Author Archives: sesquiotic

zucchini

Posted on November 3, 2010 | 2 comments

Take one Italian word for “gourd”: zucca. Add a diminutive suffix, ino, to make zucchino (note that the root is feminine but the suffix makes it masculine; note also that the h is added to the spelling to keep the consonant as [k] rather than becoming an alveopalatal affricate). Pluralize to make zucchini. Borrow into English and serve, one or more at a time.

Yes, it’s hard to miss the Italianness of this word. Generally when you see a cch there’s a very good chance the word has come from Italian (yecch notwithstanding), and if you add the z it just ramps the odds up further. Italian, unlike English (with exceptions, e.g., bookkeeper), actually says double consonants as double consonants, and it happens to like them. And in Italian, anytime you have a /kk/ before a front vowel (/i/ or /e/ are the only two in Italian), you have to add the h after the cc – because the letter k is not as a rule used in Italian words (excepting loans).

But of course when it’s borrowed over to English, some of this is elided; most of us don’t know all the rules of Italian, and we certainly don’t follow them in English. As mentioned, double letters, except across morpheme boundaries, are almost always said as single sounds in English, so we say this word as [zu ki ni]. And since we don’t have a connection between sound and spelling for double letters, it’s common to see various confusions: zuchinni, zucchinni, zuchini, zuccini, zucinni.

The other thing we do with loan words, more often than not, is conform them to our morphology. We say gondolas, not gondole, for instance. Generally we borrow the singular and handle it like an English noun stem. But not always: if the idea of a borrowed plural morphology gets entrenched for a word – for instance, criterion/criteria, alumnus/alumni, graffito/graffiti (among a certain set, anyway), etc. – then we will keep the borrowed plural too. And sometimes there’s a bit of fussiness and controversy: I know quite a few people who get prickly when they see or hear “a panini.” “A panino!” they think or sometimes even say. “One panino, two panini.”

You’ll notice in the case of panini that it’s the plural that’s being used as a singular. And, since nothing escapes you, you will already be thinking about how that is also the case with zucchini. Yes indeedy. But the difference is that panini is a fairly fresh borrowing, with still a very noted Italian flavour, whereas zucchini came into English nearly a century ago (not so much in England, where courgette took hold) and it just happens there weren’t enough tut-tutters to make the singular stick. (In fact, the rather redundant zucchini squash was – and still in some quarters is – common, too, with no pedants seen out trying to stop it.)

Ah, the singular stick – how often do you ever have a singular stick of zucchini anyway? They tend to grow in such quantity that if you have friends who grow them you’ll come home to plastic bags of the stuff hanging on your doorknob, and if you buy them at the store they’re so cheap you might as well get two. You can see multiplicity even in the appearance of the word (just by coincidence, of course): two i‘s like two zucchini (or, as is often said, two zucchinis), two c‘s like two slices of zucchini (note its use there as a mass object: not slices of a zucchini), and even the u and n really the same shape rotated.

But what’s the most common word seen next to zucchini? One. Or, rather, 1. The second most common is 2. Why? Well, other common words it goes with include add, cut, medium, and small. Do you see where this is going? That’s right: you usually see this word in recipes.

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Commas before quotes

Posted on November 3, 2010 | 6 comments

Does quoted material always need a comma before it? Not necessarily. When the quoted material is within a narrative frame – even if it’s the only thing in the narrative frame – and we’re being taken to the scene, as it were, a comma is generally used. But when the quoted material is being treated as an instance of an utterance of that phrase, and the verb is the main thing rather than being an entrance point to dialogue (in other words, when the quoted material is truly the complement of the verb rather than an act of locution introduced), a comma is not called for. Some comparisons:

These are the sort of people who say “Sure thing” and then don’t do anything. [no comma there – it’s not bringing in an actual dialogue situation]

The pepper jar broke. Mary sneezed. John said “Aw, nuts.” The cat fled. [what John said is being treated as another action like Mary’s sneeze]

The pepper jar broke. Mary sneezed. John said, “Aw, nuts.” The cat fled. [you’re expecting further dialogue here – at the very least, the instance is framed as one of a dialogue situation]

Don’t shout “No, don’t do it!” at an actor in a play. [don’t use a comma here – this is a general comment, not an entry into a specific situation]

