Good Words for Bad Boys

Just as there seem to be more words for telling lies than telling the truth, so there seem to be more words for bad behavior than good. Today we begin to look at bad behavior:  roué, cad, rake, dissolute, and licentious, words similar to a word we saw previously, libertine. Libertine refers to someone unrestrained in their consumptions.

Let us begin with the difference between a roué, a cad, and a rake.

A rake is a garden implement that has teeth that help pull things together. The noun has been around a very long time, and the verb developed in about 1300. 

But that is not the word I mean. Rake also is defined as “a dissolute or profligate person, especially a man who is licentious; roué.” Rake was actually used first in the 1650s as a short form of the word rakehell, a word that I have never run across. 

Rakehell came into use in English in the 1540s, but its source is unknown. It may have come from a combining of the verb rake and Hell (so bad they raked Hell to find someone like that) or it could have come from the Middle English work rakel, which described something hasty or rash. But etymonline.com suggests it is probably from raken, which meant to go or proceed and came from the Old English word racian, meaning to move or hurry forward. It retains more of the meaning of rake Hell than rash behavior, but current use seems to be somewhat whimsical as if to describe a good man with a taste for bad things.

Roué is defined with the words “a dissolute or licentious person” while etymonline.com says it refers to a “debauchee” and is from the French word (we adopted it accent and all) that is used to refer to a dissipated man, rake. That does not help differentiate the words. We adopted it into English in 1800, and the French adopted it from the Latin root word rotare, which means roll and from which we get the word rotary to describe that which turns around an axis, or the turning motion.

The word roué is purported to have first been given to the companions of the Duc d’Orleans, who was the regent of France from 1715-1723. It may have been a suggestion that they deserved some round of punishment, but there is a figurative sense to the French word that suggests the subject is worn out, broken, or beat down. Its use in English has a slight negative sense but not is not as strong a descriptor as cad.

Cad is used of someone who behaves dishonorably or irresponsibly toward women, although it can also refer to a man who is simply ill-bred. (All three of these words are used of men; I have yet to encounter their use to describe a woman.)

Cad was also a shortened word, and was shortened in 1730 from the word cadet. Originally used of servants it meant a person lacked refinement (in 1838 it defined a “person lacking in finer feelings.”) According to Anthony West in his biography of his father,  “H.G. Wells: Aspects of a Life,”

A cad used to be a jumped-up member of the lower classes who was guilty of behaving as if he didn’t know that his lowly origin made him unfit for having sexual relationships with well-bred women.

So you can be a roué and still serve the leader of France, but being a rake is bad, and a cad is even worse. Next week: dissolute and licentious. 

Don't Bate Your Breath Waiting for a Unicorn

Today we look at unicorn and “bated breath” and ask “Why?”

Why is it unicorn and not unihorn? After all, the mythical creature is known for having one horn, and last week one of the Sunday cartoons speculated that the horse must have fallen face-first into a silo to get a “corn” stuck in its head.

Why is eagerly waiting also known as waiting with bated breath? Or is it baited breath? Why would someone with worm-smelling breath be eagerly waiting something?

Unicorn is where I want to start, because of my music education. The word unicorn came to English in the 1200s from the Old French word unicorne, which the Old French got from the Late Latin word unicornus, which came from the noun use of the Latin word unicornus, which was an adjective meaning “having one horn.” The Latin word for horn is cornus, from which we also get the word cornet, referring to the conical-bore brass instrument equivalent to the cylindrical-bore trumpet. Of course, I am a simple bore. (Cornet came to English about 1400.) So unicorn really means “single horn,” and a rhinoceros would be a unicorn.  

So where does our word “corn” come from? It has been around for a long time as an Old English word, which is related to a Proto-Germanic word for a small-seed: kurnam. In Old English corn referred to a grain with the seed still intact rather than any particular plant. So a pomegranate as well as an ear of corn would be known as corn in Old English.

Now, have you been waiting with bated breath for the next word? Bate is a verb that means to restrain or moderate, to lessen or diminish. So “holding your breath” would also be known as “bating your breath.” 

When the stress of a situation causes you to either moderate or restrain your breathing, the natural human response is bated breath. The word bate is a shortening of the word of abate, and was first used in English in about 1300. Of course, abate means “put an end to” and came from the Old French word abattre, which may have come from the Vulgar Latin abbatere, which means “to beat.” Since baseball season is about to begin it should be mentioned that the word batter also comes from the Old French batre.

