Presenting Presents in the Present (Gifts)

Two years ago this blog posted “The Pedantic Night BeforeChristmas” and last year we looked at words for love and joy. In the spirit of Christmas we’ll begin this year by opening some presents.

Why does a word (present) that is a tense and an adjective that means “at this time” also have the noun meaning of a gift or the giving of a gift? And what kind of a word is gift?

Present as a noun meaning gift was the first to arrive in English, in about 1200. It came from the Old French word present that came from the Medieval Latin word presentia. Etymonline.com adds “from phrases such as French en present ‘(to offer) in the presence of,’ mettre en present ‘place before, give,’ from Late Latin inpraesent ‘face to face,’ from Latin in re praesenti ‘in the situation in question,’ from praesens ’being there’…on the notion of ‘bringing something into someone’s presence.’” For me, that quote fits into the category of too much information.

The next versions of present to arrive in English were both the noun and adjective meanings of “the current time” as opposed to future or past. The noun arrived about 1300 from the Old French word present and from the Latin praesens that means “being there.” The adjective arrived concurrently to the noun but directly from the Latin praesentem meaning “at hand, in sight.” Interestingly (perhaps) the meaning in English of “being there” attached to “present” did not occur until the mid-1300s, about the same time that the word was used to describe the grammatical tense.

Just to complete the forms of speech, the verb use of present (pronounced with a long "e" in the first syllable and emphasis on the second syllable) also entered English about 1300. Meaning “to introduce formally” or “give formally” it comes from the Old French presenter and directly from the Latin praesentare, “to place before, show, or exhibit.”

I was surprised to find that the word gift arrived in English after the various words present. Perhaps due to the various forms of present the need for an exclusive word for that which is given was needed. Gift, according to etymonline.com, was used in surnames from as early as about 1100, but took until the middle of the 1300s for it to convey its present meaning. (See how I used present in a way that can refer to either "now" or "the thing being given"?) Gift came to English from a Scandinavian source; Old Norse has the word gift or gipt meaning gift or good luck. But Old Saxon also has the word gift and Middle Dutch has it spelled ghifte. The Old English noun for giving or gift was spelled giefu.

In this season of giving, my present to you is the gift of words. I’ve collected them for years, and hope you enjoy the interrelationship and discovery of how words came to be. (For instance, in German, the word Gift means poison. Wait until next year for that post.) It has been a gift (not the German word) to me to be able to give time to this blog and I trust it has been enjoyable for you as well as (on occasion) enlightening.

That's it for the present(s). Next week we're on to the future.

Tincture: A Hint of Tint, But T'aint about Taint

I ran across the word tincture recently and wondered what, if any, relationship the word had to distinct, extinct, and instinct. It turns out tincture is more closely related etymologically to taint, tinge, and tint than any of the other “-tinct” words.

Let’s follow the etymology of tincture. The noun tincture came into English in about 1400 from the Latin word for the act of dyeing: tincture, which came from tinctus which is the past participle of tingere. Within 100 years the verb tinge appeared in English from the Latin word tingere. Then by 1600 the nouns taint and tinct (from the Latin tinctus) appear. Taint came from the Old French word for color, dye or stain: teint. The Old French got teint from the Latin word tinctus and within 20 years of its arrival the English had added the sense of corruption or contamination. By that time tincture was also being used as a verb. Before another 20 years had passed tincture was also being used of a solution of medicine in alcohol, as in tincture of iodine (but also tincture of benzoin and even of opium). In 1717 the word tinct was altered to the commonly used tint, probably influenced by the Italian word for color which is tinta. But the etymology of words from tingere wasn’t complete: in 1752 we have the first recorded use of tinge as a noun.   

What is the difference in meaning? When do you use tincture rather than tint, tinge, or taint?

Tincture, when not meaning something in a solution of alcohol, means to give color to, tinge, or to “imbue or infuse with something” according to dictionary.com. It has lost its close association with color, and now is often used in the imbuing or infusing sense.

Tinge as a verb means to impart a slight trace or degree of tint (or now taste or smell) to. When used of color it can be synonymous with tint, although tint alludes to a more general or complete but weak coloration while tinge would have an even more limited or visible coloration.

Tint (the word formerly known as tinct) is a color or hue, but can also mean a color that has been diluted with white. It is most often used of a diluted or lightened color and among these words is the one most often used in coloring hair.

Taint is the negative infusion or imbuing of something. It can be infection or contamination, can be physical or moral, but is rarely anything but bad. It is possible to find examples without a negative meaning, but that is the misuse of the word. Use tint or tinge if you wish to describe a hint of a color or something good.

So where do distinct, extinct, and instinct come from? They are all related to the past participle forms of Latin words (extinctus, instinctus, and distinctus), which is why they also have the -tinct ending. All three are related to the Latin word for prick or goad or quench: stinguere. And etymonline further elucidates with the tieing the “ish” forms of words like extinguish and distinguish to the “Latin inchoative suffix –iscere).

Unfortunately there’s no space to delve into this today, so stay tuned. 

Daring to Endure the Use of Derring-do During the Day

What does derring-do mean? If it’s related to daring, why is it spelled differently?

Derring-do is a noun that means doing a daring or heroic action. It’s been an English word for a long time, since the 1300s, and was originally dorrying don, two words that literally meant “daring to do.” So it IS related to daring.

But in Middle English the present participle form of the verb was durring. The Middle English equivalent of dares was durren. Dare in Old English was durran, and the verb was conjugated as darr, dearst, dear in the singular. A form of the past tense of dearst, dorste, survives in the word durst, an increasingly rarely used past tense of dare. The verb dare means having the courage or boldness to do something.

So how do we get from durring to dorrying to derring? How do we get from verb to noun? Remember, at that time English was not written much, and it was not until the King James Version of the Bible and the writings of Shakespeare that much standardization of spelling came to take place.

In the 1500s durring was misspelled as derrynge and the poet Edmund Spenser mistook it for a noun rather than a verb as it had been. It is Spenser who attached the chivalric meaning, that of a hero performing daring acts.

It was not until the 1590s that the verb dare (however it was spelled at the time) also developed a noun sense.

In case you’re wondering, and why would you, the preposition during comes from a different word, from duren, that in the late 1300s meant “to last or endure” according to etymonline.com. The present participle form of duren was durand, and it is from durand that we get during. So when we say during the day it is a vestige of the old meaning of “while the day lasts or endured. The English got the word duren from the Old French word durer which the Old French got from the Latin word for endure, durare, the word from which we get our word endure. The phrase “during the day” is (again, etymonline.com:) “a transference into English of a Latin ablative absolute (compare durante bello ‘during (literally ‘enduring’) the war”).” Don't you love the ablative absolute? Absolutely.

And while we’re there, the adjective enduring, meaning lasting, came to English in the 1530s, while the verb endure had arrived in the late 1300s. Endure, meaning to hold out against or to last through, came from the Old French word endurer, which meant to make hard or harden or bear and tolerate. The Old French got the word from the Latin word indurare, meaning to make hard. In Late Latin the word meant to “harden (the heart) against.” My most enduring recollection of the phrase “harden the heart” is from the King James Version account of the exodus of the Jews where it is used 12 times in Exodus (three times in chapters 10 and 14, twice in chapters 8 and 9, and once each in chapters 4 and 11.)

