Shudder, shiver, and quiver intersect--nay, practically collide--at various places, though they are not totally interchangeable.
A shudder can be quite strong: “a convulsive tremor of the body occasioned by fear, repugnance, or chill” [OED]. On the other hand, it may be more mild: “a tremulous or vibratory movement; a quiver” [OED].
A quiver is a tremble (a slight, rapid movement) or, if applied to the human voice, a quaver.
A shiver is a quivering or a trembling, often occasioned by cold or by an emotional reaction.
I muse on this because I recently came across the word phrictopathic, composed of two Greek word parts: phriktos, producing a shudder, and pathos, a disease. Dorland’s American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 12th Edition, defines it as “causing a shudder: a term applied to a peculiar shuddering sensation caused by irritating a hysteric anesthetic area during recovery.”
The word part phricto- seems so eminently usable that I was surprised to find it nowhere except in this single word. Aren’t there any phrictophobes out there who hate the thought of a disruptive shudder and become positively phrictofugal, or any phrictomaniacs who love the exquisite feeling that a shudder sends through the body, much as the French cherish a frisson? Phrictophilia should send a thrilling wave of tremors through a crowd. Of course, if the shudders turned to uncontrollable spasms, the victims would experience phrictalgia and have to call in a phrictologist.
SIDEBAR: Letter from Ernest Jones to Sigmund Freud, June 6, 1909
SIDEBAR: The Brothers Grimm: The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder
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Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Gremial Gremlins
In Latin, gremium meant the lap or bosom, and that provided us with a strange, but useful, term.
Gremial refers to a tight membership. The word started in academic circles, where it referred to a resident member of a university. That was appropriate, since the university was the Alma Mater (fostering mother).
Later, it was extended to any society or corporation, where it referred to full members, as opposed to honorary members. It was also applied to any bosom-buddy, any intimate friend.
Finally, gremial came to mean an ecclesiastical garment, an apron placed on a bishop’s lap when he was seated. Its purpose was to keep his costly vestments from being stained.
SIDEBAR: Asociacion Gremial de Auto-Taxi de Madrid
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Shipping News
Q. I keep hearing the word nauseous (causing sickness) used as if it meant nauseated (feeling sick). That’s wrong, isn’t it? Tim/Old Mission Peninsula, MI
A. Your observation is correct. Both words come from the Greek word naus, meaning a ship, so the original nausea was caused by the action of waves.
These days, nauseated means “suffering from nausea,” while nauseous means “causing nausea.” That means that if you misuse the terms and say “I’m feeling nauseous,” a number of unkind people will agree with you.
But it’s strange how words get turned around. Originally (1613), nauseous meant “inclined to sickness or nausea.” In turn, nauseated originally meant “causing nausea” (1659). So the words have undergone a complete transformation, and the mistake that you point out is really a return to how things once were, however unwitting the restoration may be.
It’s another good illustration of how ephemeral word usage and grammar conventions actually are.
SIDEBAR: nausea
Friday, May 18, 2007
Maven
MAVEN
During an interview on CNBC this week, the host referred to a guest as a “stock market maven.” Where did that word come from? [Barry, Topeka, Kansas]
Maven comes to us courtesy of the Yiddish meyvn (plural mevinim) an expert or connoisseur. That is a variation of the Hebrew mebin, a person with understanding, a teacher. The word is the participial form of hebin, to understand, to attend to, to teach.
The word was around in the 1950s, but it received wider notoriety because of an advertising campaign for Vita Herring, launched in the United States in 1964.The ads featured a character known as “The Beloved Herring Maven.”
Other names for experts or connoisseurs include enthusiast, aficionado, ace, adept, authority, genius, hotshot, master, pundit, sensation, star, virtuoso, whizkid, and wizard.
Media are also fond of the word guru. Guru is a Hindu term for a teacher or priest. In Sanskrit, the word meant weighty, grave, and dignified. Originally signifying the head of a religious sect, it was eventually secularized into an expert or teacher in more worldly arts.
SIDEBAR: Beloved Herring Maven returns
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Scab
<potato scab>I found myself following a car this morning with countless bumper stickers plastered all over its trunk. They left no doubt that the owner of the car was a young, athletic person.
My eyes focused on one sticker in particular: Scab Skateboard. Aside from being a great in-your-face brand name for a skateboard, the word scab caught my eye, and I decided to pursue its origin when I got home.
Most of us think of it as the crusty protection that forms over a scrape or wound--nature’s own bandage. But the word started its career in 1250 as the name for a disease of the skin in which pustules or scales are formed. Take my word for it: the medical illustrations are disgusting.
