I'm No Aristotle, Part 1

I know when I started this blog I thought I might run out of words and subjects within a year. But the English language is so rich and diverse that after blogging for over a year (and 381 words by my count) I still have a list of 146 words I haven’t gotten to yet.

So, let’s get to some that lead to others.

I begin my travel season this week, which will see me at the airport in nine of the next ten weeks, and 12 of the 14 weeks between now and Memorial Day. While to some that peregrination may seem deracinative, being errant does not extirpate me. And while I am peripatetic I hope the schedule does not make me an arrant fool.

Peregrination is a word I first encountered with the return of Perigrine falcons to a city in which I was living. They had disappeared and their nidification (a good word for a later blog) was indicative of a return from near extinction (not a vacation in the Bahamas).  

Peregrination (the noun form of the word) came to English in the 1520s, thirty years before it was given as an adjective (peregrine) to the falcon even though the bird had been known with that modifier in Middle Latin and (by the late 14^th century) in Old French. The noun form came originally from the Latin word peregrinationem, which refers to a journey or travelling abroad. Peregrinus was formed by attaching the prefix per- that meant “outside the Roman territory” to agri, which meant field, territory or land (from which we get two words: agriculture and acre).

One dictionary defines it as “travelling from one place to another, especially on foot”, an interesting definition given its aviary connection. Another describes it simply as an extensive voyage. Yet another defines it as “following (e.g., a route), travelling the world. While I will not leave North America, I will be involved in peregrination. But more like the falcons (I’ll be flying most places) than on foot.

Walking around leads me to the word peripatetic, which one dictionary describes simply as walking or travelling about.  Another describes it as itinerant, which is a good description of what I do but must wait for later. The word peripatetic has a very storied history.

Aristotle taught his students while walking through the Lyceum in Athens.  The word describing such walking around in Greek was peripatein (peri-  referring to “around” and patein to walking). Aristotle’s students became known as peripatetikos (peripatetikos). Passing through Latin and Old French it came to English in about 1400, first as a descriptor of a disciple of Aristotle, and then by the 1600s as anyone who walks around. It still retains a strong tie to teaching or talking, and I most often use it in that sense when I step away from the podium (see blog for 4/11/10) during a presentation.

I’m no Aristotle, but at least I can present in the same style. It also makes me a harder target to hit when people throw things at me.

Hail to the Chief

In George Washington’s farewell address he spoke of “the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness;…accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity.” Is it any wonder that in this, which many describe as a most unusually contentious political, climate we also suffer from a recession the like of which has been unseen for 70 years. National union is what Washington sought to bestow, and through it happiness, safety and prosperity.

But in the midst of this wonderful intent for the nation he was so much a part of founding Washington uses the word palladium. This being a blog on words, we cannot let that pass without explanation. Palladium may sound familiar; it is the name of an “element of the platinum metal group”, according to the World English Dictionary. But that metal was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803 (which he named after the asteroid Pallas discovered in 1802), so it could not have been the meaning Washington intended.

Palladium is a Latin word, and was adopted from the Greek word Palladion, which is the neuter form of the word that means “of Pallas.” Now we’re getting close; what was Pallas? For those of you intimately familiar with Greek mythology you might recognize Pallas as someone Athena killed and then took that entity’s name. So sometimes Athena is called Pallas Athena. Athena was the goddess of wisdom, courage, and inspiration. Her sacred image, according to etymonline.com, “stood in the citadel of Troy and the safety of the city was believed to depend on it.” So, by the 16^th century, when it was adopted into English, the word palladium came to mean anything that provided protection or safeguarding.

Washington also wrote "To the efficacy and permanancy of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensible." Efficacy is not the same thing as efficiency or effective. They’re all good words, but they mean three different things.

Efficacy means being successful in producing a desired result. Effective means sufficient to produce a desired result. Efficiency means performing a job well and with the least amount of time and effort. Efficacy comes from the Latin word for powerful, efficiency from a similar Latin word meaning sufficient power, and effective from the Latin word for productive (through French).

So effective means that it works, efficient means it works well in its use of resources, and efficacy means it achieves what is desired. Was that explanation effective or efficacious? It was too long to be efficient.

It is not often that I read something and keep track of an extended quotation. But in reading the collection of Alexander Woolcott’s writings, Long, Long Ago (p. 49), I was struck by the following words that are appropriate for this Presidents’ Day: Woolcott wrote that we need

 …a reminder there was once a way of life called America, that it still exists and that it is worth cherishing. It will abide when much that we now think important is dust scattered down the wind. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, our faith triumphant over our fears, are, I think, bound up in it inextricably. 

Valentine's Day

For the first time in my recollection (of over 30 years of marriage) I will be apart from my sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. Before a collective “awww” breaks forth, I should interject that my wife and I have chosen not to celebrate Valentine’s Day in the traditional way. We avoid going out to dinner that evening and don’t do cards except for birthdays anymore. Flowers and candy are purchased before and after the holiday, rather than on it, if at all. We prefer to replicate the sentiments of the holiday more regularly and more often than once a year.

