Pedantic Night Before Christmas

One crepuscular Christmas, when all through the house

Every creature quiescent, and even the mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there

The children immured all snug in their beds,

Soporific encomiums danced in their heads.

And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such plangency,

I sprang up in all etiological urgency.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave effulgence of midday to objects below

When, to my meiosis of mind should irrupt,

And eight reindeer, diminutive sleigh, interrupt.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now Myrmidons! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the roof recrudescent they flew,
Gallimaufry of rapine, St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.
In a cuirass of fur, from his head to his foot,
He’s a tatterdemalion of culm and of soot,
A surfeit of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how coruscate! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard was as hoary and white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it was gyred round his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a tumescent belly,
When he laughed it would welter, like a bowlful of jelly!

Inspissate and plump, a fey, jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
With his finger alongside his aquiline nose

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

On his Gadarene trip like the down of a thistle.

But I heard his chiasma, his hegira in sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

One of Sir Winston Churchill’s most famous quotes comes from an October 1939 speech: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

The 1960s television show Batman gives Churchill homage when The Riddler says “It’s a mystery. Broken into a jigsaw puzzle. Wrapped in a conundrum. Hidden in a Chinese box. A riddle.” The quote has been adapted multiple times in common culture.

In 2008 a New York Times article on the disappearance of fortune cookies from restaurants in China had the title “Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie.” Seinfeld has Elaine saying “Maybe he’s an enigma – a mystery wrapped in a riddle.” To which Jerry replies “He’s a mystery wrapped in a Twinkie.” But my favorite is from The Fifth Elephant. When one character mimics the Churchill quote another, named Sergeant Colon, misinterprets the quote later to be “a misery wrapped in an enema.” (Thanks to tvtropes.org for these and many more examples.)

Mystery, conundrum, and enigma are all odd words, unlike many others  unless you’re Sergeant Colon. Mystery is one of the most common non-adverb words to use two “y”s; conundrum (with panjandrum) just sounds funny, and enigma has vowels beginning and ending the word with the odd gm in the middle. Where did these oddly constructed words come from and what’s the difference between them?

Mystery came to English through the church in the early 14^th century. It originally referred to (according to etymonline.com) “religious truth via divine revelation, hidden spiritual significance, mystical truth” The path it took was through Anglo-French (misterie), Old French (mistere), and/or Modern French (mystère) from the Latin mysterium, which refers to a secret rite or secret worship or secret thing, and eventually from the Greek word myterion or its plural mysteria that refers to a secret rite or doctrine. When the Old Testament was first translated into Greek, the word was used to describe the “secret counsel of God”, and was translated into Latin (in the Vulgate version) as sacramentum. So the word has a religious connotation that the others do not.

By the late 14^th century  the word came to broader English use to describe anything hidden or secret. Since the development of the detective story (attributed substantially to Poe) the term is now a genre, but wasn’t used for that genre until 1908.

Conundrum came into use in the 1590s, when at Oxford University they were looking for a slang word to use to describe a pedant. It is also spelled quonundrum, and is described by etymonline.com as a “ponderous pseudo-Latin word”.  One dictionary defines it as a riddle with a pun or play on words involved, and uses as an example the riddle “What is black and white and red/read all over? A newspaper.” Use conundrum when there is some humor involved in the riddle.

Enigma also comes from Greek and Latin. Its Greek root word is ainigma, which is from ainos, the word for a fable or riddle. The Latin word that came from ainigma is ænigma. While in the mid-15^th century the word enigmate was being used in English, it was in the 1580s that enigma appeared.

Enigma has the broadest definition, and can define a situation, an individual, or a saying, question or picture that has a hidden meaning. It is also the name given to the German code-making machine used through World War II.

Use enigma in general, mystery particularly with detective stories or religious rites, and conundrum with humor.  Don’t be, as Raymond described his brother Robert on the television show Everybody Loves Raymond “an idiot wrapped in a moron.”

Not a Uxorial Salute

When I began this string of blog posts on words found in a couple recently read books I thought it would take a couple of posts. Here we are on the third, and final, post on the subject.

I’ve been eager to get to the word uxorious, which was used by P.D. James in her mystery The Private Patient. It’s a glorious word, because it is an adjective used to describe someone who dotes upon or is “foolishly” fond of or “affectionately submissive” toward their wife. There are several pejorative phrases used because people don’t know this word, the most acceptable of which is “hen-pecked.”