It was also a disease in animals resembling mange, a condition characterized by itching, lesions, and loss of hair. [Mange comes from a word meaning to eat. In Latin, it was not unusual for the same word to mean both itching and eating, probably from the analogy that an itch gnaws away at your skin.] Not to be limited in its scope, the word scab was also applied to plant diseases. It caused scab-like roughness on vegetable surfaces, like the hapless potato pictured above.
The word was also used as an epithet referring to a scoundral or scurrilous person. And, of course, in labor history it was applied to someone who refused to join a strike or who took the place of a striking worker.
Around 1529, it took on theological dimensions, being used to describe a moral or spiritual disease. A great quote in this regard comes from one G. Herbert: “The itch of disputing is the scab of the church.” Amen to that, brother.
Scabies is an allied word, as are scabious, scabrate, scabridity, scabriusculous, scabrosity, scabrous, and the highly picturesque scabland, an elevated area of barren rocky land with little or no soil cover, deeply scarred by channels of ancient glacial streams.
Scabbard--a sheath that protects the blade of a sword or knife--is not connected.
SIDEBAR: Scabies fact sheet
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Della Street
Someone mentioned strange street names during my last show, and Traverse City’s Psycho Path came up. I know that it shows up on many lists, but I have driven past it and it appears to be a private drive, not a public street, so I’m not sure that it qualifies as an actual street name. No doubt that it is clever, though.
There is also supposed to be a Buckshot Road in the area, but the nearest I find alphabetically in the phone book is Buttermilk. The ominous street name Buckshot would be comfortable in the company of Shades of Death Road (Warren County, New Jersey), Bucket of Blood Street (Holbrook, Arizona), and Breakneck Road (Green Pond, New Jersey).
Zzyzx Road may be found in Zzyzx, California, which received its name from a resident named Springer (no, not Jerry). Mr. Springer claimed to have found zzyzx as the last word in a dictionary, and that was good enough for him. I guess he figured that made his town the last word in villages. I find no evidence that the word ever existed, and since Springer served time for selling phony elixirs, his veracity is in doubt.
Buena, New Jersey, is home to Unexpected Road, and Divorce Court is found in a trailer park in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Neither is as disconcerting as Skunk’s Misery Road in Long Island, New York.
Our neighbors to the north weigh in with a few strange street names: Bastard Ward (Kingston, Ontario), Ragged Ass Road (Northwest Territory), and Lois Lane (Chilliwack, British Columbia). Not missing a beat, there are also Lois Lanes in Rocky Ford, Colorado, and Walnut Creek, California.
There are also a few intersections of note. Toronto is home to the intersection of Clinton and Gore. On the more salacious side, Chicago boasts the intersection of Hooker and Bliss, and New York City has the intersections of Seaman and Cumming, and Bangher and Leever.
And if you have occasion to browse at Winter Pianos in Oxfordshire, England, you’ll find the showroom on Crotch Crescent road.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Pidgin English
Pat from Elk Rapids, Michigan, asks about Pidgin English.
A common misspelling today is Pigeon English, which would imply that its speakers, instead of relying on hand gestures, bob their heads vigorously. (To be fair, in the early days of its use, pidgin and pigeon were interchangeable.)
The word pidgin seems to have had its origin in the inability of 19th century Chinese to articulate the word business. It came out as bigeon or bidgin, and since it is a short step from B to P, it finally flattened out as pidgin.
A pidgin language develops when two groups who speak different languages try to communicate by adapting elements of each other’s language. Generally, the result is simple, almost childlike, with an emphasis on readily understandable vocabulary instead of sophisticated grammatical elements. A pidgin is a second language for all parties involved. Ironically, it developed most naturally when two groups engaged in trade. In other words, they were taking care of bidgness.
We come across Pidgin English in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. For example, at one point Crusoe asks Friday why, if his tribe was justifiably famous for its warriors, Friday had been captured. Friday explains, “They more many than my nation, in the place where me was; they take one, two, three, and me: my nation over-beat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one, two, great thousand.”
And in 1782, in Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, our own Benjamin Franklin recorded this snippet of a more advanced Pidgin English: “Boccarorra [a form of buckra ‘white man’] make de Black Man workee, make de horse workee, make de Ox workee, make ebery thing workee; only de Hog. He, de Hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please, he libb like a gentleman.” J. L. Dillard, Black English, (Vintage Books 1973), p.89.
Finally, if a Pidgin language perdures and becomes a permanent fixture, it can evolve into Creole. At that point, after several generations of use, it becomes the primary language of a community.
SIDEBAR: Robinson Crusoe
SIDEBAR: Pidgin & Creole
Friday, May 04, 2007
Spelling Bee
Traverse City’s 3rd Annual Senior Citizen Spelling Bee is now history. It is designed to be fun and to act as a stimulant for aging brains, but it also brings out a serious competitive streak in someone’s grandmother or grandfather.