The source of the phrase “bated breath” is Shakespeare. The phrase is used by Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3:

Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,

With bated breath and whis’pring humbleness, Say this:

“Fair sir, you spet on me Wednesday last,

You spurn’d me such a day, another time

You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies

I’ll lend you thus much moneys”?

Abbatere also had a meaning of “to slaughter”, hence the alternative word for a slaughterhouse: abattoir (also from the French but not appearing in English until 1820.)

Bait, in its sense of food put on a hook or in a trap, also came into English about 1300, from an Old Norse word for food, beita.

So don’t bate your breath waiting to see a unicorn. Instead, use corn as a bait to catch something that will cause your hunger to abate. Then celebrate it with a fanfare from cornets and horns.

To Instaurate, without Temporizing: Don't Cavil or be Captious

I picked up a biography of Francis Bacon and recently finished reading it. Bacon was known for creating words. It’s probably the only thing he and I have in common.

The word most often used in the book was instauration, due in part to Bacon’s use of the word in the title of his magnum opus: “The Great Instauration.” Instauration was derived in about 1600 (perhaps by Bacon) from the Latin word of the same spelling that means “a renewing or repeating.” The meaning remains attached to the word today, with the additional meaning of renovation, restoration or repair. The Great Instauration  is available for online reading in several places.

Another word I picked up from Bacon’s biography is temporize. With its root in the Latin word for time (tempus) it is a word with several good uses. It came into use in the 1550s, about ten years before Bacon was born, and entered English from the Middle French (temporizer), which meant “to pass one’s time, or wait one’s time” according to etymonline.com. Apparently the Middle French got the word form Medieval Latin, where the word was temporizare and meant “pass time.” But the Vulgar Latin had the word temporare that mean to delay, and it may have come from that word, although there’s no written proof of that.

The primary meaning in my dictionary is related to the Vulgar Latin: to be indecisive – or appear to be - in order to gain time or delay acting. The second meaning is to comply with the occasion or opinion, to be “with the times.” It does not retain the Middle French meaning of passing one’s time without purpose, but the primary meaning includes the passing of time not unintentionally but with purpose.

A third word for today is similar, and is the verb meaning to raise irritating and trivial objections, sometimes with the intent being to temporize. (See how temporize works?) The word is cavil, and is another word that came from Middle French into English, also in the mid-1500s. The Middle French word caviller meant to mock or jest and came from the Latin word with the same meaning, cavillari. Cavil can also be used as a noun, to define the objection itself or the act of raising the objection.

If one cavils extensively the person might be described as captious, which means “to make much of trivial faults or defects.” It can also mean difficult to please or faultfinding. It can also mean “proceeding from a faultfinding or caviling disposition.” (See how cavil works?)

Captious has been in use much longer than our other words today, having come to English around 1400 spelled capcyus. It came either from the Middle French word captiuex or directly from the Latin word captiosus.

To instaurate, without temporizing: don’t cavil or be captious.

Mordant Exenteration of Tergiversation

Recent reading has provided several words (or reminders of words) that relate to previous posts, so let’s catch up with some more good words.

I encountered a word in recent reading that I’d never seen before and needed to look up to discover its meaning: exenterate. I knew it might be a good word for a bad thing, but could not tell from the context its meaning. Its context led me to think of my post on words like castigate, excoriate and defenestrate.

Exenterate is a verb that means to disembowel or remove the contents of. It is similar to eviscerate, and came to English in the first decade of the 1600s from the Latin root word enter with the suffix - atus and the prefix ex-. The Latin word stem enter came over from the Greek word entera, from which we get another of our word for bowels: entrails. (The suffix is used in Latin to make an adjective of a verb while the prefix means “from.”) In addition to describing literal disemboweling it is used figuratively to describe the act of removing the contents of something. It has a less emotional use than eviscerate.

Eviscerate also means to remove the entrails from a person or animal. It came to English about the same time as exenterate (the early 1600s must have seen a flurry of disemboweling taking place), although it initially was used figuratively and didn’t develop its literal use of disemboweling for about 20 years. It came from the Latin word for internal organs, viscera, with the Latin prefix e­-, the short form of ex-. When used figuratively it means to remove the vital or essential parts of something, to leave the resulting entity powerless. In its figurative use it is very strong.

We get the English word visceral from the same Latin root word, a developed meaning of the adjective form of viscera, which is used to describe the organs of the abdominal cavity. Because of the physical reaction in our abdomen occurs when a strong instinctive response takes place we call that feeling visceral, and have since the 1570s, when we adopted the word from the Middle French word visceral. It was after the word eviscerate came into use that the word developed its literal meaning, in about 1640. Again, the figurative use is of an emotional reaction, not as powerful a feeling as eviscerate, but more instinctive in nature. Because of the word viscera, viscerate means the same as eviscerate, while there is no English word "enterate."

