From King Charles II to Sarah Palin in One Word

I have been reading a biography of Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It is written in English (as opposed to American or Australian) but there are few words unfamiliar to me.

The one word that has cropped up most often is the word prorogue, in reference to the King's actions regarding Parliament. Prorogue is defined as "to discontinue a session of (the British Parliament or a similar body)" or "to defer or postpone." It came into use in the 1400s (200 years before King Charles II) from the Old French word proroger or proroguer. Of course, the Old French got the word from Latin, from prorogare, that literally translated is "to ask publicly." It is formed by combining the prefix pro- meaning before (a good meaning for a prefix) and rogare meaning to ask.

Etymonline.com suggests the original sense in Latin may have been to ask the public for consent to extend someone's term in office, but the legislative meaning of "temporarily discontinued" has been around since the mid-1400s.

How it changed from asking consent to postponing is not explained. But etymonline.com does connect it with another word, rogation, a word my spellcheck doesn't recognize. Neither did I. It is apparently an ecclesiastical term for "solemn supplication", and is especially related to the chanting that occurs in the three days before Ascension Day (called in some places Rogation Days). Ascension Day is the 40th day after Easter. The history of Rogation Days goes far back into the early few centuries of the church.

Rogation also comes from the Latin word rogare. So does a more familiar word that either prorogue or rogation. The word derogatory comes from rogare, by adding the prefix de-, meaning "away." Derogare means both to diminish and to partly repeal or modify. Derogatory came into English in about 1500 directly from Latin, and is the word for that which lessens the merit or reputation of a person or thing.

The verb form of the adjective derogatory (derogation) followed another 50 years later.

You may have been wondering how our word rogue relates (or if it does) to prorogue. One would be forgiven for thinking that when a legislative body is temporarily discontinued is has something to do with giving time off "for the rogues." But, alas, it doesn't.

Rogue, while it may also have come from rogare, has a different and more colorful course into English use. Ten years after the arrival of derogation it appeared, and there are two theories for its source. One is that it comes from a Celtic word akin to the Breton word for haught: rog. But the Oxford English Dictionary (all bow) says there is no evidence of a connection to the French word for haughty, rogue. Another theory is that it is a shortened form of the word roger, pronounced with a hard "g", which was thieves' slang for a beggar (rogare: to ask) who pretends to be a poor scholar (poor monetarily, not necessarily in scholarship) from Oxford or Cambridge.

Before the onset of the 15th century the word was used more affectionately (and less derogatorily) for a mischievous individual.

It was not until 1859 it was first used for a large beast living apart form the herd, most commonly it seems of a rogue elephant. I always wondered why we didn't call them rogue dogs or rogue rabbits, but it is most often used with elephants in my experience. That's the same year the phrase "rogue's gallery" came into use for the collection of police mug shots.

Apparently until 1964 no one thought to use it of other things that are undisciplined or uncontrolled, and now it has been transmogrified into the phrase "going rogue," which was used as the title of Sarah Palin's political memoir.

And that is how you get from King Charles II to Sarah Palin in one word: rogare.

Quiescence

It is quiescent this morning, and before there is any ruction or I get the paroxysm of energy necessary to mow the lawn I thought I’d post on three of the (still) over 200 remaining words on my list.

Actually, paroxysm might be a slight misuse of the word. It is a sudden (applicable) or violent (not accurate) outburst, or a fit of violent (not accurate) action or emotion (not accurate). It is also used in medicine of some quick growth of a disease or a seizure or convulsion. It has been in English since it came from Middle French word paroxysme in the early 1400s. The Medieval Latin word paroxysmus referred to a fit of a disease or an incidence like I had as a youth at summer camp with poison ivy. Para- means beyond and oxynein means to sharpen or goad, according to etymonline.com. Oxynein is from the Latin word oxys that means sharp or pointed and from which we get the word acrid.

Acrid only came into English in 1712, when it was formed (irregularly according to etymonline) from the Latin word acer, that means “sharp, pungent, bitter, eager, fierce.” But nowhere in the etymonline.com explanation does the word oxys appear, so I don’t know why it’s included as part of the listing on paroxysm.

At any rate, paroxysm was only used as a medical word until about 1600 when its meaning broadened to include any outburst or fit or strong emotion.

A ruction is a disturbance, particularly between two individuals. Its etymology is unknown, and is somewhat colloquial or even dialectical, but has been around since 1825. It may be a portmanteau word (like brunch) formed from eruption and insurrection. Brunch is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch reported in the Aug. 1, 1896 issue of “Punch” as introduced by Mr. Guy Beringer. (Smog is another portmanteau word, formed in 1905 from smoke and fog. It seems to have been coined in reference to London’s air. Its first attestation is in a paper read by Dr. H.A. des Voeux, treasurer of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society in the “Journal of the American Medical Association” issue of Aug. 26, 1905. Take that, Los Angeles!)

Quiescent is a wonderful word that describes the calm, quiet stillness of a summer’s day when the world is inactive and motionless. The word comes from the Latin word quiescentem, which is a form of quiescere, described by etymonline.com as an “inchoative verb formed from quies.” Quies is the Latin word from which the Old French got their word quiete and which supplied us (in about 1300) with the word quiet. Since about 1500 we have had the adjective quiescent in English, and since the 1630s the noun form, quiescence, but only since 1821 the verb form: quiesce.