We use a team approach, since many seniors haven’t made public presentations for years and might be intimidated by facing an audience alone. Teams of three decide among themselves what the proper spelling for a word is (using pencils and pads of paper), and then one of them recites the team’s choice.
Here are some of the words that were presented:
mileage, preferred, supercilious, garrulous,
questionnaire, recalcitrant, voluminous, innocuous,
sassafras, omitted, chauvinism, moccasin,
bisque, persistence, scissors, resuscitate,
delicatessen, privilege, clientele, saccharin,
eligible, vengeance, vacuous, usable,
hygiene, hemorrhoid, fluorescent, connoisseur,
plausible, aerosol, misspelled, demagogue,
wrangle, leisurely, sacrilegious, exhilarate,
believable, oscillation, quandary, bailiff.
As you can see, no softballs here.
One of the features that kicks in when the contest is down to the last two teams is validation. In other words, if Team A misspells a word, it then goes to Team B for correction. If Team B salvages the correct spelling, they still have to spell a new word correctly to validate the win. If Team B misspells their validating word, it goes back to Team A, and so on.
For the first time, this year’s contest turned into a ping-pong match at the end. Both teams had a terrible time with the word fuchsia. As it bounced back and forth between the last two teams, it acquired these misspellings: fuschia, fuscha, fuchia (twice!) and fuscia. Finally, Team 4 spelled it correctly and then had to spell diphtheria to validate the win. They did, and the trophy was theirs.
Senior spelling bees are a terrific asset to a community. If you’re interested in starting one in your community, go to seniors.tcnet.org to find a set of rules friendly to seniors and some practice sets. I'll be glad to help if I can.
SIDEBAR: National Spelling Bee Resources
Check out Mike's latest book here: http://arbutuspress.com/
or at Amazon.com
Monday, April 30, 2007
Caveat Emptor
Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes I have twinges of nostalgia for words that have passed out of currency and are now considered obsolete. It’s not so much the lost words themselves; it’s the word parts upon which they were built. A case in point is -empt/or-.
It comes from the Latin verb emere, to buy. That lead to the noun emptio, a purchase. Many of you will be familiar with the phrase caveat emptor, which means “let the buyer beware.” That is one of the few traces left today, and it’s not even English.
Here are some of the now-obsolete words that used this word part:
• coemption: The buying up of the whole supply of any commodity in the market.
• emption: The action of buying: chiefly in phrases, right of (sole) emption, etc.
• emptional: That which may be purchased
• emptitious: Venal, capable of being bought.
• emptor: A purchaser.
• emptory: A mart, market-place.
I propose reviving the word emptorial, defined as “of or pertaining to buying.” Thus, we would have emptorial frenzy, emptorial sprees, emptorial considerations and concerns, emptorial opportunities, emptorial compulsion, and emptorial trends or patterns.
The word is not a total invention. The word actually appeared in the 1922 edition of Roget’s International Thesaurus, edited by Mawson. In that edition, it appeared under 795: Purchase.
I am also reminded of the word part onio-, which comes from the Greek oneisthai, to buy. It appears in the word oniomania, a compulsive urge to buy things. Evidently, even the Greeks and Romans had blue light specials: venditio cum luce caeruleo.
SIDEBAR: Food buying tips
SIDEBAR: Budgeting
Friday, April 27, 2007
Ex- vs. Former
Should it be an ex-president or a former president? Are the two interchangeable?
Ron/Traverse City, MI
This is one of the many manufactured controversies that bedevil people and make their lives unnecessarily complicated. Both ex- and former are properly used as designations for persons who have previously held the office in question.
H.W. Fowler seems to be the culprit in this case. His A Dictionary of Modern English Usage contains this entry for ex-:
For such patent yet prevalent absurdities as ex-Lord Mayor, ex-Chief Whip, ex-Tory Solicitor-General (except in another sense than its writer means), see HYPHENS; & for alternatives, LATE.
Fowler was often an elegant writer and a dispenser of common sense, but there was a spasm of personal preference in this entry disguised as proper grammar. Even he admits that saying the late Lord Mayor should be avoided “because of the doubt whether it means that the person’s life, or his tenure of office, is over.” In modern America, unless you are fond of using the phrase of late instead of the word recently, late means dead in this context.
I acknowledge that one of Fowler’s points was to avoid ambiguous hyphenated terms, such as ex-Friend of the Library member. The single-minded among us could construe that to mean that this person is now a raving enemy of the library and a flaming book-burner, but the rest of us realize that ex- modifies the entire phrase, not simply the word to which it is attached.
So, many commentators have arrived at this compromise. (1) Use ex- for the immediate past office holder: ex-president Bill Clinton. (2) Use former for all previous holders of the office: former president Jimmy Carter. (3) Use late to indicate a recently deceased holder of the office: late president Gerald Ford.
