Discomfited, Disconcerted, or in Discomfort?

I ran across the word discomfit recently and realized I did not know what it meant and how it was different from discomfort. So a trip to the dictionary was warranted in order that you might be able to be discriminating and accurate in your use of various words for being uneasy.

Discomfit is primarily a verb whereas discomfort is a noun but can be used with an object as a verb. Discomfort means to confuse and deject or to disconcert (now we have a third word to differentiate.) It also means to frustrate the plans of or to thwart or foil. When you have confused someone by a statement and they are now either sad or a little angry with you or even frustrated you have discomfited them by your words.  When you have made a person stop their plans due to an uneasy feeling that your assertion has caused, they have been discomfited by your contention. The word is used in conjunction with an object.

Etymonline.com and its etymology provide some insight. Discomfit came to English about 1200 as an adjective, from the Old French word desconfit that meant defeated or destroyed (like in battle, a definition deemed Archaic by my dictionary). It was formed from the Old French prefix des- that designated a negative and confire which meant make or prepare or accomplish. So discomfit happens when someone becomes unprepared or unready due to another’s actions or words. Etymonline.com goes on to say that it took 100 years for the word to change from an adjective to a verb.  Then it says that discomfit as a “weaker sense of ‘disconcert’ is first recorded [in the] 1520s in English, probably by confusion with discomfort.”

So if discomfit is weaker than disconcert, what is disconcert? Disconcert is a verb used with an object (just like discomfit) that means to disturb the self-possession of, to perturb or ruffle. That sounds like a weaker form of discomfit, not the other way around. Then the second definition of disconcert is given, “to throw into disorder or confusion.”  Now we have two meanings of disconcert, one that is weaker than discomfit and one that is stronger. Does the etymology help? Disconcert has been used in English since the 1680s, when it was adopted from the Middle French word disconcerter, which meant “confused” and was formed by combining dis- (do the opposite of)with concerter . Then etymonline says “see concert.” Disconcerting, isn’t it? Or did that meaning discomfit you?

Concert is a noun in English since the 1660s (prior to disconcert) that means agreement or harmony, a meaning it retains. The French got the word from the Italian word concerto that had the same meaning. What is interesting is that the Latin word concertare from which the Italians got concerto meant “to contend, contest, or dispute”. But according to etymonline.com “Before the word entered English, [the] meaning shifted from ‘to strive against’ to ‘to strive alongside.’” It also says there is some disagreement, one etymologist contending that concerto comes from the Latin word concantare that means to sing together. At any rate, it now means to do something in agreement or in harmony.

(Concert as a word for a public performance came into being at the same time as disconcert, only further confusing – or disconcerting – English speakers and writers.)

Discomfort, or the absence of comfort, is a noun that can also have a meaning of uneasiness or even mild pain. It can also be used as a verb used with an object, but it is most often used as a noun.  It originally entered English as a verb, around the year 1300, but by the middle of the century developed the noun sense that is more common. It came from Old French (we have the Old French to thank for our discomfort with these words today), from desconfort. Again, we have the prefix des- now with the word conforter from which we get the word comfort.

Comfort is a verb meaning soothe or console, but also a noun meaning relief or consolation, or simply a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants with freedom from pain and anxiety.

So if comfort can mean ease, why do we have the word discomfort rather than disease to mean lack of ease? Originally (in the early 1300s) disease meant discomfort or inconvenience, but by the end of the 1300s came to refer to sickness or illness. By the end of the 1600s it lost the meaning of discomfort.

Discomfort had discomfited disease’s meaning of lack of ease. That probably makes you disconcerted. 

About the Gray (or is it Grey?) Metal (or is it Medal?) - Read (or is it Red?) This!

Last week was very confusing. I used the word medal, which can be a homophone for the grey (Or is it gray?) metal and as confusing (or more) than lead/led/lede. Read and the past participle of read pronounced the same as the color red are not as confusing, but the context is the only way to know how to pronounce the word read.

Let’s begin with the grey area of gray. I admit that I have no idea which spelling is preferable, let alone why there are two spellings. While my dictionary has both spellings, the spelling with an e only redirects to the word gray, which explains that it is a color between white and black. (Aren’t all colors between white and black?)

More of an explanation comes from etymonline.com, which explains that “The distinction between British grey and U.S. gray developed [in the] 20^th century.” So now I know if I am writing for a British audience to use grey and for U.S. audiences I should use gray. But that does not explain why the two spellings developed. I think the etymology it provides helps to explain. Etymonline provides the source of gray or grey as “Old English græg (Mercian grei)…” Because of the digraph æ in the Old English those east of the Atlantic went with the e while those “across the pond” went with the a. But apparently only in the 20^th century.

But what about metal and medal?

Metal, those substances which are a crystalline when solid, comes from the Old French word of the same spelling. The French got their word from the Latin word metallum, which came from the Greek word metallon, and throughout its etymology the words have had the same meaning. That is both unusual and simple for us.

In contrast, the English word medal, has a much more convoluted etymology. A medal is defined as a flat piece of metal bearing an inscription or design and commemorating or honoring a person, action, or event. The word medal came to English in the 1580s from the Middle French word médaille, which came from the Italian word medaglia. It originally was used to describe just a trinket or charm, and was first used in its current meaning in 1751.

Finally, read/read/red. Once again we have the digraph æ to thank for some of the confusion. The origin of the verb pronounced “reed” is Old English: rædan in West Saxon spelling, redan in Anglian spelling. While it only has 46 definitions, most of them have to do with looking at so as to understand the meaning.

