Winston S. Churchill Biography Words

I recently finished reading part two of a biological trilogy on Winston S. Churchill by William Manchester (The Last Lion, Alone: 1932-1940). As is my wont (a word for yet another post), words I didn't know or didn't know the definition of were kept track of on the final page of the index. Of the 14 words I listed, only one, limpid, had been part of a previous post; given that this blog has covered 783 words so far, to have only one already covered was a surprise to me. And I have 268 words still on my list.

So let's get to the seven words not on either list:

The most often used word previously unknown to me was poilus. The word is the plural of poilu (pronounced pwah-loo) and is the word for a common French soldier. It was first used at the beginning of World War I, in 1914. The French word literally means hairy, as in beards or animal coats. In the 1800s Balzac used it as an adjective that meant strong, brave, and courageous. If you read the book, you will come to the conclusion that the soldiers must have had a lot of hair.

The second most-often used unknown word was demarche. It can still be spelled démarche since it is  a French word used in English, but it is common enough to be considered also an English word. Particularly since it's been in use in English since the 1650s. Originally meaning stride or step, it now refers to a diplomatic act such as an appeal or protest, a meaning it has had since the 1670s. But according to etymonline.com it was "never quite anglicized."

I thought I had already blogged on gravamen, but did not find it either in the blog or in the waiting words list. I've encountered it before, but apparently didn't capture it for the blog. The short definition of gravamen is "a grievance," but its primary used now is for the part of an accusation that weighs most heavily against the accused. It comes from the Late Latin word gravamen, which meant trouble or inconvenience, and has been used in English since the 1640s.

I was also surprised to not find anything on perfervid. Perfervid is an adjective that describes that which is very fervent or ardent or fervid. (There are three words for another post - what's the difference?) Perfervid was first used in English in 1830, derived from the Latin word perfervidus. In Latin the prefix per- means "completely" and fervid means heated or vehement.

Two more words, just for fun: quiddity and diathesis. Manchester used them both in the same sentence. In telling about Churchill's moral courage and honest eloquence was "...the intrinsic Churchill, his quiddity and diathesis." (The Last Lion: Alone, p. 348.)

Quiddity means the essential nature of a thing, or the quality that makes something what it is. It has been used in English since the late 1300s, having been adopted from the Medieval Latin word quidditas. Its original classical meaning was the real essence of a thing. Along the way it has developed the meaning of "a trifling nicety in argument," or a quibble. Perhaps it's been a confusion between the two words rather than a developed meaning. In Latin quid  means "what," so quidditas essentially means "whatness."

Diathesis is the word for a constitutional predisposition toward something. Used most often relating to a disease or affection, it can apply to anything that one has difficulty not doing. It has been in use in English since the mid-1600s, and comes from a "Neo-Latin" word with the same spelling.

Thanks for sharing with me in my latest discovery of words new to me. Happy New Word Year to you.

Love and Joy (but not the way you think) to You and Yours

I was listening to a famous conservative talk show host this week as I Rushed to do some last minute shopping, and thought I heard the misuse of either the word averse or adverse, and went to see if I'd covered those words. They are linked to the posts in which I'd included them, and in reading those posts I discovered a couple of words on which I had not posted.

The first was internecine, a good word I could have mentioned in the post on interregnum, interrex and antebellum. It is defined as conflict within a group, and is often used in the phrase "internecine warfare," referring to, for instance, fighting between children or within a political party. Inter- as a prefix is understood to refer to something in the middle of two other things, but -necine is not something that brings a reference to mind. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (in this blog when we refer to the OED we must bow) though, the inter- prefix is not used to mean between or mutual but is used as an intensive. 

The Latin word from which it came to English (in the 1660s) is internecinus, which meant very deadly or murderous. When Johnson wrote his influential dictionary he made the mistake of assigning the prefix meaning as "between" and it's caused confusion ever since. The dictionary contains both definitions (mutual destruction and infighting), so you have your choice. But now you can be pedantic by correcting those who use internecine instead of the word infighting.

Another word used in the post on averse and adverse that I haven't covered is the word lascivious. Lascivious is an adjective that describes something that arouses sexual desire or is suggestive of lust (like a gesture or a look). Lust is the noun for a strong sexual desire or appetite. 

Lascivious has been used in English since the mid-1400s, when it arrived from the Middle French word lascivieux. The Middle French word came from the Late Latin word laciviosus. In Latin lascivia meant not only lewdness but also playfulness or frolicsomeness. 

Lust goes much further back in time. It was an Old English word that may have come from Old Saxon, Old Frisian, German, or Dutch, all of whom have the word lust. In Middle English it could refer to not only pleasure and delight, but also an appetite or a liking for someone. It developed its sexual connotation when it was used to translate the Bible into English. When the translators got to I John 2:16, they encountered the Latin phrase concupiscentia carnis. Looking for a suitable Old English word to describe sexual desires of the flesh (or concupiscence) they settled on the words "lusts of the flesh."

Concupiscence has been used in English since the mid-1300s, and came directly from the aforementioned Latin word, which means "eager desire." At this point, the only desire it refers to is sexual desire, but originally it could have referred to that chocolate bar or the feeling children (or their dads and grandpas) have when they get up on Christmas morning. 

I hope your Christmas is replete with fulfilled concupiscence (in its old Latin sense) and no internecine conflicts. 

I'm Home, Lucid!

Last week we looked at some similar words that can be used interchangeably, and I shared my confusion with when to use “which” and when to use “that.” While compel and impel can be understood by differing definitions, and further and farther by different etymologies, which and that in the context of which (not that) I am referring is a matter of usage, not etymology or definition.

I even added parenthetical comments demonstrating some instances where it’s clear that “which” is the only word which (that?) can be used, and some instances where it’s clear that “that” is the only word which (that?) can be used. But I didn’t have space to clarify, so let’s get to that (an instance in which “which” won’t work) now.

What about which/that? You can see from my parenthetical comments above and last week that (can’t use “which” here) there are times when “which” and “that” can both make sense. But which (can’t use “that” here) word is the good word to use?

I found one site that suggests “use ‘that’ to introduce a ‘restrictive clause’ and ‘which’ to introduce a ‘nonrestrictive clause.’” The difference between a restrictive and a non-restrictive clause is explained as depending on whether you are referring to only the person or thing that you just mentioned (as I did with the site) or whether it describes not only what you’ve referenced but other things as well. Further, the site explains that if you remove the restrictive clause the meaning changes and the sentence loses specificity, but with an unrestrictive clause it wouldn’t.

Another site, while agreeing on the restrictive/nonrestrictive clause explanation, adds that usage has changed over the past century (as usage tends to do) and informs us that restrictive clauses are (or at least used to when grammar teaches could wield rulers on knuckles with impunity) not separated from the rest of the sentence with commas, while non-restrictive clauses are.  The article even quotes Sir Ernest Gowers, writing in the 1965 edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, saying he “comments rather sadly about this situation.” What is quoted is:

If writers would agree to regard that as the defining relative pronoun, and which as the non-defining, there would be much gain both in lucidity and in ease. Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers.

So, if you wish to be a stickler, use “that” when defining a word, and “which” when being less restrictive. 

Does that make it easy (or at least lucid)? If so, to misquote Ricky Ricardo, “I’m home, lucid!”

And that (not which), my friends, is a reference not readily understood by most people under age 50. 

Confused About Further and Farther and Compelled to Blog About It

This week I encountered the word impel where I would have expected the word compel. Why did the author use the former rather than the latter? Then later this week I was writing an email and wondered whether further or farther was the appropriate word. How do you know which is the good word to use, and speaking of which, that with which I struggle sometimes is whether to use which or that.

What’s the good word for each situation is not always determined by definition, but let’s start with those that are: impel and compel.

