Monthly Archives: July 2009

plenipotentiary

Posted on July 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Now, this is a mighty impressive word for a mighty, impressive person. Look at it: in the middle is potent – the word of power and prowess – and it’s flanked by torchbearers (i i); surrounding is a plenary session (conference terminology for “everyone attend!”). Three ascenders plus two dots and three descenders: it cuts a profile, and with six syllables and fifteen letters, it has two of many things: two dactyls, metrically; two p‘s, two e‘s, two n‘s, two i‘s, two t‘s. And a residue of l o ary. It bursts off the start with the plosive p spreading its aspiration onto the l, pops again at the second p and taps up the tension with ten. It’s like a drum flourish before a fanfare. But lest the one who is full of power get too full of himself, let it be remembered that this word contains within itself, awaiting the loss of but three letters (representing three phonemes), a nadir to match the zenith: penitentiary.

acorn

Posted on July 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

This word has that food-receiving mouthfeel that comes from corn, plus the bit of acuity that comes from the a. Its object presents images of that squirrel favourite, the tree-seed shaped like the head of a medieval yokel with a pageboy bob (or perhaps Dorothy Hamill). Nothing in the shape of the word readily suggests that, though; the closest is the co, a bit like an acorn on its side. (Scramble it and you get caron, a diacritical mark that looks just a little like an acorn cap turned upside down.) It’s just an unassuming little word, really, but one about which many assumptions have been made. It ought not to have the corn at all, etymologically; it appears to stem from the Gothic aker “field,” originally “open country” – source of acre – by way of the derivative akran, which would have signified “fruit of the open country or forest.” Others trace it to óg, an Indo-European root for “fruit, berry.” Wherever it came from, the sense over time narrowed to refer to the oak’s seed specifically. This led to versions such as oke-corn and oke-horn. Most recently, the misconjecture eggcorn has become a word to refer to such folk-etymological misconjectures generally. When we see acorn out on a date, its Betty and Veronica are squash and woodpecker (an acorn squash is a squash that resembles a huge acorn, and an acorn woodpecker is a type of woodpecker that hoards acorns).

starboard

Posted on July 5, 2009 | 4 comments

I remember one of my elementary school teachers telling us that on ships, the left side was called port because it was the side towards the port – ships docked on that side – and the right side was called starboard because, as it was away from the port, you could see the stars. In my adult years I have come to realize that many teachers, like many other adults, will often make things up that seem reasonable to them and assert them as fact when explaining things to children. This is one such instance. Actually, the star in this word comes from the word that, on its own, came to be steer in modern English. Old Germanic ships were steered by a steersman who stood on the right side of the vessel with a paddle. (This did force the ship to dock on the left side, so port is port because that’s the side of the ship that had the port – opening – in it for loading and unloading; that side was originally called the larboard.)

But no one thinks of steer now when seeing this word. Steering is not done from the right side and hasn’t been for a long time. And star, well, star is star! It has that éclat that lends fulgurance even to such a baleful thing as a star-chamber. In this word, it is joined to board, which has that rigidity with the hint or threat of splinter, and so you can get a taste of a wooden ship at night, stars above and boards below. Try to ignore the rats running off the left side… the ship is broad and you’re on the right. No mixed-up road brats – or bastard – will steer you wrong. Hard a-starboard!

P.S. There’s a huge amount of etymological rubbish focused on things nautical and naval. Quite a few terms and phrases have baseless – and sometimes breathtakingly inane – stories about nautical origins circulating. Among the most senseless is the assertion that “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” was a reference to cannon balls being stacked on brass plates on a ship’s deck. Whoever made this up knows not enough about a) ships in general, b) naval battles in specific, c) physics, and d) metal. Actually, it came from a host of phrases referring to brass monkeys, the first recorded one being “hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey.” (See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bra1.htm for more details.) Another common fase etymology is for posh, which has for decades been said to stand for “port outward, starboard home.” This is baseless. The term most likely comes from London street slang for “money.” See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pos1.htm for more details.

4 Comments

Posted in language and linguistics, word tasting notes

Tagged brass monkey, posh, starboard, word tasting notes