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”.