Compel is defined as “to force or drive, especially to a course of action” while impel is defined as “to drive or urge forward; press on; incite or constrain to action.” Not much difference. Other definitions of compel all have the word force in them, while neither definition of impel does (at least on dictionary.com). But other than that the definitions don’t provide a lot of separation of meaning. Let’s look at etymonline.com and see if the sources for both words sheds some light.

Compel came to English in the mid-1300s from the Old French word compeller, which came from the Latin word compellere, which means “to drive together, drive to one place” (when used of cattle) or “to force of compel” when used of persons. The Latin word was formed by attaching the prefix com- that means “together” together with pellere, which means “to drive” and from which we also get the word pulse. We also got impel from pellere, (in the early 1400s) with “im-“ as the prefix. In Latin, im- indicates entry, as in in, into, or upon.

Now we have some clarification. Impel should have a sense of acting upon something from outside. Compel is more of a force from within working together with outside influences. Its usage bears this out – compel is often used in the first person “I am compelled” while impel is rarely used in the first person.

So what about further and farther? The only difference dictionary.com provides in defining the two is that further has a tertiary definition of “additional; more” that farther does not. Both are used when describing a greater distance or more advanced point. Back to etymology.com to see if this helps clarify anything.

What we find is what I enjoy about words. Let’s begin with further, because it goes further back. While etymonline.com does not indicate the timing of its first use in English, it does show furthermore as appearing about 1200, which predates anything in the farther lineage. Further comes from the Old English word furđor if used as an adverb, or furđra as the adjective. Additionally, the etymonline.com clarifies for us that the word is “…etymologically representing either ‘forth-er’ or ‘fore-ther.’”

Moving farther ahead, to farther, we find that it first appeared in about 1300 as a variant of further, and etymonline tells us further that farther replaced ferrer as the comparative form of the Old English word fierr, that (which?) meant “far.” Then it goes on to explicate that fierr is “itself a comparative but no longer felt as one.” Etymonline.com also tells us that the vowel change (from u to a) was “influenced by the root vowel, and confusion with the Middle English ferþeren, which (that?) meant “to assist, promote, [or] advance.” It further (farther won’t do here) states “There is no historical basis for the notion that farther is of physical distance and further of degree or quality.” In fact, with the exception of the meaning of additional that the dictionary provides for the word further, the words can be legitimately used interchangeably. Further has a somewhat more pedantic usage while farther is probably more common, at least in my experience.

So I hope that clears up any confusion on those two pairs. Next week we'll get to the motherlode of my confusion: which vs. that. I bet you're excited and can't wait. In the mean time, enjoy some old episodes of "I Love Lucy." It will come in handy for my hilarious close next week.

I'm Adamantine About Obdurate, But Not Déclassé

Time to follow up on some words from previous posts.

On February 15, 2010 I closed my blog by writing “I won’t be obdurate or adamantine about it, no matter what the title says.” But I never got around to looking at those words.

Obdurate is an adjective that means unmoved or stubbornly resistant to moral influence. The first appearance of any form of the word was its noun form, obduration, in about 1400. I have not heard the noun form used, but have heard the adjective often. It appeared in the mid 1400s. The word in whatever form comes from the Latin word obduratus, which means “hardened” and is the past participle of obdurare, which means “be hard, hold out, persist, or endure.” In fact, endure comes from the root word of obdurare, durus, which means hard.

Obdurate is similar to contumacious or pervicacious, but obdurate has a moral quality the other two words do not, contumacious has a haughty quality the others don’t. Pervicacious you’ll have to let me know how it compares.

Adamantine is an interesting word to me. I thought it was the adjective form of the noun adamant, but adamant can also be used as an adjective, making adamantine duplicative. Adamantine also came to English directly from Latin in about 1200. The Latin word is adamantinus and means “hard as steel, inflexible.” It comes from the Greek word adamantinos, which is a form of adamus, from which in the mid-1400s English we got the noun form of adamant (through the Latin via the French word adamant). Its use as an adjective came into use late in the 1400s.

Adamus was also the Latin name of the hypothetical hardest material, and literally meant invincible. It meant hard as steel until the 1670s, when it was first used to mean unshakeable or stubborn or obdurate. Adamant the noun was used in antiquity (according to etymonline.com) of substances like white sapphire, steel, and diamonds. In Old English it was ađamas, which meant “a very hard stone.”

While obduracy is a force of will, being adamantine is a result of character or nature.

So many words for stubborn. I wonder if there are as many words for being nice and compliant.

Also, earlier this month I used the word déclassé. While I italicized it and used the accents the French requires, it turns out that it has made its way into English usage sufficiently that I could have just written declasse. While I have never seen it that way, etymonline.com lists it as such, and a search of dictionaries provides examples of its appearance without accent marks and non-italicized. It is possible that the change from French word being used in English to an English word is still in process, but since I have always heard it pronounced as a three-syllable word (dey-kla-sey) I think the non-accent spelling without italics is still premature. It’s been used in English since 1887, and has the same meaning in English that it does in French: to cause to lose class, status, or social standing. Of course, since I have never had class or social standing, I can’t personally become déclassé, and I am adamant about that. (But not obdurate.)

Blither-Blather, Maggie Lauder, and Garbanzo Beans

This week a friend of mine posted a link on her Facebook page to a list of “20 ‘Forgotten’ Words That Should Be Brought Back.”  On the list was a word that and spurred and starts today’s post – blithering.

The verb blither was first used in 1868, a variant of blether, which comes “from Middle English blather.”

Blather is a good word that is either a verb or a noun, and means either foolish talk or talking foolishly, although it is often used with voluble talking. It’s an old Scottish word from the 1520s that probably came from the Old Norse word blađra that meant to mutter or “wag the tongue.” In its gerund form (blathering) it looks very much like the word blithering, which I’ve heard a lot, too (never in reference to my expressing myself, you understand – always about others).

Blither means the same thing as blather and blathering. Maybe on Thanksgiving Day this week I can caution the kids to “stop all that blither-blather.” According to etymonline.com it wasn’t for another 12 years (in 1880) that the “present participle adjective (from the first typically [used] with idiot)” was formed, even though it had been in use as a “verbal noun” since 1872.

These words reminded me this morning of a word Bill O’Reilly used to use (he still may – I haven’t seen his show recently) in encouraging people to write in: blatherskite. Blatherskite doesn’t primarily have the implication of foolish talk, only of voluble talk, although its second definition does.  The word blatherskite is formed by combining the aforementioned blather with the “dialectical” (etymonline.com) –skite, the suffix applied to a “contemptible person.”

It also comes from Scottish, from bletherskate. It came to English about 1650, but came to America during the American Revolution as Scottish soldiers in the Continental Army would sing the song Maggie Lauder.

The list that I referred to as I began this post also had a word previously mentioned in this blog, gallimaufry. I didn’t have space in the post on gallimaufry to include a similar word so let’s get to it now.

Farrago is a word that came into English in the 1630s from Latin, and it is defined as “a confused mixture,” something that can be used to describe this blog today. The Latin word farrago described a medley, or mix of grains for animal feed, the far in farrago being the word for grain. (Which reminds me – another blogspot user posted a blog on 10 freezer to crockpot meals. I’ve got to replicate this preparation soon.)

Also from that casserole post is chickpeas vs. garbanzo beans. Chickpeas and garbanzo beans are disparate words for the seeds of the plant biologically known as Cicer arietinum.  Etymonline.com has the word as a hyphenated word, but my dictionary doesn’t; it also says the word is a “false singular back-formation” because the word used since the 1540s was chich-pease, having come from the French name for the seeds, pois chiche. In pois chiche the chiche comes from the Latin name of the plant.

Garbanzo is the other name for the seeds, and comes from Spanish. One source said it is an alteration of the Spanish word arvanҫo, but I couldn’t find the word in Spanish. Wikipedia says arvanҫo is possibly a Portuguese word. Wikipedia also says garbanzo came to English as calavance from Old Spanish, perhaps influenced by garroba or algarroba. Said by etymonline to ultimately to come from Greek or Basque, its usage is primarily American. According to the OED, the Basque construction it might have come from is garbantzu, a word formed by combining the Basque words for seed (garau) and dry (antzu). I like that explanation best, even if it doesn’t have sufficient provenance (not to be confused with Provence, an area of France which really isn’t that far from the Basque region).