John stood, horrified. He shouted, “No, don’t do it!” at the actor. [this is an entry to a dialogue situation, even if no further speech is said]

John is a fool. Last night at the play he shouted “No, don’t do it!” at an actor. You can’t take him anywhere. [this is not entering a narrative]

John is a fool. Last night at the play, he shouted, “No, don’t do it!” at an actor. I had to grab him and drag him back into his seat. An usher ran over and glared at him uselessly. [this is entering a narrative]

In the end, the General said “Nuts.” [there was something he said at the end, and we’re just establishing what it was]

In the end, the General said, “Nuts.” [it’s taking us there to the instance of utterance]

There was the time Mary came home and found Debbie Travis in her living room. She ran out of the house shrieking “It’s her! It’s her!” and the camera crew had to sprint after her. [this is a more anecdotal, broad-view description]

Mary walked into her living room and saw a large number of people she knew. In the midst of them was Debbie Travis. Mary’s eyes popped. She ran out of the house shrieking, “It’s her! It’s her!” as the camera crew sprinted after her. [involved narrative]

There’s a certain amount of wiggle room and, yes, some variation in opinion on this. It can be a slight but important variation in tone in some cases; in other cases, the wrong punctuation will make it jarring.

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yank

Posted on November 3, 2010 | 1 comment

First of all, is a yank a jerk?

Well, in some parts of the world, certainly, people will tell you Yanks are jerks. Which is not necessarily fair, though I have to admit American tourists can often be quite grating, even if you are one (I tend to lean to my Canadian side when travelling – as though Canadians are never obnoxious, hah). But there’s Yank and there’s yank.

Both have the same sound, reminiscent of pulling on, say, a rope attached to something or someone – short, beginning with an accelerating impulse and then ending abruptly. Both have the same letters, with that final k like a wall with something being pulled away from it and that initial y like a wishbone that parties pull on – but the capital Y is perhaps more wishbone-like. Also more dowsing-rod-like.

But Yank is short for Yankee, which outside the US means “American” and in the US more often means “American from the northeastern states, or specifically from New England”. Its origins are not altogether certain, but most likely it comes from Dutch Janke “Johnny” or Jan Kees, a dialectal variation on Jan Kaas “John Cheese”, used as a derisive nickname (remember that there were many Dutch settlers in the northeastern US in the 17th century). The lower-case yank, on the other hand, seems to come originally from Scotland, where it means “a sudden sharp blow” (yerk is another word in the same vein); the “sudden pull” sense comes from the US, and the verb is formed from that noun.

So, in the American sense, yank is synonymous with “jerk”, but in the sense “American” it is not necessarily so. But it is good to have a word yank that is like jerk but different, since jerk has its own flavours – jerkin and jerky, certainly, but also jerk as in “annoying person” (as we have already implied) and jerk in some other, ruder uses. And given that yank is often used in conjunction with out, away, open, and, yes, off, that matters. It’s also good to be able to speak literally of “yanking someone around”, whereas “jerking someone around” has an overriding figurative sense. Yank also has a more completive feel: if we talk about “yanking someone or something”, that means pulling them or it from a program or lineup. “Jerking them” is not available for that kind of use.

And along with the imitative feel of it, it does get a little boost from echoes of yikes and all the ank rhymes (thank, spank, tank, and so on), and that [jæ] onset that could be positive but is always energetic emotionally. And, of course, the inevitably American flavour of it.

Thanks to Carolyn Bishop for suggesting yank – back in September 2008.

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curry favour

Posted on November 1, 2010 | 2 comments

The food court had suddenly become busy, and stomachs were growling. I was along for something to munch on, but the options that didn’t involve waiting were few.

Actually, the options numbered exactly one: only Chennai Kari House was unmobbed. Turning to Maury, who was slumped in a seat in dismay, and Jess, who had one eyebrow arched in that love-child-of-Ellen-DeGeneres-and-Mister-Spock way she has, I said, “Well, I favour curry.”

“You’re just saying that to curry favour,” Jess said.

“That old chestnut!” Maury snorted.

“Chestnut!” I said. “I rather think it’s been lying fallow.”

“Well, the point is, I think you’re just fawning.”

“Ha. That would make me a horse of a different colour.”

