Apotheosis

The Traverse Symphony Orchestra performed its last concert of the season last week, and it included Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony, one of my all-time favorites. The program notes included a quote from Richard Wagner, who called it “the apotheosis of the dance.” Since the first time that I encountered that quote years ago, it has neatly summed up this rhythmic masterpiece for me.

Apotheosis comes from a Greek verb meaning to make a god of. Shades of meaning include

• transformation into a god, deification
• the ascription of divine power or virtue; exaltation
• a deified ideal
• ascension to glory

Related words include apotheosize, apotheosized, and apotheosy.

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With Bated Breath

Brian from Interlochen came across the phrase with bated breath and wondered what it meant and where it came from.

The first thing to note is that the spelling is b-a-t-e-d, not b-a-i-t-e-d. A person with baited breath would have been eating worms or minnows.

Bated in this sense amounts to “held breath.” It goes back to Old French and Anglo-Norman words that meant to reduce, decrease, or beat back. Bated breath occurs when someone is shocked, terrified, or otherwise stunned into breathlessness.

Abate and rebate are allied words.

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Visit The Senior Corner, a web site containing information for senior citizens.

Crepuscular

 A television program featuring the white-tailed deer referred to them as crepuscular. The word is applied to animals that are active at twilight. It comes from the Latin crepusculum, dusk or twilight.

Related words include crepuscle (twilight), crepuscule (twilight), crepusculine (dusky, pertaining to twilight), crepusculous (indistinct, dim, dusky), and crepusculum (twilight, dusk).

Other time-of-day words were discussed in an earlier blog. 

Available from McFarland & Co.: Word Parts Dictionary, 2nd edition

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I WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR VOTE

The Top 100 Language Lovers 2013 competition hosted by the bab.la language portal and the Lexiophiles language blog has just started and your blog “Wordmall” (http://verbmall.blogspot.com/) has been nominated.

The following voting period extends from May 22nd to June 9th, during which everyone can vote for their favourite blog, Facebook page and/or Twitter account. The results will be made public on June 12th.

For further information on the Top 100 Language Lovers 2013 competition, visit
http://www.lexiophiles.com/language-lovers-toplist/top-100-language-lovers-2013-nominate-your-favourite-now

Senior Spelling Bee Results

Here are the Senior Citizen Spelling Bee Winners for 2013. The Bee is a function of the Traverse City (MI) Senior Center.

First Place: Chris Olsen, Alan Olsen. They correctly spelled sybotic, then validated with oenology.

Second Place: Ronald Smith, Cornelia Hart, Dick Fidler. They went out on sybotic (pertaining to a swineherd).

Third Place: Linda Blakkon, Eleanor Lynn. They went out on exsert (the opposite of insert).

Here is a list of the words actually used. The contest took 35 rounds. Participants work in teams, and words are drawn blindly from a container.

assiduous, burnish, impute, equivocate, ignoble, idyll, equipoise, cabal, obviate, cadge, calumniate, overweening, sagacious, salubrious, salient, iconoclastic, homogeneity, salutary, mendacity, incredulous, mendicant, mercurial, mitigate, morose, capricious, disabuse, castigate, expostulate, torpor, torrid, suppliant, dynamo, poignant, sycophant, mollify, tautology, verisimilitude, trousseau, truculence, turgid, umbrage, regale, vendible, tyro, surfeit, taciturn, refractory, turpitude, typography, turbid, perfidious, prosaic, peremptory, tutelary, timorous, umbratilous, misogynist, temerity, misanthrope, proscribe, hermetic, mien, perfunctory, minion, auspicious, imperious, malinger, partisan, approbation, appropriate, dulcet, garrulous, garrulity, vesicate, peripatetic, stymie, veritable, volubility, broach, boisterous, beatify, bedizen, intransigence, impetuous, vituperate, viduity, virology, expurgate, edifying, exscind, exsert, denigrate, farraginous, aichmophobic, rhonchial, zymurgy, ochlesis, baize, obvallate, oneirodynia, sagittiform, agrestic, jejunator, roscid, jejune, blennoid, scissile, xerodermia, sybotic, oenology

I am always amazed and humbled by their performance. The human mind: use it or lose it.

Available from McFarland & Co.: Word Parts Dictionary, 2nd edition

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Visit The Senior Corner, a web site containing information for senior citizens.

Range

Lowell from Interlochen followed up on the word range, which is applied to an array of burners on top of an oven. His question was, how does the range plied by cowboys (Home on the Range), fit in?

The basic meaning of range is a row, line, or series, but many meanings have taken over from there. Range became the American word for the grazing ground for livestock. The verb range meant to wander over a large area. Along with the buffalo, the cattle roamed.