My advice: relax. There are more serious things to worry about, such as shallow one-minute formats passing as presidential candidate debates. Shame on you, MSNBC.
SIDEBAR: H.W. Fowler, The King’s English
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Hubris
Doug from Traverse City (MI) asked about the meaning and use of hubris. It comes from a classical Greek term, and currently it means pride and excessive self-confidence.
It was more than swollen ego in the old days. It was anger wrapped in insolence, and when it resulted in insulting, degrading treatment of another person, it was actually a crime. In Greek law, according to Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, hubris included all the more serious injuries done to another, and it was a grievous assault. It could lead to public indictment.
When anger and contempt lead to lesser injuries upon another, Liddell and Scott say that it was known as aikia, and the remedy was more likely to be private action. Variations on the word hubris historically included wantonness, lewdness, and restiveness on the part of overfed horses. I hate it when that happens.
Aristotle discussed hubris in his Rhetoric [1378b]:
“There are three kinds of slighting -- contempt, spite, and insolence. (1) Contempt is one kind of slighting: you feel contempt for what you consider unimportant, and it is just such things that you slight. (2) Spite is another kind; it is a thwarting another man's wishes, not to get something yourself but to prevent his getting it. The slight arises just from the fact that you do not aim at something for yourself: clearly you do not think that he can do you harm, for then you would be afraid of him instead of slighting him, nor yet that he can do you any good worth mentioning, for then you would be anxious to make friends with him. (3) Insolence is also a form of slighting, since it consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved. (Retaliation is not "insolence," but vengeance.) The cause of the pleasure thus enjoyed by the insolent man is that he thinks himself greatly superior to others when ill-treating them.”
Number 3 gives the essence of hubris: shaming and humiliating another. Stick the knife in and twist it, baby.
St. Paul turned the whole concept on its head when he said that Christians should welcome shame and humiliation as a test of faith. In 2 Corinthians 12:10, he writes,
“Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
The original Greek hubris was translated in this KJV passage as insults.
SIDEBAR: The Use of Greek Hubris as a Concept Applied to Contemporary History Events
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Brain Cramps
In researching word parts for the 2nd edition of my Word Parts Dictionary, one of the sources that I have gone through is Dorland’s The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 12th Edition (1923). It’s a delightful book, giving not only accurate Greek and Latin sources, but providing a glimpse at an earlier world.
One of the interesting sidebars if found under the entry “cramp.” It takes us back to a day when ergonomics was not much of a consideration. Here are some of the cramps that a doctor would look for.
• “auctioneers’ cramp: a professional neurosis affecting mainly the left side of the orbuicularis oris muscle.” I’m curious; does anyone know why that’s so site-specific?
• “compositors’ cramp: an occupation neurosis of the thumb and fingers of compositors, resembling writers’ cramp.”
• “hammermans’ cramp: a spasmodic affection of the muscles of the entire arm.” There must have been a lot of carpenters at work in the 1920s, as evidenced next.
• “hephestic cramp: hammerman’s cramp.” Obviously, the editor was showing off a classical education here. Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire, and he was the patron of blacksmiths.
• “seamstresses’ cramp: a neurosis of sewing-women, resembling writers’ cramp.”
• “shaving cramp: a neurosis of the hands of barbers resembling writers’ cramp.”
• “telegraphers’ cramp: a neurosis resembling writers’ cramp, seen in telegraphers.”
• “watchmakers’ cramp: a spasm of the finger muscles peculiar to watchmakers.”
• “writers” cramp: an occupation neurosis due to excessive writing. It is marked by spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the fingers, hand, and forearm, together with neuralgic pain therein. It comes on whenever an attempt is made to write.”
The message is loud and clear: mothers, don’t let your sons and daughters grow up to be writers. And we thought our age was dangerous because of Blackberry thumb.
Sidebar: Hephaestus
Sidebar: Blackberry thumb
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Eating Words
Q. At what point do words become a solid piece of the language? Everyone knows hola and uses it on a regular basis, but it's still considered Spanish.
Kate/Leelanau School,
Glen Arbor, MI
A. I don't think that there's a time limit for transference of foreign terms into English. When words stop being foreign and are considered just as English as anything else can be a slow process or a fast process. It depends on a number of external factors.
But I have noticed a few related things that take place when a word is fully assimilated. One is that these words stop appearing in print with italics or quotation marks when they are finally welcomed into the club. They also eventually lose any accent marks that we don’t use in English.
Another sign is that they stop being defined in parentheses; they are simply accepted as familiar, not treated as if they were illegal aliens.