Jess’s eyebrow ratcheted up a notch. “I think I must have been away when you covered that one. Perhaps you could go over it again?”

“With a fine-toothed comb?” I said.

“A curry comb would do fine. I’m sure that curry as in combing down a horse, from a Latin word meaning ‘make ready’, is the source of the curry in curry favour. But could you do me a favour…?”

“Curry favel,” Maury said drily.

“Favel being an old term for ‘fallow’, ‘fawn’, or perhaps ‘chestnut’ – as in a colour,” I explained. “For a horse.”

“In medieval French allegories,” Maury explained further, “the fallow horse was a symbol of cunning and deceit.”

“Oh, yes,” Jess said, with an of-course toss of the hand. “The Roman de Fauvel.”

“All the potentates come to bow down before the titular donkey and to brush him off – curry him,” I said. “Sucking up and fawning over him. So originally it was a donkey, but later a horse. And then, reasonably enough, the phrase was reconstrued as curry favour.”

“All that fawning led to their roan-ation, anyway,” Maury said.

“I think the lack of food is getting to your head,” I said.

“Pappadum preach,” Maury shot back.

“Don’t talk naan-sense,” I retorted.

“OK, guys, I don’t want to be playing ketchup,” Jess said.

We both looked at her. “I’m guessing,” I said, “that that’s a reference to curry the food coming from Tamil kari, which was originally a word for a sauce or relish for rice, and to ketchup coming from Malay kechap, which is a fish sauce.”

“No,” Jess said, looking again at the Chennai Kari House counter, where a line was forming, “I’m saying I don’t want to play catch-up. We’re going to be stuck behind the mad rush for Madras if you two don’t get off your punning butts.”

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lunch

Posted on October 31, 2010 | Leave a comment

“I have a hunch,” Maury said, “we’ve beaten the lunch bunch to the punch.”

“Yes,” I said, surveying the still-deserted food court, “we’re ahead of the crunch.”

Jess nodded approvingly. “That’s good. I hate to have to use a truncheon to approach my luncheon.”

Maury looked at his watch. “Of course, the fact that it’s barely eleven would have something to do with it.”

“So we’ll call it a brunch,” Jess said.

I shrugged. “I just want something to munch.” I looked around. “Not too many options in that respect.”

“We’re surrounded by food places!” Jess protested. “Not too many options?”

“Most of what they serve does not make an audible crunch,” I said. “I am not of that school who – like some restaurant reviewers – would use munch for eating foods such as fried eggs or mashed potatoes.”

“Or soft tacos or hamburgers,” Maury added. He looked over to his left and jabbed me with his elbow. “You could get a Double Down.”

I looked down at his elbow. “What was that?”

“A dunch,” he said. “A short sharp blow, with the elbow.”

“Well,” I said, returning to the main topic, “double down is what I want in my pillow, not on my plate – and goose down, not chicken down.”

“Well, then, what sounds tastiest?”

“So far,” I said, “unch.”

“You can’t make a meal of a phonaestheme,” Jess pointed out.

“True,” I said, “but it works the jaws and, with that final affricate, makes a sort of crunch.”

“Would you really call it a phonaestheme?” Maury mused. “Do the words all have some element of sense in common?”

“They mostly seem to have an onomatopoeic origin,” I said. “Even bunch is thought to have an imitative basis.”

“Well,” said Jess, “I don’t know that I’d be as definite as that. I seem to recall that the OED gives ‘of obscure origin’ for several of them.”

“My favourite is its source for luncheon,” I said. “It says ‘related in some way to lunch.'”

“Which, in its turn,” Maury said, “may have formed on the basis of lump the same way hunch may have been based on hump and bunch may be related to bump.”

“And then there’s the other lunch,” I said, “basically obsolete now: ‘the sound made by the fall of a soft, heavy body.'”

“A lump, perhaps?” said Maury. “Does a lurch by a lump count?”

“Well,” declared Jess, “I would like a lump of something for lunch.” She looked around again. “Holy cow!”

We looked up. In the short time we had been tasting words, lines had formed at all of the food places. Maury threw his hands up as if crying “Uncle!” and audibly collapsed onto the nearest seat.

“Well,” said Jess, “that was our ‘lunch.'”

