Churchillian Distinctions

I have been reading the third volume in William Manchester’s epic biography of Winston Churchill (I recommend it highly). On page 30 I encountered the use of three words that made me think “I wonder what the difference is between…. ”

Page 30 mentions Winston’s preference for simplicity in words.

He believed, with F. G. Fowler, that big words should not be used when small words will do, and that English words were always preferable to foreign words. He said: “Not compressing thought into a reasonable space is sheer laziness.” On his orders “Communal Feeding Centers were renamed “British Restaurants,” as Local Defense Volunteers had become “Home Guard.” And why not “ready-made” rather than “prefabricated”? “Appreciate that” was a red flag for him; he always crossed it out and substituted “recognize that.” Another was “intensive” when “intense” was required. Once John Martin, driving along the Embankment with him, described the winding of the Thames as “extraordinary.” Churchill corrected him: “Not ‘extraordinary.’ All rivers wind. Rather, ‘remarkable.’”

What’s the difference between recognize and appreciate? Between intensive and intense? And why is the Thames remarkable but not extraordinary?

Recognize means something is identified from previous knowledge. It has no qualitative or quantitative sense, whereas appreciate has a third meaning of being fully aware of something. There is a sense in appreciate of a quantitative completeness that is not existent in recognize. You can recognize something without appreciating the full implications of its presence. The first two meanings of appreciate are to be grateful or thankful for, and to value or regard highly. There is a positive sense to the more common uses of appreciate that is qualitatively different from recognize.

The meanings of intense and intensive, according to the American Heritage dictionary,

…overlap considerably, but the two adjectives often have distinct meanings. Intense often suggests a strength or concentration that arises from an inner disposition and is particularly appropriate for describing emotional states….Intensive is more appropriate when the strength or concentration of an activity is imposed from without…. Thus a reference to Mark’s intense study of German suggests that Mark engaged in concentrated activity, while Mark’s intensive study of German suggests the course Mark took was designed to cover a lot of material in a brief period.

So intense is something that comes from within, and intensive is something that comes from outside.

Now, why is the Thames remarkable but not extraordinary? Julius Caesar wrote about it when he encountered it in 54 BC, but he also wrote about and is more associated with other rivers (see Rubicon). That’s remarkable but not extraordinary. It was on an island in the Thames where King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. That’s historic and remarkable, and could be extraordinary, but it was the winding of the Thames to which John Martin referred. Even the S formed east of London, a remarkable feature, is not extraordinary.

Remarkable means notable or conspicuously unusual. It is something worth talking about. Extraordinary is not the combining of the two English words extra and ordinary; it comes from the Latin word extraordinarius, created by the combining of two Latin words: extra (meaning “out of”) and ordinem (meaning “order”).  Since the winding of the Thames is not uncommon among rivers, it is not out of the order of things. But it is remarkable to note that it winds considerably.

Remarkable acknowledges something worthy of note; extraordinary acknowledges something unusual.

Now you can be Churchillian in your distinctions, too.

Passion from Ardent to Zealous

This post actually began last week, when I covered vehement and coined the name of a scale to measure intensity of feeling: Pvaziff.

In my reading came upon the word fervid, which made me wonder, what’s the difference between fervid, ardent, and fervent?

Fervid means heated or vehement in spirit or enthusiasm, but it can also mean burning, glowing or intensely hot. Fervent means having or showing a great warmth or intensity of spirit or enthusiasm, and also means hot, burning, or glowing (as opposed to burning, glowing, or intensely hot).  Ardent means having, expressive of, or characterized by intense feeling, passionate. It also can mean burning, fiery, or hot (but apparently not glowing).  Zealous means ardently active or devoted.

The definitions aren’t much help. Let’s see if the etymologies can clarify at all. Let’s take them in chronological order.

Ardent came to English in the early 1300s from the Old French word ardant. The word was originally used of alcohols that were distilled, since they were formed by being put over a fire. It came to Old French from Latin, where the word ardentum meant “glowing, fiery, hot, or ablaze.” Ardent spirits were called that because they were flammable (or inflammable, if you prefer – the words mean the same thing, and flammable came first, but with the development of the word “inflame” it wasn’t long before both were used and confusion ensued).

It did not take too much ardent spirits (like brandy) to inflame a burning love for the wench who served it to you, or too long (the late 1300s) for that sense to come into use.

Fervent arrived in English in the middle 1300s an Old French word: fervent. (Go figure!) The Old French got the word from the Latin word ferventum, which is the present participle of fervere, which means to boil or glow. By 1400 it had come to refer not only to physical objects but also to feelings and emotions.

Zealous is a form of the word zeal, developed in the 1520s. The word zeal had been used in English since the late 1300s and came from the Late Latin word zelus. The Greek word zelos means ardor or jealousy, and is of uncertain origin.

Fervid came to English in the 1590s from the Latin word fervidus, which means “glowing, burning, vehement, fervid.” Fervidus also came from fervere. As with fervent, it took a few years (this time about 60 of them) for the word fervid to describe feelings.

In 1830 the word perfervid came into use. The prefix per- is an intensive meaning “completely”, so perfervid would be beyond the v end of the scale. There is no Latin word perfervidus, so the creation is a quasi-Latin word. There is neither a word perfervent nor a word perardent.

Ardent now has a sense of strong attachment rather than the kind of heat generated from fervent or fervid.  Zealous is a stronger word than ardent, and since the definition of fervent contains the word “great” in it, I would put it slightly beyond fervent on the pvaziff scale, while impassioned fits between ardent and zealous.