So dare to endure the use of derring-do during the day.

Diving Deep into Bathos and Feeling Pity and Pathos

In my recent reading the word bathetic has come up several times. I cannot remember having seen it before, so had to look it up to see what it meant. It is not a misspelling of pathetic, although the two are related.

Bathetic and pathetic are forms of the words bathos and pathos. It will be easier to understand bathos once we have a good understanding of pathos.

Pathos is noun for the quality or power to evoke a feeling of pity or compassion. While it is often used of art, it also occurs in life. Pathetic is the adjective form, describing something that evokes pity or sympathy.

Pity is defined as sympathy or sorrow evoked by the suffering or distress of another, pitiful being the adjective form with an added definition that includes some sense of contempt or disparaging of the quality of the suffering. Pity came to English in the early 1200s from the Old French word pite, which they got from the Latin word pietatem meaning loyalty, duty or piety. (Yes, we get piety from the same word.) Old English had a word, mildheortness that meant mild-heartedness, and was, according to etymonline.com, a “loan-translation of Latin misericordia.” Etymonline also says that pity and piety were not fully distinguished from each other until the 1600s.

Pathetic is often used where pitiful is meant; it should not have a negative connotation but increasingly does. The difference between the two words is closing.

Pathos has been in use in English since the 1660s, coming over from the Greek word of the same spelling that means literally “what befalls one” according to etymonline.com. Pathos means suffering, feeling, emotion, calamity.” But the word pathetic arrived earlier, in the 1590s, from the Middle French word pathétique. Pathétique meant emotionally moving or stirring, and came from the Late Latin word patheticus, which came from the Greek word pathetikos meaning “subject to feeling, sensitive, capable of emotion.” Its root word, though had a sense of suffering that we find also in pathos. The conflation of pathetic and pitiful began in 1737.  

Bathos is pathos overdone or insincere, and anticlimax. It is trivialization or going from the sublime to the ridiculous (a phrase attributed in concept to Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason, 1793, but made popular by Napoleon, who reportedly uttered in 1812, the year he retreated from Moscow “From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step.”) According to britannica.com, bathos is an “unsuccessful, and therefore ludicrous, attempt to portray pathos in art, i.e., to evoke pity, sympathy, or sorrow. The term was first used in this sense by Alexander Pope in his treatise Peri Bathous; or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728).” Etymonline pegs its arrival in English a year earlier, from the Greek word for depth: bathos but also attributes its introduction to Pope.

Britannica.com gives an example of bathos from the oeuvre of William Wordsworth, who tries to “arouse pity for the old huntsman in ‘Simon Lee’” with these words:

Few months of life has he in store

As he to you will tell,

For still, the more he works, the more

Do his weak ankles swell.

Sometimes the line between pathos and bathos is difficult to find. The line between pathetic and bathetic and pitiful is even more difficult to discern.

What Do Isaiah, Diana Nyad, and Oreos have to do with Satyrs and Nymphs?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the word satire that “The word in Latin was altered because of the word satyr, when people mistakenly thought there was a connection to the Greek satyr drama, from which we get satyr.” I’ve usually pronounced it “sat–er”, but the primary pronunciation listed on Dictionary.com is “sey-ter.”

Satyrs were, in Greek mythology, gods of the woods. They are the creatures pictured as half man (usually from the waist up, attached to the body and legs of a) half horse or goat. Etymonline.com says that in pre-Roman Greek art a satyr was represented as a “man-like being with the tail and ears of a horse; the modern conception of a being part man, part goat is from Roman sculptors, who seem to have assimilated them to the fauns of native mythology.”

Their role was to serve Bacchus, the god of wine. Surely not coincidentally they were known for their riotous and lascivious behavior. As a result, a man who is known for such behavior is sometimes called a satyr. While the being has an ancient history, the word satyr was not used in English until the 1300s.

The word satyr appears twice in the King James Version of the Bible, in Isaiah 13:21 and 34:14. The key to this use of satyr is the reference to the desert in the original. Hebrew has a word for a hairy monster believed to inhabit the desert regions: se’irim. The King James Version translators decided to use the word satyr instead of “bigfoot” or “yeti.”

Unbeknownst to me until today is that there is a condition known as satyriasis, and one who has that is also known as a satyr. I call it a condition because neither webmd.com nor psychiatry.com yielded any results for a search of the word.

That doesn’t stop the dictionary from defining it, etymonline.com from telling us that by the 1650s satyriasis appeared in English, or Wikipedia from devoting a page to hypersexuality and saying that in men it is known as satyriasis and in women as nymphomania.

While nymphomania seems to be a more common word than satyriasis, it is also not an officially recognized disorder or diagnosis. While the word nymph has been used in English since the 1300s, the word nymphomania was coined in 1775 in an English translation of a dissertation by French doctor M.D.T. Bienville on women with uncontrollable sexual desire.

Nymphs were only semi-dieties. The Greek word nymphe originally referred to a young wife, then to any beautiful young woman, before eventually taking on semi-divine status. Subgroups of nymphs are dryads and hamadryads (both wood nymphs), naiads (water nymph – see Diana Nyad), nereids (sea nymphs), and oreads (mountain nymphs). Oreads have no connection to Oreos, though sometimes nymphs – in the sense of beautiful young woman - in American vernacular are called “cookies.”

So that’s how you get from satyrs and nymphs to Diana Nyad and oreos.

Some Locutions For When You Estivate

I recently ran across the word estivate, and inferred that it was the opposite of hibernate.

Estivate means “to spend the summer, as at a certain place or in a certain activity.” Hibernate means “to spend the winter.” Zoologically the meanings also includes a sense of dormancy. But if you are not talking zoologically you can use the two words to refer to those who are known as snowbirds, or even more pretentiously those who have a summer home. (e.g., “I’m wintering in Palm Springs and summering in Newport.”)

Hibernate is often used, both zoologically and non-zoologically, but estivate is not used nearly as much as it should be. Hibernate has been used for the practice of spending time in what is colloquially known as a “man-cave.” But when I spent my summers at camp (both as camper and as staff) I never knew I was estivating there.

Hibernate is likely a back-formation of the noun hibernation. Hibernate has been used since 1802, while hibernation came to English from Latin in the 1660s. Hibernationem means the same as hibernation.

Estivate, on the other hand, has been in English since the 1650s, and also came directly from Latin, from the word aestivatus that also means spend the summer.

I used the word colloquial earlier in this post, and had not covered it in a recent post, Slang, Idiom, Jargon, Euphemism, or Argot? (SIJEA) Colloquial basically means informal as opposed to formal speech. All of the forms of speech from the SIJEA post are colloquial. But not all colloquial speech fits into one of those categories.

Colloquial comes from the word colloquy, a word that dates in English from the mid-1400s. As with all our words today it comes directly from the Latin, from their word (colloquium) for conversation. Colloquy means conversation or conference. Colloquium is formed by combining the prefix com- meaning “together” with loquium that means “speaking” and from which we get the word loquacious. The form of loquium that means “to speak” is the source of English word locution. 

While I have previously covered loquacious I have not covered locution. Dictionary.com suggests that its primary definition is “a particular form of speech,” and I have heard it used that way. But I seemed to have heard the second definition more often: “a style of speech or expression; phraseology.” Perhaps because my style of speech and expression are unusual.

