FUTPNBCIII (Follow Up - The Pedantic Night Before Christmas, Part III)

Due to next week being a holiday, the recurring FUTPNBC series is springing forward a week.  For those who are new to the blog, FUTPNBC refers to the December 23, 2012 post and stands for Follow Up To Pedantic Night Before Christmas. It’s taken three posts so far to cover words used in that post, and there are more to come (we’re only about halfway through the poem after today’s post.)

Our first word is diminutive, which means small or little. It is often used of people, but can be used of anything tiny, like Santa’s reindeer and sleigh. It has been used in English since the late 1300s, when it came as both a noun and an adjective from the Old French word diminutif. The Old French got their word from the Latin word diminutivus, which is from the past participle stem of deminuere. We also get the word diminish from this Latin root word.  

Our next word has a classical Greek mythology etymology (for those who like ologies). Myrmidon goes back to the story of Achilles in the Trojan War. Some of you (maybe one or two) will remember the Thessalian tribe of warriors that Achilles led into battle. They had been changed from ants (myrmex in Greek) to men, and were still referred to as Myrmidones. The word came into use in English about 1400, and at some point in the next 200 years came to refer to a person who executes commands without questioning them. When used in that sense, myrmidon need not be capitalized. When referring to the ant-men of the Trojan War it should be capitalized.

Recrudescent is the adjective form of the noun recrudescence. (The verb form is recrudesce.) I don’t have etymology of recrudescent, but it’s in my dictionary so I used it. The earliest form of the word in English is the noun form, which means breaking out again into activity. Its first use in English was in 1721, and came directly from the Latin word recrudescere, which literally translated means to become raw again, but also means to re-open (like wounds). Crudescere comes from the Latin word crudus, that means “raw” and from which we get our word crude. It is indeed a good word for renewed activity like the reindeer who had settled on the lawn only to be recrudesced to the roof by Santa.

Gallimaufry is a noun that refers to a jumble or hash or ragout; it is a bunch of things thrown together. It came to English in the 1550s from the French word galimafrée, which I will now call any hash or stew I create. It sounds so much more delectable. Galimafrée came from the Old French word calimafree, which was a “sauce made from mustard, ginger and vinegar; a stew of carp”. We’re not sure where that word came from; one suggestion is that it is a combination of the Old French word for “to make merry, live well”, galer, and the Old North French word for eating a lot, mafrer. Makes sense to me. Now I’m hungry.