So on this day of rest in the Christian world, quiesce a little. Avoid ruction and don’t engage in any paroxysms. 

Returning to Visit

Time to play a little catch-up and revisit some posts.

First, a February post about unpaired words continues to inexorably affect me. I used the word inexorable a few posts ago and wondered if there is a word such as exorable. Since there is it does not qualify for unpaired word status.

But neither inexorable nor exorable have been covered in this blog. Inexorable means not able to be moved or unyielding or unchanging. Exorable means able to be moved or persuaded. Inexorable arrived in English in the 1550s, twenty years before exorable. While the word inexorable came directly from the Middle French word of the same spelling, its original source is the Latin word inexorabilis that means "that cannot be moved by entreaty".

In reading some of Emerson's essays this week I ran across the word educe, which made me think of the words deduce and adduce (which I found in reading a Perry Mason mystery). Adduce means to bring something forth as evidence in an argument (argument is also used in legal cases for one side's contentions in the courtroom) or to cite as pertinent or conclusive. Adduce was formed in Latin by adding the prefix ad-, that means "to", to the word ducere, that means "to lead." While that sounds like it would result in "to to lead" it results in the meaning "to lead to" or "to bring to." Adduce appeared in the early 1400s as did deduce and educe. All of which leads us to another word from ducere.

In my post on educe I mention the connection of ducere to the word Duke and conduce. But I never discussed conduce. It means to lead to a result. The original Latin word, conducere is formed by adding the prefix "com-" to ducere. Com- means together, so conduce is reminiscent in my mind of the mother duck and her ducklings, as she conduces them to the nearest pond. While conduce appeared about 1400, the word conduct followed shortly after (like a duckling).

Conduct is formed from the past participle of ducere. It originally had the general sense of convey, like a railroad conductor, then by the 1630s added the meaning of managing or directing. In about 1710 it began to be used to refer to behavior.

In case you wonder when the word came to be used specifically as the name of the leader of an orchestra, it was 1784. Conductor was first used in the 1520s for anyone who guides or leads, but when educe and deduce and adduce were coming into use the word being used for a leader or a group was "conduitour," from the Old French word conduitor. But once the word conductor came on the scene it won out. The railroad conductor got its name in 1832. The scientific uses meaning to pass electricity is from 1737 and to pass heat is from 1745.

You can now adduce that ducere inexorably leads to many words in English.

Much Ado About Zero, Cipher, Naught

As a Cincinnati Reds fan there has not been much to cheer about this year. But this last week the Reds took their first series in St. Louis from the Cardinals in the last ten visits. Not only that, but they had back-to-back shutouts, which means the Cardinals scored - wait for it - zero, zilch, zip runs! That's the first time they've accomplished that feat since 1937. The "redbirds" scored in only one inning of the 27 they played, the last 24 in a row. That is 26 "goose eggs" in 27 innings for Reds' pitchers.

Which gets me to today's post. Zeroes, or ciphers - particularly if you're British (in which the previous paragraph may be a different kind of cipher: a coded message requiring interpretation/deciphering if you will) - are known in baseball colloquially as "goose eggs" because of the resemblance of zeroes to eggs. According to the book 2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings, & Expressions, by Charles Earle Funk, its first recorded use was in 1886, by the New York Times, in its report on a baseball game: "The New York players presented the Boston men with nine unpalatable goose eggs in their contest on the Polo Grounds yesterday." Britain has its own version: in 1863 Charles Reade's Hard Cash described a failure to score at cricket achieving a "duck's egg."

The concept of zero is interesting. Etymonline.com has a posting on it here that explains, basically, that the concept didn't exist except in Babylonian, Mayan, and Indian number systems. The word zero came to English in about 1600 from the French word zéro, or directly from the Italian zero. Either would have come from the Medieval Latin word zephirum from the Arabic word sifr, a translation of the Sanskrit word for desert, empty place, or nought: sunya-m.

The word cipher is older. It also ultimately comes from sunya-m, although it's easier to see its etymology from sifr. It arrived in English in the late 1300s. Again according to etymonline.com it "came to Europe with Arabic numerals.Originally in English 'zero,' then 'any numeral' (early 15c.), then (first in French and Italian) [a] 'secret way of writing; coded message' (a sense first attested in English 1520s), because early codes oftn substituted numbers for letters."

In the paragraph before last the word nought is used. I remember it being used most often when there were people alive talking about the first decade of the 20th century, in which a year was often referred to as "nineteen-nought...."  Nought (or naught - both are acceptable) comes from Old English (where it was nowiht) and has meant "zero, cipher" since the early 1400s.

Since we're on the subject, Zero Mostel (1915-1977) was a comedic actor born in Brooklyn as Samuel Joel Mostel. He was nicknamed Zero by the press agent for a club at which he was hired as a comedian who said "here's a guy who started from nothing."

And finally, Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing in the late 1500s. He could have called it Much Ado About Zero or Much Ado About Cipher. But he didn't.