Thanks to Gabriel Cooper for suggesting the unch words.

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dryad

Posted on October 31, 2010 | 1 comment

After mentioning dryad at the end of naiad, I hadn’t really intended to return to it right away, but this evening I saw The Andersen Project, directed by Robert Lepage. (If you don’t know who Robert Lepage is, and you have any taste for live theatre, look for an opportunity to see one of his pieces.) It just happens that it’s about a guy who is hired to write a libretto for an opera production in Paris of Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Dryad.”

A dryad is a kind of nymph that lives in, or is associated with, a tree. And by nymph I don’t mean simply a young girl (I was going to name the eponymous lead female in a book by Nabokov, but then I remembered that that name is snagged by spam filters due to its use to signify young girls in prurient contexts). I mean a spirit, a sprite (not a Sprite, even if it’s a Canada dryad, but it may be effervescent – if evanescent), the sort of thing the aid of which you’re enlisting when you knock on a tree after saying something hopeful – and if not on a tree, then on the nearest wooden thing (which, however, seems a bit like expecting a steak to eat grass and say “moo”).

Dryad may or may not seem woody to you. The hint of druid in it may connect you to the forest, but otherwise its connection is pretty much through its sense and its etymology (from Greek δρυς drus “oak”).

But for some reason, to me the word dryad has always had a bit of an erotic tinge. Obviously, nymphs may have one, and dryads do always take the form of beautiful young women, but beyond that, nearly every context in which I can remember encountering the word dryad has had some at least faintly sexual tinge to it. I do wonder whether I don’t also associate dryness with bareness…

But dryads have a well-established place in literature. Andersen’s dryad (who pines to see the city, and then, having done so, dies wishing she had stayed in her tree) is among the less known of the literary dryads. The Victorian ilk, with their barely repressed prurience – that society that produced Lewis Carroll as well as the pre-Raphaelites – certainly had a taste for these little darlings of the woods; in fact, it had arisen even before the Victorian era. Keats, Wordsworth, Wilde, Coleridge, all mentioned them in one place or another (be they startled, leaf-crowned, light-wingèd, what have you); so did Milton, in Paradise Lost.

Not that modern times have no fascination with them, of course; we have not lost our taste for lithe young females, be they ever so sylvan and shy. Simply do a Google image search on dryad and you will see what I mean. Mind you, many of these dryads are not so wispy – they tend to have the buxomness characteristic of fantasy (and gaming) artwork. (Dryads are also characters in World of Warcraft, after all.)

I wonder, too, whether, the shape of the word doesn’t have some influence. Look at it: in the heart is the y, which may seem like two forks of a tree coming together, but may also resemble the meeting point of the legs (y), a shape you will see in many paintings of dryads. And those d and d on the sides – they could be trees, or branches, or blossoms, but they could also be parts of a feminine form. (Perhaps even a double-d feminine form.)

And no doubt other similar words influence. Other words for nymphs, certainly – naiad is notable – but also maenad. Ah, but dryads are at least not associated with Bacchanalian frenzy, however woody they may be.

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naiad

Posted on October 29, 2010 | 7 comments

Not too long ago I read an article about a swimmer. Not just any swimmer: a woman who holds the record for the fastest ten-mile swim across Lake Ontario. A woman who swam 102.5 miles from Bimini, Bahamas, to Jupiter, Florida. And then took 30 years off. And now is planning a 103-mile swim from Cuba to Key West… at age 60.

A regular spirit of the water, eh? Now, what did the Greeks call the spirits that lived in the water? Naiads. Specifically, a naiad is a water nymph (of the sort painted gladly by the pre-Raphaelites such as John William Waterhouse). The word naiad by extension also refers to juvenile dragonflies, damselflies, and mayflies; a certain flowering plant; a freshwater mussel; and an expert female swimmer.

So clearly the freshwater (and saltwater) muscles of this expert female swimmer belong to a naiad, yes? Yes and yes, in fact. Her name is Diana Nyad. And no, that’s not a made-up name; she was born Diana, and her mother married a man whose last name was Nyad. It just happens that nyad is an alternate spelling of naiad (though I cannot say for certain that naiad is the origin of her stepfather’s family name), and Diana is an anagram of naiad. Really, how perfect is that, eh? (But maybe don’t call her a nymph.)