Finally, when the assimilation process is complete, they will show up in an English dictionary filed alphabetically with all the other English words. An example would be bete noire. Those who know what it means treat it as if they were saying something like the bogeyman. Other assimilated terms include habeas corpus, genre, kimono, igloo, macho, heuristic, angst, gulag, klutz, paparazzi, and impasse.
To find more on the process, try using the search terms assimilation or borrowing.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Kangaroo Kop
A caller asked about the term “kangaroo cop.” It joins Keysone Cop and Rent-a-Cop as terms of derision, but it’s a bit edgier and more sinister than they are.
It’s intimately connected with “kangaroo court,” a proceeding that is markedly unfair and self-serving. It’s vigilante justice and rush to judgment on steroids.
The term started in the days of the California Gold Rush, and the image of a kangaroo was meant to show erratic hopping from place to place. There is some disagreement on precisely what was doing the hopping.
One opinion says that it was an apt image for jumping to a conclusion. The judge--and the puppet jury, if there was one--knew the outcome before the trial began, and jumped to the verdict as soon as cosmetically possible.
Others say that because it was the Gold Rush, many of the trials involved claim jumping, and the point was to get the stake back in the hands that the judge deemed worthy. In Texas, this would have been called a Mustang Court, and it would have involved ownership of livestock.
A third theory says that it refers to the practice of itinerant judges. They were legitimately appointed, but they rode from town to town on a moment’s notice. The fact that they were paid based on volume and the amount of the fine would have made speedy justice desirable. Now they advertise on T.V. and have 800 numbers.
So, a kangaroo cop was an officer who would haul the accused to a kangaroo court. Years later, in Williams v. United States, Justice William O. Douglas would write this: "Where police take matters in their own hands, seize victims, beat and pound them until they confess, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the police have deprived the victim of a right under the Constitution. It is the right of the accused to be tried by a legally constituted court, not by a kangaroo court"
SIDEBAR: Tie me kangaroo down
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Easter, Step by Step
- Ancient Babylonians and Syrians worshipped the goddess Ishtar.
- Among Semitic worshippers, the same goddess was called Astarte.
- When her cult spread to Europe, her name evolved into Ostara.
- The name came into Anglo-Saxon as Eastre.
Canny Christian missionaries incorporated some of the features into their celebration of the Resurrection.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Homophones: Phone Home
I came across two amusing items while working on the next edition of the Word Parts Dictionary.
We’re all aware of the disconnect that exists between sound and spelling in English. If you ask someone to spell the equivalent of the sound hear/here or the sound there/their/they’re, the first thing you’re going to hear is, “which one do you mean?”
Say sigh/koll/oh/gee out loud, and to a person we will all write psychology [Gr. psukho-, mind, + -logia, area of knowledge]. But another equivalent of that sound is sycology, the study of figs [Gr. sukon-, fig, + -logia, area of knowledge]. Everyone is aware of a word that shares the same root: sycophant. Originally, a sycophant was an informant rather than today’s abject flatterer, but the OED informs us that its origin is disputed. It may be related to an obscene gesture, “showing the fig.” That consisted of pushing the thumb between two fingers and holding them up. It sounds like the same contemptuous intent embedded in thrusting the middle finger straight up in the air as a display.
The other word with a disconnect needs a little wriggle room, but it’s close. Say fill/oll/uh/gist, and most of us will write philologist [Gr. philo- love of, + -logos, word]. A close contender would be phellologist, an expert in the substance cork [Gr. phellos, cork]. Some not-so-common words using this root are phelloderm, phellogen, phellogenetic, phellogenic, and phelloplastic (a cork model or figure).
SIDEBAR: figs http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/fig.html
SIDEBAR: cork http://science.howstuffworks.com/question550.htm
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Roo, Roo, Roo Your Boat
A caller asked about the plausibility of the following story: An early European explorer in Australia asked a native for the name of a strange-looking animal leaping nearby. The aborigine scratched his head and replied, “kangaroo.” The explorer took that to be the name of the mammal, not realizing that the native had said in bewilderment, “I don’t know.”
The odds are that the story is bogus. First of all, the likelihood of a native not having a name for a local, familiar animal is quite low. Secondly, early written testimony tells us that it was a known name. Captain Cook’s Journal speaks of “the animals which I have before mentioned, called by the Natives Kangooroo or Kanguru.” The term found by anthropologists in the Endeavor River area was gaNurru.
However, other early accounts claim that the name kangaroo was unknown to natives they encountered; instead, they used words like patagorong or patagaran. The discrepancy is probably due to different languages or dialects found scattered across the vast bounds of Australia.
At any rate, the Oxford English Dictionary pooh-poohs the story in its usual elegant way by saying that it “seems to be of recent origin and lacks confirmation.” Kangaroos are macropods, a word that breaks into macro-, large, and -pod, foot. That makes the kangaroo the original Bigfoot of our era.
