Work Your Abs Part One

Many people are thinking these days of the resolutions they will institute on January 1 and break on January 2. I’m thinking I’ll begin the year working on my abs. (For you Latin scholars, a little joke: you may wonder when I’ll get off my abs.)

First, I’ll do my morning ablutions (and discover the difference between morning ablutions and morning constitution), then I’ll work on the difference between abscond and absquatulate. Then I’ll be abstemious, and maybe all this is facetious.

Yes, the abs I’m working on are words that begin with ab-. I reencountered the word ablutions while reading the Bret Harte book The Luck of Roaring Camp some time ago. The first interesting thing about the word is that I have rarely seen it used in its singular form: ablution. An ablution is a cleansing with water or other liquid (I suppose those hand gels that are ubiquitous in hospitals qualify). Ablutions are washing of hands, face, etc. The word came to English directly from Latin in the late 14^th century. The closest word is ablutionem, the nominative form of which is ablution, in case you’re wondering. It is described by etymonline.com as a noun of action, from the past participle stem of the word abluere, which means to wash off and is formed from the addition of the prefix ab- , which means off (see Latin joke above), to the word luere, which means wash.

A phrase I associate with ablutions is morning constitutional. It is more difficult to find meanings for phrases, and after well over four minutes of searching online I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory etymology for the phrase “morning constitution”. (Several sites repeated a reference to walking that also included a reference to a “bowl” movement. Since they repeated the misspelling of bowel, I assume it was a cut and paste of someone’s original mistake. Or maybe I need to do a post on the difference between bowl and bowel….) So, without a phrase etymology, let’s look at the word etymologies to see what can be found.

The word constitution came to English in the mid-14^th century in reference to laws or edicts. It came from the Old French word constitucion, which they got from the Latin word constitutionem. Constitutionem is the act of settling, or a setting condition or regulation, order or ordinance. By the 1550s the word constitution began to refer to physical health, as in the phrase “she’s got a strong constitution.” In the 1680s the adjective constitutional developed, originally pertaining to a person’s physical or mental constitution. Since there is a healthy argument over whether it is better to work out in the morning or evening it is necessary to refer to that which is beneficial to your physical constitution as your morning constitutional. (The use of the phrase to refer to excretion is recent; I have heard it only since the 1970s.)

So you may wish to do your morning ablutions after your morning constitutional. More abs next week; I'm not giving up on them on Jan. 2.

Pedantic Night Before Christmas

One crepuscular Christmas, when all through the house

Every creature quiescent, and even the mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there

The children immured all snug in their beds,

Soporific encomiums danced in their heads.

And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such plangency,

I sprang up in all etiological urgency.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave effulgence of midday to objects below

When, to my meiosis of mind should irrupt,

And eight reindeer, diminutive sleigh, interrupt.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now Myrmidons! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the roof recrudescent they flew,
Gallimaufry of rapine, St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.
In a cuirass of fur, from his head to his foot,
He’s a tatterdemalion of culm and of soot,
A surfeit of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how coruscate! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard was as hoary and white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it was gyred round his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a tumescent belly,
When he laughed it would welter, like a bowlful of jelly!

Inspissate and plump, a fey, jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
With his finger alongside his aquiline nose

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

On his Gadarene trip like the down of a thistle.

But I heard his chiasma, his hegira in sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

One of Sir Winston Churchill’s most famous quotes comes from an October 1939 speech: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

The 1960s television show Batman gives Churchill homage when The Riddler says “It’s a mystery. Broken into a jigsaw puzzle. Wrapped in a conundrum. Hidden in a Chinese box. A riddle.” The quote has been adapted multiple times in common culture.

In 2008 a New York Times article on the disappearance of fortune cookies from restaurants in China had the title “Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie.” Seinfeld has Elaine saying “Maybe he’s an enigma – a mystery wrapped in a riddle.” To which Jerry replies “He’s a mystery wrapped in a Twinkie.” But my favorite is from The Fifth Elephant. When one character mimics the Churchill quote another, named Sergeant Colon, misinterprets the quote later to be “a misery wrapped in an enema.” (Thanks to tvtropes.org for these and many more examples.)

Mystery, conundrum, and enigma are all odd words, unlike many others  unless you’re Sergeant Colon. Mystery is one of the most common non-adverb words to use two “y”s; conundrum (with panjandrum) just sounds funny, and enigma has vowels beginning and ending the word with the odd gm in the middle. Where did these oddly constructed words come from and what’s the difference between them?

Mystery came to English through the church in the early 14^th century. It originally referred to (according to etymonline.com) “religious truth via divine revelation, hidden spiritual significance, mystical truth” The path it took was through Anglo-French (misterie), Old French (mistere), and/or Modern French (mystère) from the Latin mysterium, which refers to a secret rite or secret worship or secret thing, and eventually from the Greek word myterion or its plural mysteria that refers to a secret rite or doctrine. When the Old Testament was first translated into Greek, the word was used to describe the “secret counsel of God”, and was translated into Latin (in the Vulgate version) as sacramentum. So the word has a religious connotation that the others do not.

By the late 14^th century  the word came to broader English use to describe anything hidden or secret. Since the development of the detective story (attributed substantially to Poe) the term is now a genre, but wasn’t used for that genre until 1908.

Conundrum came into use in the 1590s, when at Oxford University they were looking for a slang word to use to describe a pedant. It is also spelled quonundrum, and is described by etymonline.com as a “ponderous pseudo-Latin word”.  One dictionary defines it as a riddle with a pun or play on words involved, and uses as an example the riddle “What is black and white and red/read all over? A newspaper.” Use conundrum when there is some humor involved in the riddle.

Enigma also comes from Greek and Latin. Its Greek root word is ainigma, which is from ainos, the word for a fable or riddle. The Latin word that came from ainigma is ænigma. While in the mid-15^th century the word enigmate was being used in English, it was in the 1580s that enigma appeared.

Enigma has the broadest definition, and can define a situation, an individual, or a saying, question or picture that has a hidden meaning. It is also the name given to the German code-making machine used through World War II.

Use enigma in general, mystery particularly with detective stories or religious rites, and conundrum with humor.  Don’t be, as Raymond described his brother Robert on the television show Everybody Loves Raymond “an idiot wrapped in a moron.”

Not a Uxorial Salute

When I began this string of blog posts on words found in a couple recently read books I thought it would take a couple of posts. Here we are on the third, and final, post on the subject.

I’ve been eager to get to the word uxorious, which was used by P.D. James in her mystery The Private Patient. It’s a glorious word, because it is an adjective used to describe someone who dotes upon or is “foolishly” fond of or “affectionately submissive” toward their wife. There are several pejorative phrases used because people don’t know this word, the most acceptable of which is “hen-pecked.”