How “beans” got attached to garbanzo, I don’t know, but garbanzos sound much more fun, and masculine, than chickpeas. 

Different and Disparate words for Dissimilar

Sometimes you encounter words that are different, but sometimes they’re just dissimilar. Then there are those that are disparate. When is something different, when is it dissimilar, and when is it disparate?

The definitions shed some light: different is defined as “not alike in character or quality” while dissimilar is defined as “…not having likeness or resemblance” and disparate is “distinct in kind”.  

Latin is the ultimate source of all three words. The Latin word differentem (from which we get different through the Old French word different. It essentially means “to set apart.” (As in the Sesame Street song “one of these things just doesn’t belong here.”) It came to English in the late 1300s.

The Latin word similis means “like, or resembling.” There’s actually an Old Latin word (I didn’t even know there was Old Latin) that means “together” from which it may have come – the Old Latin word is semol. The French took similis  and made it similaire. The French had a word dissimilaire, which may be the source, but by the 1620s English was using the word dissimilar.

The Latin word from which we get disparate is disparatus, and disparate didn’t come through French. It arrived in English around 1600. Disparatus is the past participle of disparare, which means “divide or separate.” It was formed from combining the prefix dis-, which means “apart” and parare, which means prepare or get ready. There is a Latin word for unequal or unlike, dispar, which may also have influenced the development of the word. It is the Latin root that helps clarify what I believe the current predominant usage to be: bringing together of unlike things that were prepared separately.

So, disparate words are words that are unlike and come from different places, while different are things that are not alike in character or quality and dissimilar are things that don’t resemble each other.

For instance, olio and oleo are disparate words, olio and medley are dissimilar words, and olio and hodgepodge are different words. And, since I mentioned but didn't explain oleo earlier this month, let's cover that.

Oleo is short for oleomargarine, and has been a word of its own since 1884. In 1854 the French coined the word oléomargarine to describe the butter substitute made from beef fat.They formed the word by combining their word oléine (from the Latin word for oil, oleum, and the suffix from glycerine, -ine) and margarine. Around our dinner table we call oleine glyceryl trioleate. Margarine was invented in 1869 by the French scientist Hippolyte Mège-Mouries, according to etymonline.com. 

Etymonline.com also quotes a "Punch" article from Feb. 21, 1874 as saying "The 'enterprising merchant' of Paris, who sells Margarine as a substitute for Butter, and does not sell his customers by selling it as Butter, and at Butter's value, has very likely found honesty to be the best policy. That policy might perhaps be adopted with advantage by an enterprising British Cheesemonger." We all know who they're talking about, don't we? 

Making a Hash of Words - and Fashion

I promised last week to cover heterogeneous and medley this week.

Heterogeneous means different in kind or unlike. It can also mean composed of different kinds of parts. It came to English in the 1620s from the Medieval Latin word heterogeneus, which came from the Greek word heterogenes, a combination of the Greek words for different (hetero) and gender/race/kind (genos, from which we also get genus.) Earlier in the 1600s they tried out the word as heterogeneal, but apparently heterogeneous won out. I don’t think the battle was as fierce as between vhs and beta (a reference that anyone under the age of 30 will likely miss) but a battle nonetheless

Notice it is het-er-uh-jee-nee-uhs, six syllables. While combining the last three syllables into jeen and yuhs is also given (as in genius), the stress is not on the syllable with the o, and there is a long e sound after the n. While heterogenous is a biology or pathology term for something outside the organism, it is a different word from heterogeneous. Now that I have that off my back, let’s look at some similar words.

The opposite of heterogeneous is homogeneous (again, homogenous is a biology term – get it straight!). It arrived in English 20 years or so after heterogeneous (they were looking at differences before they looked at similarities, apparently). I don’t think it will surprise you to find out that the Greek word for similar is homo. As with heterogeneal, there was an earlier version of the word, homogeneal, that lapsed into disfavor and was eventually shut up in the Tower of London.

The other word from last week is medley. In my mind a medley is a succession of items, but my dictionary defines it as “a mixture, especially of heterogeneous elements.” Medley arrived in English in about 1300, and has a very interesting etymology. It came from the Old French word for hand-to-hand combat, medlee. Within a couple of hundred years it developed a meaning of a combination or mixture, and was not used to describe the musical composition of diverse parts until the 1620s. So the next time some guy (anyone but me) shows up at work with striped pants and a plaid shirt with a paisley tie and a checkered jacket, refer to his outfit as a medley instead of a hodgepodge.

While we have space, let me follow up on last week’s coverage of the word hash. “Hash browns” and  “hash marks” have come into use in English. What have they to do with hash? While Hash browns is the earliest of the three, having arrived in English in 1917. It refers to potatoes that were hashed (i.e. chopped up) and then fried. The –ed was eventually also chopped. While my source (etymonline.com) doesn’t state that it is a product of the first World War, the other one (actually two) is/are.

Hash marks were first used in the armed forces to describe the service stripes on the sleeve of a military uniform. They’ve been used in that sense since 1909 (actually before the first World War, but give me a break) and were called that supposedly because they marked the number of years one had eaten the free food/hash from the Army. The similarity in appearance of the lines on an American Football field (I know this blog has readers in other parts of the world) to the stripes on a uniform sleeve resulted in them getting called hash marks, but not until the 1960s. On the football field they look more like dashes than hash, but who am I to quibble?

Are you ready for some football?

My Casserole Restaurant Menu

I like casseroles so much that I once thought it would be a good idea to open a casserole-only restaurant. (Name: “It’s how we ‘role”.) It would include stews and hodgepodge dishes, perhaps even olio, gallimaufry and ragout. Some ideas are best left as ideas.

But I do like casseroles. Yet I was a little surprised to find out that the word casserole refers primarily to the covered baking dish in which they are cooked. It was not until about 1930 that the word was used to describe what is cooked in the dish, perhaps as haute cuisine flourished and used phrases such as en casserole, or à la casserole.

Casseroles as a word came to English in 1706 from the French word from the 16^th century that described a sauce pan. The Middle French word for pan (used as early as the 14^th century) was casse, and came from the Provenҫal  word cassa, which meant “melting pan,” which they got from the Medieval Latin word for pan, cattia. It is possible that Latin got cattia from the Greek word kyathion, which is a diminutive of their word for the “cup for the wine bowl”, kyathos.

While in my mind a casserole is a hodgepodge of ingredients, it can be more simple than a hodgepodge.

A hodgepodge is defined as a heterogeneous (dissimilar – wait until next week’s post) mixture, or a thick soup made from meat and vegetables. I don’t know about the heterogeneous aspect, but  knowing that hodgepodge began by describing “a kind of stew…made with goose, herbs, spices, wine, and other ingredients” certainly makes it deserving of a place in my restaurant menu. Goose stew.

The word hodgepodge (also found as two words or hyphenated between the syllables) came into English in the early 1400s as hogpoch, which was an alteration of the word hotchpotch that appeared in the late 1300s. At that time it was an Anglo-French legal term meaning “collection of property in a common ‘pot’ before dividing it equally,” a word derived from the Old French word hochepot that meant stew or soup.

Another item on the menu would be gallimaufry. It is defined as “a hodgepodge,” meaning a jumble or confused medley (more on this, too, in next week’s post), a ragout or hash. Gallimaufry has been used in English since the 1550s, having come across the channel from France, where it was spelled galimafrée. In Old French it was spelled calimafree, and since the late 1300s had referred to a “sauce made of mustard, ginger, and vinegar; a stew of carp.” Where that came from is open to debate. Carp stew with mustard/ginger sauce – comin’ right up.