Mordancy is another word I encountered in my recent reading. It would have fit nicely in my posts on the words calumny or sarcastic. Mordancy is the quality of being mordant, which means biting, sharply caustic or sarcastic. (If sarcastic is not strong enough, use mordant. If calumny is too strong, use mordant.) Mordant came into use in English in the late 1400s, having come from the Middle French word mordant, which they got from the Latin word for bite: mordere. Those of you engaged in dyeing fabrics may have encountered the word in its use of making colors fixed or fast, a sense that did not develop until 1791, prior to which dyes apparently ran a lot. Musicians will know a mordant as a “turn”, in which the tone and the tones above and below are used in quick succession as an embellishment.

Our final word today is related to my post on words like dissimulate and obfuscate. Our word for today is tergiversation. Coming to English in the mid-1500s, it is the noun form of the lesser-used  and back-formed verb tergiversate. Its etymology is interesting, in that it is formed from a Latin word that combines two Latin words: tergum and versare. Tergum means the back (the opposite of your face or your front) and versare means to spin or turn. So tergiversationem meant a shifting away or turning one’s back on something.

Tergiversation in English means to repeatedly change one’s opinion or attitude; one can easily imagine the person’s attitude spinning. While its meaning relates to a weakness, a regular changing of one’s mind, it also has a negative meaning of intentional changing, or turning renegade. In that sense the question is whether the original opinion was honest or not, hence its association with dissimulation and obfuscation.

So, more good words to use in our quest for accuracy in English usage.

The Empire Strikes Back

Every so often I encounter a word that reminds me of another and drives me to consider “what’s the difference between the words?” I am a fan of the various hues and shades of meaning in the English language, and strive to use exactly the right word in conversation and writing. (Even in the last sentence, I changed to the word “strive” from “work” because strive more accurately describes my intent while work would describe my actions.)

So, what’s the difference between equitable and equably, between imperious and imperial, and between review and revue?

Equitable means having the character of fairness or justice, while equable means unchanging or unvarying. What a difference “it” makes. How did we come to have two words so similar mean such different things?

Equitable comes from the French word équitable, which is a form of équité from which we get the word equity, the noun form of the adjective equitable. Equitable came to English in the 1640s and has a very definite legal sense of fairness.

Equable is actually either a back-formation from equability or came to English from the Latin word æquabilis, which means equal or consistent. It also is an adjective, arriving in the 1670s, long after the noun form (equability) came into use in the 1530s.

So when do you use equitable and when do you use equable? Equable has come to define that which over time is equitable, while equitable usually defines an instance where the situation is fair to all concerned.

What about imperious and imperial?

Like equable and equitable, imperious and imperial are both adjectives. Where imperial is defined as that which is like or pertaining to an empire, imperious is defined as domineering or even dictatorial. Imperial came into English in the late 1300s from the Old French imperial. The Old French got the word from the Latin word imperialis, which describes that which is related to the empire. While the noun form, empire, came into English in the early 1300s, the Old French word from which it came was empire, from the Latin word imperium.

Why the initial e in empire rather than the i as in imperial? I could not find anyone with a suitable explanation, but in researching realized that the word empirical also begins with an e. But empirical, which means derived or guided or proven by experience or experiment, comes from the Latin word empiricus, which was used for a physician whose experience guided their treatment. The Latin came from the Greek word empeirikos, which means experienced. But empiric came to English in about 1600, while empirical came about 40 years later, or after centuries of empire being used.

You have several choices as to why the initial e rather than an i – either blame it on Greek or on the Old French pronunciation of an initial i, which to the English ear may have sounded like an e.  

So, what about review and revue? A revue is a form of theatrical entertainment, usually a series of unrelated parts, while a review might be the critique of the performance but also would be any process of going over a subject, or a general survey of something.  Review came to English earlier, in the mid-1400s, from the Middle French word reveue, and was originally used to define an inspection of military forces. It wasn’t until the 1560s that it meant the process of going over again, and it was not until about 1600 that it meant a view or survey of the past. The meaning of a critique was the last to arrive, in the 1640s.

What did they review? More likely writing rather than performances, because the word revue did not come into use until 1872, where it originally described a performance that presented a review of current events. The French word revue is the source of the English word.

So in review, you can be imperious and equable in your empirical reporting on a revue, and may even be equitable, but you would not be imperial unless you happen to be an Emperor.