Uxorious came to English long ago, in the 1590s, from the Latin word uxorius. Uxor is the Latin word for wife, and uxorius means “of or pertaining to the wife.” In 1800 the word uxorious was used as the formation of the nicer word uxorial, which simply means what the original Latin word meant: of or pertaining to the wife. Then, with two words already in English, and apparently in response to a high-profile incident, the word uxoricide was coined in 1854 to describe the murder of one’s wife.

So, the good word is uxorial, the bad word is uxorious. In fact, the bad word might be minatory.

Minatory is an adjective that means threatening or menacing. It came to English around 1530, either from the Old (or Middle; there’s some dissension) French minatoire, or directly from the Late Latin minatorius, which means threaten. Why do we have three words (threatening, menacing, and minatory) that mean the same thing? There are four likely reasons: 1. Threatening and menacing are adjective forms of verbs. Minatory came to English as an adjective, 2. Different sources (threaten came from Old English, menace from Anglo-French, and Minatory from Late Latin), 3. Using minatory is an opportunity to show your pedantic abilities, or 4. They had slightly different meanings (menace had a sense of urging that the others don’t; threaten a sense of ominous foreboding, and minatory was more purely negative).

The other two words picked up from this source are mullion and salubrious.

Mullions are the vertical pieces between windows, doors, screens, etc. It is a structural support piece, not a decorative separation. It came to English in the 1560s from the Middle English word moyniel, which came from the Anglo-French moinel, which came from the Old French word meien, which means mean (as in intermediate).

Salubrious is a good adjective for that which promotes health. Diets can be salubrious, spring waters have been considered salubrious, as has mountain air. Salubrious has been used in English since the 1540s, when it was adopted from the Latin word salubris that has the same meaning.

In case you’re wondering, our word salute comes from the same Latin source word, salus. The Latin word salutare (from which we got salute in the late 1300s) literally means “wish health to.” By the beginning of the 1400s the gesture or utterance of greeting was called a salute. The military (and nautical) meaning of a salute as a display of flags or sound of cannons to mark respect has been used since the 1580s. However, the military sense of a hand salute didn’t come into use as a noun until 1832 or as a verb until 1844. 

So let's salute all those who are not minatory or uxorious. 

Get Your Arsis in Gear

Continuing my effort to get to good words picked up in reading (see last week’s blog), there is a good word that sounds familiar, but was unknown to me: hypostatize. It can also be spelled, especially in Britain, hypostatize. It has been a difficult word for me to wrap my mind around, so it will get a few more words of description than I normally give.

Hypostatize means to take an idea or a concept (usually) and consider it to be real, or to take something insubstantial and consider it to have substance. One dictionary contains the definition of personify or embody. Its meaning can be better understood by considering its related adjective hypostatic, which in genetics is used in reference to a nonallelic gene that is masked by another gene. In Medicine hypostatic refers to the condition of hypostasis, and in theology hypostatic refers to a distinct personal being or substance. Hypostatic came into use in English in the 1670s from the Greek word hypostatikos that means pertaining to substance and is equivalent to hypostat, which means “placed under, given support.” But the original form of the word is hypostasis, a noun form, which came into use in the 1580s. (The verb form hypostatize didn’t start being used in English until the 1820s.) In medicine it refers to an accumulation of blood. But in theology it is used either of one of the members of the trinity (the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit) or of the binary nature of Christ, which is both human and divine. In metaphysics it refers to that which is foundational or essential. So in general, it is a foundational idea, the accumulation or combination of something essential.

That is very different from hypothesize, which means to form a hypothesis or assumption (or just a guess). Hypothesis is the noun, hypothesize the verb, and hypothetical the adjective. The adjective form came into English first, from the Greek word hypothetikos, then the noun form came into English in the 1590s, and because it had to come through the Middle French word hypothese from the Late Latin word hypothesis, which came from the Greek word hypothesis. Those silly French, who couldn’t leave it alone! The Greek root word meant the basis of an argument or a supposition, and literally translated is “a placing under”, hypo- meaning under and thesis meaning a placing, or a proposition.

Yes, our word thesis came originally from the Greek, but through Latin. In Latin thesis referred to the unaccented syllable in poetry, and later to the stressed syllable, but the Greek thesis always referred to a proposition placing of an idea. It also referred to the downbeat musically, which makes sense to this musician. While it entered English in the late 1300s, it has come to expand beyond the meaning of a proposition to a subject for a composition or essay, and even more commonly for a dissertation as proposed for a degree. (My wife did a thesis for her Master’s degree. I’m not that smart.)

However, I am a musician, and only in researching this thesis today did I learn about the thesis use in music. And the good word arsis, as opposed to thesis. Arsis refers to the upbeat in music, the non-stressed beat. For some reason poetry has it backward from music. In poetry the thesis is the non-stressed part of the meter, the arsis the stressed; in music the thesis is the stressed downbeat and the arsis the unstressed upbeat.  

It is not to be used in the phrase “get your arsis in gear”.

Words from The Plague and The Patient

I noticed the title to a recently rebroadcast episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent: Palimpsest. I ran across the word in two books I’ve read this year, also: In the Wake of the Plague, an interesting book by Norman F. Cantor, and The Private Patient, an enjoyable mystery by P.D. James. In fact, each book generated several words for my blog. Along with palimpsest, In the Wake of the Plague gave me words like demesne, hypostatize and salubrious, while The Private Patient generated uxuorious, minatory, mullion, and a few others. We won’t get to all of these this week, but let’s get started.

Palimpsest, the catalytic word, is a noun for a parchment (in particular) or similar document from which writing has been erased to make room for other text. Kind of like those paintings that were painted over another painting, these are documents where words have been removed and other words written over them. With the dawn of technology that allows for correcting texts easily, such palimpsests are less prevalent.

Palimpsest came to English in the 1660s through the Latin palimpsestus from the Greek palimpsestos, which means “scraped again.” The Greek word was formed by combining palin, which means “again” and psen, which refers to the rubbing smooth of something. Palin is also the source word for palindrome, a word that describes a word or phrase that reads the same backwards as it does forwards (like my brother’s name – Bob – or “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.”) Palindrome came to English in the 1620s.

Demesne was an entirely new word to me, perhaps because it came from English feudal law. It was, according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the word used for “that portion of a manor not granted to freehold tenants but either retained by the lord for his own use and occupation or occupied by his villeins or leasehold tenants.” That clears it up, doesn’t it? Dictionary.com defines it as “possession of land as one’s own” primarily, but a second definition is “an estate or part of an estate occupied and controlled by, and worked for the exclusive us of, the owner.” The third definition it gives is “land belonging to and adjoining a manor house.” Back in feudal times, when there were various arrangements by which people worked and lived on land owned by the lord, demesne was land and property not given over to such use.