Range is one of the words with an incredible number of meanings. Let’s review some of them.

• a rank or file of hunters or soldiers.
• a row, line, or series of things.
• a line of mountains, hills, or other large natural features.
• a row of buildings; a continuous stretch of a building.
• a measure of young timber or underwood.
• a (usually numbered) column of townships, six miles in width, extending north and south parallel to the principal meridian of a survey.
• a set of points on a straight line, esp. as determining a pencil of lines joining each point to some non-collinear point.
• a rank, a class, an order; a level in a hierarchy.
• the elevation of a gun in firing; the direction of a shot.
• in glazing: the length of a line perpendicular to one edge of a diamond-shaped quarry and meeting the opposite angle.
• Shoemaking: the lie or line of the upper edge of a counter.
• any gas or electric cooker incorporating burners or heating elements and one or more ovens.
• the fat produced from roasting meat, dripping.
• a fence, an enclosure.
• an unbroken stretch of railing, balustrade, battlement, or the like.
• a strip of leather from which smaller pieces are cut.
• a strip of glass from which smaller panes are cut.
• Nautical: a portion of anchor cable drawn up on deck, of sufficient length to enable the anchor to descend smoothly.
• Mining: a deposit or vein of ore, mineral, etc.
• Nautical: a large cleat for securing tacks and bowlines.
• a wooden stake to which cattle are tied when indoors.
• a shaft running between two horses pulling a coach or carriage.
• an area marked out for a jousting tournament.
• grazing ground for livestock.
• an extensive stretch of grazing or hunting ground.
• an area of land or sea used as a testing ground for rockets, military equipment, etc.
• a walk, a stroll.
• opportunity or scope for ranging about.
• a single pass in the application of a file to the notches of a saw blade.
• a set of different things of the same general type.
• a set of goods manufactured or for sale.
• the maximum distance to which a weapon will shoot, or over which a bullet or other projectile will travel.
• Physics: the distance over which a physical force is effective.
• the maximum distance at which a radio or television transmission can effectively be received.
• the distance that can normally be covered by an aircraft or other vehicle without having to refuel.
• the distance of an object as detected by radar.
• the scope of something.
• Nautical: field of vision.
• the scope or extent of a person's knowledge or abilities.
• the span or scope of a scientific instrument.
• the variation of pitch a musical instrument or voice can produce.
• the size of the difference between the greatest and least amount or degree.
• a series or scale of values or degrees between particular upper and lower limits.
• Mathematics: the set of values that the dependent variable of a function can take.
• Statistics: the difference observed in a sample between the smallest and largest values of a variable.
• the area over which the occurrence of a phenomenon, artifact, etc., is known or possible.
• Botany and Zoology: the geographical area within which a given species or other taxon of plant or animal occurs.
• in an unbroken straight line.

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Visit The Senior Corner, a web site containing information for senior citizens.

Cor/Gor

Daniel Jablonski wrote: “I once heard the expression 'Cor Devil' used in vernacular, methinks in the stage play 'Me and My Gal' by the lead male. As you know, the play was set in prewar England, and I have never heard that expression used again before or since. I remember a hint of this with the simple expression 'cor', but again I don’t know where or when. What is the meaning of this 'cor'? I would also like to know if it’s still in common use anywhere, and if there’s some word or expression in 'American' that has a root in this word 'cor'. Is this a really bad cuss word?"

I can't track down "Cor Devil," but I remember a British exclamation that is close. The phrase was "Gor blimey," also rendered as "Cor blimey." It was a minced oath (a euphemism designed to avoid a religious word or expression), and in standard English it would read as, "may God blind me if I am not telling the truth." In short, "God blind me."

In some British dialects—and almost certainly Cockney—God would change into Gord, thence to Gor. The combination "God Devil" certainly seems an odd juxtaposition, though.

In American English, the most common avoidance of the word God is probably Gosh. Golly and Gad are not far behind. There is a difference of opinion on whether such usage is appropriate. Proponents would say that it is a good thing, since it consciously goes out of its way to avoid blasphemy. Opponents—and this is borne out on several religious web sites—argue that minced oaths are just as bad as the original, and should not issue from the mouths of committed Christians. 

The Gor Blimey was also the name of a British service cap in World War I.

Sidebar: Jeepers Creepers

Available from McFarland & Co.: Word Parts Dictionary, 2nd edition

Nook edition

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Check out Mike's program-based books here:
 Amazon.com

Listen to Mike’s program in real time every Tuesday morning, 9:10 - 10:00 a.m. EST, by going to wtcmradio.com and clicking on Listen Now. You’ll also find about a month’s worth of podcasts there under The Ron Jolly Show.

Visit The Senior Corner, a web site containing information for senior citizens.