Perhaps it’s just me, but the na seems to have a bit of a water association. Maybe I’m thinking natation (swimming); maybe I’m thinking French words such as navire, naufrage, and nager; maybe I’m thinking of Nadi, capital of Fiji (which is a bunch of islands); maybe I’m thinking of navy. Perhaps the source of that association is at root not available (n/a). The word naiad as a whole at least is pleasing to the eye, with a certain central symmetry; in the mouth, the word’s symmetry is nearly exact, as long as you don’t take into account the raising of the velum, which makes the nasal /n/ become a stop /d/.

The word naiad might seem also to have something of a flavour of not only ocean but Oceania, the naia tasting a bit of Polynesian tongues, but like Oceania and Polynesia the word naiad comes to us from Greek – the ad ending might be a hint: there’s Iliad, myriad, pleiad, and quite a few others, including some other types of nymphs.

Speaking of other types of nymphs, it’s worth pointing out that naiads are associated specifically with springs and fresh water. Diana Nyad is perhaps better known for her saltwater feats, and the nymphs associated with saltwater are called oceanids. Unless they’re in the Mediterranean, that is, in which case they’re called nereids. But, you know, you go with what you have…

Oh, and if a naiad is wet, what do you call a nymph associated with something dry? Well, if that dry thing is a tree, then the nymph is a dryad. Convenient, no?

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peptide

Posted on October 28, 2010 | 1 comment

This word looks as though it’s formed by bonding two somewhat disparate parts, one suggesting liveliness (not just pep but pepper, Pepsi, peppermint, and for that matter those yummy peppermint patties called Pep), the other suggesting massive fluid action (or laundry detergent, or perhaps a time of the year, as in Christmastide) – in other words, two parts suggesting action but otherwise some distance apart, sort of like two distant mountain states (say, Colorado and New Hampshire). On the other hand, it could be the cheerleading squad of the University of Alabama (whose sports teams are called the Crimson Tide).

One could also think of it as pept with the ide ending, of course – that chemical ide that shows up in bromide and hydride and other such things as may be pipetted in a lab. And in fact that’s where it comes from. The pept comes from peptone, which is not some group of harmony singers from a pep rally but rather (per the OED) “a mixture of proteins made soluble by partial digestion or hydrolysis”; peptone in turn comes from German Pepton, which comes from ancient Greek πεπτος peptos “cooked”, source in turn of pepsin and, from that, Pepsi.

What is a peptide? Even if you haven’t been tipped off, you probably have a sense that it’s something biochemical; I’m quite sure some of you reading know exactly what it is, and in much greater depth than I do. But, in short, it’s a chain of amino acids of the same type as a protein, but generally shorter (there is some overlap). When two amino acid residues are held together to make a chain (a peptide chain), the bond that holds them gets a name that is a common collocation for this word: a peptide bond. That’s specifically a carbon-nitrogen bond, CO linked with NH.

CO-NH peptide bond, eh… Makes me think of a ski chase in some Bond flick (Bond? Peptide Bond), taking place on the mountains of Colorado and New Hampshire. Or maybe he goes to the ocean and encounters a rip tide… Or maybe he just has too much dodgy food (with his martinis) and takes some Pepcid.

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wherefore

Posted on October 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

For many people, Shakespeare is reduced to two generally misunderstood quotes from monologues: Hamlet is all “To be or not to be” (which not all hearers may realize is not some existentialist meditation but rather serious suicidal ideation), and Romeo and Juliet is all “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

Ah, Romeo and Juliet. Two star-crossed lovers. Most of those who haven’t seen or read the play don’t know that Romeo and Juliet actually get married or that they’re both awfully young (Juliet is approaching her fourteenth birthday). And I’d venture to say that most of them don’t know what “wherefore art thou Romeo” means.

The thing is, wherefore just isn’t used today, with some fairly rare and rarefied exceptions. Most people know it only from that phrase. And, now, where does that phrase get uttered in the play? Juliet says it on her balcony, mooning over Romeo, who is lurking below unbeknownst to her. Now, if you’re a girl with a mad crush on a guy and you’re out on a balcony and you don’t know where he is, what’s more plausible: that you’re wondering where he is or pondering why he is? And since wherefore starts with where, the former interpretation seems quite natural, no?