Demesne came to English sometime around 1300, and was originally spelled demeyne. It came from the Anglo-French word demesne or demeine, which came from the Old French word demaine, which the Old French got from the Latin word dominicus, which means “belonging to a master” and was formed from the root word dominus, which is the word for lord. An interesting note in etymonline.com tells that the word was respelled demesne by the late 15^th century by Anglo-French legal scribes, who were influenced by the Old French word mesnie, which referred to a household, since the concept of demesne referred to land attached to a mansion. But etymonline.com also says that Anglo-French legal scribes (those wild and crazy guys) had a “fondness for inserting –s- before –n-.” 

So why aren’t they Asnglo-Fresnch?

Little Words

I don’t care one whit, not an iota, nary a bit about that, and it’s a tad selfish and a mite foolish of you to bring it up. If you had a smidgen of self-respect… Well, I don’t.

As the highlighted linked words show, we have already discussed whit and iota, but a coworker of mine used the word “tad” this week, and sent me off on this foray into small words about small things. What’s the difference between whit, iota, bit, tad, mite, and smidgen? And does it make a difference which one you use? And what do these words have to do with Abraham Lincoln, pirates, or the Bible?

Let’s start with Lincoln. I knew that President Lincoln referred to his son Thomas as Tad, but I was not aware that he coined the nickname and the word we use to describe a small amount or quantity of something. The speculation is that the President gave his son the nickname “Tad” as a shortened form of tadpole. While Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and “Tad” died in 1871 at age 18, the use of the word tad to describe a small child (especially a boy) is first recorded in 1877. However, it was used only in reference to small children until 1915, the first recorded use in reference to something other than a child. Today it’s primarily used in reference to small amounts, or a bit of something.

Bit, on the other hand, first came into use in English in about 1200, a relative of the Old English words bite, which we still use, and bita, which refers to that which was bitten off. (No reference to it being the past tense of bite yet.) The act of biting is why we use it to describe the piece of a drill that actually does the boring (as opposed to the kind of boring I’m doing right now). That usage developed in the 1590s. And of course, the part of the bridle placed in the horse’s mouth has since the 14^th century been called a bit, since that’s what the horse did with the piece. It wasn’t until after these two usages were in place that the word came to refer to a small amount or a piece of something. (The first use in that sense was about 1600.) Its expansion to refer to time rather than an object took place in the 1650s. And so it remained until 1909 when a small part in a theatrical production came to be known as a bit part.

But there’s one other usage that evokes images of pirates and the bounding main. The Spanish Real was in colonial times the equivalent of today’s US Dollar: an international unit of money. But because the value of a Real was significantly more than many goods, change would be made by dividing or cutting the Real in half or quarters or even into wedges of eighths. An eighth of a Real is one bit, a quarter is two bits, etc. You can still on occasion hear the quarter referred to as “two bits” in the U.S. Because of the proliferation of the coin during the heyday of pirates in the Caribbean, the concept of bits still attends to the image of pirates.

Speaking of coins, the word mite has also come to mean something small. There are several mite words. One refers to a small arachnid, the largest of which grow to be ¼ inch large and the smallest of which are microscopic. But the second mite refers to a Flemish copper coin of such little value that it developed a proverbial use in English to mean a very small amount of money. That is the sense in which John Wycliffe used it in his English Bible translation of the Latin word minutum in Mark 12:42. (It’s also used in Luke 12:59 and Luke 21:2.) The minutum was a translation of the Greek word lepton, which was the smallest coin in use in Palestine during Roman times.  One etylomogy suggests the word mite was a contraction of minutum. One source indicates that a mite was equivalent to six minutes’ work. Not much now, not much then. Just a little bit.

That leaves smidgen, a larger word for a smaller amount. Its first recorded use in English is in 1845, but its etymology is not certain. It could have come from the Scottish word smitch, which referred to both a small or insignificant person or to a small amount. Smitch is found in 1822, so the adoption into English a couple of decades later makes sense. Etymonline.com also suggests it might come from the word smidin, which means small syllable, but I could find no other reference online to smidin.

I find that a bit disconcerting, or a mite odd, or a tad unusual.

Who's Going to Win on Tuesday?

I was reading a story about early voting and how to interpret the numbers when I ran across the word salience. And there it was – my starting point for today’s pre-election blog.

So I went to the dictionary to find the definition of salience is…the state or condition of being salient. (A definition like that is like kissing your sister.) So one must go to the word salient for real understanding. Salient is defined as prominent or conspicuous. It second definition is “projecting or pointing outward”, and the third definition given is “leaping or jumping.” It sounds like a good word for something that “jumps out at you.” In my experience it is generally used in reference to arguments or debate points.

Salient came to English in the 1560s when it was used as a “Heraldic” term for “leaping”. It came from the Latin word salientem. Over a century later (in the 1680s) it developed a military sense of “pointing outward”. I would have thought it a geometric phrase, but I would have been wrong. It wasn’t until the 1840s that it developed the sense of something prominent or striking, although the phrase “salient point” can be traced to the 1670s. Aristotle used the phrase punctum saliens, literally “leaping point” or we might say “point of departure” or “jumping off point.”

The story about early voting also was related to semiotics, the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior. As a philosophy it is usually divided into pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics. But  I think it’s applicable because the media are full of semiotics, in many cases of dueling semiotics as campaign operatives strive to balance their polling, observations, and anecdotal information with what places their candidate(s) in the best position to pick up last minute voters or inspire the base to turn out. There was a link in the aforementioned story to early voting statistics by precinct so you could interpret for yourself whether your candidate has an early advantage or not. It’s that close an election.

Semiotics as a field of study was first used in the 1880s, but the adjective semiotic came to English in the 1620s and meant “of symptoms”. Its use in psychology only dates back to 1923. It came from the Greek word semeiotikos, which meant observant, particularly of signs or symptoms.

Another good word to use in anticipation of the election is latitudinarian. I encountered the word in the book Bunts, by George Will (a book on baseball that I highly recommend). Latitudinarian means “allowing or characterized by latitude in opinion or conduct, especially in religious views.” It is not something you see much during campaigns. When Chris Christie shows latitudinarian attitude toward Obama’s response to the storm Sandy, it was salient, standing out from most of what we’ve been hearing for months. Latitudinarian came to English in the 1660s from the Latin prefix latitudin-, or freedom from narrow restrictions. It was originally used in reference to Epicopalian clergymen who were characterized by their broad-mindedness in doctrinal matters. We get the word latitude from the same Latin root.

