"Just Take This Thing" - A Phrase My Wife Used in Parturition

So what I thought would be one blog post has turned into three. Parturition, parturient, and pare are still left from the subject of the last two posts. Then we'll get to some other words.

Parturition and parturient are related forms, parturition being the noun and parturient being the adjective . 

Parturient is the older, having come into English in the 1590s, and means bearing young or about to do so, although it is sometimes used of an idea, although nascent is a more common word for that concept. Parturient comes from the Latin word parturientem, a form of the word parturire that means to be in labor. It literally means "desire to bring forth" according to etymonline.com, being the desiderative (I didn't know there was such a thing in Latin) of parere, which means "to bear."

Parturition, which came from the Latin word parturitionem, which is a "noun of action" (no wonder I flunked Latin...twice) from the past participle stem of parturire. Parturition came into use in English in the 1640s, so for 50 years in England you could only talk about the process, not the act of giving birth. It would be another 136 years before men would gather in Philadelphia to parturition a nation.

The Latin word parere gives us another English word, pare. Pare means to cut off or cut away the outer layer of something (in my experience most often an apple). It is the oldest of these three words, having arrived about 1300 into English from Old French, where the word was parer, which the Old French got directly from the Latin parere. Parere had many meanings, according to etymonline.com. Their list is "make ready, prepare, furnish, provide, arrange, order; contrive, design, intend, resolve; procure, acquire, obtain, get; get with money, buy, purchase." I suppose today the difference between provide and purchase is not great, and maybe it wasn't so in ancient Rome, either. The point is that it the word pare had other meanings derived from French and Latin and it was not until the 1520s that the meaning of taking a peel off came into preeminence. 

So instead of saying “in labor” or “act of giving birth” you can say parturient or parturition. Not that it’s much shorter. “In delivery” or “delivery seem to be the more common usage.

We have space to look at an unrelated word today. 

I ran across a post on Mental Floss.com (which today highlights a post "11 Paraprosdokians That Will Make You Think Twice") written by Arika Okrent entitled "11 Weirdly Spelled Words and How They Got That Way.  One of the words was "knead" and I thought what was written was interesting:

Two things happened in the early 1500s that really messed with English spelling. First, the new technology of the printing press meant publishers - rather than scribes - were in charge, and they started to standardize spelling. At the very same time, the Great Vowel Shift was underway. People were changing the way they pronounced vowels in vast groups of words, but the publishers weren't recognizing the changes yet. This is why we ended up with so much inconsistency: 'ea' sounds different in knead, bread, wear, and great. Along with the vowel changes, English lost the /k/ shound from /kn/ words, the /w/ from /wr/ words, and the /g/ from gnat and gnaw. But by the time the change was complete, the writing habits has already been established.  

While that is great, the two things not said were that knead is a verb that means to work into a uniform mixture by pressing folding, and stretching (and punching and throwing and squeezing) or that it comes from the Old English word cnedan (Saxon, Dutch, German, and Old Norse all use the k in their forms of the word, in case you wonder.)

Not that you kneaded to know.

Shakespeare and Hunka Hunka Burning Love

Last week I ended the blog post by saying we never got to the words fornication or parturition or priapic or pudendum. With the anticipation building to a fever pitch, without further ado let's get back to what for some are prurient interests.

Fornication is the most commonly used of today's words. It is not just any sexual intercourse, it is specifically the voluntary sexual intercourse between two people who are not married to each other. The noun form is older than the verb form, fornicate. Fornication came to English in about 1300 from the Old French word fornicacion, which came from the Late Latin word fornicationem, both of which came from the Latin word for brothel, fornix. The verb came directly from the Latin in the 1550s, or it may just be a back-formation from fornication. 

