Easter

Sybil asked about the word Easter, wondering if the liturgical feast received that name because the events narrated in the New Testament took place in the Mideast rather than in the West. In answer, I’m going to reprint something that appeared here in 2007.

• 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.

Her feast occurred during the vernal equinox, and since she was a fertility goddess, prolific symbols such as rabbits and eggs were part of the trappings.

Canny Christian missionaries incorporated some of the features into their celebration of the Resurrection. Their formula for the date of Easter has been passed along for centuries: the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

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Boring the Boorish Boar

The relationship—or supposed relationship—among bore, boor, and boar came up on the

program. Boar and bore are homophones, and while boor is pronounced differently, there could be a very slight overlap between bore and boor. A boor can bore you to death.

A boar is a male swine. It tracks back to an Old Saxon word, bêr, which meant swine.

A bore is a tiresome person who causes ennui. It may be connected to the French word bourrer, to stuff or satiate.

A boor is a rude, ill-bred person who lacks refinement. It was based on the Old English búr, short for the Old English gebúr, a farmer or peasant. In turn, that was based on búr, a dwelling, house, or cottage. Boor is cousin to neighbor, which may be translated as near-dweller.

This brings us to Boer, which was a Dutch-speaking colonist in South Africa, especially one engaged in agriculture or cattle-farming. It was based upon the Dutch word boer, a countryman, peasant, or farmer. This is, of course, the word boor in shallow disguise.

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Sock It To Me!

Kelly from Alanson wrote, “I've been thinking about the word sock. Someone can ‘sock someone in the nose’, tell you to ‘put a sock in it,’ or ‘cover you feet with socks.’ Where did that word come from?”

Sock in the usual sense (a stocking) comes from a Latin word, soccus, which meant a light slipper. Aside from the idioms that Kelly provided, you can sock your money away, stand 5 feet tall in your socks, knock someone’s socks off, pull your socks up, be someone’s sock puppet, or observe a windsock at the airport. Those are all connected to sock, n.1, in the Oxford English Dictionary.

A number of words share the same spelling. My favorite is sock, v.1.

• sock, n.2:  a ploughshare
• sock, n.3:  suck given to a child
• sock, n.4:  a sound thrashing
• sock, n.5:  edibles of various kinds
• sock, n.6:  a pet child or young animal
• sock, n.7:  a small coin
• sock, n.8:  abbreviation of socket
• sock, v.1:  to sew a corpse into a shroud
• sock, v.2:  to strike hard
• sock, v.3:  to give a gift
• sock, v.4:  to sigh
• sock, v.5:  to provide with socks; to put money aside; to enshroud, as a fog

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My Nana Returns as Ananym

An ananym is a pseudonym formed by writing a real name backwards. It was formed from the Greek words ἀνά, back,  + ὄνομα, name. Here are a few examples, all of them occurirng in popular culture.

Count Alucard  [Bram Stoker]

Many movies and games based on Stoker’s novel introduce a mysterious Count Alucard, later revealed as the dreaded Dracula.  (Son of Dracula, the movie.) 

Erewhon  [Samuel Butler]

Erewhon is the name of a fictional country, a satirical utopia. Notice that Butler retained the –wh- sequence instead of going all the way and making it Erehwon. It’s easier to pronounce that way.  (Erewhon) 

Harpo Productions  [Oprah Winfrey]

Ms. Winfrey incorporated the company as a Chicago-based multimedia production company.  (Harpo Productions) 

Nomad Band [Damon Rochefort]

This British band was formed by Damon Rochefort, who named it after himself in a disguised way. The band was active from 1989 to 2003.  (Something Special) 

Redrum  [Stephen King]

In the movie The Shining, the telepathic child writes RedRum on a door using his sleeping mother’s lipstick. When he wakes her up by chanting RedRum, she reads it in a mirror and is horrified.  (The Shining) 

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A Thin Shell is no Yolk

Ralph asked about the saying, “to egg someone on.” He speculated that it might have come from early theater, where bad performances were greeted with thrown objects, including eggs, tomoatoes, and anything else at hand.

Although this practice appears with some frequency in comedic movies and TV shows, I’m not sure that it was ever widespread. And wouldn’t they be trying to egg the bad actor off the stage? At any rate, it has nothing to do with this idiom, which means to urge someone on.

It goes back to an Old English word, ecg, a sharp point on a weapon, such as a sword. When captives were being moved, especially in large numbers, they would be prodded by their captor soldiers in order to move them along. A sword or a lance would act as a convincing incentive. To ecg on became to egg on, a change based on sound after the original Old English word had morphed into edge. 