Who’s going to win on Tuesday? Using semiotics and watching the salient returns, your guess is as good as mine. Let’s just agree to be latitudinarian, not matter who wins.

A Ghost or a Knight?

If you have read the last two posts you may think I have run the gamut of words about the numerous words about numbers. Unless you noticed that last line on last week’s blog, when I previewed this week’s content. Panoply, range, and spectrum, are not in the same numerical category as some of the other words. There is an element of sight in these words, and while they relate in their descriptiveness of a large amount of something, they also differ.

Panoply is an interesting word. Most people, I dare say, are unaware of its history (unless you’re a hard-core fan of Renaissance Faires).  Panoply’s is primarily used to describe “a wide-ranging and impressive array or display.” But it retains the secondary definition of “a complete suit of armor,” which is how it came to English during the Renaissance, in the 1570s, from the Greek word panoplia, and originally was figurative, due to its derivation from the Greek of Ephesians 6:11, which says “put on the whole armor of God.” (For those of you dressing as knights for Halloween, you’re not in panoply if you’re missing any piece of your armor.) Panoply in Greek is formed by combining pan-, meaning “all”, with hopla, meaning “arms” and the plural of hoplon, the Greek word for tool, weapon or implement. For those of  you who are scholars of ancient Greek military terms, you may be familiar with the word hoplite, which refers to the “heavy-armed foot soldier of ancient Greece” and has been used in English since 1727.

Panoply didn’t develop its current wide-ranging meaning until 1829. My guess is that its first use of this meaning was in a poem by John Neal, called Ode to Peace, in which he wrote:

...Child of the North - New England - Up and heave

Thy sumptuous drapery to the wind! Thy brow

Begirt with adamant, lay bare; and leave

The lurid panoply of death; and go

Forth like the mightiest and the best of them

Who, if they move to grapple with a foe,

Put on a snowy robe - a diadem

Of triple stars. Up with thee, in thy grave

And awful beauty! Let the nations hear

The language of endurance from the brave;

The song of peace from such as know not fear.

So if panoply is wide-ranging and refers to completeness, what does a range refer to? It has more of a reference to limits, whether the “extent to which…variation is possible” or the “scope of an operation or action.” It also refers to distance, usually of a projectile or to a cooking appliance. It came to English in about 1200 from the Old French word of the same spelling, and originally carried the same meaning, that of a row or line of persons. We get the word rank, as in “rank and file”, from the same source.

What’s interesting about the word range is not only its range of meanings, but its historical development.  While it started out referring to a line of people, its first divergent meaning is to the cooking appliance, a meaning which developed in the 15^th century. Why that meaning came to be is unknown, a historical and etymological mystery. By the 1590s the meaning of range as “the distance a gun can send a bullet” came into use, although the reference to the place where you can practice shooting did not develop until 1862. (Perhaps ammunition was too valuable to waste practicing shooting until then.) Since much shooting was at animals in the 1600s, it’s not surprising that the meaning of “area over which animals seek food” developed in the 1620s. Shortly after, in the 1660s, we (not me, but those alive at the time) adopted the meaning in greatest use today, of “scope or extent.” In case you’re wondering, the use of the word to describe a series of mountains was not developed until 1705.

It’s time to shed some light on spectrum. My Webster’s dictionary defines spectrum as “the series of colored bands diffracted and arranged in the order of their respective wave-lengths by the passage of white light through a prism or other diffracting medium and shading continuously from red (produced by the longest wave visible) to violet (produced by the shortest). Phew! It is not until the fourth definition we get the synonym for panoply or range: “a continuous range or entire extent.” It also ascribes its coinage as a physics term to Sir Isaac Newton in 1671. While etymonline.com mentions its first usage of the initial definition to the 1670s, it gives an older usage of the word.

In the 1610s it was used as a form of the word specter to refer to an apparition or ghost. Taken directly from the Latin word spectrum, our word originally retained the Latin meaning of a ghostly image or apparition, or specter. Specter is and was a word adopted from the Latin through French (where it is spelled spectre). 

Numerous Words for Multiplicity, Part II

To follow up on last week, and make things more confusing, the word multiple didn’t come into English until the 1640s, and came from the 14^th century French word multiple, which the French got from those Late Latins who used the word multiplus. Multiple means having several parts.  Multiplus means manifold, and came from combining the prefix multi- with –plus, which means, and I quote, “-fold”. In case you’re wondering, and at this point why would you, -fold is a multiplicative (just what we need, another “multi-“ word) suffix. While its use has been “crowded out by the Latinate double, triple, etc.” it is still used in words like hundredfold.  The use of crowd indicates a multitude of uses of double and triple rather than –fold.

Multiplex means having several parts. Sounds like multiple, doesn’t it? But it also means having several aspects, which expands its meaning slightly beyond multiple. It came to English through mathematics over a century before multiple, in the 1550s as an adjective and within ten years became also a noun. It came directly (I said it, etymonline didn’t) from the Latin word multiplex, which means “having many folds; many times as great in number; of many parts.” Many folds sounds like manifold.

Manifold has a different etymological path, which is why it uses “mani-“ rather than “multi-“. It means “of many kinds; numerous and varied.” Its etymology is from Old English, the Anglian version of which is monigfald and the West Saxon version of which is manigfeald. It meant “various, varied in appearance, complicated; numerous, abundant.” And for those who like a challenge, etymonline adds:

A common Germanic compound (cf. Old Frisian Manichfald, Middle Dutch Menichvout, German mannigfalt, Swedish mångfalt, Gothic managfalþs), perhaps a loan-translation of [the] Latin multiplex (see multiply). Retains the original pronunciation of many, Old English also had a verb form, manigfealdian, “to multiply, abound, increase, extend.”

For those of you who care (both of you), Old Frisian was a language "akin to English spoken on the North Sea coast of modern Netherlands and Germany before 1500," according to etymonline.com.

So, manifold has a sense of variety to its multiplicity, multiplicity can be synonymous with manifold or with multiplex, which is about complexity where multiple is about similarity, and multitude can be synonymous with multiple but is the only one to use when speaking of a crowd of people. Or a number of people, or numerous people. 

Or, to make it simpler (I hope), use numerous when just referring a great number of anything, multitude when referring to people or a very large number of objects, manifold when referring to a variety of objects, multiple when referring to a number of similar things, multiplex when referring to one thing with several parts to it, and multiplicity if you can’t remember which of the other five to use. Phew!

Next week: plethora, range, and spectrum. Because there are never enough words for numerous .

Multiplicity of Words for Numerous, Part I

There are a number of words for numerous. In my blog post “Hands and Legs” we looked at gamut, and multifarious was covered in “Nothing Nefarious about Multifarious”. But what’s the difference between multitude and multiplicity, between range and spectrum, between panoply and plethora? And where’d we get such an unusually spelled word as “number” and why is the word numerous rather than numberous? So many questions, so little space, so this will take several weeks to get through.

