn’t take much space, let’s turn our attention elsewhere after a pregnant pause…
“Singularly unique” (a wonderful redundancy again), according to Wikipedia, dreamt “and its derivatives are the only English words that end in mt.” And “there are only two words in English that end -shion (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion.” (Words like pincushion and refashion are just derivative forms of these words.)
“There are only three common English words ending in -cion. These are coercion, scion, and suspicion (another is the less-common cion).”
Boldface and feedback are the shortest words that contain all the letters from a to f. There is probably no common English word that contains all letters a through g.
And with that I’m finished with the Wikipedia entry on unusual words. If you want more you’ll have to do the research for yourself.
This makes for a short entry today, but it’s longer than last Wednesday’s entry.
Fecund came to English in the early 15th century from Old French. The Old French word fecond came from the Latin word fecundus. The speculation is that the word came to Latin from a primitive indo-european root word that means “to suck or suckle”. According to my dictionary the root word is the one from which we get the word fetus.
A similar good word is superfetation. I think I came across the word superfetation when the Octomom was in the headlines. Superfetation is the fertilization of an ovum during a pregnancy already in existence. The word immediately above superfetation in my dictionary is the word superfecundation, which refers to the fertilization of more than one ovum at separate times during the same ovulation period.
Since fecund and superfetation didn’t take much space, let’s turn our attention elsewhere after a pregnant pause…
“Singularly unique” (a wonderful redundancy again), according to Wikipedia, dreamt “and its derivatives are the only English words that end in mt.” And “there are only two words in English that end -shion (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion.” (Words like pincushion and refashion are just derivative forms of these words.)
“There are only three common English words ending in -cion. These are coercion, scion, and suspicion (another is the less-common cion).”
Boldface and feedback are the shortest words that contain all the letters from a to f. There is probably no common English word that contains all letters a through g.
And with that I’m finished with the Wikipedia entry on unusual words. If you want more you’ll have to do the research for yourself.
This makes for a short entry today, but it’s longer than last Wednesday’s entry.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Hometown Buffet
Just got back from a visit to Hometown Buffet (HTB). Usually it’s my father’s favorite place to go, so I’ve become a regular at the Turlock HTB, but Dovie and I haven’t gone to the one in Elk Grove for some time. I tried hard not to overeat, or at least to overeat those things that aren’t fattening – a big salad, and a couple of sugar-free cookies for dessert.
One of the things my father usually comments on when we go to HTB is the gulosity of many of the denizens of HTB. Actually, he doesn’t use the word gulosity; in my dictionary it’s listed as a “Now Rare” word, but that’s a matter of volume of use, isn’t it? (I think I’ll begin a campaign to make gulosity less rare – as a word, not as a condition; I wouldn’t want to work in direct opposition to Michelle Obama’s efforts.) Apparently its rarity is cause for it not to be found in either of my favorite online resources. But my dictionary gives us some explanation of its etymology. It comes from the Late Latin word gulositas, which is a form of gulosus, which means gluttonous. The word gulosus comes from the Latin word gula, from which we also get the word gullet. Gulosity has come to mean greediness, especially in relation to food.
Another good word that applies at HTB (okay, to me at HTB) is inspissate. Inspissate came to English the same year the Pilgrims came to America, 1620. It, too, is formed from Late Latin words, in this case in- and spissare, which means “to thicken”. Inspissate still means to thicken, usually by evaporation (not in my case, though). A synonym would be condense.
While we’re on the topic, we might as well go to France and come back with embonpoint. Embonpoint came to English from French before the Pilgrims came from England. In the 16th century the Old French phrase en bon point, which means “in good condition” was adopted into English. Not long after Henry VIII (a man of great proportions) the word embonpoint was used to refer to those in good condition, which in that time meant not emaciated. By 1751 it came to refer to plumpness, and now my dictionary adds the word corpulence to the definition. There are usually people who are embonpoint at most buffets.
Now, those with embonpoint are not the same who are turgid. Turgid comes from the Latin word turdigus which mean inflated or swollen.
Paradoxically, those who are suffering from malnourishment will often have turgid or distended bellies, but those who have been through the line at HTB more than twice would likely also have turgid bellies. Turgid came into English in the 1610s, and eventually (by 1725) came to be used in reference to language.
If you want to see turgid language, turn to Cspan and watch your government in action. (Or is it inaction?) Or, for more on turgidity in language, you could refer back to my blog of Jan. 31, 2010. It’s not the blog that’s turgid, turgidity is the subject of the blog. Do it before Fat Tuesday...
