No Time to Waste

Last week I used the word fugacious, and some would have used the word celerity or the word alacrity. All three have to do with speed, but what do they each mean and what is the good word for various uses?

I was doing an appearance on Sacramento & Company, a local television show that has a “word of the day” and the word was alacrity. The contest was to use the word correctly during the program and win a prize package. (I won an umbrella.)

Alacrity is a noun that means eager willingness or readiness, often manifested by quick, lively action. It comes originally from Latin, from the word alacritas or alacritatem, which means liveliness. It was adopted into Old French where it was alacrite, then into Middle English, where we got it in about 1500. It refers to quick action quickly taken.

As mentioned last week, anything that is fugacious is something that is short-lived, fleeting, or appears and disappears quickly. Botanically, it refers to a bloom that falls off soon after it blooms. It’s pronounced like fugue, rather than like fugitive (the word with which it shares a connection). Enough on this word; I’ll be fugacious about fugacious.

Celerity is a noun that comes to us from Middle French (célérité) which got it from Latin (celeritas). Celer in Latin means swift. And celerity means swiftness in acting or moving. It doesn’t have the connotation of quick reaction that alacrity does, and can last longer than fugacity. It’s possible that it has an older history, since there are several primitive Indo-European roots (PIEs, they’re called) that are similar, to cel or kel. Sanskrit has the word carati that means “goes”, Greek has keles that means “fast horse or ship”, Lithuanian has the word sulys that means “a gallop” and Old High German has the word scelo that means “stallion”. So you can see how many languages have a similar word that has a similar meaning; but it is one thing to see a connection and another thing to be able to track the connection. It’s only to Latin through French that proof exists of a connection in word development. While célérité was used in France in the 14th century, it wasn’t until the late 15th century that it was brought into English. (And it has a different etymology from celery, which will have to wait for another day and blog.)

So fugacious refers to something that appears and disappears quickly. Alacrity refers to a quick activity engaged upon with no delay. Celerity is much more a synonym for speed, but would be used for speed when talking about action rather than movement. (Although it can be used for movement, too.) I’ve most often heard it used for human activity of the will rather than pure speed (like a car or a stallion). Use it in referring to people and the speed with which they should or have accomplished something.

Anniversary part 1

There were those who thought it would be fugacious and frangible, but it has turned out to be irrefragably puissant. It is not a litote to say that its multifarious efflorescence has been supernal rather than specious. We did not abjure and as a result have accreted recondite benisons.

I’m writing, of course, about that which Dovie and I celebrate today: 29 years of marriage. There is much which can and should be said about the spending of half my life (so far; the percentage will now begin to exceed that mark) with my sweetheart, and much which need not be revisited. But as we look at the above paragraph it will have to suffice for this year’s description. (And it will take two blogs. It would fill a book to adequately describe these 29 years.)

It was on our wedding day that a quondam girlfriend of mine approached me to say that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t tell me her concern that we were being rash and that the marriage wouldn’t last. (Quondam means former or at one time, and came in the 1530s directly from the Latin word quondam that means formerly.) She didn’t use the words fugacious or frangible, but that’s what she meant.

Fugacious came to English in the 1630s from the Latin word fugax, from which we also get fugitive. Fugax means to flee. Fugacious means fleeting or passing away quickly, ephemeral.

Frangible arrived in English in the mid-15th century from the Middle French word frangible, which came from the Middle Latin word frangibilis, which developed from the Latin word frangere, which means “to break”. It means breakable or fragile. So how is it different from fragile (and which is the “good word” for this meaning)? My dictionary has one of those wonderful usage paragraphs after fragile that explains the difference:

Fragile implies such delicacy of structure as to be easily broken…; frangible adds to this the connotation of liability to being broken because of the use to which the thing is put…; brittle implies such inelasticity as to be easily broken or shattered by pressure or a blow…; crisp suggests a desirable sort of brittleness…; friable is applied to something that is easily crumbled or crushed into powder.

Back to our marriage. It has been irrefragably puissant. The -frag- in irrefragable comes from the same Latin word, fragere, as frangible; the actual Late Latin word is irrefragabilis. So we know that frag means break. The ir- means “not” and the refragabilis means to oppose or contest. So irrefragable, when it came to English in the 1530s, meant cannot be contested or refuted. It still does.

Puissant (pronounced pyoo-is-ent or pwis-nt) means powerful or strong, and comes to English from Middle French (again in the mid-15th century). The Middle French word puissant came from an earlier form, poissant, which was derived from the stem word for “being able”, poeir. It’s the word from which we get the word power. Our marriage has had surprising puissance.