Let’s begin by getting the number vs. numerous mystery out of the way. Number was the first of the two words to come to English, and it came about 1300 from the Anglo-French word noumbre. The Anglo-French got noumbre from the Old French word nombre, which the Old French got from the Latin word numerus. Why they added a b is unexplained. A form of the Latin word numerus, numerosus, is the source of the English word numerous, which began to be used the 1400s. So you can blame the Old French (if you can find them) for the presence of a b in our word number. Number has at least five definitions, one of which is “the sum, total, count, or aggregate of a collection of units, or the like,” which is similar to our other words today and next week. But when used in this sense, it is usually in the phrase “a number of”. Numerous means “very many; being or existing in great quantity.”

Multitude and multiplicity, I must admit, are two words that seem to me to be so similar that research can only help me differentiate. Multitude came to English in the 14^th century, from a 12^th century Old French word (are you ready for this?) multitude. The Old French (you know who you are) took it “directly from” (that’s what etymonline says, and it rarely uses the word “directly”) the Latin word multitudinem. Multitudinem means “a great number, a crowd; the crowd, the common people.” Multi- means many, and -tude is the suffix Latins used to turn an adjective into a noun. So multitudinem was a noun meaning a great number, and had a sense of a lot of people. It still means a great number, and still has a sense of reference to a great number of people, a crowd.

Multiplicity came to English a century later than multitude, in the mid-15^th century. It came from the Middle French word multiplicité, which the Middle French got from the Late Latin word multiplicitas. Multiplicitas means (wait for it…) multiplicity. That clears it up, doesn’t it? By the way, the Late Latins (you know who you are, and next time be on time, please) got multiplicitas from the Latin prefix multiplic- from which we get our word multiple.

So what does multiplicity mean? It means either a large number or a large variety or both. It can mean “the state of being multiplex or manifold.” Here we go again.  But not until next week.

Annoying stubborn bullies?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Portmanteau Idiomatic Expressions

Today we have three more words to catch up on from previous posts, all three from August, but two from this August and one from August, 2010.

The first is whippersnapper, which I used in my blog on August 19. Whippersnapper is a portmanteau word that I always associate with an old person’s appellation of a young person. I used it hoping its use would be incongruous, since I am so young, but my burgeoning grey hair may belie that contention.

Whippersnapper actual is useful when describing “an unimportant but offensively presumptuous person, especially a young one.” It dates from the 1670s, and the Oxford English Dictionary says it is “apparently a ‘jingling extension’ of whip snapper”,  or someone who cracks whips. Etymonline.com goes further back and says it may be “an alteration of snipper-snapper,” which they say was in use in the 1590s. They also refer to a term of abuse for a woman, whipperginnie, which was in use at the same time as snipper-snapper. 

The conflation of these two phrases into whippersnapper may have been the origin, but it doesn’t help us understand either snipper-snapper or whipperginnie, or for that matter whippersnapper. So here is a conundrum. Where did it come from and what did it mean? In doing further research there are some who contend the word is a sexual reference, either to penile erection or to the use of condoms. Since the use of condoms was not widespread until the 18^th century I believe that interpretation is a recent invention.

Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby) and Alcott (Little Women) used the word whippersnapper, and Thomas Nashe used the word whipperginnie in The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), but I found nothing else to help solve the conundrum. We must bow to current usage and leave it at that.

In describing whippersnapper as a portmanteau word we encounter another of today’s words: portmanteau, which is left over from my post of August 11, 2010. Originally a portmanteau was a traveling bag, especially of the sort that would open up into two halves like a trunk. It came to English from the Middle French word portemanteau. Court officials who carried a prince’s mantle in the 1540s were called the prince’s portemanteau, porte being the imperative of porter which means to carry and manteau being the word for cloak or mantle. Mickey Mantle carried a heavy stick and hit 536 home runs for the Yankees. By the 1580s the word portmanteau came to mean a case or bag that carried clothing while traveling.

The French origins of the word give you the option of pluralizing the word by adding either an s (portmanteaus) or an x (portmanteaux). Pendants will certainly opt for the latter.

One other interesting note about the word that is necessary to explain my usage of the word above. In 1882 Lewis Carroll  coined the phrase “portmanteau word” to describe a word “blending the sound of two different words.” These are the words he used to populate the conundrum of a poem Jabberwocky, the opening of which is most familiar: “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…”

Today’s third word, confute, is also from the August 19, 2012 post where it was used in a definition of evince. Confute means to prove something to be false or invalid. Disprove would be a synonym. So why does confute exist and where did it come from?

It came to English in the 1520s, like portmanteau from the Middle French. The French got their word confuter from the Latin word confutare, which was formed from the intensive prefix com- and the word future, which means “to beat or strike”. It originally meant to repress, check, disprove or restrain. As such it is likely different from disprove in its intensity, not in its meaning. If you have disproved something in a forceful and substantial manner, you have confuted it. In debates, it might be the verbal “smackdown,” a portmanteau idiomatic expression.

Someone should be fined for using smackdown and portmanteau idiomatic expression in the same sentence. Young whippersnapper!http://larry-whatsthegoodword.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-word-leads-to-another.html

Hoydens Give me Neurasthenia

As I promised last week, I’m trying to catch up on words I said I’d get to later.

From October 6, 2010 I have two words relating to lassitude and ennui that I didn’t get to include in my two-week exposition on vacation: neurasthenia and acedia.

Neurasthenia is a psychiatric term for what we would call nervous exhaustion. According to etymonline.com it was coined as a “medical Latin” word in 1854 by combining the Greek words for the nerves (neuro-) and feeling (asthenia).

Acedia, on the other hand, has nothing to do with psychiatry. It means sloth or laziness, particularly relative to religious matters. Or so says dictionary.com. It came to English in the early 1600s, from the Late Latin word acedia, which came to Latin from the Greek word akeda that was derived from the Greek word for care or anxiety, kedos. The prefix a- negates the word that follows, the Greek equivalent of our non-.

From my blog of December 1, 2010 comes the word ambit. Not a word I’ve seen or heard used, it is nonetheless a good word to describe the circumference or boundary or limit of something, whether physical or conceptual. Originally referring to the space surrounding a building or town in the late 1400s, by the 1590s it came to refer to a circuit. It came to English from the Latin word ambitus, which is the past participle of ambire that means to go round or about. It is the Latin word from which we also get the word ambient, meaning surrounding and usually referring to an environment. Ambient came to English at the time ambit came to mean a circuit.