Fornix is actually a word, but it is anatomical, referring to various arched formations. Huh? Well, fornix in Latin originally meant an arch or vaulted chamber or opening, or a covered way, and the supposition is that prostitutes in Rome used such architectural features as their place for solicitation. By the time of Juvenal and Horace fornix meant brothel,

Another interesting etymological possibility from fornix is that the arched meaning has some kinship to fornus, which is the Latin word for a brick oven with an arch or dome. It is the word from which we get furnace, which is any structure or apparatus in which heat is generated. So perhaps Elvis's song hunka hunka burning love has Latin roots.

Since fornix is an anatomical word, let's look at the words priapic and pudendum, which are also anatomical in nature. 

Priapic means something is like Priapus, who I am sure you remember as the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, and is the god who personified male reproductive power. Priapic, the adjective formed from his name, has been in use since 1786, perhaps as a more obscure word for the more commonly used word phallic, although priapic came into English three years before phallic. Priapism has been used in English since the 1620s, and refers to the "persistent erection of the penis." If it lasts more than four hours, call your doctor.

Phallic means pertaining to the phallus, and came from the Greek word phallikos, which came from the Greek word phallos, meaning penis, from which we get the noun form of phallic, phallus. Phallus has been used in English since the early 1600s, and is defined as "an image of the male reproductive organ." The Greek word for whale is phalle. I'm not sure there is a connection, I'm just saying.... Since 1924 phallus has been used not just of an image, but of the penis itself. Phallic symbol has been used in English since 1809. 

In case this post makes you uncomfortable, you might be interested to know that the word pudendum, which refers to external genital organs, comes from the Latin word pudendum which literally translated is "thing to be ashamed of." It has been used in English since the late 1300s, and while originally it would refer to either male or female genitals it now primarily refers to female genitalia, specifically the vulva. 

And we're out of space, so parturition, parturient, and pare will have to wait until next week. Paring the post here may be, as Shakespeare wrote, "the most unkindest cut of all." 

Sex

During a recent visit to the doctor the television show “Big Bang Theory” came to mind (Sheldon’s use of the phrase “voiding my bladder,” if you must know) and I was reminded when I looked at my list of unblogged words of another of Sheldon's idiomatic use of English.

It seems that in English there are subjects and words that are avoided in “polite society,” like Sheldon’s use of “void my bladder” rather than some euphemistic expression. I looked a little bit through previous posts for a good example of the proliferation of words to describe uncomfortable subjects and didn’t quickly find one. If you remember one, feel free to add a comment for others.

Today’s subject matter is sex. To get back to my “Big Bang Theory” opening, another of Sheldon’s “polite society” words is the use of the word coitus for having sex. Having sex is an idiomatic expression for coitus or copulation or fornication or the act of sexual intercourse. It is a general term for various acts (not all of which will be covered in this blog post.)

Sex as a word came to English in the late 1300s as a noun for genders collectively. It comes from the Latin word sexus that means the state of being either male or female. And so it remained for hundreds of years until D.H. Lawrence used the word in 1929 to refer to the act of sexual intercourse. Within 10 years it came to be used to refer to genitalia.

Some other “sex” phrases are older. Sex drive is from 1918, according to etymonline.com, and sex object from 1901. Sex symbol was used in anthropology starting in 1871, but in 1959 a modern anthropologist first used it to describe a woman (Marilyn Monroe, if you must know). Prior to that sex objects were known primarily as pin up girls (the most iconic being Betty Grable), a phrase first attested to in 1941 as Americans joined World War II and sent their men overseas with reminders of what they were fighting for.

But back to “Big Bang Theory.” Sheldon’s use of coitus is correct. Coitus is sexual intercourse, particularly between and man and a woman. Etymonline.com indicates it is synonymous with copulation, and gives its entry date into English as 1713. It comes from the Latin word coitus that means “a meeting together; sexual union.” Before deriving its sexual meaning it referred to any inexorable attraction, as in magnetic force or planetary conjunctions. Coitus interruptus (according to the Collins English Dictionary the deliberate withdrawal of the penis from the vagina before ejaculation) was first used by Havelock Ellis in 1900. Havelock Ellis also is credited by Wikipedia with “introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism.”