Another word we have from the Latin word loqui is interlocutor. It came to English in the 1510s, combining the prefix inter- (meaning between) with “to speak.” While it can refer to anyone involved in a conversation, it has developed a sense of conversational go-between, a meaning that first came from minstrel shows where a person in the middle would act as announcer and “banter with the end men,” according to Dictionary.com. It can also mean an interrogator or interviewer, although those meanings are less common.

One final loqui word today: elocution. As did colloquial, elocution came to English in the mid-1400s, from the Latin word elocutionem that means “voice production” according to etymonline.com. It also is a “’speaking out, utterance, manner of speaking,’ in classical Latin especially ‘rhetorical utterance, oratorical expression.’” 

So whether you're estivating or hibernating, you can engage in colloquy as an interlocutor. You will more likely use colloquial expressions and won't worry at all about your locution. You would also probably prefer hibernating to elocution.

Lampoon, Parody, or Satire?

Last week I mentioned that Jonathan Swift was known for his satire and parody, and then wrote those words would need to wait for another week. Well, another week has arrived, so let’s look at those words and see where they lead us.

Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. (according to dictionary.com). Parody is a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing. I would add music and performance art to that definition, since Weird Al Yankovic and Saturday Night Live have been engaging in parodies for years.

Satire has been a word (and practice, presumably) in English since the late 1300s. It comes from the Middle French word satire which came from the Latin word satira, that means satire. It was used in Latin to refer to “a collection of poems in various meters on a variety of subjects by the late republican Roman poet Ennius.” That use related to poems about vices. The word in Latin was altered because of the word satyr, when people mistakenly thought there was a connection to the Greek satyr drama, from which we get satyr (a word for a future post).

Parody came to English in the 1590s from the Latin word parodia, which came from the Greek word paroidia, that was formed by combining para-, meaning beside, with oide, meaning a song or ode. Its first known use in English is by Ben Jonson.

Satire is defined as a written and serious form of assailing a vice or folly. Parody began (and remains) as a performance form (though it can now be a written work as well), and includes humor that is not part of the definition of satire.

Ambrose Bierce, in his “Devil’s Dictionary,” 1911, defines satire as

An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are ‘endowed by their Creator’ with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a sour-spirited knave, and his every victim’s outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.

According to Samuel Johnson, satire is differentiated from a lampoon in that satire has general reflections while lampoon is aimed at a particular person.

Lampoon is defined at dictionary.com as “a sharp, often virulent satire directed against an individual or institution.” It came to English in the 1600s from the French word lampoon, but where that word came from is unknown. French etymologists suggest it might be from lampons, that was a popular refrain in songs in the 1600s that meant “let’s drink.” It’s possible that drinking still plays a part in much lampooning that takes place these days.

So if you want to seriously address a vice or folly, particularly in writing, that is a satire. If you’re singing or writing poetry to poke fun at something, that would be a parody – particularly if it’s humorous. And if you are satirizing a particular person or a single institution, humorously or not, you are creating a lampoon. 

Political Discourse: Bunk and Baginage

As the 2014 political season comes to an end in the U.S. there are several words that come to mind: buncombe and badinage. The latter I came across while reading the letters of S.J. Perelman, the former while reading Mark Twain’s Puddinhead Wilson.

Buncombe is the more appropriate for political campaigns, especially this year when the Senate race on North Carolina could determine who controls the senate. Here’s the story behind the word:

On Feb. 25, 1820 congress was in session to decide on the statehood of Missouri. As the final committee vote was about to take place a North Carolina congressman, Felix Walker, rose to address the question. Apparently he was known for his both lengthy and boring speeches, because the House of Representatives very quickly started requesting the “question be called” and the vote taken. Walker’s response was that he wanted to get something into the record that could demonstrate to his home district that he was active and involved. His words were “I shall not be speaking to the House, but to Buncombe,” a county in North Carolina that he represented.

By 1838 bunkum became the word used generically for a representative’s home district. By 1841 it became American slang for nonsense. By 1900 the word was shortened to bunk, now an ejaculation expressing a strong feeling that the speaker is saying nonsense.

Bunkum is now defined as any insincere speech, particularly speech that is designed to impress a politician’s constituency. (Does “You can keep your doctor” come to mind?) While you can still find buncombe, particularly in writings pre-1900, it is accepted enough as a word to not need capitalization.

At the other end of political discourse is the word badinage. Badinage, as you might discern from its pronunciation (dictionary.com indicates its preferred pronunciation is with emphasis on the third syllable that it conveys as the soft g sound –ahzh) is French in origin. The French word badinage means playfulness or jesting, from the French word for joke badiner. The French word came from an Old Provençal word for yawn or gape: badar.  The Old Provençal word came from the Late Latin word of the same meaning, badare. Badinage has been used in English since the 1650s, and is a noun for jesting or teasing banter.

Banter is a noun for playful or teasing remarks, so it could be synonymous with badinage. Banter came into use in English in the 1670s as a verb, and by the 1680s was also used as a noun. According to Jonathan Swift it came from London street slang. 

And just to complete the circle, if you were not aware, Jonathan Swift, renowned for his satire and parody (words for another week) Gulliver’s Travels, was also a political pamphleteer for both the Whigs and the Tories. Some thought he engaged in buncombe, although the term was not to be coined during Swift’s lifetime.

Ease on Down the Road

I was composing an email and thought about using the word attenuate, but wanted to make sure it was the appropriate word to use. It turned out it wasn’t, and I learned another good word.

Attenuate means to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value. It comes from the Latin word attenuatus, that means enfeebled or weak. Attenuatus is past participle of attenuare (a combination of att- and tenuare, meaning make thin”) that means to lessen or diminish. The word came to English in the 1520s.

In my email I used the more accurate word alleviate, that means to make easier to endure, or to lessen or mitigate. Alleviate came to English a little before attenuate, from Latin through Middle French. The Latin word was alleviare, meaning to lighten (in Latin levis does not mean jeans, it means “light in weight.” Levis is the word from which we get lever, something that makes a heavy load easier to lift.) So alleviate has a sense of easing or taking pressure off, while attenuate is has a sense of weakening. Attenuating is often negative, while alleviating is always positive.

Of course, now that we have the definition of alleviate we have to look at mitigate. The difference between mitigate and alleviate is that mitigate has a connection to pain. It means to lessen pain or grief or wrath, or make a punishment less severe. That is because it comes from the Latin word mitigatus, which is the past participle of mitigare, that means to soften or make tender. Mitis means gentle or soft. A gentle touch is wonderful when you’re in pain or facing severe punishment.

As I was capturing this line of words, I wondered if attenuate and extenuate are related. They are, though the meaning is somewhat connected more closely to mitigate. Extenuate, like attenuate, came to English in the 1520s, and also is originally from the word tenuare, this time with the prefix ex- that indicates “out”. It means to represent something as less serious. It is most often used in the phrase “extenuating circumstances,” which indicates there is a reason why the offense should be considered less serious that it would appear to be.  So it is different from the other words in that it is an explanation as to why an offense or fault that has already taken place should have lesser impact.

Attenuate is weakening (and not necessarily good), alleviate is easing (and good), mitigate is lessening pain (and very good), and extenuate is lessening punishment (and neither good nor bad).

