Monthly Archives: October 2008

cloaca

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

It may have the sound of a cloak, but its object is best cloaked; the vague resonances of chocolate are best kept at bay, and the easy anagram “lo, caca” is apposite, if puerile. Makers of laxatives seem to have found a certain effect from the combination of [k] and [l], given the names some of them give their products, and this word may partake of any such effect as well. The aspirated voiceless stops, the first of which saps the voicing from the following liquid, give a crisply whispered air that a synonym such as “sewer” can never quite attain. Five of the six letters have rounded shapes; the exception is the linear (but liquid) l. Make of that what you will. This word, though originally applied to public sewers, is now most likely most familiar to zoologists, especially ornithologists and monotremologists but also ichthyologists and reptilologists, due to its application to a feature their subjects have and humans haven’t. Classic historians may think immediately of the cloaca maxima, the great Roman sewer, and indeed the word has come to us straight through from Latin, undigested. In Latin it was derived from a verb meaning “purge.”

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hiatus

Posted on October 18, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word that manifests a gap between classical Latin and modern English pronunciation. When it was at home, the vowels were i as in machine, a as in father, and u as in flute. And so it came into English. Then the great vowel shift happened, changing long vowels into diphthongs, and the short vowel was reduced further and the h came to be pronounced. Now the word sounds like it was invented to be squawked by nasal northeastern Americans (perhaps from Hyannis? more likely Avon Lake, Ohio). It starts with a greeting or an altitude, then there is a quantity or a meal, and finally we have us, which is us or just a Latin suffix such as you’ll see on onus or dorcus or diabetes mellitus. Nothing in the sound or spelling displays a lacuna as such, unless it be the gap in voicing heard with the h, which also shows up on fellow-travelling words: hernia, holiday, hole.

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rocket

Posted on October 17, 2008 | 2 comments

From the earth to the sky and beyond: a word that begins with an inert hard lump of silicon and, boosted by two diminutive letters – and often brainpowered by myriad tiny silicon circuits – becomes a heaven-bound vessel. Mirror the last two letters onto the end again and you get a leg up. Attempts at onomatopoeic association would be off base unless the astronauts were toads. And the shape: do the three round letters remind one of rockets viewed from above or of the planets they are aimed to visit? Does the k seem vaguely gantry-like? But this word brings with it a galaxy of collocations and connotations. Red is a common colour, sometimes glaring, often associated with transportation. Speed is a must. British cooks’ minds may fly to arugula; ecclesiasts may have surplice thoughts. Those hearing it may think it an imperative to be applied to a boat, a cradle, a trailer, or various musical expressions (e.g., this town, inside out). And where does this word come from? Ironically for something that has long been associated with masculine bravado, it was first named (with an Italian word based on a Germanic one) for what it was shaped like: a little distaff.

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repugnant

Posted on October 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

A fist in your ear and a blight to your senses. The middle syllable, like a plug-ugly little dog, bursts out strong and loud – if you said pugnaciously, you’d be right. It is couched in the re of repel and rebarbative rather than that of resign or reacquaint. The end is the arms-akimbo noun suffix, not a busy ing or an officious tion but an ant in active stance, even antagonistic, all the more so because of the negative little n that attaches to it. The re draws back, the pu spits in distaste and the gn gulps a a gag reflex. This word is sometimes seen with physically, which is nearly redundant, but of late keeps company often with morally. The soul recoils, then fights back – pugnare, Latin “fight,” is what punches this one through.

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curmudgeon

Posted on October 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word to be grumbled or growled with a voice soaked in whiskey, cigarettes, or mere cussèd impatience. It starts with a low gurgling throat rumble and then bares its teeth, which are munching on a crummy cigar. The whole word can be said with the teeth clenched. A mean dog, a dirty mess, the back end of a greedy bird… this word is made up of bits that bespeak intolerance, resistance and grudges. But how much of it is really just for show? Many now take the label upon themselves as a protection of filthy rust around a heart hinted to be of nobler metal, and 16th-century users of the word would have been surprised to hear the common modern collocation “lovable” with it. There have always been curmudgeons, of course; they seem to come out of some unidentifiable place, born already old – like the word itself, which has not been successfully traced to its roots. Speculation abounds as to how it came to be… and why its objects can’t smile just once for the camera, please?