SIDEBAR: Read about the Roo
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Whose and Who’s
Q. Today’s edition of [a local newspaper] contained this sentence in an article in the Sports Section: “Quite a story for a guy who’s first swimming lesson was 10 years ago.”
Shouldn’t that be whose? Jean/Petoskey, MI
A. It most definitely should. Good call on your part. The easiest solution is to remember that who’s is a contraction. It stands for who is; the apostrophe replaces the -i-. Saying “a guy who is first swimming lesson . . .” out loud should tip you off to the error. Correct examples would include
• Who’s your daddy?
• I asked him who’s in charge.
• Who’s responsible for this mess?
If you’ve never heard the “Who’s on First” routine of Abbott and Costello, read it here: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor4.shtml
Whose is a possessive pronoun, and it may be rendered as belonging to whom. It always involves ownership or intimate connection. Here are some correct uses:
• This is a word whose origins are lost in the mists of history.
• When I find out whose wallet this is, I’ll return it.
• Quite a story for a guy whose first swimming lesson was 10 years ago
A famous use of the word may be found in the opening lines of Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Read the poem here: http://www.favoritepoem.org/poems/frost/stopping.html
Thursday, March 22, 2007
A Lousy Day
I’m working on the 2nd edition of my Word Parts Dictionary for McFarland & Company, so I notice that my postings are a bit more sporadic than usual.
I’m going to share something that only the most hardcore of word freaks will care about, but it’s fascinating to me.
The open nature of the internet is one of its delights--anyone can post anything--but it’s also one of its glaring weaknesses, especially when it comes to discussions of words. Phobia lists are fun to peruse, and a Google search for “fear list” brings up about 68 million hits. One of the words that makes some of these lists--and several books listing fears--is pothiriophobia, the fear or dislike of parasites. I now believe that it resulted from a misreading.
One of the references that I use is an edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, and there is nothing meaning parasite that begins with the Greek letters pi/omicron/theta or pi/omega/theta, the equivalents of p/o/th.
However, there is a phthir- that means louse or worm, but it is spelled phi/theta/epsilon/ iota/rho. To the untrained eye, a theta can look like an O with a transverse bar [ θ ], thus rendering it poth- instead of the correct phth-.
So in my 2nd edition, pothiriophobia is toast, replaced by phthiriophobia. You read it here first.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Flibbertigibbet
Q. I used to hear the word flippertigibbet more in the past than I do now. Where did it come from? We used it to mean a flighty person. Joan/Torch Lake, MI
A. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is onomatopoeia (where the sound of the word suggests its meaning).
In its early form, it was spelled flybbergybe, and it meant a chattering or gossiping person. (An obsolete meaning of gibbet was to whoop or cry out to signal to your dog that the hunt was on.)
By Shakespeare’s time, it was one of the names that signified a minor devil or demon. He seems to have read a book by Samuel Harsnet with the delightful title, Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. A few of the names mentioned in Harsnet show up in King Lear, including our focus today:
Edgar: This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. Lear III. iv.
In the works of Scott, Coleridge, and Stevenson, it had lost some of the diabolocal baggage and referred to someone mischievous or flighty.
If you have seen Sound of Music, you know that it was used in the song, How can you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!
That has probably extended its life.
Sidebar: read Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures
Monday, March 12, 2007
Tow That Toe
On my program last week, a caller told of an unintentional error in a recent book about Governor Granholm of Michigan. The author wrote, “I followed the governor with cameraman in toe.” That would require either a gigantic foot or a shrunken cameraman.
The image required is of being “in tow,” pulled by a line by another vessel. In Old English, it could refer to anything being hauled or dragged, but by the 14th century, it was applied almost exclusively to ships.
“In tow” is matched by another error involving a homonym. I have come across “tow the line,” meaning to abide by the rules and regulations. I can see where pulling a barge attached to a hawser might spring to mind, but in this case it should be “toe the line.”
Many of the early uses of this image come from the British Navy, so many commentators think that it started with sailors in formation. The space between deck planks was filled with loose hemp or jute fiber, then sealed with pitch. As a result, dark lines ran the length of the deck. When the crew was required to fall into formation for inspection or instruction, they would place the toes of their boots on a designated line to achieve a neat formation. American sailors favored the phrase, “toe the crack.”
SIDEBAR: all about oakum
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Getting My Goat
When I think about goats (which I seldom do), I think of two characteristics: they leap nimbly, and they stink.
There is a third element, of course, as I recalled when a friend asked me about the origin of the word tragedy. There is no question that it came from ancient Greek rites that eventually developed into theater, and it is usually said to mean “goat song.”