May your week be filled by one or more of these. Mine will, as I am now officially on vacation for the week. 

A Visit to Anhedonia for the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

I once used the word dolor in a reference letter, and the person for whom I was doing the reference later shared with me that her interviewer said that my use of that word was influential in her getting the job.

Dolor (spelled dolour in the U.K.) means sorrow or grief. It is different from anhedonia, which is the lack of ability to experience pleasure, although it can also refer to the lack of pleasure. It is a psychological term. Cafard is a feeling of severe depression, but is not a psychological term.

Dolor came to English from the Latin word for pain, dolor, in about 1300, through Middle English (where it was spelled dolour). It is the source of a more common word, dolorous. It is probably most familiar as part of the phrase via dolorosa, which is translated as “way of sorrow” and refers to the path Jesus took through Jerusalem to the site of the crucifixion. Dolorous (the adjective form of the noun dolor) has been in use since about 1400, and came through Old French, where the word was doloros.  

In case your name is Dolores, don’t be sad. The name comes from the Spanish Maria de los Dolores, literally “Mary of the Sorrows.” Prior to Vatican II the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows was celebrated on September 15 (I guess I’m a month late with this post.) An interesting devotion is to follow the seven sorrows in the life of the Virgin Mary.

The other two words in today’s short post are from reading the letters of humorist S. J. Perelman.

Anhedonia was a word coined in 1897 by French Psychologist Theodule Ribot. He was looking for a word to express the opposite of analgesia, and adapted the French word anhédonie for this purpose. The French word comes from Greek, from an-, which expresses negation, and hedone, the Greek word for pleasure. Hedone is also the source word for hedonist. 

Cafard is a very obscure word. Dictionary.com has only one reference dictionary that provides a definition. Cafard comes from the French word kafar. According to Collins English Dictionary, kafar can mean either cockroach or hypocrite.

Anhedonia may lead to dolor, which may devolve to cafard.

Words from One Book Review

I was reading a review of Daniel Hannan's Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World and within two paragraphs came across the word tendentious and the phrase "English is the world's lingua franca." (The review was by Jay Weiser in The Weekly Standard.)

My first thought about tendentious was how similar it is in sound to contentious but how very different in meaning. 

Tendentious is an adjective meaning having or showing a purpose or bias or tendency, the word to which it is related. Contentious is an adjective related to contend, and defines anything that causes contention or strife or arguing.

Tendentious was, according to etymonline.com, not formed from contend or contention, but from the German word tendentiös, which the Germans got from the Medieval Latin word tendentia. It probably will not surprise you to read that tendency also comes from the Medieval Latin word tendentia. Tendency has been use in English since the 1620s, while tendentious first appeared in 1871. The use of tendentious is a relatively "new tendency," which in Portuguese is "bossa nova."

Contend and contentious came to English much closer in time. Contend arrived in the mid-1400s, while contentious came about 1500. Contend came from the Old French word contendre, which the French got from the Latin word contendere that meant to strive after. Contentious came from the Middle French word contentieux, which the Middle French got from the Latin word contentiosus, meaning quarrelsome.  

The phrase "English is the world's lingua franca" got my attention because lingua franca was not italicized as a foreign word or phrase usually would be. Is it now common enough, I wondered, that italicization is unnecessary? I guess so, since it has been in use since the 1620s. It is from Italian, and means “Frankish tongue.” The phrase, if capitalized, refers to the Italian-Provençal jargon, an admixture of Spanish, French, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish. The jargon was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean, especially in ports. According to etymonline.com it was originally used in the Levant, and “is probably from the Arabic custom (that dates back to the crusades) of calling all Europeans Franks.”

Lingua franca now refers to any language that is widely used as a means of communication among speakers of another language. For instance, in the court of Europe French was the lingua franca. In the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church Latin was the lingua franca. In Britain lingua franca can also refer to any language that contains elements of several other languages.

Later on in the review Weiser used the word admixture (as I did above), again sending me to my dictionary. What's the difference between admixture and mixture? Admixture is the noun for the act of mixing or the state of being mixed. Mixture is the result of the act of mixing. Admixture arrived in English in about 1600, comes from an earlier word admix, which was a back-formation of admixt that came from the Latin word admixtus that means “mixed with.” Mixture had arrived about 100 years earlier from the Old French word misture, and also directly from the Latin word mixtura.

Today’s admixture is probably not a contentious post, though I can be a tendentious poster. 

Slang, Idiom, Jargon, Euphemism or Argot?

In a recent post I was looking for the word that means a phrase used to avoid impolite words (euphemism) and ran across words like slang, idiom, and jargon.

That is a long list of words for words that are outside of formal expression. What is the difference?

Let's start with euphemism. A euphemism is the substitution of a more acceptable expression (usually a phrase) for one that might be viewed as offensive or harsh. George Carlin used the proliferation of euphemisms for several comedy routines. Dictionary.com uses the example "to pass away" for "to die." The substitutions dates from ancient Greece (from whence came the word), when words were avoided out of superstition. You probably remember Eumenides' substitution of "the Gracious Ones" for "the Furies."

When the word euphemism came into use in English in the 1650s it was rhetorical, indicating the use of a favorable term in place of an inauspicious one. It came from the Greek word eupemizein that means "speak with fair words, use words of good omen," according to etymonline.com. It was not until 1793 that the word began to be used for the replacement for an impolite word or phrase.

Slang, idiom jargon, and argot are different from euphemisms in that they are not intended to avoid embarrassment.

Slang words are those that are more playful or vivid and less acceptable in polite language. It also has a definition of "the jargon of a particular class, profession, etc." I would use jargon for the language peculiar to a specific profession. Slang came into use in English in 1756 to define the "special vocabulary of tramps or thieves." It may have come from the Norwegian word slengenamn, which meant nickname, but the Oxford English Dictionary says that based on "date and early associations" such etymology is unlikely.

Jargon is defined as "the language...peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group." It is also used that is unintelligible, not understandable, or pedantic. Jargon is an old word, coming to English in the mid-1300s from an Old French world of the same spelling. The Old French used it for the chattering of birds, lending the sense of unintelligibility to the English word.

Argot is at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum. While it can be (and is) used as a synonym for jargon, as language particular to a group and sometimes a profession or trade (more often of the genre of detectives noir), its strongest use is for language used particularly by gangsters and the underworld. Words like moll, gat, and gam are argot. Argot, like jargon, comes from French without change in spelling (or substantially in pronounciation). In French it referred to the language peculiar to the Parisian underworld. It arrived in English in 1860.

Idiom is language that (like euphemisms) has a meaning different from its components; dictionary.com uses the illustration of "kick the bucket" for the aforementioned euphemism "pass away." But it is also used (and in my experience more commonly) for language that is characteristic of the sentence construction of another language. Yiddish very often uses idiomatic expressions. My ancestry, Amish, is renowned for idiomatic expressions like "throw papa down the stairs his hat" or "throw the cow over the fence some hay." Idiom is also used of styles in music and literature. Idiom also comes to English from French, from the Middle French word idiome, which came from the Late Latin word idioma, that means "peculiar language." Latin got idoma from Greek, where it was also  idioma.