One of the things my father usually comments on when we go to HTB is the gulosity of many of the denizens of HTB. Actually, he doesn’t use the word gulosity; in my dictionary it’s listed as a “Now Rare” word, but that’s a matter of volume of use, isn’t it? (I think I’ll begin a campaign to make gulosity less rare – as a word, not as a condition; I wouldn’t want to work in direct opposition to Michelle Obama’s efforts.) Apparently its rarity is cause for it not to be found in either of my favorite online resources. But my dictionary gives us some explanation of its etymology. It comes from the Late Latin word gulositas, which is a form of gulosus, which means gluttonous. The word gulosus comes from the Latin word gula, from which we also get the word gullet. Gulosity has come to mean greediness, especially in relation to food.
Another good word that applies at HTB (okay, to me at HTB) is inspissate. Inspissate came to English the same year the Pilgrims came to America, 1620. It, too, is formed from Late Latin words, in this case in- and spissare, which means “to thicken”. Inspissate still means to thicken, usually by evaporation (not in my case, though). A synonym would be condense.
While we’re on the topic, we might as well go to France and come back with embonpoint. Embonpoint came to English from French before the Pilgrims came from England. In the 16th century the Old French phrase en bon point, which means “in good condition” was adopted into English. Not long after Henry VIII (a man of great proportions) the word embonpoint was used to refer to those in good condition, which in that time meant not emaciated. By 1751 it came to refer to plumpness, and now my dictionary adds the word corpulence to the definition. There are usually people who are embonpoint at most buffets.
Now, those with embonpoint are not the same who are turgid. Turgid comes from the Latin word turdigus which mean inflated or swollen.
Paradoxically, those who are suffering from malnourishment will often have turgid or distended bellies, but those who have been through the line at HTB more than twice would likely also have turgid bellies. Turgid came into English in the 1610s, and eventually (by 1725) came to be used in reference to language.
If you want to see turgid language, turn to Cspan and watch your government in action. (Or is it inaction?) Or, for more on turgidity in language, you could refer back to my blog of Jan. 31, 2010. It’s not the blog that’s turgid, turgidity is the subject of the blog. Do it before Fat Tuesday...
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Getting to the Bare Truth
As I was first developing the list of words on which I would blog I was reading a mystery book or story (I don’t remember which) set in Paris, and there were three words used that I’d never encountered: ecdysiast, integuement, and valetudinarian.
The hero of the tale was chasing his nemesis into an establishment where he encountered an ecdysiast. I could tell from the context that the woman referred to as such was engaged in doing a strip-tease. It turns out that the word is relatively recent, being coined in 1940 by H.L. Mencken. He took it from ecdysis, which came from the Greek word ekdysis, which is used specifically of snakes when they shed their skin/integument and means “a stripping or casting off”. So he took a perfectly good word (ecdysis) and sullied it. Shame on him.
Integument is a word that refers to the outer covering of something, like a husk, hull, shell, or skin. The word comes from the Latin word integumetum, formed from in- (in or upon) and tegere (to cover). It’s an old word, having been used in English since the 1610s, but it was new to me.
Another new word to me was valetudinarian. It comes pretty directly from the Latin, from the word valetudinarius. In Latin it referred to someone who is sickly, infirm, or an invalid. Interestingly, the word is formed from the Latin word for strong: valere.
The etymology of the English usage is interesting. It first was used in the 1580s in the adjectival form valetudinary, meaning sickly. In 1703 the word valetudinarian was first used in print, and referred to someone who “is constantly concerned with their own ailments”. It still retains the same meaning, but also has gained the meaning of a sickly person. So whether you’re constantly sick or just constantly concerned with being sick, you’re a valetudinarian.
But what about the adjective? Valetudinary has almost ceased to exist, and the noun valetudinarian now can also be used as an adjective.
A valetudinarian differs from a hypochondriac in that a hypochondriac has an “abnormal anxiety over one’s health, often with imaginary illnesses and severe melancholy.” A valetudinarian may have a lot of anxiety, but the illnesses are not imaginary.
Hypochondriac originally referred to the hypochondrium, which is the area of the abdomen on either side directly below the bottom rib. Hypochondria has a long history, going back to its Greek root word, hypokhondria. In case you care, hypokhondria is a neuter plural word formed from the word hypo- (meaning “under”) and khondros (meaning cartilage of the breastbone). By the time of Late Latin it was spelled By the time of Late Latin it was spelled hypochondria and (according to etymonline.come) reflected the “ancient belief that the viscera of the hypochondria were the seat of melancholy.”