Ragout (still pronounced in the French manner as ra-goo) is defined as a highly seasoned stew of meat or fish, with or without vegetables. Another dictionary allows poultry to be an ingredient, so add chicken ragout to the menu. Ragout has been used in English since the 1650s, and came from the French word ragoût, a form of the Middle French word  ragoûter, that meant ”awaken the appetite.” 

Hash has developed a déclassé connotation of diner fare about it, but the word refers more to the preparation of the food than the other words do. There is an element of cutting into small pieces rather than just mixing disparate ingredients. Defined primarily as “a dish of diced or chopped meat and often vegetables, as of leftover corned beef and veal and potatoes, sautéed in a frying pan” or “meat, potatoes, and carrots cooked together in gravy”,  we have another menu item – veal hash.

Hash came to English first as a verb (also in the 1650s) to describe the hacking or chopping of food into small pieces. The French word for chop up is hacher, from the Old French word for ax, hache (more on this in a future post, or I’ll never finish my menu).  The noun (the food, not the method of preparation) came into use about a decade later.  

One final item on the menu, a word much used in crosswords. Olio is a dish of many ingredients, and is not a misspelling of oleo. (See why we have so many “follow up” posts?) It, too, is defined as a mixture of heterogeneous elements, a hodgepodge, but it is also used informally to describe olla podrida, a spicy Spanish stew comprised often of sausage, chickpeas, tomatoes and other vegetables. Known on the Iberian peninsula since the 1640s, the word comes from the Spanish (olla) or Portuguese (olha) word for pot or jar. The Spanish and Portuguese got their word from the Latin word olla. Like casserole, its meaning transferred from the cooking vessel to the food itself. And we’ve come full circle.

Of course, the dessert menu would have to include zabaglione.

More Inigo Montoya Words

Time for another installment of Inigo Montoya words. Today we look at restive and factitious.

Restive sounds like it should describe a state of rest. But it actually describes something that is impatient regarding control or restraint or delay. It can also describe something that is stubborn or refusing to go forward, or balking at something. It’s been around since the early 1400s, when it arrived in English from the French word restuffe, which meant “not moving forward.” Restuffe came from an earlier (Middle French) word restif, that meant brought to a standstill, like traffic in Los Angeles. There is a Modern French word, rétif, that has the same root. Originally restricted in meaning to just “not moving forward,” the word apparently grew restive and in the 1680s developed the additional meaning of “unmanageable”, according to etymonline.com, having “evolved via [the] notion of a horse refusing to go forward.” So restive is anything but restful.

Our other word today is factitious. Factitious sounds like it should mean full of facts. It also is an adjective, used to describe something that is created rather than natural, planned rather than spontaneous, artificial rather than real.  It’s been around in English since the 1640s, having arrived straight from the Latin word factitius, which means artificial and comes from factus, which is the past participle of facere, from which we get multifarious, surfeit, and nidify. Facere means “do” or “make”, and it is in the sense of “make” that it is used here.

We get a lot of words from facere, including misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance. While these three words might be familiar, the word feasance, from which they are formed, may not be. Since it has the root word facere, arriving in English through the French word faire, both of which mean "to do," it has the legal sense of doing something as a condition or a duty. But what’s the difference between misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance?

According to etymonline.com, misfeasance is “the wrongful exercise of lawful authority or improper performance of a lawful act,” and arrived in English in the 1590s from the Middle French word mesfaisance, which comes from the combining of the Old French mes-, meaning “wrongly” and the aforementioned “faire,” that means “to do.” My dictionary has an additional definition of “a wrong consisting of affirmative action.”

Malfeasance, on the other hand, is defined by my dictionary as “the performance by a public official of a…wrongdoing.” According to etymonline.com it arrived in English a century after misfeasance, in the 1690s. It also came through French, from malfaisance, formed from the French prefix for “badly”, mal-, and faisant, the present participle of faire. So in French the difference is between doing something badly and doing something wrongly.

Misfeasance is doing a legal act improperly but not illegally yet its effect may have legal repercussions. Malfeasance is doing something that is illegal. It is often used of those in public office in particular, but applies to anyone. Nonfeasance is the illegal non-performance of an act one is obligated to perform.

If you’re restive, don’t give in to a desire to be factitious and be guilty of malfeasance. 

It's Enough to Drive You Mad, Especially If You're Crossing a Rubicon

As I threatened last week, today we follow up on Alyssum and Rubicon. Both are proper nouns, hence the capitalization.

Alyssum, not to be confused with my lissome niece Elissa, is also part of a family – the mustard family (not the Colonel Mustard family, for you Clue players.) There is an entire genus named Alyssum, and Alyssum is characterized by clusters of small white or yellow flowers. The name arrived in English in the 1550s, having come through Latin from Greek. The Greek word, alysson is, according to etymonline.com, “perhaps the neuter of adjective alyssos ‘curing madness,’ from privative prefix a + lyssa ‘madness, rage, fury.’” My dictionary inserts “canine” between curing and madness. In case you’re wondering whether flowers are a key component in the rabies vaccine, they’re not.

Rubicon is the other proper noun carried over from last week. With the same root as ruby or rubicund (the Latin word rubicundus), it is similar in appellation to the eight Red Rivers in the U.S. or the five in Canada or similar ones around the world. When the banks of a river have surrounding soil that is red it is often used to describe the river itself.

But the Rubicon is familiar to many in the phrase “Crossing the Rubicon.” While there are two Swedish bands (Armageddon and The Sounds) who use that title for one of their albums, and a couple of other bands (The Human Extract and Revolution Renaissance) have used the phrase as a title of a song, it is more commonly known as a metaphor for reaching the point of no return.

Students of history know this refers back to Julius Caesar, and his decision on January 10, 49 BC, after having conquered what is now France and southern England as Governor of Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul, to “invade” Italy, the border of which was the Rubicon River. While one report has Caesar saying Alea iacta est, which of course means “The die is cast,” the one thing that is certain is that this began his march on Rome, which resulted in his becoming the dictator before the year was out.

I used the word appellation above. Appellation means name or title, but also is used of the act of naming. It came to English in the mid-1400s, from the Middle French word apeler. But another form of the word came to English in the late 1400s from the old French word apelacion, which the French got from the Latin word appellationem, which was an addressing or accosting, but also an appeal, or a name or title. It actually was a noun of action (like the act of naming), and was derived from the past participle of appelare, from which we get the verb appeal. So the act of appealing to a higher authority is a newer sense (by about ½ century) than the more common meaning of name or naming.

It’s enough to drive you mad, especially if you’re crossing a Rubicon.

Ravenous But Not Rapacious Reading Results in Being Lissome

I ran across three words this week in my readings, two of which are follow up to recent posts.

While last week’s post covered some "–some" words, it could not cover them all. One that I encountered this week was lissome. It is a variant spelling for lithesome, which is more difficult to pronounce, and developed around 1800. Lithesome had arrived in use in 1768, but because it is a voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative followed by a voiceless coronal sibilant (th sound followed by s) it is not easy to pronounce, hence along came lissome. It is pronounced with a short i sound rather than a long i sound since it is followed by a double s. It sounds like the flower Alyssum, a word we’ll have to defer (defer until later is unnecessary repetition).

Lithe, the base word for lissome that means flexible or limber, is an adjective (as are lithesome and lissome). It is a very old word in English, having survived from an Old English word that meant soft, gentle or meek. By Middle English it was used of the weather, and developed its current meaning around 1300.

Our second word today follows up on the blog post on voracious, inveterate reading. Had there been space I could have added the word ravenous to that post. Ravenous, which means extremely hungry or rapacious (we’ll get to that in a minute), does not come from the bird named the Raven but from an Old French word, ravinos, which the Old French developed from their word that meant “to seize”, raviner, which came from the word for a violent rush or a robbery, ravine.  Yes, that’s where we get one of our words for a narrow, steep-sided valley through which water often rushes violently, a ravine. When the word we started with, ravenous, came to use in English in the late 1300s it meant obsessed with plundering or excessively greedy. Within a century its meaning expanded to any excessive appetite, like reading or food.