It Behooves Us Not To Be Impetuous in Using Withal

I was reading a biography of Joe DiMaggio and noticed the author used the word withal several times. Withal seems like a good old word that is underused, like bespeak or bespoke. Or behoove (a word I used in an email this week.

While I knew how to use behoove, I was not certain the meaning of withal. Withal is defined not as a contraction of "with it all;" "with it all" is the primary definition. It can withal mean as well or besides. But besides has a sense of location (next to) while withal does not. Withal can withal mean in spite of or nevertheless. Etymonline.com sets its date of entry in English in about 1200 as a carryover from Middle English, where it was two words, with alle. Etymonline gives its meaning as "in addition." Certainly withal (pronounciation with-awl, emphasis on the second syllable) seems to be an archaic adverb. Why use withal instead of too or also? I understand it in place of "in addition" or "in spite of" since it is shorter, but "in spite of" can often be replaced by "yet" or "also" withal.

So in spite of its use in the biography, withal is not a word I will try to add to my vocabulary. There are too many good, shorter, and more common words that work just as well.

Behoove, on the other hand, is a word it would behoove more people to use. Behoove bespeaks a legal argument, but is used withal in many other ways. It means "to be necessary or proper for" and the impetus can be legal, moral, or just proper behavior. It can also refer to an action taken for personal profit or advantage, in which case it has only a positive sense. ("It behooves one to have a good command of the English language.")

The most interesting thing about the etymology of behoove is that it is spelled behove in Britain, causing dissension over whether it should be pronounced to rhyme with move and prove or rove and grove, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It comes from the Old English word behofian that was in use prior to the year 900.

And since I have space and used the word impetus earlier, let's look at it's meaning and etymology. Impetus comes originally from Latin, from the word for rapid movement or rush, impetus. It is a noun that arrived in the early 1400s spelled impetous, but by the 1640s people decided to stay with the Latin spelling. It is now defined as a moving force, something that stimulates to action.

But when such an action, whatever the cause is rash and rushed it becomes impetuous, an adjective. Impetuous actually arrived in English earlier, in the late 1300s, but also from Latin, through Old French. The original Latin word was impetuosus, and meant impetuous with a flavor of violence thrown in. Impetuosus comes from impetus, so impetus and impetuous have a common ancestor. When the Old French adopted the word in the 1200s it became impetuos. The extra "ou" makes a difference; it is not bad to give impetus to something, but to be impetuous is not a good characteristic.

It behooves us to think carefully about our actions.

Masticating on Micturate

Sometimes I come across words that I am surprised to find have not had airing in this blog. In my reading this week I encountered the word micturate and (in my mind) paired it with masticate. When I checked to see, neither had been covered in a post. So let's correct that oversight.

Micturate was used in an article (by Matt Labash in The Weekly Standard magazine) about simplicity, then explained by saying "I would rather say 'squirt' than 'micturate.'" But dictionary.com defines it as "to pass urine, urinate." More commonly the word would be "piss," a good word though in polite conversation one would use some euphemism like "go to the restroom." In fact, there are a number of euphemisms for urinate: "answer the call of nature," "see a man about a horse," or as the character Sheldon on the television comedy "Big Bang Theory" says: "void my bladder."

Micturate has an interesting etymology, according to etymonline.com. It came to English in 1842, a malformation of the correct English word (that had been used since 1725) micturition that has the same definition. But etymonline.com says about micturate something I had never read: "malformed, and with an erroneous sense; condemned from its birth." Yet it is the more commonly used - I have not seen the word micturition before this research. Micturition comes from the Latin word micturitum, which is the past participle of micturire, that means "a desire to urinate." It is a desiderative (look it up yourself - it's a grammar term to describe a verb formation in Latin and other inflected languages) of mingere, that means to urinate.

Prior to 1725 the word that was commonly used was piss. Piss can be properly used as a verb for urinate or as a noun for urine. It was first used in the verb sense (for the act of urination) in the 1200s and came to English from the Old French word pissier, which the Old French got from the Vulgar Latin word pissiare. The noun sense (for urine itself) arrived in English a century later.

My grandfather, a very religious and completely proper individual, surprised me one day by describing someone as "so stupid they could not pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the sole." I was a bit taken aback by his use of the word piss in the humorous expression. In the 20th century many idiomatic slang expressions using the word piss were formed, such as piss away (1948, waste time), or less politely "piss off" (1958, primarily British for go away), or "pissed off" (1946, primarily American for angry).

The other word in today's title is masticate. It simply means to chew, and comes from the Late Latin masticatus, which is the past participle of masticare. It has been used in English since the 1640s. It is not uncommon for it to be used humorously in an expression where the word masturbate would also make sense.

And that should be enough for you to "chew on" today.

Rumpus Room

This week my wife was bothered by a ruction next door; carpet layers were working until at least 10 p.m., hammering something. After she created a ruckus there was a recrudescence (see previous post). It was not a paroxysm, but the rumpus finally ended.

Ruction is a word for a riotous outbreak or a noisy disturbance. Some dictionaries tie it to a quarrel or spat, but it refers to something noisy that disturbs. It has been in use in English since 1825, but its source is uncertain. It is possible it came from the work eruption or insurrection or, in my opinion, both. It does not have a clear predecessor in other languages.

But it may be the predecessor for the more common (in my family, at least) word ruckus. At least I remember my mother often inquiring of us kindly if we would “stop that ruckus up there” as we children made noise instead of sleeping (not Don – he was always good). Ruckus formed in 1895 and is also uncertain in its etymology (according to etymolonline.com). But they suggest it might be formed from a blending of the words ruction and rumpus. Ruckus is defined as a noisy commotion or a rumpus. A common construction uses the verb raise, as in “raise a ruckus.”

Rumpus is the oldest of these “r” words, having come into English in 1764. It similarly is of unknown etymology, but the Oxford English Dictionary says it has a “fanciful formation.” Fancy that! A rumpus is a noisy or violent disturbance, whereas a ruckus is not violent.

Rumpus is a familiar word to older “baby boomers” due to its use in the title of one of the early television shows, Johnny Olson’s Rumpus Room (yes, the announcer of the Price Is Right show), which ran from 1949 to 1952. More familiar, but not to be confused is the long-running children’s show Romper Room, which began in 1953 and was on the air until 1994.

The first recorded use of “rumpus room” is in 1938, but it has since been the subject of shows on television like Maude (for the rest of us baby boomers) and The Simpsons.

Paroxysm is the oldest of today’s words, having come into English in the early 1400s from the Middle French word paroxysme, which had previously been paroxime (in the 1200s), and came from the Middle Latin word for an irritation or disease-induced fit: paroxysmus. Latin got it from Greek, where the word was paroxysmos, meaning irritation or exasperation, and was a form of paroxynein, that means irritate, goad or provoke. It is formed by combining para-, meaning beyond, with oxynein, meaning sharpen or goad. It was primarily a medical term until about 1600. Now it means any sudden outburst, positive (a paroxysm of praise) or negative (paroxysms of rage) and can refer to an action or an emotion.

So, the next time you hear an outburst, you’ll know whether it is a ruction (a noise involving a couple of people), a ruckus (a noise involving a few people), a rumpus (a ruckus that might get violent), or a paroxysm (the only one of these that might be positive or negative). Whatever it is, don’t keep it to yourself.   