Uxorious came to English long ago, in the 1590s, from the Latin word uxorius. Uxor is the Latin word for wife, and uxorius means “of or pertaining to the wife.” In 1800 the word uxorious was used as the formation of the nicer word uxorial, which simply means what the original Latin word meant: of or pertaining to the wife. Then, with two words already in English, and apparently in response to a high-profile incident, the word uxoricide was coined in 1854 to describe the murder of one’s wife.

So, the good word is uxorial, the bad word is uxorious. In fact, the bad word might be minatory.

Minatory is an adjective that means threatening or menacing. It came to English around 1530, either from the Old (or Middle; there’s some dissension) French minatoire, or directly from the Late Latin minatorius, which means threaten. Why do we have three words (threatening, menacing, and minatory) that mean the same thing? There are four likely reasons: 1. Threatening and menacing are adjective forms of verbs. Minatory came to English as an adjective, 2. Different sources (threaten came from Old English, menace from Anglo-French, and Minatory from Late Latin), 3. Using minatory is an opportunity to show your pedantic abilities, or 4. They had slightly different meanings (menace had a sense of urging that the others don’t; threaten a sense of ominous foreboding, and minatory was more purely negative).

The other two words picked up from this source are mullion and salubrious.

Mullions are the vertical pieces between windows, doors, screens, etc. It is a structural support piece, not a decorative separation. It came to English in the 1560s from the Middle English word moyniel, which came from the Anglo-French moinel, which came from the Old French word meien, which means mean (as in intermediate).

Salubrious is a good adjective for that which promotes health. Diets can be salubrious, spring waters have been considered salubrious, as has mountain air. Salubrious has been used in English since the 1540s, when it was adopted from the Latin word salubris that has the same meaning.

In case you’re wondering, our word salute comes from the same Latin source word, salus. The Latin word salutare (from which we got salute in the late 1300s) literally means “wish health to.” By the beginning of the 1400s the gesture or utterance of greeting was called a salute. The military (and nautical) meaning of a salute as a display of flags or sound of cannons to mark respect has been used since the 1580s. However, the military sense of a hand salute didn’t come into use as a noun until 1832 or as a verb until 1844. 

So let's salute all those who are not minatory or uxorious. 

Get Your Arsis in Gear

Continuing my effort to get to good words picked up in reading (see last week’s blog), there is a good word that sounds familiar, but was unknown to me: hypostatize. It can also be spelled, especially in Britain, hypostatize. It has been a difficult word for me to wrap my mind around, so it will get a few more words of description than I normally give.

Hypostatize means to take an idea or a concept (usually) and consider it to be real, or to take something insubstantial and consider it to have substance. One dictionary contains the definition of personify or embody. Its meaning can be better understood by considering its related adjective hypostatic, which in genetics is used in reference to a nonallelic gene that is masked by another gene. In Medicine hypostatic refers to the condition of hypostasis, and in theology hypostatic refers to a distinct personal being or substance. Hypostatic came into use in English in the 1670s from the Greek word hypostatikos that means pertaining to substance and is equivalent to hypostat, which means “placed under, given support.” But the original form of the word is hypostasis, a noun form, which came into use in the 1580s. (The verb form hypostatize didn’t start being used in English until the 1820s.) In medicine it refers to an accumulation of blood. But in theology it is used either of one of the members of the trinity (the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit) or of the binary nature of Christ, which is both human and divine. In metaphysics it refers to that which is foundational or essential. So in general, it is a foundational idea, the accumulation or combination of something essential.

That is very different from hypothesize, which means to form a hypothesis or assumption (or just a guess). Hypothesis is the noun, hypothesize the verb, and hypothetical the adjective. The adjective form came into English first, from the Greek word hypothetikos, then the noun form came into English in the 1590s, and because it had to come through the Middle French word hypothese from the Late Latin word hypothesis, which came from the Greek word hypothesis. Those silly French, who couldn’t leave it alone! The Greek root word meant the basis of an argument or a supposition, and literally translated is “a placing under”, hypo- meaning under and thesis meaning a placing, or a proposition.

Yes, our word thesis came originally from the Greek, but through Latin. In Latin thesis referred to the unaccented syllable in poetry, and later to the stressed syllable, but the Greek thesis always referred to a proposition placing of an idea. It also referred to the downbeat musically, which makes sense to this musician. While it entered English in the late 1300s, it has come to expand beyond the meaning of a proposition to a subject for a composition or essay, and even more commonly for a dissertation as proposed for a degree. (My wife did a thesis for her Master’s degree. I’m not that smart.)