When the word came to English use in 1373 it referred to only the upper abdomen. By 1668 it had fused the ancient belief with a new meaning, and had come to refer to a depression or melancholy without cause. That sense remained and in 1839 gained the additional meaning of any illness alleged that has no cause (or now, any basis in fact).
It still retains the meaning of location, according to the dictionary, but almost all uses I’ve encountered refer to imaginary illnesses.
Better to be a valetudinarian than a hypochondriac (although not by much) and better to be either of those than an ecdysiast.
The hero of the tale was chasing his nemesis into an establishment where he encountered an ecdysiast. I could tell from the context that the woman referred to as such was engaged in doing a strip-tease. It turns out that the word is relatively recent, being coined in 1940 by H.L. Mencken. He took it from ecdysis, which came from the Greek word ekdysis, which is used specifically of snakes when they shed their skin/integument and means “a stripping or casting off”. So he took a perfectly good word (ecdysis) and sullied it. Shame on him.
Integument is a word that refers to the outer covering of something, like a husk, hull, shell, or skin. The word comes from the Latin word integumetum, formed from in- (in or upon) and tegere (to cover). It’s an old word, having been used in English since the 1610s, but it was new to me.
Another new word to me was valetudinarian. It comes pretty directly from the Latin, from the word valetudinarius. In Latin it referred to someone who is sickly, infirm, or an invalid. Interestingly, the word is formed from the Latin word for strong: valere.
The etymology of the English usage is interesting. It first was used in the 1580s in the adjectival form valetudinary, meaning sickly. In 1703 the word valetudinarian was first used in print, and referred to someone who “is constantly concerned with their own ailments”. It still retains the same meaning, but also has gained the meaning of a sickly person. So whether you’re constantly sick or just constantly concerned with being sick, you’re a valetudinarian.
But what about the adjective? Valetudinary has almost ceased to exist, and the noun valetudinarian now can also be used as an adjective.
A valetudinarian differs from a hypochondriac in that a hypochondriac has an “abnormal anxiety over one’s health, often with imaginary illnesses and severe melancholy.” A valetudinarian may have a lot of anxiety, but the illnesses are not imaginary.
Hypochondriac originally referred to the hypochondrium, which is the area of the abdomen on either side directly below the bottom rib. Hypochondria has a long history, going back to its Greek root word, hypokhondria. In case you care, hypokhondria is a neuter plural word formed from the word hypo- (meaning “under”) and khondros (meaning cartilage of the breastbone). By the time of Late Latin it was spelled By the time of Late Latin it was spelled hypochondria and (according to etymonline.come) reflected the “ancient belief that the viscera of the hypochondria were the seat of melancholy.”
When the word came to English use in 1373 it referred to only the upper abdomen. By 1668 it had fused the ancient belief with a new meaning, and had come to refer to a depression or melancholy without cause. That sense remained and in 1839 gained the additional meaning of any illness alleged that has no cause (or now, any basis in fact).
It still retains the meaning of location, according to the dictionary, but almost all uses I’ve encountered refer to imaginary illnesses.
Better to be a valetudinarian than a hypochondriac (although not by much) and better to be either of those than an ecdysiast.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Solving the Mystery
I recently came across three (out of a set of 10) small books with the ambitious title “The World’s Best 100 Detective Stories.” Published in 1929, it came before Dashiell Hammitt and one year after Ellery Queen’s creation. Nonetheless the stories I’ve read so far (two of the three volumes) provide a couple of interesting word mysteries.
The first mystery is: what is the difference between incredible and incredulous? In a story by Karl W. Detzer entitled “The Music of Robert the Devil” the author introduces the title character and states:
“’Robert the Devil?’ Amazed townsfolk stared him down. It was incredulous!”
I would have used the word incredible, having understood that incredible is used of something beyond belief and incredulous is a response of disbelief (whether justified or not). A thing is incredible, whether a fact or a statement, and a person is incredulous (sometimes in response to an incredible statement). At least that’s the way I’ve ordered them in my mind. Let’s see what Mr. Webster says.
The adjectives are defined as: incredible – not credible, unbelievable, and incredulous – unwilling or unable to believe, doubting, skeptical. So my supposition was correct; incredible describes the act, statement, or fact, and incredulous describes the reaction to the act, statement or fact.
