Monthly Archives: November 2008

cacophony

Posted on November 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word like an awful evening at the symphony. This word brings you the bad music (caca), the bad composer (phony), the bad audience (cough), the bad tuning (off), the stuttering singer (c-c-), the bad conductor (cack-handed), the bad date (get your hand off my knee), the poor intermission beverage selection (coffee only), even the irritating bird outside the concert hall (caw!). And it doesn’t even have a pleasant rhythm – it’s not a nice bar of 4/4 with the ictus on the first syllable; it’s like tripping on a step in the aisle and stumbling for the next three. This word came to us from the Greeks, of course (via Latin), caco from the word for “bad” and phony from the word for “sound” (not the similar-sounding Greek word for “murder,” though one might wonder).

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punch

Posted on November 18, 2008 | 1 comment

A short, punchy word, on the whole – or, rather, several identical short, punchy words. One (or two, counting noun and verb) comes from puncheon, a tool for poking holes or, by extension, stamping into (as with a die), which comes from the same Latin source as puncture. From this application of direct force came the sense with the fist. One comes from a commedia dell’arte character, Policinella, with a big paunch and a hooked nose, who became Punchinello, an English puppet character, shortened to Punch, who became best known for beating his wife, Judy, with a stick. One comes from the Sanskrit and Hindi word for “five,” as in five ingredients – in a beverage that was adapted by the English to something that rather caught on. (And began drifting semantically quickly once unmoored from the Raj – rum punch, big in the West Indies, has four ingredients classically: “one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak” are the measures.) But a good glass of punch packs a punch (and may punch a hole in your stomach if you have H. pylori problems). Hole is certainly a common collocation of this word, and ticket comes in often enough with the same sense, but outside of specific uses – and even to some extent within them – the puncture sense is bested by the pugnacious force of the word. Other collocations include pulling, packing, drunk, press, card, in, out and up. Even the letters have more the rounded shape of a blunt object (fist, wife-beating stick*) than any reminiscence of an awl or similar piercing object. Only a vowel separates this word from pinch, but the broad u and the narrow i are as opposed as the two actions. This word has the opening phonaesthetics of abrupt words such as puff, punt, pug, and punish, and the closing impact of crunch, bunch and hunch and the crisper munch and lunch. But when you’re quaffing a glass, it may make you think sooner of quench.

*The story that “rule of thumb” comes from the size of a stick a man was allowed to beat his wife with is not true; that account was invented long after the phrase, which came from estimating measurements. See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rul1.htm .

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vertex

Posted on November 17, 2008 | 1 comment

A word that starts and ends with angles: v, x. (It is perhaps ironic that this word lacks an A, since it was first of all not just any angle put the apex of a triangle – ah, APEX: there’s the angle to take.) Even in pronunciation you can find an angle: you start at the lips with [v], pass the alvolar ridge at [t] and proceed to [k], but then turn back forward to [s] – in [eks] the tongue closes the angle like a tapping telegraph key. And this word may have a flavour of narrowing in other ways, as other verts may seem narrow because tall (vertical) or simply reminding one of the angle of a v (divert). Others have a more vicious vibe (pervert). And of course there are the ones that turn to the point of dizziness (vertigo), true to the turning origins of vert. But somehow this word does not whirl like vortex, which forces the mouth into a funnel and has the roar of voracious and the lethality of vorpal. Yet vortex comes from vertex, which in Latin meant both the top of the head (and the highest point of anything) and a whirlpool. The o version took the swirl and the e version has taken the whorl on the top of the head. And so we find that the true tellers in the shapes of this word are the t – which has the highest point – and the two e‘s, which are the closest thing to a spiral.