Another similar word, coition, is a noun that has been in English since the 1540s and comes from the Late Latin word coitionem, a noun of action developed from the Latin word coitus and was used in English for sexual intercourse 100 years before coitus. I don’t remember ever seeing it used. There's a word for you, Sheldon.

Copulation (the word) came to English from Middle English in the late 1300s. It comes from the Latin word copulationem, a noun of action from the past participle stem (thank you, etymonline.com) of copulare, from which we get copulate. It originally referred to any coupling and has been used of the sex act since the late 1400s; now it is almost exclusively used of sexual intercourse.

Copulate is a verb meaning to engage in sexual intercourse, and has been used in English since the early 1400s. It came from the Latin word copulates, the past participle of copulare. Originally meaning “to join” it eventually (by the 1630s) was used of sexual intercourse.

In usage, coitus is a more scientific term while copulation is a slightly more coarse word, but still acceptable since there are so many euphemisms for sexual intercourse.  

And we haven't gotten to fornication or parturition or priapic or pudendum. Check back next week. 

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

A couple of words come from last week's post: hobo and ephemeral.It is the nature of their passing along that unites them.

A hobo is a class of homeless, traveling man. The origin of the word is unknown, except that it seems to have come into vogue in California in the 1890s. There are a number of conjectures for its etymology, Etymonline.com quotes Barnhart comparing it to an early 19th century English word, hawbuck, which referred to a "clumsy fellow, country bumpkin." It may have come from trainmen calling out "ho, boy" to those using rail cars illegally. Or it could have come from "hoe-boy" meaning a farmhand.

H.L. Mencken, in his monumental work "The American Language" (Supplement 2, p. 679), writes that the first use of the word hobo is in a magazine article by Josiah Flynt dated 1891, but doesn't give the magazine's name. He quotes the Dictionary of American English as positing that it comes from "Hello Beau," or "Ho, beau." Another suggestion he gives (my favorite) is that it comes from homus bonum, meaning a good fellow. But he concludes by saying that all of the suggestions sound improbable to him. So more ideas, but nothing definite.

My dictionary defines a hobo as a tramp or vagrant, but those who call themselves hobo would make a distinction between the three. They would suggest a tramp is one who will only work when they need to and a vagrant as one who will never work, while a hobo works to support their lifestyle as a vagabond, the original American migrant worker. It was the depression in the 1930s that increased the hobo population dramatically. They would "ride the rails" from town to town, setting up "hobo camps" and even developed a literature that included poetry.

If you want to learn more about the history of the hobo and "hobohemia," a trip to Britt, Iowa is de rigueur. It hosts a hobo convention every year (this year's is August 3-9); for more information you can go to http://www.brittiowa.com/hobo/.


Ephemeral is a much older word. It means lasting a very short time, and is very similar to transitory. But the difference is in the potential continued existence of something that is transitory while that which is ephemeral has a sense of ceasing to exist in a very short time.

Ephemeral came to English in the 1560s and was originally used only of diseases and lifespans. It wasn't until the 1630s that it expanded to anything that would quickly cease to exist. According to dictionary.com a second definition is for something that lasts only one day, giving an example of "an ephemeral flower."

Ephemeral is formed from making an adjective of the noun ephemera, which took place after ephemera had been in English for over a century (it came into English in the late 1300s.) The word ephemera comes from the Medieval Latin word ephemera that referred to a fever that would last but one day. Ephemera comes from the Greek word ephemeros that means daily or just for the day. The Greek word was formed by combining the Greek word for "on" (epi-) with the word for "day" (hemera). But it was a while before ephemera developed the broader application to anything that quickly ceases to exist; it wasn't until 1751 that this meaning is first recorded.

By the way, I read that due to the increased speed of rail transportation the life of the hobo has become much more dangerous and the population of hobos has dwindled. It might even be called ephemeral.