According to Webster’s, they come from two different Latin words. Incredible comes from incredibilis, and incredulous comes from incredulus. (I wonder why we added the “o”?) The word incredible came first into English in the early 15th century. It wasn’t until the end of the 16th century (1570 to be exact) that incredulous came aboard, although incredulity arrived at about the same time as incredible.
Incredulity, the unwillingness or inability to believe, came from the French word incrédulité, which came from the Latin incredulitatem, the qualitative noun form of incredulous.
So you may be incredible, but you’re more likely to be incredulous. And something someone else says may be incredible, but it can’t be incredulous. It can be said with incredulity, or incredulously, but only a person can be incredulous.
Another word used in the book was the word is sang-froid. Sang-froid is a good word, and comes from two French words (yes, sang and froid). First used in English in 1712, it refers to a calm presence of mind, or composure, often described as coolness under pressure. In French sang means blood (we have the word sanguinary which comes from the same root) and froid means cold. So the literal translation would be cold-blooded, a phrase mostly used of killers. Sang-froid is often used in a positive sense; I’ve not heard cold-blooded used in anything but a negative sense (except in referring to animals).
The word sang-froid reminded me of another word relating to emotions: angst. Much more popular now than even two decades ago, angst refers to a “gloomy, often neurotic feeling of generalized anxiety and depression.” Used in its original German (Angst) in 1849 by George Eliot, it became more popular as Freud’s works were translated into English. It was considered a foreign word until the 1940s, and my dictionary lists it as a proper noun, while acknowledging that it is often spelled with a lower case “a”.
I suppose the existence of a cold-blooded killer would cause angst until a sang-froid hero catches the killer in an incredible fashion. Although you might be incredulous.
The first mystery is: what is the difference between incredible and incredulous? In a story by Karl W. Detzer entitled “The Music of Robert the Devil” the author introduces the title character and states:
“’Robert the Devil?’ Amazed townsfolk stared him down. It was incredulous!”
I would have used the word incredible, having understood that incredible is used of something beyond belief and incredulous is a response of disbelief (whether justified or not). A thing is incredible, whether a fact or a statement, and a person is incredulous (sometimes in response to an incredible statement). At least that’s the way I’ve ordered them in my mind. Let’s see what Mr. Webster says.
The adjectives are defined as: incredible – not credible, unbelievable, and incredulous – unwilling or unable to believe, doubting, skeptical. So my supposition was correct; incredible describes the act, statement, or fact, and incredulous describes the reaction to the act, statement or fact.
According to Webster’s, they come from two different Latin words. Incredible comes from incredibilis, and incredulous comes from incredulus. (I wonder why we added the “o”?) The word incredible came first into English in the early 15th century. It wasn’t until the end of the 16th century (1570 to be exact) that incredulous came aboard, although incredulity arrived at about the same time as incredible.
Incredulity, the unwillingness or inability to believe, came from the French word incrédulité, which came from the Latin incredulitatem, the qualitative noun form of incredulous.
So you may be incredible, but you’re more likely to be incredulous. And something someone else says may be incredible, but it can’t be incredulous. It can be said with incredulity, or incredulously, but only a person can be incredulous.
Another word used in the book was the word is sang-froid. Sang-froid is a good word, and comes from two French words (yes, sang and froid). First used in English in 1712, it refers to a calm presence of mind, or composure, often described as coolness under pressure. In French sang means blood (we have the word sanguinary which comes from the same root) and froid means cold. So the literal translation would be cold-blooded, a phrase mostly used of killers. Sang-froid is often used in a positive sense; I’ve not heard cold-blooded used in anything but a negative sense (except in referring to animals).
The word sang-froid reminded me of another word relating to emotions: angst. Much more popular now than even two decades ago, angst refers to a “gloomy, often neurotic feeling of generalized anxiety and depression.” Used in its original German (Angst) in 1849 by George Eliot, it became more popular as Freud’s works were translated into English. It was considered a foreign word until the 1940s, and my dictionary lists it as a proper noun, while acknowledging that it is often spelled with a lower case “a”.
I suppose the existence of a cold-blooded killer would cause angst until a sang-froid hero catches the killer in an incredible fashion. Although you might be incredulous.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
More from Wikipedia
Ever heard of a kangaroo word? Wikipedia says "a kangaroo word is a word that contains all letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning. Examples include masculine (male), observe (see) and inflammable (flammable)."