Other Words for Testicles

Last week I used the word bollox/bollocks/bollix and said it would be the basis of this week’s post. So here it is.

The spelling of the word I was looking for is bollix, not bollox. It is a verb that means to do something badly, or to bungle, and it is often followed by the word “up.” (As in “You really bollixed that up, Bob.” In truth, Bob never bollixes up anything.) The word is a respelling of the word bollocks, which is the plural of bollock, which is an old English word for testicle. The Old English word for testicles is beallucas. Ballocks is another derivation from the word beallucas, which is the plural diminutive of balle, or ball. So testicles have long been called balls.

Bollocks, which can also be defined as a confused bungle, is a noun. It also originally meant testicles (in 1744). By 1919 it appeared in British slang as an ejaculation to mean “nonsense.” The American version of bollocks would be “Nuts.” That ejaculation was famously uttered by Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. “Nuts” was his reply to the German General’s request that he surrender.

Nuts as an interjection expresses disgust, defiance, disapproval, or despair. But as an adjective it means insane or crazy. As a derisive retort it had been attested since 1931, 13 years prior to General McAuliffe’s use. As early as the 1610s the word nut (as in rabid fan) was used for any source of pleasure, and in 1785 the expression “be nutts upon” to describe extreme fondness, and by 1846 the word indicated someone crazed about something, or crazy. At some unknown time it became American slang for testicles. Etymonline.com shares several examples of its taboo quality resulting from this definition: “On the N.B.C. network, it is forbidden to call any character a nut; you have to call him a screwball.” [“New Yorker,” Dec. 23, 1950] “Please eliminate the expression ‘nuts to you’ from Egbert’s speech.” [Request from the Hays Office regarding the script of “The Bank Dick,” 1940].

Numbnuts is a noun for a stupid or ineffectual person. In use in U.S. slang since at least 1971 it is suggestive of impotence, as if the testicles were insensate.

While it does not seem the “bee’s knees” would fit in this category, it does. While it was used as far back as 1797, in 1923 it became a fad (closely associated with the Roaring 20s). It denotes excellence and is indeed based on apian anatomy. (I couldn’t pass up the alliterative opportunity. It would have been simpler to say bee physique.) Originally it meant something insignificant, but its use in the 1920s was indicative of unusual and exotic. The phrase also existed in the form of “bee’s nuts,” but that was too ribald even for the 1920s. Also from the Roaring 20s are the phrases “cat’s whiskers,” “cat’s pajamas,” and “cat’s meow.” Other forms followed, such as “canary’s tusks,” “cat’s nuts,” and “flea’s eyebrows.” The craze may have inspired Cole Porter’s 1934 song “You’re the Top!” In 1989 the phrase form reappeared in Britain as “dog’s bollocks.”

Which brings us full circle, something I feel is the “bee’s knees.” 

We're Going to Oxword

I was sitting with some friends at dinner when one of them used the word flummox, which flummoxed everyone. I followed with bollox (mistakenly remembering it as a word ending in ox) and mentioned it would be a good source of words for my blog – words ending in ox.

So here we are. Words ending in ox. I had to exempt words ending in dox or are a combination of two words (e.g., muskox, dropbox, etc.). That limits it to a blog-able number: the aforementioned flummox, lummox, equinox, and (next week) bollox, which is actually spelled bollocks (I made a bollocks of the spelling).

So let’s begin. Flummox is a verb that means to confuse, confound, or bewilder. Etymonline.com designates it as a cant word.

Do not get flummoxed by the word cant; it is not the contraction of the words can and not, it is in its own right a word, meaning a word used by a particular class or group of people, often the “underworld” or “gangsters.” Cant came to English in the 1560s from the Old North French verb canter that meant “to sing, or chant.” The Old North French got it from the Latin word for sing, cantare. By the 1640s it referred to “the whining of beggars,” and by 1709 to “insincere talk,” according to etymonline.com, which also quotes John S. Farmer’s Foreward to the 1896 publication “Musa Pedestris”:

…Slang is universal, whilst Cant is restricted in use to certain classes of the community: thieves, vagrom men, and – well, their associates…. Slang boasts a quasi-respectibility denied to Cant, though Cant is frequently more enduring, its use continuing without variation of meaning for many generations.

Back to flummox. It came to English much later, in 1837, although its origin is not certain. Etymonline.com speculates that it probably came from “some forgotten British dialect.” It then suggests there are candidate clusters in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, southern Cheshire and Sheffield. Etymonline.com then quotes the Oxford English Dictionary editors: “The formation seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily.” So the OED and Etymonline.com are flummoxed by the source of flummox.

The origin of lummox is also obscure, although it arrived in English usage slightly before flummox, in 1825. It is sourced as East Anglian slang, and may be from dumb ox influenced by lumbering. It is used of a clumsy or stupid person, depending on whether they are lumbering or stupid.

The other ox word for the day is equinox, the word used twice a year, when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator, when at the equator the days and nights are of equal length. Equinoxes take place near March 21 and September 21. The March event is specifically the vernal equinox, while the September event is the autumnal equinox. (Vernal and autumnal will have to wait.) Equinox came to English in the late 1300s either from the Old French word equinoce or from the Medieval Latin word equinoxium, that means equality of night and day. 

So He Sold Half A Duck

I recently used the words canard and ruse in the same sentence. I was not sure it was the correct use nor that they belong together, so I thought I would post what I find and where it goes.

Canard, unless you're cooking a duck or flying an airplane (in which case there are other meanings), is defined as a story, report or even a statement that is false or baseless. It can be derogatory but most uses I have seen of the word are more about intentionally misleading. Canard came to English prior to 1850 from the French word canard, which means "hoax." Canard (or quanart in Old French) literally means "duck." So how did the French word for duck come to refer to a hoax? It is apparently the result of a punch line to a French joke.

The joke is: A duck seller, the only one in the neighborhood, had a great business selling his ducks for 8 francs apiece. Soon another duck seller moved in and undercut the original vendor by selling his ducks for 7 francs each. A price war ensued, until the original duck seller was forced to lower his price to 3 francs. But he knew he could not stay in business at that price, so in small print below the three-franc price he wrote "vendre un canard à moitié." Pretty funny, eh? Oh, in English the phrase is "for half a duck." That subterfuge and punch line became equated with perpetuating a hoax, and our English meaning was born (or hatched).

A ruse, in addition to being the name of a Bulgarian city on the Danube, is a trick or an action intended to mislead. When it came to English in the early 1400s it referred to the dodging movements of a hunted animal. But by the 1620s it had expanded to refer to any action intended to mislead. It came from the Old French word ruse or reuse, a word backformed from reuser that came from the Latin word recusare, which means deny, reject or oppose. It turns out to be a tricky word etymologically, because it is thought by some to come from the Latin word for backward, rursus.

I used the word subterfuge earlier, and it is another word in this group. It is an action used to avoid the truth or evade a rule or consequences. It came to English in 1570 either from Middle French or Latin. The Middle French word subterfuge had been in use since the 1300s. The Medieval Latin word is subterfugium,  and is formed from subter, meaning under or beneath, and fugere, which means flee and from which we get fugitive (and fugacious).