However, I am a musician, and only in researching this thesis today did I learn about the thesis use in music. And the good word arsis, as opposed to thesis. Arsis refers to the upbeat in music, the non-stressed beat. For some reason poetry has it backward from music. In poetry the thesis is the non-stressed part of the meter, the arsis the stressed; in music the thesis is the stressed downbeat and the arsis the unstressed upbeat.  

It is not to be used in the phrase “get your arsis in gear”.

Words from The Plague and The Patient

I noticed the title to a recently rebroadcast episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent: Palimpsest. I ran across the word in two books I’ve read this year, also: In the Wake of the Plague, an interesting book by Norman F. Cantor, and The Private Patient, an enjoyable mystery by P.D. James. In fact, each book generated several words for my blog. Along with palimpsest, In the Wake of the Plague gave me words like demesne, hypostatize and salubrious, while The Private Patient generated uxuorious, minatory, mullion, and a few others. We won’t get to all of these this week, but let’s get started.

Palimpsest, the catalytic word, is a noun for a parchment (in particular) or similar document from which writing has been erased to make room for other text. Kind of like those paintings that were painted over another painting, these are documents where words have been removed and other words written over them. With the dawn of technology that allows for correcting texts easily, such palimpsests are less prevalent.

Palimpsest came to English in the 1660s through the Latin palimpsestus from the Greek palimpsestos, which means “scraped again.” The Greek word was formed by combining palin, which means “again” and psen, which refers to the rubbing smooth of something. Palin is also the source word for palindrome, a word that describes a word or phrase that reads the same backwards as it does forwards (like my brother’s name – Bob – or “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.”) Palindrome came to English in the 1620s.

Demesne was an entirely new word to me, perhaps because it came from English feudal law. It was, according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the word used for “that portion of a manor not granted to freehold tenants but either retained by the lord for his own use and occupation or occupied by his villeins or leasehold tenants.” That clears it up, doesn’t it? Dictionary.com defines it as “possession of land as one’s own” primarily, but a second definition is “an estate or part of an estate occupied and controlled by, and worked for the exclusive us of, the owner.” The third definition it gives is “land belonging to and adjoining a manor house.” Back in feudal times, when there were various arrangements by which people worked and lived on land owned by the lord, demesne was land and property not given over to such use.

Demesne came to English sometime around 1300, and was originally spelled demeyne. It came from the Anglo-French word demesne or demeine, which came from the Old French word demaine, which the Old French got from the Latin word dominicus, which means “belonging to a master” and was formed from the root word dominus, which is the word for lord. An interesting note in etymonline.com tells that the word was respelled demesne by the late 15^th century by Anglo-French legal scribes, who were influenced by the Old French word mesnie, which referred to a household, since the concept of demesne referred to land attached to a mansion. But etymonline.com also says that Anglo-French legal scribes (those wild and crazy guys) had a “fondness for inserting –s- before –n-.” 

So why aren’t they Asnglo-Fresnch?

Little Words

I don’t care one whit, not an iota, nary a bit about that, and it’s a tad selfish and a mite foolish of you to bring it up. If you had a smidgen of self-respect… Well, I don’t.

As the highlighted linked words show, we have already discussed whit and iota, but a coworker of mine used the word “tad” this week, and sent me off on this foray into small words about small things. What’s the difference between whit, iota, bit, tad, mite, and smidgen? And does it make a difference which one you use? And what do these words have to do with Abraham Lincoln, pirates, or the Bible?

Let’s start with Lincoln. I knew that President Lincoln referred to his son Thomas as Tad, but I was not aware that he coined the nickname and the word we use to describe a small amount or quantity of something. The speculation is that the President gave his son the nickname “Tad” as a shortened form of tadpole. While Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and “Tad” died in 1871 at age 18, the use of the word tad to describe a small child (especially a boy) is first recorded in 1877. However, it was used only in reference to small children until 1915, the first recorded use in reference to something other than a child. Today it’s primarily used in reference to small amounts, or a bit of something.

Bit, on the other hand, first came into use in English in about 1200, a relative of the Old English words bite, which we still use, and bita, which refers to that which was bitten off. (No reference to it being the past tense of bite yet.) The act of biting is why we use it to describe the piece of a drill that actually does the boring (as opposed to the kind of boring I’m doing right now). That usage developed in the 1590s. And of course, the part of the bridle placed in the horse’s mouth has since the 14^th century been called a bit, since that’s what the horse did with the piece. It wasn’t until after these two usages were in place that the word came to refer to a small amount or a piece of something. (The first use in that sense was about 1600.) Its expansion to refer to time rather than an object took place in the 1650s. And so it remained until 1909 when a small part in a theatrical production came to be known as a bit part.