Lastly, from my blog of January 23, 2011 is the hyphenated word hoity-toity. Although etymonline.com suggests it can also be used without the hyphen, my dictionary has neither hoity nor toity as a word, so I’m sticking with the hyphen. Hoity-toity is a disparaging word that means pretentious or haughty. (You can’t sing “never is heard a disparaging word” when singing about my blog.) The word hoity-toity came to English in the 1660s and originally meant “riotous behavior.” There was an earlier phrase, highty tighty (not to be confused with the screwy mnemonic “righty-tighty, lefty loosy”) that meant “frolicsome or flighty”. Etymonline.com suggests that hoity-toity might have been related to the dialectic word hoyting, which in the 1590s referred to “acting the hoyden, romping.” Hoity-toity didn’t get its sense of haughtiness until the late 1800s, and etymonline.com conjectures it was probably due to the homonymic qualities of haughty and hoity.

Hoyden, a word from etymonline.com I used in the last paragraph, is a good word to use when describing a boisterous, bold, and carefree girl, or a tomboy. It came to English in the 1590s, but it’s not clear from where. Most likely it came from the Dutch word heiden, which was used of rustic or uncivilized men. Hoyden originally meant a rude or boorish man, but since the 1670s it started being used in reference to females, and now has come to refer almost exclusively to girls. 

Bon mots about superannuated and my dotage

Last week I ran out of space before getting to the word superannuate, and the week before ended with a bon mot using bon mot. I promised I’d catch up with some words I’ve previously mentioned but saved until later, so here we go.

Not only last week but in my blog post on May 23, 2010 I used superannuate and didn’t explain. In 2010 I referred to my father’s 90^th birthday as his superannuation. I didn’t expound on superannuation, and apparently didn’t even consult a dictionary, because had I done so I would have found out it doesn’t mean “very old”, it means retired because of age or infirmity, or too old for use. It came to English in the 1630s from Middle Latin, which combined the prefix super, which means beyond or over in Latin, with the Latin word for year – annus. It originally referred to cattle that were more than a year old. While it may have a connotation that relates only to age, it should not be used for anyone not retired, not someone in their dotage.

Dotage is the word I covered in my post of August 11, 2010,but I didn’t get to the word dote. Dotage originally meant simply “the state of one who dotes”, but it has come to mean “a decline of mental faculties, especially as associated with old age.” It can be used to refer to the act of doting, but I do not know of anyone who uses that meaning. Interestingly, the word dote has gone the other direction in meaning. It originally defined a decline in mental faculties, but has come to mean the habitual showing of excessive fondness or loving attention. It is 100 years older than dotage, and was adopted from the Middle Low German word doten, which meant “be foolish.” It didn’t get develop the meaning of excessive fondness until the late 15^th century.  Dotage still retains a certain sense of foolishness to the subject that senility and superannuate don’t connote.

The week before last I used the French pairing bonmot, which has been adopted for use in English since 1735.  It is literally translated “good word” as in “What’s the good word?” In common parlance today you might hear “word” used to mean the same thing. “Word” as a bon mot is a paring of the pairing “word up”, which means, according to UrbanDictionary.com, “I comprehend what you are saying and verify that your statement is true, my good brother.” A la “true dat.” To finish the etymology, the French word mot comes from the Vulgar Latin word muttum, which descended from the Latin word muttire, which means to mutter, mumble, or murmur and from which we get the word mutter.

More words to come next week that I didn’t get to because I ran out of space, as we’re out of space again this week. 

Superman Gives 110%

To find a supernacular superannuated supernumerary who is supererogatory would be supernal. That person might be a superman. Or that might be a first-rate retired person who takes up acting, gets a non-speaking part and does more than expected. Such a person would be heavenly.

Supernacular is the only “super” word above that wasn’t on my list of unused blog words. It’s also a “mock Latin term intended to mean ‘upon the nail’.” Because of its coinage it is not found in many  dictionaries (or on etymonline.com, since it really doesn’t have an etymology). It appears to have been coined by Thackeray,and it was also used by Byron and by Brand. Its first use was as two words, super nagulum, by Nashe in 1592. The quote helps explain its meaning: “Drinking super nagulum, a devise of drinking new come out of Fraunce; which is, after a man hath turned up the bottom of the cup, to drop it on his nails, and make a pearle with that is left; which if it slide, and he cannot make it stand on, by reason ther’s too much, he must drinke againe for his penance.”

Supererogation is one of those good words that needs to be used more often, in place of the phrase “going above and beyond” or “giving 110%” (an impossibility, by the way). Supererogate, the verb form of the noun supererogation, is defined as simply doing more than is required. Which means erogate should mean doing what is expected, right? Wrong. Erogate, before it became obsolete, meant to lay our money or expend. So how do we get from paying to doing above and beyond? Supererogation is actually the word that came in English use in the 1520s. 

It is part of Catholic theology, so it is not surprising that it came from a Late Latin word supererogationem, the nominative of which is supererogatio. It was formed by adding super (in its meaning of beyond or over) to erogare, which means to pay out. Erogare is formed from ex-, meaning out, and rogare, meaning ask or request. It is used in the Latin version of the New Testament in the story of the Good Samaritan. Luke 10:35 says that after paying the Innkeeper two silver coins (New International Version, NIV, “two pence” in the King James Version) the Good Samaritan said “Look after him, and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.” (NIV) In the Latin, the underlined words are quodcumque supererogaveris. Supererogation eventually became a sense of duty and performance that came into conflict with Martin Luther’s famous translation of the words “the just shall live by faith alone” and set off the Reformation. Supererogation now means going above and beyond and deserves a place in everyone’s lexicon; especially in lieu of giving 110%.

If you’re interested in heavenly words, look at the word supernal. It is an adjective that refers primarily to heavenly, celestial, or divine beings, but also refers to anything lofty or having an excellence of more than earthly or human proportions. But to understand it better, one should compare it with its counterpart infernal.

Infernal, the adjective that means hellish, diabolical, or fiendish, also came from Latin through 12^th century Old French. Late Latin had the word infernalis that meant “of the lower regions”; Ambrose used infernus as his word for hell. Infernus means “the lower (world)”. Its relationship to a place called hell, or things that resemble it, is due to Dante’s use of the Italian word inferno, which was adopted as an English word for a raging fire as early as 1834.

Supernumerary, as can be deduced, means in excess of the usual number. A baker’s dozen (13) would be a supernumerary dozen. But supernumerary has taken on a distinctly personnel meaning. It may refer to extra staff hired on or placed temporarily, and is used of what are commonly referred to as “extras” in film and stage productions. No wonder that it has a personnel sense since it came to English in about 1600 from a Late Latin word, supernumarius, that meant “excessive in number” in reference to soldiers being added to what was already a full legion. (Legion being the Roman word for an Army Division of 3000 – 6000 soldiers.) And yes, numarius is the word from which we get our word “number”.