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ersatz

Posted on November 15, 2008 | Leave a comment

This word, to look at it, could be something spectacular or chintzy. There’s something of the lightning bolt in it, but that diamond twinkle, it seems, is Brummagem – not coruscating but coarse. The sound of satz is not an electric spark but mere air – and that coffee in your cup is, well, not. Indeed, coffee was once a particularly common collocation of ersatz, but now this word gets around rather widely – but always with a cheesy (Velveeta?) or cheating tone. The roughly synonymous spurious is like a sneaky, curious snake that spears you with its fangs from behind, but ersatz is more of a whoopee cushion, or a phonaesthesis for the taste in your mouth after eating a dry, overcooked turkey wiener. It makes out better in its native German, where it cleaves closer to the norm; there, it’s simply a word for “replacement” or “substitute.” But who in English would refer to a one-day fourth-grade fill-in as an ersatz teacher, or a ninth-inning mound step-up as an ersatz pitcher?

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mêlée

Posted on November 14, 2008 | 1 comment

A mellifluous word, like a stream-smoothed pebble, that exists to prove that anything, shouted with enough guttural force, spit and testosterone, can be violent. The twisting arc of a body swinging a broadsword – is this not, too, the feeling of mêlée? If you may lay your enemy about and asunder with lashings of mace in malice, why not do so with a word you can sing while you swing? Or would that be too male, eh? But there are hints when you look at the word: those diacritics, arched like angry eyebrows or perhaps perched like helmets or carried like rucksaks and rifles. But why is that circumflex there? In French – the immediate source, of course – it always attests to an absence of s: so meslee, which in turn comes from Latin misculatus, “mixed.” And with that word we hear the military cutlery clashing and slicing. How those edges have blunted and polished over the centuries! Other words have come down, too, as the s has alternated with l and d: meddle is a killing cousin, but a sibling is medley, which first meant the mixing of forces in combat. Now it brings to mind music. So death is bookended with melody: the trumpets sound at the start of the battle, mêlée, mêlée; at the end, by the bleeding field, the birds reply, medley, medley.

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dandelion

Posted on November 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

It sounds like a character in a kids’ book, but it stands for an overly successful flower. Many lovers of flat, grassy lawns have exclaimed that there’s nothing dandy about these plants, and whoever says they are is lyin’. Certainly the first word association many would come up with for this one is weed. The plant is hardy, rough-and-tumble like its rounded, bouncing word (all at the front of the tongue, and all voiced), but pretty, too. Its floating seeds, signs of later summer, make guest appearances in feminine hygiene ads, but a cue from the name would make them seem more like dander or dandruff. This word has always seemed yellow to me – of course I knew the flower before the name. Its two d‘s give me an image of the cheeks of a cartoon lion, but what is leonine about this flower? You may think it’s the bush of yellow florets, somehow like a mane, but in fact it’s the leaves, like lion’s teeth – dent de lion is the French source. Next time you sink your teeth into a fresh dandelion green, see if it bites back.

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sockeye

Posted on November 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word like a fish slap in the face. The first part carries echoes of hosiery but also of fisticuffs, which may prevail given the swing of [s] and the impact of [k] – and the connection with eye, which, for its part, aside from being a potential impact site, bounces back like a recoil from the sock. Those looking at the eponymous fish (also called red salmon, blueback salmon, nerka, or – when found in landlocked water – Kokanee, the sound of which may make western Canadians thirsty) will wonder what is sockish about its eye. The answer is: nothing at all. This word took its current form by folk etymology from Salish suk-kegh or sukkai. Most Canadians, on hearing this word, will probably think of something pink in a can. They may or may not think of the two-and-a-half-foot-long colour-changing striver of rivers. But their enjoyment of its buttery flesh will be sharpened by the cracking echo of its name.