Speaking of that last pair, how can two words that seem to mean the opposite actually mean the same? In- as a prefix should mean “not” (see blog of 12/26/09), but here it doesn’t. Why not? It gets to etymology again. Word-detective.com addresses the inflammable/flammable confusion:
Other words with both similarities and differences are homophones. Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings (like male and mail). Rarely do pairs of homophones have opposite meanings (antonymns). One example of homophones with opposite meanings is raise (to build or rise) and raze (to demolish or push down by force).
The antonyms cleave (to split apart) and cleave (to adhere, or stick together) are homographs (the same spelling) as well as homophones. The words patronize (to support) and patronize (to act condescendingly toward) are also antonym homograph homophones.
This isn’t as unusual as you may think. There are a few English words that have one meaning that is the opposite of another. Wikipedia calls these “ ‘self-antonyms’, ‘auto-antonyms’ or ‘contronyms’. Examples include cleave or clip (joining things together or taking them apart), fast (move quickly or fix in one spot), sanction (to give one's blessing or one's condemnation), enjoin (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done), and ravel (to unravel, to entangle).”
And in the category of “I never noticed that” is the differing spelling of the words blond and blonde. I always spell it blonde, but it turns out that blonde used to be used only in describing women, while blond was used for males. It is common in some languages to decline adjectives, but this is the last remaining adjective in English that has vestiges of declination, and those are growing less as blond is becoming the preferred (some say politically correct) usage for both male and female. Or is it mail and femail?
Speaking of that last pair, how can two words that seem to mean the opposite actually mean the same? In- as a prefix should mean “not” (see blog of 12/26/09), but here it doesn’t. Why not? It gets to etymology again. Word-detective.com addresses the inflammable/flammable confusion:
In the beginning, there was "inflammable," a perfectly nice English word based on the Latin "inflammare," meaning "to kindle," from "in" (in) plus "flamma" (flame). "Inflammable" became standard English in the 16th century. So far, so good.
Comes the 19th century, and some well-meaning soul dreamt up the word "flammable," basing it on a slightly different Latin word, flammare, meaning "to set on fire." There was nothing terribly wrong with "flammable," but it never really caught on. After all, we already had "inflammable," so "flammable" pretty much died out in the 1800's.
"But wait," you say, "I saw 'flammable' just the other day." Indeed you did. "Flammable" came back, one of the few successful instances of social engineering of language….
After World War Two, safety officials on both sides of the Atlantic decided that folks were too likely to see "inflammable" and decide that the word meant "fireproof," so various agencies set about encouraging the revival of "flammable" as a substitute. The campaign seems to have worked, and "inflammable" has all but disappeared.
That left what to call something that was not likely to burst into flames, but here the process of linguistic renovation was easier. "Non-flammable" is a nice, comforting word, and besides, it's far easier on the tongue than its now thankfully obsolete precursor, "non-inflammable."
Other words with both similarities and differences are homophones. Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings (like male and mail). Rarely do pairs of homophones have opposite meanings (antonymns). One example of homophones with opposite meanings is raise (to build or rise) and raze (to demolish or push down by force).
The antonyms cleave (to split apart) and cleave (to adhere, or stick together) are homographs (the same spelling) as well as homophones. The words patronize (to support) and patronize (to act condescendingly toward) are also antonym homograph homophones.
This isn’t as unusual as you may think. There are a few English words that have one meaning that is the opposite of another. Wikipedia calls these “ ‘self-antonyms’, ‘auto-antonyms’ or ‘contronyms’. Examples include cleave or clip (joining things together or taking them apart), fast (move quickly or fix in one spot), sanction (to give one's blessing or one's condemnation), enjoin (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done), and ravel (to unravel, to entangle).”
And in the category of “I never noticed that” is the differing spelling of the words blond and blonde. I always spell it blonde, but it turns out that blonde used to be used only in describing women, while blond was used for males. It is common in some languages to decline adjectives, but this is the last remaining adjective in English that has vestiges of declination, and those are growing less as blond is becoming the preferred (some say politically correct) usage for both male and female. Or is it mail and femail?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Supercalifragil... Long Words
In several August blogs I mentioned the Wikipedia listing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_with_uncommon_properties. There were parts of the listing that made me wonder “Who has time to check these things out?” But since they do, we might as well honor that research:
Looking for odd and unusable information about words and letters? “Faulconbridge is a town in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. The town's name uses half of the alphabet, including all five vowels, and does not use any individual letter twice.”