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seductive

Posted on October 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

This is a word that dwells in the duct-work of leading, like conduct and viaduct, but the leading in this case is astray. When you hear this one say “duck,” you might want to – or say “Leave me alone, I’m a family man.” And yet it’s far too tempting, with its whisper and quick light moan of se and the nuzzling buzz of ive – with a plunging neckline at v – which speaks an echo of the commands give and live but on paper also shows the same end as connive. And, looking back, do you think of vice and victim? But this word has ameliorated in tone of late. Everybody wants it; you may hear an alto voice murmur it in reference to clothing or chocolate. It referred to leading (duc) apart (se) – perhaps to secede from the party to a secluded place – but now it almost seems mainstream.

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catarrh

Posted on October 4, 2008 | 2 comments

A word to be said with nose stuffed and throat phlegmy. For those who have ever seen this word actually used, it may have resonances of 19th-century advertisements for medicine. Its sound brings contradictory echoes: a dry, arid Arabian country and a resonant stringed instrument. Pet owners may look at it and think of a hairball. But if you focus on the tar, you begin to get the sense of the thing. The first half has a stickiness suitable for saying with the sinus passages inflamed. The second half simply lolls the tongue, but the spelling tells the true tale of woe: a double liquid rolling followed by heavy breathing… a throat clearing, or a grunt of frustration. If the rrh reminds you of diarrhea, it should, not just because that’s also unpleasant but because they both come from the Greek for “flow.” The cata is the same one as in cataclysm and catastrophe: down.

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ennui

Posted on October 3, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word that seems to give up out of boredom. A heavy-lidded e hunkers down into two sheep-like n‘s; the third one has keeled over and is lying feet skyward, staring at the blue emptiness. And at the end: the i, a brief candle about to go out. Others may see in it a little train of thought with a locomotive smokestack puffing on the right, but this train is crawling forever across an eternal Great Plains of the soul. The word can give less impassive overtones, with its echoes of annoy (which is in fact a related word) and an incomplete suggestion of “on we go” – but, you see, the go got up and went. Ennui can sometimes be seen with its Anglo-Saxon cousin boredom, and is also occasionally to be seen with its German relation Weltschmerz, but this is clearly the sort of word that smokes a Gauloise under the bleu, blanc et rouge while sipping absinthe for want of anything, oh, anything better to do. It started out as Latin inodio, proclaiming its hatred, but it got worn down over the years, lost its stop, its censorious io now trailing off instead as a tongue-relaxing ui, and it just can’t be bothered to care any more.

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qwerty

Posted on October 2, 2008 | Leave a comment

This word may well be your type. Although it sounds off-key, it also resonates with Canadian classical music lovers as a homophone for Kuerti, one of the country’s most noted pianists. But this word attaches to a different keyboard. Its very existence is a simple accident of an arrangement of keys producing a sayable word – even if one deviant from the usual English spelling rules. It is surely also luck that saying it produces two tyepwriter-like taps, with a whir in between (perhaps the sound of a Selectric or the daisy wheel on a 1980s Olivetti). It has a quirky look by dint of its opening q, and binds the lips and brain ever tighter with a double u rather than a single one. It has faint resonances of twenty and thirty and forty, and rather stronger ones of query – and the suitably inclined mind may hear some of flirty and see some of erotic. The most common neighbouring word is keyboard; after that, it’s probably uiop and asdfghjkl, neither of which is a word per se and the latter of which would tie the tongue of even a Czech or a Georgian. But why QWERTY? In fact, the layout was developed by trial and error to slow down typists so the keys wouldn’t jam. But even after the keys didn’t stick, the layout did. It may also be no coincidence that one may type TYEPWRITER using only the top row of keys.

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serendipity

Posted on October 1, 2008 | 1 comment

A real find of a word. It presents an interesting mixture of bits – a new discovery at every turn: is it serene? dippy? is there pity? if you are in a sere place, will it rend you – or render you to a dip to end it? The word brings pleasant resonances to those who know it, and its sound delivers nice contrast: a smooth trochee followed by a bopping dactyl. It starts with a snakey s, but it won’t bite; the pair of eyes you see are heavy-lidded e‘s, like those of a relaxed dreamer (as the lid of r droops to n). But then a d pops up, and in the twinkling of an i it has flipped over to p. And after you’ve seen it… y? Well, why not? And where was this word found? Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, once known in Persian as Serendip… but as seen through a spyglass from England: in the 18th century, Horace Walpole coined the word on the basis of the story of the three princes of Serendip, who were ever discovering happy wondrous things unsought and unexpected… perhaps they, too, were word tasters.

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