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trilby

Posted on November 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word that may seem old hat but perhaps also counfounds the hearer. Those who don’t know what a trilby is may think it a trifling, silly, or flimsy frill, or perhaps a flower – or a furry little purring space rabbit. Those who know it is a hat may be misled by the tri to think it a three-cornered one. In truth, the hat could have been called a Du Maurier hat (for the man who wrote the novel Trilby and did the illustrations, including ones of a character wearing a floppy Homburg-type hat with a pinched front, which was subsequently worn in the hit play as well), or a Billee hat (for the character who wore the hat)… or perhaps even a Svengali hat (for the most famous character of the novel, who, however, would more likely have lent his name to an axe-like beard had his appearance been more remarked than his character). But this is a word tasting note, not a hat tasting note. And, in truth, the word could have more readily been given to the feet, as the heroine Trilby had beautiful ones – and in fact it for a time was a cute word for a foot – or to a style of shoes – which it also was for a time. It never referred to a singing voice, oddly, in spite of its thrilling treble trill. The word on the page is mostly ascenders, going up like the heroine’s voice or the hairs on the back of your neck on hearing it (or on thinking of Svengali’s Mesmeric control), or pointing to the hat, but with a little y setting down a dainty foot at the end – or curving and pointing down like Svengali’s beard, depending on how you see it.

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conch

Posted on November 10, 2008 | 2 comments

A word with a hollow resonance, perhaps like the sound of the blowing of the eponymous shell, but cut off abruptly at the end, like the horns of the cars you hear on the road on your way, say, to Arawak Cay in Nassau to eat some of the eponymous mollusk (which, for its part, is chewy almost like octopus). Many who have passed their lives far from the West Indies may think that this word rhymes with craunch and haunch (or, for some Canadians, gonch, i.e., an undergarment which craunches the haunches), but to residents of the Cays and Keys (who often take this name on themselves) such a sound may be found distinctly off-key. This word is a cousin of wad and chance in that it is often a consort to blow – but it is much less lexically promiscuous than the others; its other companions are more limited and include shell, mainly, and fritters if you’re in the Bahamas. Another kind of blow – to the head – may be suggested by the pronunciation with [k] final. The visual form of the word does not spiral, but it does have two curls and a ring. And for the Romans, such concavity would have been sufficient, since in Latin it simply meant a mussel or cockle or a shell-like cavity.

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eternal & everlasting

Posted on November 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

eternal

Three syllables, seven letters, infinite time. This word hangs in the back of your head the axes of the endless: forever within (internal), forever without (external), forever revolving and returning (turn). It is found with a boundless set of words, preceding struggle, sunset, sunshine (of a spotless mind), city, night, prairie, hellfire, damnation, life, incompetence – you name it; on the one side of the coin is enduring and on the other is unendurable. If you listen to classical music you may hear æternum often, giving this word a flavour of singing and strings. This is a word that spans the universe, the great mu in the mind of the unknowable. It starts with an e as in eon and ends in the great null; on the way, you have a scent of the ether. And then you pass out of time.

everlasting

A trinity of morphemes for an eternity of time. This may be the greater infinity, having in it all the letters of eternal plus v, s, i, g (gives less an e). This is a fully Anglo-Saxon word, ever (a formation not found in other Teutonic languages; ay, which means “ever,” sounds like “eh” and was probably the basis of the first syllable of ever, is cognate with similar words in other related tongues) plus lasting, with the latter being last (meaning “endure,” in earlier times “follow” or “accomplish”) plus ing (the one that makes nouns, cognate with German ung). It has a nice rhythm, two trochees, making it well suited to being sung, which is why you may hear it in a bopping tune with the word love. It can also be heard with such words as damnation and hellfire, however, thanks to its ecclesiastical use. It may also bring to mind a brand of boxing attire. That connection may strengthen its occasional notes of elastic. The opening ever also carries with it a thought of its opposite, never, as in neverending. But, oddly, world without end brings to mind last things, and so lasting takes us forward to the end of time. It also takes us to the back of the mouth – from the v up front we move through the l and st on the alveolar ridge and end at the velum with ng. Extrapolation will take you through the glottis down to the source of breath, the perpetual cycle of breathing, an analogue of the cycle of all existence, life after life, big bang to big crunch to big bang and on.

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