Not concerned with repetition but trying to avoid double vowels or double consonants? Honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters), Shakespeare's longest word (see August 22), alternates consonants and vowels, as do the slightly more prosaic medical terms hepatoperitonitis and mesobilirubinogen (both 17 letters). The longest such words that are reasonably well known may be overimaginative, parasitological and verisimilitudes (all 15 letters, the last of which will make for a good future blog, to tell the truth). As a country, United Arab Emirates (18 letters) is unsurpassed for length in its vowel/consonant alternation.
Apparently those people who have time and inclination for these kinds of words have developed a few words of their own to describe categories. The word isogram is used to describe a word in which no letter is used more than once. (Remember Faulconbridge?) Uncopyrightable, with fifteen letters, is the longest common isogram.
Speaking of long words, I remember when antidisestablishmentarianism (at 28 letters) was considered the longest word in the dictionary (the dictionary being the Oxford English Dictionary). It has since been overtaken by pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
The history of the p word (known as P45) as recorded in Wikipedia is interesting: “This word was invented in 1935 by Everett M. Smith, president of the National Puzzlers' League, at its annual meeting. The word figured in the headline for an article published by the New York Herald Tribune on February 23, 1935 titled ‘Puzzlers Open 103d Session Here by Recognizing 45-Letter Word’:
“Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis succeeded electrophotomicrographically as the longest word in the English language recognized by the National Puzzlers' League at the opening session of the organization's 103rd semi-annual meeting held yesterday at the Hotel New Yorker. The puzzlers explained that the forty-five-letter word is the name of a special form of silicosis caused by ultra-microscopic particles of silica volcanic dust...”
For purists, the Guinness Book of Records in 1992 (and thereafter) declared floccinaucinihilipilification to be the “longest real word” at 29 letters. F29 (as I call it) is a good word that should get more usage. It refers to “the act or habit of estimating as worthless.” Its first known usage is in 1741 in the Eton Latin Grammar. It is actually a combining of four Latin words used together in a rule, all four words having the meaning of “small price” or “for nothing”. (The words were flocci, nauci, nihili, and pilifi.) The combining of these four words in such a monumental word to describe such a little thing was considered great fun in 1741, the television not having been invented yet.
Looking for odd and unusable information about words and letters? “Faulconbridge is a town in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. The town's name uses half of the alphabet, including all five vowels, and does not use any individual letter twice.”
Not concerned with repetition but trying to avoid double vowels or double consonants? Honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters), Shakespeare's longest word (see August 22), alternates consonants and vowels, as do the slightly more prosaic medical terms hepatoperitonitis and mesobilirubinogen (both 17 letters). The longest such words that are reasonably well known may be overimaginative, parasitological and verisimilitudes (all 15 letters, the last of which will make for a good future blog, to tell the truth). As a country, United Arab Emirates (18 letters) is unsurpassed for length in its vowel/consonant alternation.
Apparently those people who have time and inclination for these kinds of words have developed a few words of their own to describe categories. The word isogram is used to describe a word in which no letter is used more than once. (Remember Faulconbridge?) Uncopyrightable, with fifteen letters, is the longest common isogram.
Speaking of long words, I remember when antidisestablishmentarianism (at 28 letters) was considered the longest word in the dictionary (the dictionary being the Oxford English Dictionary). It has since been overtaken by pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
The history of the p word (known as P45) as recorded in Wikipedia is interesting: “This word was invented in 1935 by Everett M. Smith, president of the National Puzzlers' League, at its annual meeting. The word figured in the headline for an article published by the New York Herald Tribune on February 23, 1935 titled ‘Puzzlers Open 103d Session Here by Recognizing 45-Letter Word’:
“Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis succeeded electrophotomicrographically as the longest word in the English language recognized by the National Puzzlers' League at the opening session of the organization's 103rd semi-annual meeting held yesterday at the Hotel New Yorker. The puzzlers explained that the forty-five-letter word is the name of a special form of silicosis caused by ultra-microscopic particles of silica volcanic dust...”
For purists, the Guinness Book of Records in 1992 (and thereafter) declared floccinaucinihilipilification to be the “longest real word” at 29 letters. F29 (as I call it) is a good word that should get more usage. It refers to “the act or habit of estimating as worthless.” Its first known usage is in 1741 in the Eton Latin Grammar. It is actually a combining of four Latin words used together in a rule, all four words having the meaning of “small price” or “for nothing”. (The words were flocci, nauci, nihili, and pilifi.) The combining of these four words in such a monumental word to describe such a little thing was considered great fun in 1741, the television not having been invented yet.
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