That being said, we would at least osculate on Valentine’s Day were we together, and haptic occurrences may send a frisson through us even after all these years. And so begins today’s blog. Osculate, haptic, and frisson; good words for the day.

Osculate is a word I remember latching onto at least as a teen, if not before that important age. It came to English in the 1650s, from the Latin word osculum, which means “kiss”. Literally translated, osculum means “little mouth”, being the diminutive form of the word os, which means mouth. “Little mouth” is a way to describe a pucker, or the beginning of the most innocuous form of kissing. The primary definition my dictionary has is “to come into close contact or union” but I’ve never heard it used except in reference to kissing.

BLOGGER EXTRA: SIDE STORY ON THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE PHRASE “FRENCH KISS”

French kissing, according to the Times of India online, "The french kiss was first known as maraichanage, a term to descrive the prolonged, deep, tongue kiss practiced by the Maraichins, inhabitants of Brittany, France. It dates from at least the 1920s." Given the choice between trying to pronounce maraichanage and French kissing, it is no wonder that we've chosen to call it French kissing. Maraichanage is so obscure that the 12 (yes, only 12) references on Yahoo are similar to what the Times of India wrote. Although, I must admit, I did not read the four entries that were in Croatian or Hungarian.

According to Wikipedia, "In France, it is referred to as baiser amoureux ("love kiss") or baiser avec la langue ("kiss with the tongue"), even if in past times it was also known as baiser florentin ("Florentine kiss"). In French slang, a French kiss is called a patin (ice skating shoe) or a galoche (wooden-soled shoe). Doing a French kiss is referred to rouler un patin ("roll a skate", as in ice skating shoe) or rouler une pelle ("roll a shovel") or s'emballer in slang.”

Now, back to our blog:

According to dictionary.com the word haptic is an adjective meaning "relating to or based on the sense of touch." (The noun haptics refers to "the branch of psychology that investigates cutaneous sense data, whatever that means. But it sounds like an interesting course of study.) It has been used in English since the 1890s, and comes from the Greek word haptikos, which means "able to come into contact with". It is similar (I would maintain it is not synonymous, but that's another blog) to tactile and tangible.

The final word for today is frisson. It is what Chris Matthews felt listening to Barack Obama speak during the 2008 elections. It came to English in 1777 directly from the French, and has the suggested pronunciation of "free-sohn" or "free-sawn" to maintain the French sound. It means shiver or thrill, and came to French in the 12th century from the Latin word frigere. Frigere means "to be cold" and is the word from which we get our word frigid.

It is understandable that a shiver (like that which being cold creates) can link the thrilling word frisson with the other end of the romantic spectrum, frigid. But such is the world of etymology.

Have a great Valentine's Day.

Adverse Adjectives - As Advertised Part II

(...continued from last week.) 

Averse, on the other hand (would that be an adverse hand?) means resistant or opposed to. How is that different from adverse? In popular usage adverse refers to an outside circumstance opposing an action or opinion. (Another person might have an adverse opinion of you.) Averse refers to an inside feeling or opinion affecting something outside oneself. (You might be averse to listening to someone’s opinion or averse to taking an action.) It comes from the Latin word aversus, which means turned back or turned away. [Perhaps a Latin scholar can weigh in on the difference between the Latin prefixes ad- and a-; I am not that person.]

Both adverse and averse have the idea of opposing force, or something trying to change minds or circumstances. The web site etymonline.com (from which I get most of my etymological commentary) explains that averse refers to a mental sense while the word avert is the physical sense (averting disaster being its most common usage). No wonder, then, that both averse and adverse are related etymologically to the word advertising, whose intent is to get us to change our minds about a product. You may be averse to advertising, which means advertising has adverse conditions in getting your business and averting bankruptcy.

Advertising sometimes appeals to our prurient interests. While the word prurient means inclined toward or having lascivious or lustful thoughts (What’s the difference? Isn’t lust a thought?) it can also mean having a restlessness or longing. My wife often gets disgusted by how often “sex” is used to sell anything from hamburgers to luxury cars. Get us to lust after an item and we’re a step closer to buying it. (Don’t you love it when they use a word like lascivious to define a word like prurient. I think there’s a mean streak in those who write definitions and they take fiendish delight in sending the user from one part of the dictionary to another.) 

The second definition is anything that causes lust. So why does the word prurient look so different from venal? Prurient and averse are very different words that both come from Latin; obviously they come from very different places. Prurient came directly from the Latin word prurientum, which is the prp of pruriere, not from the root word venus. Pruriere means “to itch, long for, be wanton”, a more general meaning than the specific sexual meaning relating to venus. (I’ll pause in case you look up the word wanton.) Prurient arrived in English in the 1630s, much later than the other words we've considered this last two entries. 

While it can be used for any longing that is not socially acceptable, it is now used mostly in reference to sexual desires. If you doubt me, use prurient the next time you need a vacation and see if others look at you oddly.