I find it interesting that the color red was, in Old English, spelled read. During the Middle English period the vowel sound (along with dead and the metal lead and bread) shortened. But only the color shortened the spelling. And to shorten the word bread would only confuse with the past tense of breed (bred).

As to why we pronounce the past participle of the verb read the same as the color, I could find no explanation. Sometimes English just does not make sense. 

Reading This You Might See Red

You can lede a horse to water…

I recently ran into the use of the word lead when led was warranted. In response to my suggesting the misspelling, the person maintained that lead spells lead (short e as in red) where I had read it as a long e (as in reed).

In a way she was right, because the “comparatively soft, malleable, bluish-grey metal (symbol Pb) is spelled that way. Only she was not talking about the metal, she was talking about the past-tense of the word that means to guide in direction, course, action or opinion. But the past tense of that is spelled led.

How did we end up in this confusion?

The verb lead comes from Old English, so it is very old in the sense of guiding. Originally spelled lædan, it has long been a part of English. Its noun use (the action of leading) appeared in English in the early 1200s. The verb use meaning “to be in first place” is from the late 1300s. The noun meaning “the front or leading place” is from the 1560s, although Samuel Johnson characterized this sense as being low and despicable. The noun form of the verb can also mean “play the first card”, a sense it has had since 1742, or “star in a theater production”, a sense it has had since 1831.

The noun meaning the bluish-grey metal also comes from Old English, but the word from which it came is lead. The reduction in the use of the digraph æ is the source of confusion between the noun and the verb.

Why is the past tense of the verb lead spelled differently, without the letter a? One source suggested that “verbs share a common system of inflectional morphology with one another.” Maybe that clears it up for you but I am not sure what it means. I have checked numerous sources, and while lead is an irregular verb (regular would be lead/lead/leading) it may be influenced by words like bleed, the past tense for which is bled. To try to avoid confusion with the noun lead the past tense of the verb that is a homophone is spelled differently. Unfortunately, like so many things in life, attempts to avoid confusion only create new confusion. I hope that clears it up a little.

I mentioned above that Pb is the symbol for lead. After I asked myself “Why?” a little research led me (and it will lead you, too) to the Latin word plumbum, which is the Latin word for the metal lead. It is the source word for the word-formation prefix plumbo- and in the adjective plumbic which since 1799 has described something that has been combined with the metal lead.

Plumbus is also the source of the word plumb, the lead weight hanging from a string that is used to show a vertical line. While plumb has (and plumbs have) been used since the early 1300s, the original noun has also gained adjective and adverb meanings as well, and now when something is perfectly straight/vertical is referred to as plumb.

And then there’s lede. In the lede to this post I used lede. Lede is the alternative spelling of lead (as in reed) that has been in use in journalism since 1965, according to etyomonline.com. It refers to the opening or introductory section of a story. Who says journalists have no sense of humor?

Now that you have read this you might see red. (Read/reed/red next week.)

We Solute the Dissolute, the Lewd, and the Licentious

So after last week we know all about roués, rakes, and cads. (Some day we’ll get to the Sonny and Cher list: gypsies, tramps, and thieves.) Today we continue the subject with dissolute, licentious, and lewd.

Dissolute is an adjective that means given to immoral or improper conduct. My dictionary has licentious and dissipated as synonyms. The word dissolute comes directly from the Latin word dissolutus, which means loose or disconnected. Dissolutus is the past participle of the Latin word dissolvere, which means loosen up and from which we get our word dissolve. A person who is dissolute is someone deteriorating due to their conduct, and the phrase “coming apart at the seams” comes to mind. 

The word has been around since the late 1300s in English, but the situation it describes is much older.

As with all words that seem to have a prefix, I wondered if there is a word solute. There certainly is. A substance that is dissolved in a solution is a solute. Sounds like the dictionary is using the word to describe the word, doesn’t it? I checked another dictionary: the World English Dictionary tries harder and comes up with “the component of a solution that changes its state in forming the solution or the component that is not present in excess. So apparently the sugar and non-dairy powder that I add to my wife’s coffee is the solute in the coffee I give her. But the word has only been used in English since 1890, so it is a relatively new word.

Do not confuse solute (which can be pronounced with a short or long "o") with salute, which is a way of greeting or showing honor or respect to someone. The military do this most often with the right hand raised in some way or another (depending on the country). Salute has been around in English since the 1300s. It came from the Latin word salutare and originally did not have the letter t, being spelled salue. By the time the verb added a noun sense in about 1400 the “t” had been added.

Back to the gutter. Licentious is the other carryover from last week. Another adjective, it means sexually or morally unrestrained, although it can also mean lawless. It came to English in the 1530s from Medieval Latin, from the word licentiosus. Licentiosus means full of license or unrestrained, and is a form of the word licentia from which we get the word license.

The dictionary says synonyms for licentious are lascivious, libertine, and lewd. While we’ve covered the first two, lewd (often used as the first word in the phrase “lewd and lascivious”) we get to now.

Lewd is the oldest English word of today's post; my dictionary says it has been used in English at least since before 900. In Old English the word was spelled læwede and meant nonclerical. As such it developed the additional meaning of uneducated by the early 1200s, and by 1400 further descended in meaning to “coarse, vile, and lustful.” Today it has the meaning of inclined to lust or lechery, obscene or indecent. 

Nude is considered lewd except in San Francisco, but newd is not lude. Lude is a short slang word for quaalude, and has been used since 1973.

So dissolute has a sense of dissolving behavior, licentious is beyond the bounds of proper behavior, and lewd is lustful behavior. Depending on where you live.