The word rapacious mentioned above is the adjective that currently has a meaning related to plundering and greediness. It came to English in the 1650s from the Latin word rapaci-, a  “stem of rapax, ‘grasping,’ itself from stem of rapere ‘to seize,’” according to etymonline.com. The stem word rapere, if you remember, is the word from which we get our word rapine. 

Today’s final word from this week’s reading is rubicund. It is related to both the name of the red gem ruby and the river Rubicon which is another word we’ll have to defer. Rubicund is more closely related in use to our word sanguinary than ruby or Rubicon, although sanguinary is more related to blood than just color. Rubicund, by the way, is a good adjective for something that is red or reddish or ruddy (having a fresh, healthy red color). It came to English about 1500 from the French word rubicund, or perhaps directly from the Latin word rubicundus (it gets my etymological vote), a form of the word rubere that means “to be red.” One could say that rubicund is the pedantic word for ruddy, but why would you?

So you’ve now read about red, and perhaps are no longer ravenous or rapacious to find out about lissome. But we still have Alyssum and Rubicon to look forward to. We’ll cross those next week.

Some Abraham Lincoln, Some- Robert Browning, and –some Inigo Montoya

I had dinner this week with someone I once described as winsome, and in my reading came across the word fulsome. While it seems obvious that the word irksome means that the situation being described is one that is full of annoyance or being irked, or even tiresome (which describes something that causes one to tire), that does not mean that a toothsome grin means that the grin is full of teeth. The suffix –some can sometimes be troublesome (which does mean full of trouble or difficulty.) Whereas the prefix some- usually means “at an unspecified increment” the suffix doesn’t always appear to be a suffix of causation.

Even the word some sometimes means different things. While its central meaning is “being an undetermined or unspecified one” as used in “somebody stole my cookie”, it can also be used to describe the opposite when used of plural nouns “some days I just don’t want a cookie.” There are a number of other uses, too. The word some has some (meaning “remarkable”) kind of variety, and has been used in that sense since 1808, mostly as an American colloquial.

The prefix some- (as in someone, somebody, sometime, someday, someone) indicates uncertainty or describes something that is undetermined. You can find the same words in Middle English, but they were written as two words until the 17^th to 19^th centuries. Even the word somewhen, a rare word (I do not remember having heard or read it), has been used since the 19^th century in combination with more common compounds, as Robert Browning did in line 505 of “Mr. Sludge, ‘The Medium’”:

Out of the drift of facts, whereby you learn

What some was, somewhere, somewhen, somewhy?

Wikipedia cites several recent uses, so maybe it is once again becoming a useful word.

But then there are the troublesome and irksome suffixes. The easy one to understand is the meaning of “causing”, which is the sense used in troublesome and irksome. But there is also a collective use of the suffix, as in twosome or threesome, which means “group of”.

And then there are the words that don’t follow either convention, like winsome, toothsome, and fulsome. Or, as Inigo Montoya said in the movie The Princess Bride, “I do not think it means what you think it means.” While they technically mean "full of", such a definition requires more explanation and research.

Winsome is an old word, used in English since before the year 900. It is a good word, meaning sweetly or innocently charming, and similar in meaning to the word engaging. That’s a much nicer meaning than “some win.”  In Old English it was spelled wynsum, and combined the Old English word for joy (wyn) with the Old English word sum, which somewhere and somewhen became spelled some, probably so it would not be confused with the word that indicates the total of a series of numbers or quantities, or aggregate. So technically winsome means full of wyn. 

Toothsome, which I always thought meant showing some teeth (as in toothsome grin), actually is defined as pleasing or desirable, and is often used of that which passes through the teeth (food). It came to English in the 1560s, but it was used ten years earlier in the figurative sense of “attractive.” It has also been used to describe someone who is voluptuous or sexually alluring. I think I will begin using this word more; it will likely be misunderstood by others, and I always enjoy driving people to the dictionary. 

Fulsome is the word that got me started on this quest. It means offensive to good taste, especially in being excessive or overdone. In that respect it almost means the opposite of what it sounds like it means (the kind of word I like – you can use it correctly but sound like you’re giving a compliment: “That was a fulsome dinner!”) In Middle English the word was simply a compound of the words full and some. In the 1200s it mean abundant or full (full of full?), but by the mid-1300s developed a meaning of plump or well-fed, then by the 1640s meant overgrown or overfed. It was not far or long (the 1660s) until it widened its meaning to anything offensive to good taste or good manners. One source suggested it might have developed the negative meaning from its similarity of "ful-" to the word foul, an interesting speculation that makes it easier to remember its primary meaning. 

Finally, there is also the use of the word “some” in the phrase “get some”, meaning “have sexual intercourse.” The use in this sense can be found as far back as 1899 in a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln from circa 1840. Or is it somewhen 1840?

Why Did French Courtiers Grow Their Left Little Fingernail Longer? It Was De Rigueur

Finishing up some loose ends, I have one word from last week to cover: polemics. Polemics is described in one dictionary as “the art or practice of disputation or controversy.” To which I respond “huh?”

Polemics is (polemics can be used as a singular or a plural noun) when someone presents a reasoned and contrary view of a belief or a doctrine. It comes from the French word polémique, which also referred to a controversial argument. The French likely got it from the Greek word for relating to war, polemikós. Its use in English can be traced back as far as the 1630s.

While we’re talking about French words that made their way to English, I used the phrase de rigueur in the blog post title on Sept. 1 and never explained it.

De rigueur is one of those phrases that has become so common in English that it is questionable whether it should be italicized or not. (I italicize foreign words – is de rigueur still foreign or not?) The French means literally “of strictness”, and has been used in English since 1849. But its meaning has become strictly required by fashion, usage, or etiquette.

The word rigueur in modern French is the source of our word rigor. The Old French word was spelled rigor, and that is the spelling adopted in the late 14^th century when the English first used the word that now means severity, strictness, or harshness. Its original meaning of hardness is retained in the Latin phrase rigor mortis, the stiffening of the body after death.

The Latin verb for hardness or stiffness is regere, and is the source of rigor. But the adjective is rigidus,  from which English got our word for stiff or hard, rigid, in the 15^th century. Same source word, different form.

A final French word that’s made its way into English is one used in the definition of de rigueur: etiquette. In 1750 the French word etiquette meant “prescribed behavior,” and if you can imagine the French court in the 1750s it’s easy to imagine how prescribed behavior had become. (It is said that King Louis XIV’s etiquette prescribed that anyone wishing to speak with the King could not knock on his door; he had to use the little finger on his left hand and gently scratch on the door. Rumor has it that courtiers grew that fingernail longer than the others.)

The Old French word is estiquette, and means ticket or label. The main sense relates to the behavior instructions written on a soldier’s billet for lodgings. One can easily see how, given the relation between behaving properly and keeping one’s head attached, those who were part of the French Court would have written “cheat sheets” to make sure they remembered how to behave while at court.

And you thought it was all music and dancing. 

Catching Up is Not Anathema, or Maranatha

I ran across the word anathema recently, and was surprised to find out that its origin is from the church concept of being excommunicated. It came to English in the 1520s from the Latin word spelled identically, which meant “an excommunicated person; the curse of excommunication.” Latin got the word from the Greek word transliterated anathema, which means “a thing that is accursed.” Originally it meant something devoted, and literally meant “a thing set up (to the gods).” Anathema was created by combining the Greek words for “up” (ana-) and “to place” (tithenai). 

Anathema has developed a broader meaning, although the usage I have heard most often is in the phrase “anathema to me”, meaning something to be avoided. It has gone beyond meaning just something worthy of divine punishment to something to be detested or hated, hence avoided.