Speculation abounds as to why goats were involved. One theory says that in song contests, the prize was a goat, or that goats were sacrificed as offerings. Another theory points to performances during religious ceremonies honoring Dionysus. Legend has it that they involved satyrs, creatures who were half goat and half human. Then there are those who say that the -trag- root came not from the word goat, but from the verb to gnaw. Eat your heart out.
Getting back to the prancing abilities of goats, here are a few words that commemorate that feature:
• capriccio: in music, a name applied to a lively composition. It meant “just like the skipping of a goat.”
• caprice: a descendent of the word above, it signifies a whimsical choice or change of mind. It means a “goat leap.”
• capriole: an upward leap made by a trained horse, or a playful jump by a human. It means “jumping like a goat.”
The smelly nature of goats shows up in the following words, among others:
• caproic acid: a liquid, fatty acid, so named because of the substance’s goatlike smell.
• hircine: one of its meanings is “having a goatish smell.”
• hircose: “smelling like a goat.”
The next word never made it into English as far as I know, but the ancient Greeks had a word that would be rendered as tragomaskhalos in English. It meant “with armpits smelling like a he-goat.” Better head for the industrial-strength deodorant section.
Finally, the goatee (the sparse beard form) was named after the goat, the tragus (a bump inside the ear that usually sprouts a tuft of hair) was likewise named after the hairy chin of a goat, and the word butcher originally meant “a dealer in goat’s flesh.”
SIDEBAR: goat breeds
Friday, March 02, 2007
Gonna Find Out Who's Naughty & Nice
Determining who’s been naughty and who’s been nice is the province of Santa Claus, and his job is much easier than it once was. Naughty and nice are mitigated terms in the sense that they once bore markedly stronger meanings. (The Latin word mitis meant mild, mellow, or soft.) These days, naughty is a rather tepid form of childish disobedience, and nice is an insipid compliment.
Oddly enough, naughty and nice once had identical meanings. Around 1400, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, nice meant “characterized by or encouraging wantonness or lasciviousness.” Correlatively, in the late 16th and early 17th century, naughty meant “immoral, licentious, promiscuous, sexually provocative.” Naughty or nice, you were a lecher.
Naughty started out meaning having nothing, based on the concept of naught. It progressed to uncontrollable, vicious wickedness--quite a leap. Ultimately, that was watered down to the level of mischief. Along the way, it took a detour for a while, referring to food or drink of inferior--even dangerous--quality:
KJV, Jeremiah 24:2 “One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe:
and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.”
Nice originally meant that a person was foolishly ignorant, not a compliment at all. Applied to an action, it meant absurd and silly. As I mentioned above, it wandered into licentiousness at one point. Then it signified precision and punctiliousness, with culture and refinement as a sidebar. That degenerated into cowardly and effeminate, but was rescued when the meaning shifted to skillful, discriminating, and attentive to details. Unlike naughty figs, nice food or drink was tasty and restorative. Before degenerating into its current blandness, it meant kind and friendly.
Quite a journey for both words.
SIDEBAR: two songs by naughty
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Hiding an Ox
“Nice play, ox!” is the friendly gibe that we used to direct at a buddy during a sporting event when he missed an easy layup or dropped a hot line drive. The memory of that phrase set me to thinking about words that conceal an ox. [Don’t ask; it’s what I do.]
First of all, there’s Bucephalus, the famed horse of Alexander the Great. Legend has it that King Philip, Alexander’s father, was about to turn down the offer of a horse because no one could tame it. The pre-teen Alexander asked for a shot at it and succeeded where grown men had failed. The horse was his. The steed must have been as big as a Clydesdale, because the name Bucephalus comes from the Greek bous, ox, and kephale, head. Hi, Ho, Ox Head!
The mind is capable of many strange aberrations, but one of the weirdest that I've encountered is called boanthropy. This is a mental illness in which a man believes himself to be an ox. The word is an amalgam of bous, ox, and anthropos, man. Grab your bible and turn to Daniel iv. 33. There you’ll find this: “The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.”
An ancient style of writing was called boustrophodon. It involved writing from right to left, then dropping to the next line and writing from left to right. The writer would keep alternating directions for each line. The action was just like plowing a field with oxen: when you reached the end of the furrow, you reversed direction. Boustrophedon came from bous, ox, and strophes, turning.
Bulimia is an emotional eating disorder. It features bouts of extreme overeating alternating with self-induced vomiting, purging, or fasting. Active athletes may have the appetite of an ox, but it’s totally inappropriate and harmful when it’s the product of fixation with body image. The word bulimia comes from bous, ox, and limos, hunger.
Buphthalmos is the name given to a form of infantile glaucoma. The most noticeable symptom is gross enlargement of the eyeball owing to increased intra-ocular pressure. The word comes from bous, ox, and ophthalmos, eye.
So, you see, hiding an ox is easier than catering to an 800 pound gorilla.