For the second time I’ve used the word superannuate without explaining it. Tune in next week, when I’ll catch up on some of the words I said I’d get to later. 

From Urbane to Bon Vivant

I started to share words from a biography of Aaron Burr last week, but my research diverted me from the list by interesting etymology. So, let’s get back to the list.

Aaron was described in the book as being both a bon vivant and having great equanimity. And while Burr characterized President Monroe as being pusillanimous, others used the word to describe Burr.

What is equanimity? It is mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or string. As Burr is described in the book, equanimity was his strongest trait. The word equanimity came to English about 1600, from the French word équanimité, which the French got from the Latin word aequanimitatem. The word, which means calmness, was formed from combining aequus, from which we get equal, with animus, which means mind or spirit and from which we directly take our word animus. Equanimity is a good word for a good trait.

Animus, on the other hand, is a good word for a bad trait. It is a strong dislike or a hostile attitude. (Except in Jungian psychology, where it refers to the presence of the masculine principle in women.) But the noun animus did not come to English until 1820.

Animus may seem like it would be related to animal as in “animalistic behavior”, but it’s not german, it’s more distantly related. Animal, which came to English in the early 1300s, came from a different Latin word: animale. Animale refers to any being which breathes, and came from the Latin word anima, which is related to animus, but not the root. Animus is more closely related to the word pusillanimous.

Pusillanimous comes from the Late Latin word pusillanimis. Pusillanimis was formed by combining animus and pusillus, which means very weak or little. So our word, which means lacking courage or cowardly, is pretty close to its Latin progenitor. It came to English in the late 1300s. It’s also a good word for a bad trait. 

Both animal and pusillanimous have interesting Christian church connections. The word animal, while used in the 1300s, was not commonly used until the 1600s, and consequently wasn’t used in the King James Version of the Bible. And when the translators of Greek biblical texts into Church Latin looked for a Latin word for the Greek oligopsychos, which means small-souled, they used pusillanimis.

Bon vivant are two good words for a trait that some consider good and some bad. It refers to a person who lives luxuriously and enjoys good food and drink. The literal translation of the French words is bon - good, vivant - living. It generally has a positive connotation, while voluptuarian has the negative connotation for the same characteristics, but is increasingly scurrilous in its usage (blame it on class warfare). It comes directly from the French, and came to English in the 1690s. Almost exclusively used of men, its female counterpart is bonne vivante. Bon-vivant can also be hyphenated.

All these are bon mots, as in quel est le bon mot. But bon mot

Urbane and germane comments on humane

I just finished reading a biography of Aaron Burr (Fallen Founder, by Nancy Isenberg, Viking, 2007) that added more than a dozen words to my unused blog words list. I enjoyed reading it, as it gives an alternative perspective on accepted wisdom regarding Burr, Jefferson, and Hamilton. And if you think this election is sinking to new lows, you don’t know your American history. Let’s get to the words, though. This is a blog on words, not books.

The word I encountered in the book was the adjective urbane (used in its noun form – urbanity). It is a good word to describe the person who is suave , elegant, and sophisticated. It came to English in the 1530s from the Middle French word urbain. Urbain came from the Latin urbanus, meaning “belonging to a city” and also had a sense of elegance. Urbane does not have the negative connotation that “citified” has that is in vernacular today (at least in rural areas). Urbane only referred to the city’s qualities, not attending to individuals and their qualities until the 1620s. Now it rarely refers to city qualities and almost exclusively to individuals.

I also find it interesting that urbane came to English 80 years before urban did, though urban is more directly related to its Latin root word meaning. (It still means having to do with city life.) But urban was rarely used until the 1830s by which time urbane was developing its predominant meaning of refined and elegant.

Etymonline.com (the source of most of my etymological information) suggests that in the late 20th century the word urban has taken on a “suggestion of African American.” While the phrase “urban renewal” has been used since 1955 to refer to clearing of slums, I maintain that neither urban renewal nor urban sprawl nor urban legend has much African American connotation. (For my claim to urban legend status, see pudding on the ritz.)

Also interesting (at least to me) is the connection urbane has with humane and germane. Obviously their fairly rare ending (there are only 145 English words ending in –ane) is one commonality, as are their different meanings with the addition of a final e and their sense of belonging to a group. Germane came to English first, in the mid-1300s, then humane a century later.

Germane means closely related, relevant and pertinent. It originally meant having the same parents, until Shakespeare expanded its meaning beyond human parentage in Hamlet (Act V, Scene II). You remember the line (don’t you?) “The phrase would bee more Germaine to the matter: If we would carry Cannon by our sides.” We use germane to refer to closely related ideas rather than objects as Shakespeare did.

The word germane comes from a word I can’t remember encountering: german (small g). German means having the same father and mother or grandfather and grandmother. What a difference an e makes. The word german came from the Old French word germain, and they got germain from the Latin word germanus. The meaning has been consistent though the languages.

We readily see the connection of humane with human, especially in its antonym inhuman, which is almost synonymous with inhumane. Human means having the nature of people, while humane means tender and compassionate toward people and animals. But human and humane were used almost interchangeably until the early 1700s. In fact, the Royal Humane Society was formed in 1774 not to rescue animals, but to rescue drowning humans. It wasn’t for another 100 years that they turned their attention (and the meaning of humane) to rescuing animals.

Both human and humane came to English from the Old French word humain, which the Old French got from the Latin humanus, both of which mean belonging to or of mankind. Humanus also had the meaning we give to humane, so it is no wonder the two words formed.

So, you may be an urban german human, but that doesn’t mean you’re an urbane humane person. If such a statement is even germane.

An Explicit Education

Explicit would seem to be a close cousin to illicit. But it isn’t. While the pornographic meaning of explicit has some illicit meaning, illicit means not legally permitted or authorized. It is synonymous with unlawful. It also means morally or ethically wrong, and is as often used with the second meaning as with the first. It comes from the Old French word illicite, and came to English in the 1300s. The Old French got illicite from the Latin word illicitus, which means unlawful.

A word that is a virtual homophone (I am not homophone phobic) to illicit is elicit. Elicit came to English in the 1640s directly from the Latin word elicitus, which of course is the past participle of elicere. Elicere was formed by adding the prefix ex- (meaning “out”) to licere, which is the form of the word lacere that is used when combining. Lacere means to entice, lure, or deceive, and is related to the word laqueus, which means noose or snare, and from which we get the word lace. So elicitus means to entice or lure out. My dictionary defines elicit as a verb that is used with an object, and it means to bring out or evoke or educe.