An interesting biblical usage is found in I Cor. 16:22, where anathema is followed by the word maranatha. While in the King James Version it is rendered (untranslated) as Anathema Maranatha, in the New Internation Version it is translated as “…person be cursed! Come, Lord!” Maranatha, according to etymonline.com, “is a misreading of the Syriac maran etha, which means ‘the Lord hath come.’”

Maranatha has become an interjection used in English to mean “O Lord, come.” Etymonline.com suggests it could also be a false transliteration of the Hebrew words “mohoram atta,” which means “you are put under the ban.” While that fits the sense of I Cor. 16:22 better, it seems a bit of a stretch to me; I prefer the Aramaic maran atha, the Aramaic form of the Syriac phrase. Coming up with another source and meaning seems to be pushing it too far.

While I’m catching up on words encountered lately, one of those words is one I associate with William F. Buckley: athwart. One of his earliest and best known quotes was used in “Our Mission Statement” in National Review in 1955: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”  Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley, Jr. Omnibus.

Athwart is (not surprisingly if you know much about Mr. Buckley) a nautical term, referring to anything that is at a right angle to the line going from fore to aft (front to back), or to the wind. Think of it as standing crosswise to the direction or winds of history, in National Review’s case.

Of course, the Buckley Omnibus brings up a couple of other words (we’ve already discussed animadversion): omnibus and polemics.

Omnibus in the sense used in the title has an interesting history. In about 1820 Jacques Lafitte (the Parisian banker during the French Revolution, not the Formula One racer, and not related to the pirate Jean Lafitte) is credited with using the word to refer to the carriages that were available to everyone, which in French is voiture omnibus. Omnibuses came to London in 1829, and eventually we shortened the word for the public transportation vehicle to simply a bus.

The word was used in 1842 to describe legislation that contained many different items or objects (as in omnibus bill). From that sense came the idea of a collection of different works by one author or a group of works related in theme or interest.  

Polemics will have to wait until next week. 

Don't Get All Verklempt - The Final in Our Series on Yiddish Words

I’ve been relating Yiddish words adopted into English, after reading Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008), and ran out of room last week for one word, so let’s begin with that: schlong.

Schlong (schlang in Yiddish) is another word for snake that was adopted in Yiddish to refer to the penis, the meaning carried over into English. While schmuck came from the Old Polish word for snake, schlong comes from the German word for snake, which in Middle High German is schlange. It is the most recent of the Yiddish words for penis to come into use in English, only having arrived in 1969. (Although I think I heard its use earlier, in high school in the 1960s, my memory may be wrong, but it is always the case that a word is used in spoken language a while before it appears in written works.)

Now, time for some non-sexual words from the book. (Finally, you say?) Wex says (on page 208), in talking about Mob (criminal) Yiddish words, while talking about words for prison:

The original meaning of the word khayder [Hebrew school] is “room,” hence its use in this context. Yeshiva is literally “a sitting.” Lokh is the Yiddish word for “hole.” Kan is a Hebrew adverb that means “here.” I’ve been unable to determine with any certainty if this is the source of can as prison (“he’s in the can”) in English.

While that’s possible, I also wonder if it’s the source of the “I’m in the can” meaning when someone is in the bathroom (loo, WC or water closet in England). The word “can” comes from the Old English word canne, which meant a cup or container. There are similar words for a container in many Germanic languages, and with the creation of canned food in the middle-19^th century, the word “can” was adopted in 1867 to describe those containers. The use of “can” for toilet came in about 1900, a shortening of “piss-can,” so its tie to the meaning of “room” as in “I’m in the can” is not likely either. No mention is made of its use for jail, but I found that its use to describe the buttocks (whether callipygian or not) is from about 1910. While “can” is also a verb with several meanings, primary of which is “to be able to,” that use is so old (before 900) and so basic to many languages (German, Norse, Gothic kann) that it has little we can (See how I used it?) gain from more on it here.

Our final word from Yiddish is schlock, which means cheap or trashy. Wex (p. 211) explains how it came from the Yiddish shlak:

…technically, a shlyak, but try to say it quickly – a tailors’ term for selvage, the protective edge of a fabric that the tailor cuts off and throws away before using the cloth….So shlock, a term that entered English through the rag trade, originally meant crap that should have been tossed away but that you were trying to unload – for money.

Schlock came to English at least by 1915 as a noun, but within a year was being used as an adjective. In the 1960s schlockmeister appeared (to describe the seller) and a different adjective form, schlocky, also came into use. 

There are other words to come into English from Yiddish, but these are all we'll cover at this point. I know that will make you all verklempt.

From Job 8:15 to Li'l Abner - in Yiddish

As promised, today we look at some of the sexual words that have come to English from Yiddish, as I discovered in reading Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008).

Let’s begin by recounting an interesting story about a biblical reference that provides the Yiddish phrase for impotence that is literally “someone who leans against his house.” How does that mean impotent? Wex explains on page 232:

His real problem is impotence, thanks to the standard Yiddish trick of quoting only the first half of a biblical verse to whose second half you’re making reference. Yishooen al bayseh, “He leans against his house” is the beginning of Job 8:15, the rest of which reads “And it does not stand up. He takes hold of it, but it does not rise.”

Now, to the words putz, schmuck, and schlong.

Putz, schmuck and schlong all have Yiddish origins, and all refer to the penis. It’s interesting how the words for the male sex organ have come into use in English, while words for female genitalia do not; female parts are a subject to be avoided, to such an extent that the most common word for vagina (VA-GEE-NEH with a hard G in Yiddish) is simply dortn, which means “there.”

Putz (pots in Yiddish) in English is used of a fool or a jerk. The word has been used in several ways, according to etymonline.com:

Since at least 1873 it has been used by the Amish (Pennsylvania Dutch, as my ancestors are known) to describe the “Nativity display around a Christmas tree.” This use was based on the German word meaning of finery or adornment, so the nativity adorned the tree.

In 1934 the word was used in the Yiddish sense of penis in the Henry James novel Tropic of Cancer, which was banned in the United States until the Supreme Court declared it wasn’t obscene in 1964.

In 1964 the word took on the more acceptable English meaning of an obnoxious man or a jerk.

A schmuck is an obnoxious or contemptuous person, although the uses I’ve heard (generally of me…) were less severe than the definition indicates. “You’re such a schmuck” is commonly used as a somewhat friendly/humorous reference to someone’s non-sexual actions of a fool. But it’s etymology is sexual. Schmuck, or shmok in Yiddish, is considered a quite obscene reference to the penis, much stronger in Yiddish than in English. Its first written use in English was in 1897, and probably originated in the Old Polish word smok, which is used for a grass snake or dragon (the connection to penis becomes obvious). Leo Rosten (in The Joys of Yiddish, 1968) wrote it was so vulgar its use was taboo, and the controversial comedian Lenny Bruce’s use of it on stage on the West Coast got him arrested.

An interesting development of the word is that it became euphemized as schmoe, a word that is less objectionable and is used of a foolish person. Its first appearance in English was in 1948. The cartoonist Al Capp also began using it in 1948 for a creature in his cartoon strip “Li’l Abner,” the schmoo.

We’ve gone on [sch]long enough that schlong will have to wait until next week. 

It's Labor Day, So Yiddish is De Rigueur

I just finished reading a book on Yiddish (see my Goodreads post) called Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008). Many common words come from Yiddish. Some I knew (should I just say nu?) and some I was not aware were Yiddish in origin.

The first word I encountered in the book (p. 10) was schmooze, about which Wex writes:

A SHMOOS... (the Yiddish rhymes with loose), a real conversation, begins with the idea of partnership. It’s no accident that shmoos…comes from a Hebrew word that means “tiding, rumor”; something that you’ve heard rather than something that you’ve said. Shmoozing is based on listening, on the idea of responding to what you hear and being answered in turn by someone who has been listening to you.

Schmooze in English usage (which first entered English as a verb in 1897, and added a noun sense in 1939) has a more general meaning of genial conversation, with a hint of ulterior motive – to cozy up to someone through conversation or polite banter. Listening is not as prominent a part of schmoozing in English as it is in Yiddish.