Curiosity led me to collect some other Old English words based on the same root.

• ecgan:  to sharpen, give an edge; harrow
• ecgbana:  slayer with the sword, sword-killer, murderer
• Ecgbryht:  ecg, edge, sword + bryht, bright, excellent
• ecgclif:  steep shore, a sea cliff or shore
• ecgheard:  hard of edge
• ecghete:  sword-hatred
• ecghwæs:  keen-edged
• ecglást:  sword’s edge
• ecglinga:  on the edge, edgeling
• ecgplega:  a play of swords, sword-fight
• ecgþracu:  hot contest, sword strength, war or savage courage
• ecgung:  harrowing
• ecgwæl:  sword-slaughter, sword’s wail

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Fists First

In Latin, pugnare meant to fight—specifically, with the fists. It lead to a few words still in use today, and a handful of obsolete terms, such as appugn (to oppose), expugn (to capture by fighting), propugn (to fight for something), and repugn (to fight or object).

A cousin is impugn, to fight something by calling its validity into doubt. It may also involve assailing the actions of a person. Pugilist is a fancy name for a boxer, a man or woman who engages in amateur or professional fistfights. A pugnacious person is quick to quarrel or fight.

That leaves one more word related to a fist: pygmy. In ancient Greece, πυγμή (pygme) meant fist. It also was a unit of length—the measurement from the elbow to the knuckles, a relatively short distance.

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Plastic

A listener left a message expressing his surprise that the word plastic shows up in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. ”Just how old is the word?” he asked.

I did a quick search of Cooper’s works and found the word used in the following passages. Evidently, it was one of his favorite words.

·     “The eyes of the father followed the plastic and ingenious movements of the son with open delight, and he never failed to smile in reply to the other’s contagious but low laughter.” [The Last of the Mohicans]  

·     “. . . for his plastic character had readily taken the impression of those things that from their propinquity alone pressed hardest on it.” [Home As Found]

·     “Then came the efforts to give her some ideas of religion, and the deep and lamentable mistakes which, imperfectly explained, and worse understood subtleties, left on her plastic mind.” [Mercedes of Castile]

·     “At my age, all the feelings were fresh and plastic, and grief took strong hold of my heart.”[Afloat and Ashore]

The word comes from the ancient Greek πλαστικός (plastikos). Originally, it meant capable of shaping clay, wax, and other art materials. Applied to non-material realities, it came to mean creative, impressionable, pliable, fluid, or flexible.

In our day, it has taken on a negative meaning: artificial, unnatural, superficial, or insincere.

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Emigrate & Immigrate

Judy from Cedar wrote, “Could you explain the difference between the words  immigrate, emigrate, and migrate – and when it is proper to use each one?

The difference between emigrate and immigrate is a matter of direction. To emigrate is to move OUT OF a country; let the initial letter –e- stand for exit. To immigrate is to move INTO a country; let the initial letter –i- stand for into. Observe that both actions take place in one motion: I emigrate from Ireland as I immigrate to America.

Both words are based on migrate. That comes from a Latin word that meant to change residence. To migrate doesn't necessitate going from one country to an entirely different one. And in a metaphorical application, migrate can mean to spread or transfer, and it is not confined to humans.

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Ripely Rife

Stephanie wrote, “I’m having trouble distinguishing between two similar words. Should I write, the economy is ripe with problems, or the economy is rife with problems”?

While the two words are very close in appearance, they have different meanings. Ripe means fully grown and developed; think of succulent fruit. Since the economy is not at the end of its development, that word doesn’t fit.

Rife means abundant or common; substitute filled with, and it will be clear. Thus, the economy is rife with problems would be the correct choice. The word comes from a nexus of Frisian/Dutch/Germanic/Scandinavian terms that meant copious or abundant.

Keeping our examples in the realm of economics, these would both be proper:

• Wall Street seems to be rife with initial public offerings this season.
• According to my sources, the Tekco initial public offering is ripe for plucking.

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Remonstrate

Donald has been reading a book on Confucianism. He came across a word in the following passage that he wants more information on:

“When applying the principles of filiality in the text to the relationship between leader and subject, there is no praise for blind obedience. Quite to the contrary, one section is devoted to remonstration.”

‘Of old, an Emperor had seven ministers who would remonstrate with him,
so even if he had no vision of the proper way [Dao], he still did not lose the empire.’

