Monthly Archives: February 2016

smilax, sarsaparilla

Posted on February 7, 2016 | 1 comment

Sometimes life seems like an impenetrable thicket of brambles. The more you try to push through, the more scratched up you get, and at the end of your efforts you don’t get what you want and you get what you don’t want. What is left for you? Smilax. Vegetate with sarsaparilla.

Smilax. Does that look like a portmanteau for smile and relax? That’s how you say it – there’s nothing tricky about the pronunciation. I suppose you could smile and relax with smilax, but that’s not what it means. It also doesn’t mean ‘smile and use an ax’, though you could do that with smilax. But it would be the smilax that you’re smiting with the ax: it’s a dense briery plant, in fact a whole genus of them. If you want to get to the root of the problem, though, eradicate it – e ‘out, from’ radic ‘root’ ate: pull it out by the roots. And then you may get to the sarasaparilla, if you take roots and make root beer.

Yes, Smilax is a genus with more than 300 species, and they’re all ornery little shrubs, the botanical equivalent of that dreadful project you’re stuck with at work. They include greenbriers, catbriers, prickly-ivys, various plants just called smilaxes, and sarsaparilla. What’s sarsaparilla, aside from a kind of smilax? It’s the plant whose roots give much of the flavour to root beer. Sometimes you’ll see root beer called sarsaparilla.

Kind of a classic-looking name, isn’t it, sarsaparilla? It seems to me to be a cross between a laid-back Southern something-or-other and a truculent simian or towering Japanese lizard. But it’s soft and liquid with a little pop, an ideal name for a carbonated beverage. You might be more energized by the sight of the Spanish version: zarzaparilla. It means ‘little brambly grapevine’: zarza ‘bramble’ and parilla ‘little grapevine’. Does that zarza look familiar? Yes, it’s the same one that shows up in Zarzuela, which is named after a place that’s named after brambles. And where does this zarza word come from? Basque sartzia.

Fair enough. Many are the days one may wish to lie back and bask in the sun with a glass of sarsaparilla and just… smilax. And think of what might have been. Which might have been Smilax.

Smilax, you see, was the name of a nymph: Σμῖλαξ. She was the object of unrequited love by a human youth. He pined for her, but his love was not evergreen; in the end it did not flower, but he did: he was turned into a flower that bears his name. He was Κρόκος; we know him as Crocus. And Smilax, the poor lass, was also turned into a plant, all because she wouldn’t Netflix and chill (or IMAX and climax). But she wasn’t turned into what we call smilax. She was turned into bindweed, a flowering vine. That’s what the Greeks called σμῖλαξ. Somehow more recent botanists managed to switch the name over to a less friendly, albeit tastier, plant.

Poor nymph. Just minding her own business when some random dude she couldn’t care less about develops a thing for her, and next thing she knows, she’s turned into a plant, just because she was pretty. And then she doesn’t even get to keep her name! Think about her next time you think you have troubles. A briery thicket? Pah. It’s nothing. Have a glass of root beer. And as you sip your sarsaparilla, raise it in memory of Smilax.

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kaggerleȝc

Posted on February 5, 2016 | 2 comments

How perverse is it to taste a word that hasn’t been used in about 800 years and that includes a character that’s been out of use in English for half a millennium? That has two morphemes, one of which is not only no longer productive in English but is not even in use, and the other of which is obscure, untraced, and unseen eslewhere? How deliciously wanton is that?

Not half as deliciously wanton as including it in a modern dictionary.

Oh, but this is the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the most colossal lexicographic effort available in the English language. It is the output of senseless devotion, of a decades-long Bacchanale in the love-den of the language by the most unrestrained of word nerds. The life they led! And an unled life it was – they were not pulled around by others; they were drawn by their own fascination and linguistic concupiscence. They were esurient for words. When the objects are words through the ages, lust and gluttony, however untoward they may be, are not deadly sins but a waywardness that brings and preserves life in the language. They are prodigal in their promiscuity and promiscuous in their prodigality.

And so we have this word, sitting with the others in the Oxford English Dictionary, like an innocent in the crowd – an innocent wearing two large clogs and an enormous feather and nothing much else to speak of. Asked for its bona fides, its invitation, its affiliation, it has but two citations to show, both from the same book circa AD 1200, and not even spelled quite the same as it. Here’s one: “All þe flæshess kaggerrleȝȝc. & alle fule lusstess.” The usher squints at the cite, then at the word sitting there, and with a sigh hands back the credentials and moves on.

So what is it, kaggerleȝc? It’s pronounced like “cogger like” or “cogger lake” and is made of two bits, kagger and leȝc. The second bit is a suffix equivalent to modern ness; it was usually spelled laik but is seen in the Ormulum as leȝȝc. What is the Ormulum? It is a 12^th-century work of Biblical exegesis, and it is a treasure for historical linguists because the author, rather than adhering to old standard spellings, developed his own phonetic spellings and wrote the work in strict meter, all for the purpose of ensuring priests’ ability to pronounce the vernacular appropriately. It thus helps us to know how English was pronounced at the time too.

The OED dropped the second ȝ, presumably because the Ormulum tended to double letters where they were normally singular. But it did not normalize the spelling to laik, perhaps because this word is a hapax legomenon (a one-off), and perhaps because at the time it was collected from the Ormulum its morphology was not understood.

And what is this great feather, this ȝ? It is yogh. It represented a voiced velar fricative. You know the Scottish or German ch as in ach? Just add some voice to that. But it could be weakened to a simple glide like “y.” It was eventually replaced with g and y and other respellings, but sometimes it was replaced with z because the cursive z looked a lot like it, and then that sometimes led to the pronunciation changing to “z.” Names that have this ȝ-to-z change include Mackenzie, Menzies (said “mingus”), and Dalziel (said “deal”). Such wayward carrying on!