The second word today is nudnik, defined as a boring and dull pest. My dictionary calls it an Americanism, acknowledging its Yiddish roots. Etymologically it comes from either the Polish or Russian word for boredom or boring (nuda or nudnyi), and has only been in common usage in America since 1947.

The Yiddish term has a more nauseous sense to it, according to Wex, p. 56:

English has lost the gut-wrenching physicality that Yiddish – ever mindful of its speakers’ stomachs – never fails to stress; the basic meaning of nudnik, usually translated as “bore” or “pest,” is “person who provokes vomit in another; agent of upchuck.” NUDZHEN, an alternative version of nudyen, gives us the English noun and verb nudge, as in “Quit nudging,” “Don’t be such a nudge” – i.e., “shut up before you make me sick to my stomach.”

The aforementioned meaning of nudge, a secondary definition in my dictionary, is the most recent English transplant of today's words, having arrived in English in the 1960s. 

The primary definition has a different meaning: to push slightly, particularly with the elbow. It arrived as a verb in the 1670s, from one of the Scandinavian languages (in Norwegian the word for rub is nyggje while in Icelandic it is nugga.)

Our final word today is also associated with digestion, but you would not likely guess its association. Schmaltz (shmalts in Yiddish) is literally “melted animal fat.” So how did it come to mean exaggerated sentimentalism, a meaning it’s had in English since 1935? You have to go back to a time when it was common experience to take the fat of animals like sheep and cattle, and render (melt) it until it becomes the “essential ingredient in candles and soap” according to Wex. Shmalts “is regarded as one of the greatest goods.”  It could in past times have made someone wistful, reminiscent of “Mom and matzoh pie.” Hence the sentimentalism, relating to two basic staples of the old home.

Next week we’ll go from food words into more sex-related words from Yiddish. 

True and Habitual Words from A Variety of Sources for Those Who Can't Get Enough

As inveterate readers of this blog may suspect, I am a voracious and eclectic reader. Many of the words for this blog come from my reading.

So today we’ll look at inveterate, voracious, and eclectic before we get to words, beginning next week, from my recent reading.

Inveterate, according to Dictionary.com, means “settled or confirmed in a habit, practice, feeling, or the like.” (And I hope any reader of this blog becomes an inveterate reader.) The word comes directly from the Latin word inveteratus, which means “of long standing, chronic,” according to etymonline.com. It came to English in the late 1300s. The Latin word is formed by combining in- (meaning “in”, of all things), and veterare, a form of the word vetus, which means “old” and from which we also get the word veteran.

Veteran is the word to use of anyone who has long service or experience in any occupation. But veteran didn’t arrive in English until about 1500, through French. It originally meant just “old”, but by the year 1600 had added the current meaning, and shortly after also began to be used as an adjective.

Voracious is the adjective form of voracity, which is not to be confused with veracity, which is related to verity.

Voracious primarily means consuming or craving large quantities of food, but secondarily applies to anything consumed in great quantity. It also means exceedingly eager or avid. Voracity, a noun, arrived in English in the 1520s, from the Middle French word voracité, which came from the Latin word voracitatem, which refers to greediness or ravenousness. The adjective voracious arrived over a century later, in the 1630s, as a formation of the English noun.

Veracity is a noun that came from the same Latin source word (verus) as the noun verity. Verity is truth, while veracity is habitual truthfulness or conforming to a fact. (Veracious is a word, the adjective form of veracity.) Veracity came to English from the French word véracité, which came from the Latin word veracitatem, which means truthfulness and is a form of verus, which means true.

Which brings us to eclectic. Eclectic is an adjective that came to English in the 1680s. It originally was the name given to a group of ancient philosophers (like Panaetius, Posidonius, Carneades, Philo, Cicero and my personal favorite Seneca) who selected their doctrines from various systems. The French called them eclectique, their form of the Greek word eklektikos which literally translated is “picking out.” Now, any time a group of something has great variety it can be called eclectic. That meaning didn’t develop until 1847.

So veracity and veratious refer to truth, voracity and voracious refer to consumption, veteran and inveterate both refer to a length of time, and eclectic means bringing together from various sources, which is what these words have in common. For those of you who can't get enough of this blog.

Ubiquitous Replication Rejoinders are Tantamount to Figments

In June of last year I used a couple of words in a post and indicated there was no post to explain those words - yet. Today we follow up and can provide that post. The words are ubiquitous and rejoinder.

Ubiquitous means “existing everywhere, especially at the same time.” It came to English fairly recently (in 1837) from Modern Latin. There was an earlier word, ubiquitary, that can still be found in the dictionary, but I haven’t seen it used. It meant the same thing, since the 1580s. But the original form of the word was ubiquity, the noun (ubiquitous is an adjective). Ubiquity is the state of being everywhere at one time. It arrived in the 1570s from Middle French, who took their word ubiquité from the Latin word ubique, which was formed by combining the Latin word for “where” (ubi-) with the Latin word for “ever” (que). The word was originally used in Lutheran theology to describe the omnipresence of Christ.

While ubiquitous has a theological background rejoinder has a legal history. It arrived in English in the mid-1400s, from Middle French. The French noun, rejoindre, was the fourth stage in common law proceedings. It referred to the opportunity for the defendant to reply to the plaintiff’s replication. It retains the meaning of answer to a reply or response. In other words, a response to a response is a rejoinder.

Of course, we have to now look at the word replication. While it primarily means reply, answer, or reply to an answer (here we go again), it originated in the third section of French legal proceedings. In that sense it arrived in English in the late 1300s, which means it took a few years for the rejoinder to join replication. The Anglo-French word was replicacioun, from the French replicacion, from the Latin replicationem, formed from the Latin word for repetition, but literally meaning “to fold back.” It has since developed the meaning of a copy or reproduction, but that did not take place until the 1690s.  

While I’m following up and still have space, a recent post on George Carlin’s book, 3x Carlin, on "figment of" reminded me of the words "tantamount to." I have never heard of anything being tantamount, only “tantamount to.” Because tantamount means equivalent in value, force, or significance, it by its nature has a reference to something else. You could say two things are tantamount, but the prevalent usage of tantamount is not an actual equivalence but effective equivalence, or moral equivalence. It is used when suggesting that one action has the equivalent result of something far more serious or dire. A common alternative phrase is “moral equivalent of…” in place of “tantamount to…” It is not exactly, but has a similar effect as the thing to which it is being compared. Tantamount came ashore in the 1640s as a combining of the two words tant and amount. The phrase tant amount was used in the 1620s, and within 20 years became just the one word. We know what amount means, but what is tant? Tant was an Old French word meaning “as much.”  Now you know as much as I do, which is tantamount.

Words from Advise and Consent

I just finished reading Advise and Consent, a great book. But the one thing I found distracting was the consistent use of the word sardonic by the author Allen Drury. Another word that Drury used consistently that always disrupted the flow of my reading was his use of the word allot when allocate would have also worked. So it drove me to the dictionary. What’s the difference between allot and allocate, and sardonic and sarcastic, and what’s the good word to use in what situation?

Let’s begin with sardonic. Sardonic is an adjective that means cynical or mocking; it has a sense of derision or bitterness to it. It came to English in the 1630s from French, where it was spelled sardonique. The French got it from the Latin word sardonius, which came from the Greek word sardonius, which related to “bitter or scornful [laughter]” and was altered from Homer’s sardanios. In case that’s not enough etymology, sardanios was influenced by Sardonios, the Greek word for Sardinian, because they thought a “plant they called sardonion (literally “plant from Sardinia…”) caused facial convulsions resembling those of sardonic laughter, usually followed by death” according to etymonline.com. Think of the laughter of the villain's laughter when the train is coming down the track toward the heroine who is tied up and place across the railroad tracks.