But there’s one other usage that evokes images of pirates and the bounding main. The Spanish Real was in colonial times the equivalent of today’s US Dollar: an international unit of money. But because the value of a Real was significantly more than many goods, change would be made by dividing or cutting the Real in half or quarters or even into wedges of eighths. An eighth of a Real is one bit, a quarter is two bits, etc. You can still on occasion hear the quarter referred to as “two bits” in the U.S. Because of the proliferation of the coin during the heyday of pirates in the Caribbean, the concept of bits still attends to the image of pirates.

Speaking of coins, the word mite has also come to mean something small. There are several mite words. One refers to a small arachnid, the largest of which grow to be ¼ inch large and the smallest of which are microscopic. But the second mite refers to a Flemish copper coin of such little value that it developed a proverbial use in English to mean a very small amount of money. That is the sense in which John Wycliffe used it in his English Bible translation of the Latin word minutum in Mark 12:42. (It’s also used in Luke 12:59 and Luke 21:2.) The minutum was a translation of the Greek word lepton, which was the smallest coin in use in Palestine during Roman times.  One etylomogy suggests the word mite was a contraction of minutum. One source indicates that a mite was equivalent to six minutes’ work. Not much now, not much then. Just a little bit.

That leaves smidgen, a larger word for a smaller amount. Its first recorded use in English is in 1845, but its etymology is not certain. It could have come from the Scottish word smitch, which referred to both a small or insignificant person or to a small amount. Smitch is found in 1822, so the adoption into English a couple of decades later makes sense. Etymonline.com also suggests it might come from the word smidin, which means small syllable, but I could find no other reference online to smidin.

I find that a bit disconcerting, or a mite odd, or a tad unusual.

Who's Going to Win on Tuesday?

I was reading a story about early voting and how to interpret the numbers when I ran across the word salience. And there it was – my starting point for today’s pre-election blog.

So I went to the dictionary to find the definition of salience is…the state or condition of being salient. (A definition like that is like kissing your sister.) So one must go to the word salient for real understanding. Salient is defined as prominent or conspicuous. It second definition is “projecting or pointing outward”, and the third definition given is “leaping or jumping.” It sounds like a good word for something that “jumps out at you.” In my experience it is generally used in reference to arguments or debate points.

Salient came to English in the 1560s when it was used as a “Heraldic” term for “leaping”. It came from the Latin word salientem. Over a century later (in the 1680s) it developed a military sense of “pointing outward”. I would have thought it a geometric phrase, but I would have been wrong. It wasn’t until the 1840s that it developed the sense of something prominent or striking, although the phrase “salient point” can be traced to the 1670s. Aristotle used the phrase punctum saliens, literally “leaping point” or we might say “point of departure” or “jumping off point.”

The story about early voting also was related to semiotics, the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior. As a philosophy it is usually divided into pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics. But  I think it’s applicable because the media are full of semiotics, in many cases of dueling semiotics as campaign operatives strive to balance their polling, observations, and anecdotal information with what places their candidate(s) in the best position to pick up last minute voters or inspire the base to turn out. There was a link in the aforementioned story to early voting statistics by precinct so you could interpret for yourself whether your candidate has an early advantage or not. It’s that close an election.

Semiotics as a field of study was first used in the 1880s, but the adjective semiotic came to English in the 1620s and meant “of symptoms”. Its use in psychology only dates back to 1923. It came from the Greek word semeiotikos, which meant observant, particularly of signs or symptoms.

Another good word to use in anticipation of the election is latitudinarian. I encountered the word in the book Bunts, by George Will (a book on baseball that I highly recommend). Latitudinarian means “allowing or characterized by latitude in opinion or conduct, especially in religious views.” It is not something you see much during campaigns. When Chris Christie shows latitudinarian attitude toward Obama’s response to the storm Sandy, it was salient, standing out from most of what we’ve been hearing for months. Latitudinarian came to English in the 1660s from the Latin prefix latitudin-, or freedom from narrow restrictions. It was originally used in reference to Epicopalian clergymen who were characterized by their broad-mindedness in doctrinal matters. We get the word latitude from the same Latin root.

Who’s going to win on Tuesday? Using semiotics and watching the salient returns, your guess is as good as mine. Let’s just agree to be latitudinarian, not matter who wins.