So while subterfuge is fleeing from the truth to avoid the consequences, ruse is dodging the truth by intentionally misleading, and a canard is simply a statement or story that is not true (and in common usage intended to mislead). Subterfuge is cowardly, a canard may not be intended to be mean, but a ruse is usually intentional and bad.

Bliss or Bless? Idyllic or Euphoric?

Last week, following up on my use of the word nirvana, I used the words idyllic and euphoria. While Nirvana refers to a state of perfection and heaven to a perfect place, idyllic and euphoria refer to very nice feelings.

Idyllic actually means “like an idyll.” An idyll is a writing that describes a pastoral scene or event or anything charming and simple. So idyllic means “charmingly simple or rustic.” Idyll has been used in English since about 1600, and came from the Latin word idyllium, which came from the Greek word eidyllion that meant a short, descriptive poem, usually of a rustic or pastoral scene. Eidyllion is the diminutive form of eidos and literally means “a little picture.” It was not until the late 1700s that the adjective idyllic came into use, originally only to mean “pertaining to an idyll” but in 1831 to refer to anything simple and charming or rustic.

Euphoria is a state of intense happiness and self-confidence. It was first used in English in 1727 as a physician’s term for feeling healthy and comfortable. It comes from medical Latin, from the Greek word euphoria, that means “power of enduring easily.” The Greek word is formed from combining “eu,” that means “well,” with “pherein,” that means “to carry.” We also get the word infer from pherein.  Euphoria’s non-medical use did not develop until 1882 and is now the predominant use.

In psychology euphoria is a term used in pathology to describe the manic state in those diagnosed as bipolar, in whom the normal euphoric state is exaggerated.

I also used the word bliss in last week’s post. Bliss means supreme happiness or utter joy or complete contentment. It, like heaven, is an Old English word (blis or bliðs) carried through into Modern English. It originally referred mostly to earthly happiness, as opposed to bless, which has a heavenly connotation.

Bless is also Old English in origin (bletsian, bledsian), and came from the Proto-Germanic word blodison that meant “hallow and/or mark with blood.” Blessing, according to etymonline.com,  was originally “a blood sprinkling on pagan altars. This word was chosen in Old English bibles to translate [the] Latin benedicere and [the] Greek eulogein, both of which have a ground sense of ‘to speak well of, to praise,’ but were used in Scripture to translate [the] Hebrew brk ‘to bend (the knee), worship, praise, invoke blessings.’”

While we're following up, I recently used a word that was unknown to my wife: obstreperous. It means resisting control or restraint in a difficult or unruly manner. It has been used in English since about 1600, when it was adopted from the Latin word obstreperus. The Latin word means clamorous, and is formed from ob- (meaning "against") and strepere (meaning "make a noise"). So in Latin being obstreperous is making a noise against something, or not resisting quietly. It is similar to words found in the post "Annoying Stubborn Bullies." 

My Heavens!

I used the word nirvana a few weeks ago. Nirvana often is capitalized, and needs to be when used to talk about the Buddhist state of freedom from the cycle of personal reincarnations. In Hinduism it is salvation through the union of Atman with Brahma. Its use in English has broadened to refer to any state of bliss.  It has only been used in English since 1836, coming from the Sanskrit where it means disappearance or literally “to blow out, a blowing out” (as a flame might). It was not until 1895 that its sense broadened to the state of perfection.

Nirvana is not the same thing as heaven, the place where God and the angels reside and to which Christians aspire to live in eternity. Heaven is the English word for the home of God, having come from the Old English word heofon. Prior to being God’s home it was simply the sky, and is still used in that sense today. (If you’re wondering how there can be more than one sky, etymonline states that the plural use, skies, “is probably from Ptolemaic theory of space composed of many spheres, but it also formerly was used in the same sense as the singular in Biblical language, as a translation of [the] Hebrew plural shamayim.”)

Heaven-sent has been used since the 1640s, “heavens to Betsy” first appeared in print in 1892 and may refer to Davy Crockett’s rifle “Betsy.” That still doesn't make sense, but it's the best explanation I could find. “Heavens to Murgatroyd,” for you Snagglepuss fans, was first uttered in a 1944 movie before Snagglepuss adopted it. It may have been inspired by the Murgatroyd family in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera “Ruddigore.” Several members of the line of Murgatroyd barons were ghosts having been cursed by a witch. I suspect these uses  of heaven (and others like “My Heavens”) came into being as a Christian response to the use of the word “Hell” as a curse word.

Before we leave this idyllic topic, let’s go to paradise. One meaning for the word is a synonym for heaven; another use is as the intermediate place where souls wait for the final resurrection of the dead at judgment. It has since the late 1100s referred to the Garden of Eden, and came through Old French, where it was paradis. The French got it from the Latin word paradisus, which came from the Greek paradeisos, which means park when not referring to the Garden of Eden. According to etymonline.com “The Greek word, originally used for an orchard or hunting park in Persia, was used in [the] Septuagint to mean ‘Garden of Eden,’ and in New Testament translations of Luke xxiii:43 to mean ‘heaven’ (a sense attested in English from c. 1200). “

Shangri La has been used as a term for an earthly paradise since 1938. It originated in English in James Hilton’s 1933 novel “Lost Horizon,” which was made into a popular film in 1937. Hilton used Shangri La as the name of a Tibetan utopia.

Utopia first appeared in 1516 as the title of Thomas More’s book about an imaginary island with perfect legal, social and political systems. (Like Francis Bacon’s 1627 novel New Atlantis, parodied by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels.) Utopia was formed by combining the Greek “ou” that means “not” with “topos” that means “place.” By 1610 it broadened to mean any perfect place. Don’t be fooled into thinking it comes from the Greek word for good, eu- (as in euphoria). It literally means nowhere.

Now back to the real world.

Stand and Scrute Understand and Scrutinize

I have found myself using the word inscrutable with greater frequency lately. It means incapable of being scrutinized, or analyzed and investigated. Scrutinize means to examine in detail with careful or critical attention. It also means to conduct a scrutiny. (Scrutiny on the Bounty, anyone?) A scrutiny is a searching examination or investigation or a surveillance or close look. So we are conducting a scrutiny of the forms of the noun scrutiny. Scrutinize is the verb form and scrutable or inscrutable the adjective form. (My spell-check does not recognize scrutable but my dictionary does. I'm going with the dictionary.)

Scrutiny came to English first, as one might imagine. It arrived in the early 1400s from the Latin word scrutinium, which meant a search or inquiry. But scrutiny did not mean examine in its original English use. Originally the word scrutiny meant a vote to choose someone to decide a question, because in Medieval Latin scrutinium meant "a mode of election by ballot."

Then, in about 1500, along came the word inscrutable. Coming from the Late Latin word inscrutabilis, it meant to not examine or ransack. Why such a difference? Scrutarini is the Latin word for examine or ransack and it is possible that the root word for both scrutarini and inscrutabilis is scruta, which is a plural word for trash or rags. Digging through trash or a pile of rags would be scrutinizing, and if you do not go to that extent to investigate something you are being inscrutable.

But scrutinize was not the word being used as a verb. In fact, until the 1590s there was no verb form. At that time the English took a French word and adopted it as a verb: scrutine. For some reason that did not take root, and by 1670 the verb scrutinize had become preeminent. Understand?