Well, it sure does to a lot of people. I remember seeing a Saturday morning Warner Brothers cartoon where, after Juliet (played by a bird) utters the line, Romeo (another bird) climbs up and says, “I’m here, my love.” For that matter, it seems to have been a suitable reading for whoever wrote the headline for a recent theatre review in the Globe and Mail: “Wherefore art the love, Romeo?” Bonus points on that one for the quite common failure on archaic conjugation (art being of course what goes with thou and certainly not with the love, but the headline writer may have known that and just felt it was worth the joke).

Frankly, I think this word gets a fair amount of wear for one that’s not well understood. But anyone who happens to read or listen to what Juliet says afterwards will be confused if they think wherefore means “where”, as she wishes Romeo could deny his name and she declares “that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” Well, OK, people, what’s the central conflict in the play? Their families are enemies, that’s what! She’s fallen in love with a guy from the wrong gang! Ah! Romeo, Romeo, why you gotta be Romeo, eh? What for are you Romeo? What are you Romeo for? Couldn’t you be called something else?

Funny, isn’t it, that “What for are you Romeo” sounds so uneducated, whereas “Wherefore art thou Romeo” sounds so high-level – rather at opposite ends of the scale of fiscal wherewithal? At Shakespeare’s time, of course, thou was not a starchy word; it was a normal term one used for one’s equals and inferiors. And wherefore was just a one-word way of saying “for which” or “for what”.

Yes, that fore is really for. And the where? Well, it’s where, but used in the extended sense we see in whereupon and whereby – which mean “upon which” and “by which” (it’s also the where in wherewithal). Wherefore can be a relative pronoun (“He explained to me wherefore he had done it”) or, as we usually see it, an interrogative.

So is this whiffling on wherefore some kind of warfare on the fair words of English, or simply a bonk from a ball out of the blue on the fairway, and where was the “fore”? In fact, as irksome as it is to some, it’s unsurprising – a word that doesn’t get used much anymore is likely to be misunderstood if it looks too much like it means something else. What’s to do? Well, you could always use it more, preferably in contexts that make its meaning clear. But do be aware that everyone you say it to will think of Juliet…

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scapegrace

Posted on October 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

…we looked around through the detritus, strewn about the room like a hurricane-tattered landscape, and at length discerned a grey cloth heap in the corner in the shape of a cloaked lad. A nudge with the toe provoked a peek from inside the cape, and then the raffish ragamuffin threw off his covering, stood up with a wry smile, adjusted the ragged red scarf at his throat, surveyed the remnants of his uninvited sojourn and, without so much as a “please” or “thank you,” swung himself through the window and on to his next adventure. What a scapegrace!

Ah, scapegrace. The Oxford English Dictionary gives a likeable definition: “A man or boy of reckless and disorderly habits; an incorrigible scamp. Often used playfully.” And the quotations confirm the impression that this is a word of 19th-century literature – an era when scapegraces often showed up in novels, perhaps in a tattered cap and with a hearty “Wotcher, mate!” The word has a certain dash to it, not only through the internal echo of vowels but through the rough beginning – scape so much like scrape, and with its hissing catch and the dangerous echo of escape – followed by the smooth, nay, grace-ful ending, which subsides into another hiss but carries such a smoothness of sense.

And why would we use this word for that kind of person? Well, the idea is that he escapes, or has escaped, the grace of God – in other words, he’s a little heathen, ain’t he. Sounds kind of Huck-Finn-ish, dunnit? Or perhaps Oliver Twistish. So, yes, the scape is taken from escape (which ultimately comes from Latin ex “out of” and cappa “cape, cloak”, suggesting an uncloaking). It is altogether unrelated to landscape (which really ought to be landship if you want it to match the modern forms of its components). And the grace is of course the same grace as in grace of God (and also the grace of my wife when she’s in skates on the ice) – which traces back to Latin gratus “pleasing”, which is also the source for several words for “thanks” (grazie, gracias, etc.).

Just incidentally, scapegrace is also used for birds. I don’t mean female humans – it’s only very rarely used for them – but rather as a name for the red-throated loon, which is seen (among other places) around New England and the Maritimes, including Cape Race in Newfoundland.

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