[Confucianism by Ronnie L. Littlejohn]

Donald’s question was about remonstration and remonstrate. Both variants come from the Latin monstrare, to show. Originally, remonstrate was a synonym of demonstrate, to manifest or reveal. Eventually, it came to mean “to point out a fault to another by way of reproof, disapprobation, or complaint; to protest against a wrong.”

Other words based on monstrare—all of them rare or obsolete—include commonstrate (to make clear), monstrable (capable of being shown), monstration (a sign),and  premonstrate (to portend).

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Silent but Deadly

Crystal asked about poppycock, which is defined as nonsense, rubbish, and humbug. The Oxford English Dictionary hedges a bit, but it passes along the opinion that it may have come from a Dutch word meaning excrement from a doll. That, indeed, would be nonsense. Alternatively, the Dutch word is also translated as soft dung. A related word is poppet, a small or dainty person, which became a term of endearment. Puppet is also related.

Hidden meanings also show up on a couple of other words. Partridge, the bird, comes from a Greek word that meant to fart, probably because of the whirring noise that the bird makes as it takes off.

Pumpernickel, a dark, dense bread made in Westphalia, comes from a German word that meant a fart. As the Oxford English Dictionary delicately puts it, “This type of bread was probably so called either on account of its being difficult to digest and causing flatulence or in a more general allusion to its hardness and poor quality.”

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Somnambulist

Roger from Sault Ste Marie asked about the word somnambulistic. It’s the adjective form of the noun somnambulist, which breaks down into the Latin somn-, sleep, and ambul-, to walk. Somn- also shows up in words such as insomnia and somniferous, and ambul- appears in ambulation and ambulance, which was originally a field hospital that followed a moving army.

Four words designate types of walking, though one of them is a nonce word.

• funambulist: a tightrope performer  [L. fun-, rope]
• noctambulist: a sleep walker who moves about at night  [L. noct-, night]
• somnambulist:  a sleep walker  [L. somn-, sleep]
• vicambulist: one who walks about hoping to be seen and recognized [a nonce word, a word used on one specific occasion or in one specific text or writer's works. L. vicus, street]

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Exterminate! Eradicate! Extirpate!

These three words form an interesting cluster of destruction.

To extirpate is to pull something out by the roots, literally or figuratively. The Latin stirp represented the stem or stock of a tree. So originally, extirpate meant to clear an area of tree stumps. Ralph Waldo Emerson used it figuratively: “Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men.”

To eradicate is to pull or tear up by the roots, to remove something. The Latin radix meant a root. Charlotte Bronte wrote: “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.”

Unlike the first two, exterminate does not involve roots. It came from a Latin word that meant to drive someone out of the boundaries; then it evolved into utter destruction. Joseph Conrad’s character Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness sounded like a Dalek when he wrote, “Exterminate all the brutes!”

I should probably throw in annihilate, too, which literally means to reduce to nothingness:

http://www.hark.com/clips/rbcbnlmmkx-exterminate-all-humans

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Behemoth

Beth saw a headline on AOL this morning: Behemoth Storm Pummels Northeast. She asked what a behemoth is. It’s a large, powerful animal, but there is disagreement over precisely which one. A water buffalo would qualify, but so would a hippopotamus.

The word is used in the Book of Job, chapter 40, verses 15 to 24.

15]  Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.

16]  Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.

17]  He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.

18]  His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.

19]  He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.

20]  Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.

21]  He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens

22]  The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.

23]  Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.

24]  He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.

Experts seem to think that it started as the Egyptian word p-ehe-mau, a water ox, which was then assimilated into Hebrew as b'hēmōth, a monstrous beast. By extension, it came to mean anything of great size or power. In 1593, Gabriel Harvey used it this way: “Will soone finde the huge Behemoth of Conceit, to be the sprat of a pickle herring.” [Pierces supererogation, or; A new prayse of the old asse]

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Adamant

Charlene wrote to say that she had encountered the word adamant in a historical novel that she is currently reading. “I thought that it referred to a person secure in her belief,” she wrote, “but in the book it seems to mean a precious stone of some kind. Can you shed some light on this?”

Charlene is correct. In our day, adamant means unwavering and unshakeable in belief. The adamant person cannot be persuaded to change his or her mind. In fact, there is a whiff of inflexibility and downright stubbornness involved.

The Latin word from which it is derived originally meant a very hard substance. Sometimes it referred to steel, and sometimes to a diamond. Its Greek predecessor meant unbreakable. In time, the word was used metaphorically to signify something not easily destroyed or overcome.

Interestingly, a number of animals turn up in informal synonyms for adamant, including bull-headed, dogged, mulish, and pig-headed.

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