Sarcastic, on the other hand, also has a meaning of derision and bitterness, with the flavoring of irony thrown in as well. If you take a sardonic comment and turn it around to say the opposite thing with derision, it’s sarcastic. While sarcasm (the noun form of sarcastic) arrived in English in the 1570s, the adjective sarcastic took about 120 years to develop. Sarcasm came from the Late Latin word sarcasmos, which came from the Greek word sarkazein. While sarkazein literally translated means “to strip off the flesh” (see excoriate), its meaning in Greek was to sneer or speak bitterly about.

The difference between allot and allocate is not simply shortening by taking the cae out of allocate. While dictionary.com’s definition of allocate is “to set apart for a particular purpose; assign or allot,” its definition of allot is (along with a second definition of “to set apart for a particular purpose”) to divide or distribute by share or portion (which brings to mind the synonym apportion). Apportion means to distribute or allocate proportionally. And the circle is complete. Allocate means to allot, allot means to allocate by portion, and apportion means to allocate proportionally. So we have three words that mean the same thing?

Maybe the etymology can provide some clarification. Allot came to English first, in the late 1400s, from the Old French word aloter, which meant to divide by or into lots. Within a century, in the 1570s, apportion arrived from the Middle French apportionner, which came from the Old French aporcioner (apparently the difference between Old and Middle French is double letters), which meant to divide into portions. The same as allot, it seems.

Allocate showed up in English in another 60 years, from the Medieval Latin allocate. Allocate was “the common first word in writs authorizing payment”, according to etymonline.com, and was formed by combining the two Latin words for “to” and “place”; so to place something in another’s possession is to allocate.

So what’s the difference? Very little. Use allocate when it comes to money, apportion when something is divided up according to some formula. And use allot in a formal assignment to another if it does not have a sense of any portioning or is not a monetary transaction. It’s not much difference, and you likely won’t be excoriated if you use one word when another might be more accurate, but at least now you know.

Be Wrong If You Want To; You're Not Making Me Sick!

In a post last month I mentioned the etymology of the word brook as a verb, and also promised “More on that next month.” Well, next month has arrived, so let’s fulfill the promise.

Brook is most commonly used as a noun, but can be used as a verb, meaning to tolerate, endure, or suffer. As mentioned before, it came from the Old English brucan, which was the word used in Old English for the word use. It also meant possess, enjoy, eat; and cohabit with. So it was a versatile word. (Perhaps too much so.) As brucan in reference to eating developed the meaning of “able to digest,” it developed the meaning of tolerate, which it retains today in a broad sense in the word brook. Other meanings of brucan have not followed brook.

Brook as a noun refers to a small freshwater stream. (While my dictionary provided that information, I couldn’t find a word that refers to a small saltwater stream. Anyone know?) This meaning of the word brook did came from Old English but not from brucan. It came from their word for a flowing stream, broc.  In parts of England (Sussex and Kent) it means “water meadow” and in its plural form “low, marshy ground.”

While we’re catching up, there is another reference I needed to explore. For those of you who enjoy the sitcom Big Bang Theory, you may remember the episode where Leonard says he’s nauseous and Sheldon responds by saying Leonard should not have used the word nauseous, because he was actually nauseated. Which made me wonder “What’s the difference?”

My dictionary has as the definition of nauseous “affected with nausea, nauseated.” While that would make it appear the two are synonymous the section listing synonyms says “see usage note.” So here is what dictionary.com says:

The two literal senses of nauseous, “causing nausea” (a nauseous smell) and “affected with nausea” (to feel nauseous), appeared in English at almost the same time in the early 17^th century, and both senses are in standard use at the present time. Nauseous is more common than nauseated in the sense “affected with nausea,” either literally or figuratively, nauseating has become more common than nauseous: a nauseating smell.

My dictionary does make one firm distinction: nauseous is an adjective, nauseated is the past tense of the verb nauseate.

Let’s see if the etymology sheds any light. Nausea came into English in the early 15^th century from the Latin word for seasickness (nausea), which came from the Ionic Greek word for seasickness, nausia. In Attic Greek it was spelled nautia, and came from the Greek word for ship, naus, from which we get the word naval. (Naval and navel, now there’s another pair. See this post for more.) Interestingly (to me) the word nausea never has been restricted to seasickness in its English usage.

Continuing our hunt: around 1600 the adjective form of nausea, nauseous, came into being. About 30 years later the verb nauseate appeared and by the 1650s came to have the added meaning of creating nausea or causing loathing. Etymonline.com takes it a bit further, explaining that nauseous is used to describe something that causes nausea or squeamishness, while nauseated refers to feeling nausea.

Then etymonline adds the clarifying statement “Careful writers use nauseated for “sick at the stomach” and use nauseous for “sickening to contemplate.” That only adds confusion.

In my continuing search for clarification I found this blog post, which cites a statistic that 72% of the panelists for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4^th Edition, 2000) say that the use of nauseous to mean “feeling sick” is wrong, that nauseous should be used only to that which “causes nausea,” not the feeling of nausea personally. That helps to clarify.

If you wish to make the distinction, whether you wish to be pedantic or simply accurate, use nauseous when describing something that causes nausea, and nauseated when you feel nausea yourself. But realize that most English speakers don’t understand the difference, even those who make the distinction in their usage.

And while something noxious may cause nausea, there’s no harm in using nauseated and nauseous interchangeably. Be wrong if you want to.  

Final and Soporific FUTPNBC

When I first moved to Chicago last millennium I was stuck in traffic on the Eisenhower freeway in the heat of August hoping my car would not overheat when the announcer on the radio shared that the news that the last of the snow that in the previous winter had been dumped in a quarry had finally melted. I was not heartened by the news. That may be how you feel about this post, another in the lengthy FUTPNBC string.

Let’s begin with aquiline. You may think aquiline is a cooling reference to water, but it actually refers to the shape of an eagle’s beak, and is used to describe a curved or a hooked nose. Aguila is the Latin word for eagle, and aquilinus describing anything eagle-like, so somewhere in the 1640s the word was adopted as aquiline in English. No relief from the heat there.

How about with the word Gadarene? Maybe, but not sure you want to go there. Gadarene is a reference to the story in Matthew 8 where a legion of demons were cast into a drift (or litter) of pigs, or a sounder of swine. When something or someone runs into water, they can be described by the adjective Gadarene.

In researching Gadarene I ran across the explanation in etymonline.com that the words porker and grunter were developed as synonyms for pig because of “…sailor’s and fishermen’s euphemistic avoidance of the word pig while at sea, a superstition perhaps based on the fate of the Gadarene swine, who drowned.”

Somewhat the opposite of Gadarene is hegira, which is a noun for a journey to a better place. Hegira comes from the story of Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 662. That is the date on which the Islamic calendar begins. The Islamic word for Muhammad’s journey is Hijra, and where we would use AD for our calendar, the Islamic calendar uses AH, Anno Hegirae, which means in the year of the Hijra. Muslims call their calendar the Hijri calendar. The English word hegira has been in use since the 1580s.

Chiasma is actually a scientific word, used to describe something that crosses, like in anatomy when the optic nerves cross at the base of the brain, or in cellular biology (dictionary.com tells us) the “point of overlap of paired chromatids at which fusion and exchange of genetic material take place during prophase of meiosis.” I thought that would clear it up for you. Actually, the Greek etymology is more help: khiasma means “two things placed crosswise.” The word chiasma actually came through medical Latin (hence its different spelling) into English in 1832.

I missed one word I should have covered in the first follow up post, but it fits better here. These may have been soporific posts to you, but it kept me off the streets. I remember my first encounter with the word soporific, if I remember correctly, was Roddy McDowall in The Subterraneans, a beatnik movie. He is complaining that life is “Soporific, soporific, it’s all so soporific.” Soporific used as a noun is something that causes sleep; as an adjective it means sleepy or drowsy, or causing sleep. It came to English in the 1680s from the French word soporifique, which the French got from the Latin word for a deep sleep, sopor.

Now it’s time for a hegira or Gadarene trip to the pool, where I may find things soporific.