Educe? It also means to draw out or bring forth but it came to English earlier, in the 1400s. While it lists elicit as a synonym, it also includes in its primary definition the sense of the object (as with elicit, educe needs an object) being latent or potential – not yet obvious or realized. There is a developmental sense to educe that does not exist in elicit. Educe comes from educere, which has an interesting meaning. Imagine the General at the head of his troops, or the Admiral’s ship at the head of the armada. (We also get the word conduce and the title Duke from this Latin word.) They are “leading out” or “bringing out,” and that is the meaning of educare.

You may have noticed how close the word educare is to educate. Indeed, I did not connect the two until I saw the Latin source word, and if you know the past participle of educare is educatus, you will understand how a few years after educe came into use in English the word educate followed (in the mid-15th century. The words educare and educate both meant to bring up children and to train them. But the meaning of providing schooling didn’t develop until the 1580s.

Before I finish today, I have to say that educe has educed a second meaning: to infer or deduce. To draw a conclusion from data is a relatively recent meaning, and you may remember when it came into use in 1837. I don’t, but I’m a whipper-snapper, a word for another day.

Speaking of words for another day, avid readers of this blog with photographic memories will recall a similar word, evince, which means to show clearly or disprove (or confute, another word for another day). It shares with educe the sense of deduction, but educe has a sense of proving, while evince has a sense of disproving. If you are trying to prove something through deduction, Sherlock, use educe. If you are trying to disprove, use evince. They’re both good words. Now you have been educated, and can elicit illicit scorn with your mastery of these words.

Clear as Mud

I recently ran across the word explication and wondered how it is different from explanation and why. Explanation was in use for over 100 years before the word explication came into English in the 1520s.

Explanation is the act of explaining, and the word came to English before the word explain did; explanation came in the late 1300s, while explain didn’t appear until early the next century. Explain means to make clear or plain, and to render understandable or intelligible. Explanation came from the Latin word expanationem, which is the noun of action developed from the stem word explanare, the word from which we get explain. Explanare means to make level, flatten, or smooth, or to make clear. Ex- means “out” and planus means "flat", the word from which we also get the geometric concept of plane. Explain was originally spelled explane, but with the word plain meaning obvious its spelling changed.

In the 17th century the word explain had a meaning that helps to differentiate it from explicate. It referred to a literal unfolding of things, as in a 1664 quote from John Evelyn’s 1664 book Sylva that talks about trees that “explain into leaves.”

Explication is defined as an explanation or interpretation, a definition which doesn’t help explain the difference. The word came from the same Latin root word, explicare, but from the noun form of action explicationem, the past participle of explicare. And it took a trip through the Middle French, where it got its spelling, before coming to English.

Okay, that doesn’t explain or explicate the difference. Explicate’s definition is to make plain or clear, to explain or interpret, but also means to develop, as a principle or theory. It arrived in English about 10 years after explication. It came from the Latin word explicatus, another past participle of explicare.

So we’re left with the only difference between the two words being that explicate is used when referring to a concept, while explain is used more broadly. But otherwise they’re apparently interchangeable.

What’s interesting is comparing these two words with the word explicit. It has almost as many definitions as the previous four words combined. The first definition is fully and clearly expressed or demonstrated, while the second is clearly developed or formulated. The first meaning is a less intensive meaning than the third, which is definite and unreserved in expression; outspoken.

The word explicit came to English around 1600 from the French word explicite, which the French got from the Latin word explicitus. Explicitus means unobstructed, and is yet another variant past participle of our word of the day explicare.

An interesting use of explicitus was in the phrase explicitus est liber, which was inscribed at the end of books during the middle ages and means "the book is unrolled."

Another interesting an much more recent use is shown in the fifth definition, which refers to having sexual acts or nudity clearly depicted. Explicit wasn’t used as a euphemism for pornographic until 1971.

I hope that clears things up, that I’ve explained everything and that the explication was interesting. I was as explicit as I could be. At least you now know what explicitus est liber means. Clearly.

Comity of Errors

Sometimes I use a word, and know there are similar words and am not sure the difference. Today’s post is about two of those pairs: is it constrain or restrain, comity or amity, and what’s the difference?

The first pair, constrain and restrain, is one about which I have a preconceived notion. Constrain is something you can’t do to yourself; it relies on outside forces working upon you. Restrain is something you can do to yourself or something someone can do to someone else (a broader use). Let’s see if I understand or not.

According to the dictionary (actually, dictionary.com) constrain’s definition is to force, compel, or oblige. All examples given were of outside force compelling the result. Restrain’s definition is to hold back from action, to keep in check or under control, … to limit or hamper the activity, growth or effect of. (The ellipsis indicates it also means to deprive of liberty.) The example given supports my original differentiation. So far so good.

Where did these words come from and how did we end up with two such similar words? Constrain came first, in the early 1300s. It was originally spelled constreyen, because it came from the Old French word constreindre, which came from the Latin word constringere, which means to bind together, tie tightly, fetter, shackle, or chain. It is formed form the prefix com- that means together and the root stringere that means draw tight. (Not surprisingly, we get our word strain from the same root.)

Restrain came to English in the middle 1300s. It came from the stem of the Old French word restraindre, which came from the Latin word restringere, which means to draw back tightly, confine, or check. The prefix re- in Latin means “back, again, or against”.

So the difference in Latin is the difference between “together” and “again”. The difference is one of agency, of someone working together to keep in check or someone returning again to a place of control. I stand by my original declaration of difference. If you’re imposing the control on yourself use restrain; if someone or something else is restricting your action use constraint.

Comity and amity are even more confusing in the dictionary. Amity is defined as friendship and peaceful harmony. The secondary definition is of “mutual understanding and a peaceful relationship, especially between nations.” Comity is defined first as mutual courtesy and civility and second as “respect for one country for the laws, judicial decisions, and institutions of the other.” It sounds like amity is a closer relationship than comity. Comity includes courtesy, civility and respect, and implies peaceful coexistence I almost used harmony instead of coexistence, but you can respect, be courteous and civil toward someone without any agreement with the way they act or believe. Amity implies a closer relationship, a friendship, and more agreement in using the word harmony. So much for definitions. Does etymology add to our understanding?

Etymonline.com (since I’m citing sources again) says comity comes to English through the French word comité, which they got from the Latin comitas. Comitas means courtesy or kindness. What’s interesting is that comity’s use to mean courtesy didn’t happen until the 1540s, or almost a century and a half after the word came into English use (if you can’t do the math that means it arrived in the early 1400s.) Its use in the phrase comity of nations isn't found until 1862, when there wasn't much comity in the U.S.

So allow your comity to develop into amity, by practicing restraint and avoiding the need for constraints.