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.”