So, on the pvaziff scale it would be ardent, impassioned, zealous, fervent, fervid, perfervid. But aizffp sounds like something fizzling, so I’m sticking with the pvaziff construction. It may come in handy in Words with Friends.

How to be a Vehemently Obseqious Quidnunc

Continuing my holiday book binge word ideas, I encountered the word obsequious, and could not remember having covered it heretofore in this blog. I’d covered similar words like sycophant and toady in this blog’s second post (this blog is now 201 posts long) but I had not covered obsequious.

Obsequious crossed the English Channel in the late 1400s, arriving from the Middle French word obséquieux that meant “prompt to serve.” The Middle French got the word from the Latin word obsequiosus, which meant obedient or compliant. The Latin word was formed by combining the Latin prefix for after (ob-) with the word for follow (sequi, from which we get the word sequel and sequence.)

So if you think of someone who serves promptly by following after another person, you have a pretty good idea of the meaning of obsequious. While it seems to be increasingly used negatively, it need not have that meaning. Please use it as a good word meaning prompt and compliant service.

I encountered another word that I was surprised I had not covered, it’s such a good word: quidnunc. While my post on sycophant suggested that word to be a good word to use instead of “brown noser” the word quidnunc is a good word to use instead of gossip-monger or busybody, also known as someone who "shares their opinion about other people's life choices." How great to encounter a busybody and “compliment” them on being such a quidnunc. Using a good Latin word makes the person sound enlightened rather than base.

Quidnunc is formed from two Latin 101 words. Even though I flunked Latin (twice) I remember quid means “what” (I used it a lot as a one-word Latin question) and nunc means “now.” So quidnunc literally means “What now?” It was first used in English in 1709, probably to describe a person who is constantly asking “What’s the news?” so they can share it with everyone else if it is juicy enough.

Before we get to more words from my reading (next week), let’s cover the word vehement; it will come in handy. Vehement came to English in the late 1400s directly from a Middle French word of the same spelling, which came from a Latin word, vehementem, that means impetuous or carried away. How the word vehementem came into being is a matter of conjecture. The two primary possibilities is that 1. There used to be (it’s lost now) a middle participle of vehere, that means “to carry” and from which we get our word vehicle, or 2. It was formed by combining the prefix for lacking (vehe-) and the word for mind (mens). Perhaps vehementem originally had both meanings: getting carried away and losing your mind.

Today the word vehement means zealous, ardent, or impassioned. Its usage really would be an intensive of all three, or a combination of all three descriptive words. Vehement is a strong word, in my experience it is stronger than zealous, ardent, or impassioned. So to differentiate, next week we will cover ardent, fervid, and fervent, and zealous, and where they all fit on the pvaziff (perfervid, vehement, ardent, zealous, impassioned, fervid, fervent) scale.

But until then you know can be a vehemently obsequious quidnunc. 

Magically Glamorous Grammar

I got a lot of reading done over the holidays, and my list of words has grown. So let’s get to some of them.

One of the books I read was sent by one of my wife’s good friends and my Words With Friend. The book is entitled Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog In a footnote on p. 14 is written

…glamour is an outgrowth of the word grammar; they are, in fact, the same word, through the magic of something called ‘dissimulation,’ in which grammar becomes glamour in much the same way that peregrine becomes pilgrim. Whichever way you spell it, the word was originally about magic and witchcraft. Grammar meant learning, which a few centuries ago was understood to involve magic, or at least astrology. And even today a glamorous person casts a spell.

The way etymonline.com has it, the common source word was gramarye, and came from the Old French word for learning, gramaire, especially of a magical sort. You can go back further to Latin and Greek, but why would you? Gramarye arrived in English in the 14^th century (although it had already been an English surname for over a century) and by the end of the 1300s had become spelled grammar. Grammar eventually came to be restricted in its use to mean “rules of language” but until the 1500s gramarye meant “learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes,” including astrology and magic. In the late 1400s grammar developed the secondary meaning of “occult knowledge." It was this meaning that evolved into the Scottish word glamor.

By the way, a grammar school was, according to Samuel Johnson, “a school in which learned languages are grammatically taught.” According to etymonline.com Johnson also has the word grammaticaster as “a mean verbal pedant.” (That could be an indictment on English teachers past or current.) It was in the U.S. in 1842 that the phrase was used to identify “a school between primary and secondary where English grammar is taught.” According to dictionary.com the phrase in the U.S. is now synonymous with elementary school and in Britain refers to a secondary, or what in the U.S. is called a high school.

Back to the Scottish word glamor. (While this spelling is indicated to now be a chiefly U.S. alternative of glamour, the original spelling is retained in the adjective form, glamorous, which came into English in 1882.) The Scottish word’s migration into common English usage as a noun began in the 1720s. But its popularity can be attributed to Sir Walter Scott, who used it in his long 1805 narrative poem “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”:

And one short spell therein he read:

It had much of glamour might;

Could make a ladye seem a knight;

The cobwebs on a dungeon wall

Seem tapestry in a lordly hall;

A nut-shell seem a gilded barge,

A sheeling seem a palace large,

And youth seem age, and age seem youth;

All was delusion, nought was truth.

The word still contained the magical meaning, and would take another 35 years for the first recorded use of glamour in its current primary sense of the quality of fascinating, alluring, or attracting. Almost 100 years later, in 1939, Condé Nast publications created the magazine now bearing the name Glamour.

There’s really nothing magic about it any more. But there is something glamorous about grammar.