SIDEBAR: Public demonstrations of oxen at work
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Uncoding Colors
I purchased a new printer recently, and it differs from my previous printer in that there are now four cartridges to work with instead of the earlier, simpler two (one color and one black). Now I deal with black, magenta, cyan, and yellow. Interesting words.
Black comes from the Old English blaec. In turn, that descended from the extended Indo-European bhleg-, a root connected to shining, flashing, and burning. The color of something burned certainly is appropriate to black, and that same root form led to flame, conflagration, and flammable. Oddly enough, variations of that root led to bleached, blonde, and other bright concepts. Strange bedfellows.
Yellow comes from the Old English geolu, and it derived from the Indo-European ghel-, a root that referred to bright colors and materials, including gold. Gleam, glint, glimmer, glitter, and glisten are related; we’re talking serious bling here.
Cyan is a greenish-blue, and it comes from the Greek word kuanos, dark blue. It was used by classical writers to describe the iridescent hues of a serpent, the shiny plumage of a swallow, the deep color of the sea, and shimmering masses of oiled hair.
Magenta is a purplish-red, and unlike the previous three, it owes its name to a battle and a place, the town of Magenta in northwest Italy. Prior to the 1859 battle, the color was known as fuchsine (François-Emmanuel Verguin) or roseine (Edward Chambers Nicholson). Someone decided that the word magenta would tickle the public fancy more. It also saved the world from tittering typos resulting from misspelling fuchsine.
Sidebar: listen to the U.K.’s Magenta
Sidebar: a short history of Italy
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Heavenly Daze
Q. My husband and I listen to a local PBS station (WIAA, Interlochen), and every day it offers a feature with an odd title. We’d like to look up the word, but we can’t figure out how to spell it. It sounds something like uffemirus. Joy/Leland, MI
A. One of the problems with our phonetic system is that the very same sound can be represented by more than one letter combination. Here you have a word that starts with the schwa sound (uh), which can be represented by any of the vowels, depending on the circumstances. It’s followed in this case by the steady sound of air passing over the lower lip, held gently in place by the upper teeth. That could turn out to be f, ff, or ph.
The word you’re looking for is spelled ephemeris, and it refers to an almanac or calendar that contains astronomical or meteorological predictions for any given day: when the sun will rise and set, what stage the moon is in, which stars will be prominent, etc.
It comes from a Greek word that breaks into two parts: epi-, on or upon, and hemera, a day. So it’s a list of what shall transpire in the sky upon a given day. For a while, astronomers used a time construct called ephemeral time to predict precisely when stellar events would take place. This English major isn’t even going to pretend that he understands the math, so let me simply refer you to a web site: http://www.sizes.com/time/time_ephemeris.htm
Sidebar: U.S. Naval Observatory
Sunday, February 18, 2007
A.M. / P.M.
Q. Can you sort out 12:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.? In other words, which one means noon and which one means midnight? Mike/Gaylord
A. On air, I gave an answer that I thought was eminently logical. If it’s 11:59 p.m., then the next minute to tick by will take us into the wee hours of the morning, making midnight 12:00 a.m. One minute later, it’s 12:01 a.m.
Correlatively, if it’s 11:59 a.m., 12:00 p.m. (noon) comes next, and a minute later, it will be 12:01 p.m. Piece of cake. Then I went home and did some research.
It turns out that the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual puts it precisely the other way around. It says that 12:00 a.m. is noon, and that 12:00 p.m. is midnight.
Thoroughly confused, I sat down and did some thinking. It suddenly hit me that if you consider the nighttime 12:00 as the first minute of the morning, then it makes sense to think of it as a.m. However, if you think of it as the last minute of the evening, logically it’s p.m. The same happens at midday: if 12:00 is the start of the afternoon, then it’s p.m., but if it’s the last minute of the morning, it’s a.m.
So which viewpoint is correct? I have decided to heed the advice of the Greenwich Mean Time site. This summarizes their position: both a.m. and p.m. start at 12:00:01 if you are using a twelve-hour clock, not at 12:00:00. And both a.m. and p.m. end at 11:59:59, not at 12:00:00. Consider this: if you were to write midnight and noon as 6-digit numbers, they would come out as 00:00:00. In other words, they have no meaning; they are ciphers.
I compare it to the yellow stripe down the middle of the highway. That line is not part of the left lane, nor is it part of the right lane. It is the point of demarcation that divides right from left. Likewise, midnight and noon don’t take sides; they are moments of demarcation.
So from now on, there’s no 12:00 a.m. or 12:00 p.m. in my life; it will be noon or midnight. Better yet, perhaps I should switch to the 24-hour clock.
Sidebar: During a discussion, my wife observed that this seems to have become my version of “how many angels can fit on the point of a needle?”
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