Wait. Look at that word. Un-der-stand. Past tense un-der-stood. Stand and stood have nothing to do with perceiving the meaning of something, do they? And how do you get under the stand? We understand the meaning of under and of stand, but how did they get combined to mean understand?

Under such circumstances we go to etymonline.com, which provides some background on words. Understand is the current form of the Old English word understanden that probably meant literally stand in the midst of, not stand under, because the prefix under in Old English did not only mean beneath but also among or in the midst of (like the Latin prefix inter- or the Sanskrit anter.) We still use that meaning in the expression "under the circumstances" with which I began this paragraph.

Etymonline goes on to suggest that the ultimate sense of the word use is equivalent to the Greek epistamai which is literally translated as "I stand upon" but means "I know how," or "I know." In Old Frisian the word is understonda and in Middle Danish it is understande, so the use is common to several languages.

So understand means to know or comprehend, while scrutiny and its forms is more investigative. Comprehend?

If You Can Be Ruthless, Can You Be Ruth?

I was reading something recently and the word ruth was used. Not the name Ruth, but the word. I do not recall ever seeing this simple word before; ruthless, yes, but not ruth. Yet if Ruth can be ruthless one should be able to be ruth, right?

Ruth (the word, not the name) and ruthless are opposite, and ruthless is more commonly used. It means at least without pity, mercy or compassion, but can mean cruel. So it makes sense that ruth means pity or compassion. It also can mean sorry, remorse or grief, or even self-reproach.

Ruthless is an adjective, while ruth is a noun. Ruthless came to English in the early 1300s after ruth had been around for over 100 years. Ruth may have come from an Old Norse word, hryggô, but may have formed from the work reuwen, meaning to rue. If it were the latter the word would follow the same form as true and truth. It was originally spelled ruthe. There was in the 1300s an adjective ruthful, but it has not been used since the 1600s.

Ruth, the name, comes from the Bible; Ruth was an ancestor of David and is probably a contraction of the word for companion, friend, or fellow woman, reuth. Ruth was a friend and companion to Naomi, which in English is a name only.

Since we’re on names, I mentioned in a recent post that we would get to the name Althea. While the marsh mallow plant belongs to the genus Althea, the more common use of althea is as the name of the plant known as the rose of Sharon, hibiscus syriacus. Althea is a variation of the Greek name Althaea, which may be related to the Greek word for healing, althos. It is not one of the more common names in English, and I mentioned one famous person with that name, Althea Gibson. In 1956 Althea Gibson was the first person of color to win a Grand Slam tennis event, something the Williams sisters (Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, and Serena, from the Latin word serenus that means clear and tranquil) have replicated numerous times. Althea Gibson was also the first black player to compete on the women’s professional golf tour.

Rose of Sharon was first used in English in the 1611 translation of the Bible authorized by King James. It is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for crocus. But it does grow in the Sharon valley.  I work with a Rose of Mexico City.

Women’s names that are also English words are more common than men’s names. Faith, Hope and Charity are all used in one verse of the Bible (I Cor. 13:13) and are also women’s names. While the aforementioned Venus is a woman’s name, I have yet to encounter a man whose first name is Mars. My brothers Don and Bob come close; there are words don and bob. But Don is short for Donald while Bob is a nickname for Robert. I don’t know how you get from Robert to Bob any more than I know how you get from Lawrence (not my given name) to Larry (my given name, but usually a nickname of Lawrence.)

I’m still waiting to see the trio Faith Hill, Hope Solo, and Charity Zisengwe in concert together. Chastity Bono (now Chaz) could be Hope’s dance partner, since they were both on Dancing with the Stars. Chaz also was the writer of most of the songs and lead singer of the music group Ceremony, so he could do double duty.

Other than that, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Puss 'n Boots

No, this is not about the lead character in the 1667 Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Charles Perraut story. And, in case you are as confused as I have been, the story is not about two characters, one named Puss and one named Boots (if it were, the contraction between the names should have an apostrophe both before and after: ‘n’.) In the story, the Puss wore Boots. 

This post is about the words puss and boot.

First, puss: actually, puss, pus, pussy and pussycat; what, other than their first three letters, do they have in common?

Pus is the oldest of these words, having arrived in English from Latin in the late 1300s. The vowel is pronounced as if spelled puhs or as if it had a double s (like muss and fuss) while our other puss words are pronounced like poo-s, as the u in push. The Latin word pus is used for any matter coming from a sore. Pus is much easier to say but sounds less innocuous than “a liquid plasma in which white blood cells are suspended” but that is essentially what it is.

As for puss, it has several meanings. In the United States it refers to a cat, while in Britain it may refer to a rabbit. The cat meaning likely comes from the sound made when trying to get a cat’s attention. It is, according to etymonline.com “A conventional name for a cat in Germanic languages and as far off as Afghanistan; it is the root of the principal word for ‘cat’ in Rumanian (pisica) and secondary words in Lithuanian (puz), Low German (puus), Swedish dialect katte-pus, etc.” Its first recorded appearance in English was in the 1520s, but it was likely in use much earlier than that. By the 1600s the word puss developed a negative sense, implying and applying the negative qualities of a cat to women, but by the mid-1800s it had regained its affectionate use as well.

By the 1580s the word pussy was being used as a term of endearment for a girl, woman, or (perhaps not affectionately) of effeminate men, but was not first used as a diminutive http://larry-whatsthegoodword.blogspot.com/2013/03/futpnbciii-follow-up-pedantic-night.htmlform of puss to refer to cats until 1726 (while rabbits were called pussies in 1715). In 1879 we find the first recorded use of pussy as a slang word for female genitalia, but it was likely in use long before being put into writing. Etymonline.com quotes a reference from Philip Stubbes’ 1583 “The Anatomie of Abuses” that says merely “The word pussie is now used of a woman.” Etymonline also states that its use in mainstream literature (like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852 where it was used as a term of endearment) argues against its more delicate use much prior to 1879.

And just to confuse matters, in 1890 the word puss was used, particularly in street fighting, to refer to the face. This use likely came from the Irish word for the lip or mouth: pus. Which takes us full circle to our first word, pus.

Our other set of words today, boot, is only a little older in English than pus. It came into use in the early 1300s, from the Old French word bote. Originally it was used only of riding boots, but now refers to any footwear that covers the foot and part (or all) of the leg. My dictionary says that in Britain it is used of any shoe or outer foot covering that reaches the ankle.

The first recorded instance of bootstrap (or boot-strap) is from 1870; perhaps that is when someone first placed a tab or loop at the top of the boot to aid in pulling the boot over the foot.

Then in 1877 the word boot was first used in writing to describe a kick. By 1880 the sense of kicking someone out (probably from a saloon in the wild west) came into being. In 1888 Steele’s school book entitled “Popular Physics” had the question “Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his boot-straps?” By 1916 that idea of “lifting oneself up by his own bootstraps” had expanded to mean improving oneself by one’s own effort.

Believe it or not, it was less than 40 years later (in 1953) that the word bootstrap was used to describe the “fixed sequence of instructions to load the operating system of a computer” or what we now call “booting up.” Why bootstrap or boot? Because the first-loaded program’s role is to “pull itself up” along with the rest of the programs that are needed to begin computing.

And you thought puss 'n boots was a nice little story, didn't you?