And kagger? The context of the quote could help if you understand Middle English. The hints I’ve been carpet-bombing you with might also help. It meant ‘wanton’ – or anyway, that’s inferred; no one ever saw it by itself, only in these instances of kaggerleȝc. And kaggerleȝc means ‘wantonness’.

Wanton, by the way, is another word made of old bits that you can’t get in stores anymore. The wan is roughly equivalent to un as in undone. The ton is a past participle of tee, which means – meant, because who uses it now? – ‘draw, pull, lead’. So: Unled. Untoward. Froward (not forward).

And so this wanton use of dusty ancient lexis is a little self-referential note about the compilers’ wanton use of dusty ancient lexis. It’s like that old book on the shelf you have just because you have it. You keep it for special occasions, and then you pull it out and open it carefully and admire it, and wonder who first set eyes on it.

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discreet, discrete

Posted on February 3, 2016 | 4 comments

If you do not use your discretion in keeping words discrete, your lack of discernment may result in indiscretion – and it won’t be discreet.

Let’s be honest: discrete and discreet seem like the sort of word pair that just exist to be a sand trap in the golf course of the language, don’t they? They’re pronounced the same way and they have related meanings. But if you mix up the two, someone is sure to hold it up as evidence of a woeful lack of education. The English language is like a secret society where there’s a new password at every door, and sooner or later you’ll get one of them wrong and be stripped of your disguise and your power – your discretion and your discretion. And those who get it right will mock you indiscreetly. (Come to think of it, it’s more like an elementary-school secret club, isn’t it?)

Let’s start with the difference between the two words. One means ‘separate, distinct’, and it keeps its two e’s separate with the t: discrete. The other means ‘unobtrusive, prudent, secret or good at keeping a secret’, and it keeps both e’s hidden behind the t: discreet. So you see that the spelling suits them to a t and, remembering that, you can spell them with e’s. I mean ease.

But how did these words come to be so similar? Indeed, the noun form of the one is discretion and of the other is discretion. Which is to say there is no way to keep them discrete.

The reason for this is that they were originally the same word. The Latin source is discretus, which comes from the past participle of discernere, which is dis ‘apart’ plus cernere ‘decide, separate’. So if keeping things discrete and keeping things discreet both require discernment, now you know why. The connection between distinction and secrecy comes through prudence: knowing what’s what.

The two words were kidnapped into English in the late 1300s as one word with the two senses already in use. The spelling shifted around for the next couple of centuries as all English spelling did – discreyt, disgret, dyscrete, discreate, discrite, dyscrete, discreete – but it was only in the late 1500s that the spellings became discrete. English users sensed that there were two senses and thought it sensible to keep one for one and the other for the other. And so, almost discreetly – certainly it’s still difficult for many to see the difference – they became discrete.

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Tagged discreet, discrete, discretion, indiscreet, indiscrete, indiscretion, word tasting notes

verdigris

Posted on February 1, 2016 | 1 comment

When I was a kid, we sometimes did long car trips. We would pass through city after city and state after state (provinces, too, but not as much) on the kind of itinerary normally plied just by those who drive rigs. One thing that stood out to me when we passed through capital cities was that their capitol buildings tended to have green domes. I don’t mean a verdant green; more of a turquoise. I just assumed, being a kid, that this was something that went with important architecture. I had no idea that they were once bright, shiny, and copper-coloured.

Copper-coloured because, of course, copper. What colour does copper rust to? Green – that turquoise-y green. You will see it on other formal things: pennies, of course, though regular handling keeps if off most of them, but larger declarations of worth too, such as plaques and church steeples:

This green patina is verdigris. The state house domes were green because they were covered in a fair degree of verdigris.

Oops. Was that meant to be a wordplay? Fair degree and verdigris? The problem is this: the word is properly said like “verdigriss.” Hmm. The word looks like French, no? Yes. But it’s not directly borrowed, spelling, pronunciation, and all. It has changed and acquired a patina over the years, and is vulnerable to being reinterpreted through misconstrual.

Wouldn’t be the first time, though. Its French forms go back through history: modern vert-de-gris, which has a related adjective form vert-de-grise meaning ‘greyish green’ or ‘green of grey’ because that’s what it literally means, and it does look like that too; 14^th-century vert de grice; 13^th-century verte grez; and back to 12^th-century vert de Grece: ‘green of Greece’. Yep, Greek green; the Latin equivalent is viride Graecum. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that “the terminal syllable at an early date was no longer understood and hence underwent various corruptions of spelling and pronunciation.”

Various? Here are some of the spellings it’s had since it showed up in English: verdegrez, verdegreys, verdegrease, verdegreece, verdygresse, verdygrace, verdegrise, and, somehow, vargrasse. Well, what the heck, it was used for grass in some paintings.

Paintings? Yes, verdigris is seen in paintings as well as patinas; it used to be used as a pigment. But just when you want to rely on it, it turns out that it changes. Well, it goes from turquoise to a truly verdant green over about a month, which is good. But then it can keep changing. It holds its colour in oil, but not in other media, and if the pigment is made by boiling verdigris in a resin, it can turn brown even in oil paints. I’d like to quote Wikipedia on this, for reasons that will soon be apparent:

This degradation is to blame for the brown or bronze color of grass or foliage in many old paintings, although not typically those of the “Flemish primitive” painters such as Jan van Eyck, who often used normal verdigris.

So they painted the grass and leaves green, but, like the real thing, they went brown in time.

But not van Eyck. Who was van Eyck? Here, I happen to have a photo of his statue in Brugge: