fuchsia

Posted on September 24, 2009 | Leave a comment

OK, stop. Don’t look up. Close your eyes and spell this word out loud.

OK, check now. How’d you do?

This is indeed the sort of word that may confuse ya – or outfox you. A variety of spellings may be found for it; fuschia, fuscia, and fucia are all common enough. And they would seem to make more sense. How did it come to be spelled that way, anyway?

Well, rather, how did it come to be pronounced that way would be the right order of things. It was named (in 1703) after 16th-century German botanist Leonhard Fuchs. He’s far from the only person to have a plant named after him by appending the neo-latinate ia on the end; for instance, Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first US minister to Mexico, introduced the plant subsequently named after him to the US (and you will notice that the /i/ has been dropped in common pronunciation), and American anatomist Caspar Wistar had a now well-known plant named for him after his death (there was obviously some inconsistency in the spelling, given that we call it wisteria).

So anyway, Fuchs, which is German for “fox,” is not pronounced like “fewsh”; it rhymes with kooks, even in German (the velar fricative becomes a stop before the [s]). In theory, this word should be said “fooks-ya.” But aside from that sounding rather rude in Northern England, the average anglophone who looks at this word is unlikely to think of saying it that way.

The next question, though, is: what do fuchsia look like? I’m sure you know what colour they’re supposed to be. No doubt Herr Fuchs had no idea that, a half millennium after his time, his name would have transmuted from a reference to an animal known for being red to a soft, mushy word for a very floral, feminine kind of magenta. But the flowers actually come in a variety of kinds of red and purple. As for the flowers, they’re dainty little things that grow drooping downwards, looking rather like escapees from an especially florid ballet production, petals out like skirts and stamens down like spindly legs.

But it seems that the colour beats the flower in popular usage now. This word tends to be found near other colour names and near words such as dress, silk, hair, and lipstick. Not that the plant is rare or difficult; it’s actually quite hardy, surviving, like this word, rather better than you might expect.

Now, look again at this word. Does it look like a word for that kind of flower or colour? Really, I don’t know; you tell me. The f by itself bears a certain resemblance to the flower, but if I look at that fu and the ch it seems rather unfriendly and coarse. If, on the other hand, I think of how it’s pronounced and just glance at it as an ensemble, the effect of the sound takes over; I forget its past and heed its “fewsha.”

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smidgen

Posted on September 22, 2009 | 1 comment

This word stays right at the front of your mouth, as though you were worrying a flaxseed with your incisors. It can be said quickly with the merest movement of the mouth and just a smidgen of sound. It has clear echoes of midge and midget, both words for diminutive objects, but it’s not too far from fridge and bridge either. The /sm/ onset brings flavours from many words: small, smack, smash, smattering, smear, smell, smile, smirch, smirk, smite, smithereen, smooch, s’more, smother, smudge, smush… And the high front vowel sets the size at small; you know it’s somewhat less – and neater – than a splodge.

It showed up in English in the mid-19th century, but we’re not sure where from. Perhaps from smitch. “Oh, right, smitch!” you say. “Uh…” Yes, smitch is a no-longer-used word meaning “a little bit.” And it? “Of doubtful origin,” the Oxford English Dictionary declares. Oh, come on lads, give us some etymology. Just a smidgen?

To look at, certainly, this word is not unusually small; in sight and sound it has two parts, easily snapped in half for those who want less. But write that half down and it’s almost as big as it was to start with – smidge – which is unsurprising: how often have you said you wanted only a bit and then had nearly the whole thing?

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arabesque

Posted on September 21, 2009 | Leave a comment

My incredibly beautiful wife is an incredibly beautiful dancer and an even more incredibly beautiful figure skater. She spent her 20s as a professional figure skater, she has a level 2 skating coaching certification, and she has an MA in dance. So naturally, she’s the first person I turn to for help tasting a word like this.

I walked into the bedroom just now. She was sprawled on the bed, half-covered in papers, watching TV. I awkwardly raised my right leg, awkwardly canted forward, attempted to maintain my balance while holding my body in a T of which the vertical was one leg, the crossbar my torso and the other leg. “What’s this?” I asked.

“In dance, arabesque,” she said. “In skating, spiral. In gymnastics, scale.”

“Why is it called an arabesque?”

She looked vaguely guilty. “I don’t know…” She smiled slightly and shrugged. “Are you going to take away my MA now?”

I came back out to see if I could find out what a T-shaped dance position had to do with Arabs.

Yes, arabesque does mean “Arabian”; it’s not some coincidence. And it’s a nice, ornamental word, too, long, with many curves, and the well-balanced ascender and descender in the b and q, well suited to ornaments in calligraphy.

Now, we may do calligraphy, but, really, no one does calligraphy better than Arabic calligraphers. The sinuous, cursive forms of their alphabet lend themselves well to it, and the Islamic proscription on iconic (pictorial) art (observed with varying stringency, but in some quarters adhered to absolutely) led to a great efflorescence of calligraphic and geometric ornamentation. The artistic impulse will out, after all, even with strict constraints, and many a mosque has myriad motifs in repeating linear and polygonal forms. This style of design, as it happens, is quite reasonably called Arabesque.

Naturally, the design charmed Europeans who saw it, and they copied it. Well, in their own way, with their own historical influences and without the constraints of a proscription on iconicity. Swirling, twining forms – what could those lend to? Well, a more literal efflorescence, with leaves and branches and all that. Other extended uses have followed, typically with reference to ornamentation, orientality, or both. Arabesque, for instance, also names a musical form that is brief and ornamental.

And so, in 1830, we find (with some help from Oxford) in C. Blasis’ Code of Terpsichore the following:

Nothing can be more agreeable to the eye than those charming positions which we call arabesques, and which we have derived from antique basso relievos, from a few fragments of Greek paintings, and from the paintings in fresco at the Vatican, executed after the beautiful designs of Raphael.

In other words, it seems that the position is named after figures in artwork taken by Europeans as being Arabesque, though actually it wasn’t necessarily all that Arabesque. (Hardly the first national misnomer ever!)

The word rolls about in the mouth nicely, first with the liquid [r] and then flowing from front to back: [b], [s], [k]. The word, of course, makes one think of Arab and perhaps of Moorish architecture, but also carries foody tones of bisque and barbecue (though the object may be more like a curlicue).

My wife has come out to explain the skating part further. “It’s a spiral,” she says, “because you’re on a curve. You’re on one foot – you’re always on one foot – and you’re skating a curve.”

“And in gymnastics it’s a scale because it looks like a set of scales,” I hypothesize. She agrees that this makes sense.

“So if that’s a spiral,” I ask, “what’s a camel?”

“When you spin,” she says. “And if you hop from one foot to the other when entering, it’s a flying camel.”

Which could present a rather scary picture – if one put oneself in the shoes (or sandals) of an Arabesque person. No wonder Aladdin preferred a carpet.

Today’s word was originally requested by Elaine Phillips.

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moribund

Posted on September 21, 2009 | 1 comment

I stopped by my friend Maury’s place the other day just as he was anticipating the results of some baking. As I entered, I thought I caught a whiff of scorched cake. I ranged myself against a counter to watch him exhume a fluted tube pan from its crematorium. As Maury inverted the Bundt cake – what was left of it – on a rack, I opened my mouth to comment, and he turned and said, tensely, “Don’t-even-say-it.”

But moribund has a certain something to it, doesn’t it? It seems to have more rebound than some words (even if its objects have missed their final rebound), with the lips–tongue–lips–tongue, and nasal–liquid–stop–nasal and stop. If you say it in the usual fashion, with the i lax and underpronounced, it’s quite dominated by some of the more sepulchral vowel sounds we have, especially with the nasal. It’s a word headed for death, and stopping at the [d] (because I could not stop for death, it kindly stopped at d…). Of course, it’s seldom used literally now; it’s more likely seen with such as economy and industry.

I reflected further as I scanned Maury’s interior decorations. He had a picture of the old European riverfront section of Shanghai, famous for its commerce and nightlife in the 1930s, moribund under Mao, now very much on the rebound: a river of bright lights, in fact. “Nice picture of the Bund, Maury,” I said. He peered at me over the tops of his glasses.

My vision strayed to the splayed flowers in a dish on his table. “Moribana?” I asked. They did not seem to be doing so well; they were perhaps closer to icky than to ikebana. Maury strolled over, looked at the flowers – bound for glory, as the saying goes, only without the glory – and looked at me. And didn’t say anything. At. All.

Well, it must be difficult for Maury, having a name that recalls the Latin root for “die,” mori. I try to be sensitive; I’ve stopped calling every gift and postcard I get from him a memento Maury. But he doesn’t make it any easier for himself, either.

On this particular day, he wanted to show me a new tuxedo he’d bought. He came out from his bedroom in the full-on suit complete with cummerbund and black bowtie (real, not clip-on, give the guy credit), and he was holding a martini glass. “Bond,” he said, “Maury Bond.”

And then paused. And winced.

I pointed at his waistine, of which there was more than before, and, indicating the pleated cloth thereon, asked, “Moribund?”

He raised his martini hand. Straightened his arm. Pointed his index finger to the door.

“One more pun, and…”

He sighed, gave up, and went to refill his glass.

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whilom

Posted on September 17, 2009 | 1 comment

“Anyways,” said Jess, “he—”

“Oh, please,” Margot interrupted, wincing and setting down her cup. “Please don’t say anyways. Any goes with the singular. Any way.”

I looked at Margot as though she had just denied the law of gravity. “It’s not a plural,” I informed her. “It’s a genitive. The genitive as an active inflection survives now almost exclusively as the possessive, which has in recent centuries had an unetymological apostrophe inserted, but you see it surviving in forms such as names like Johns and Williams and in words such as anyways – meaning ‘of, or by, any way.’ The loss of the s is due to the same reanalysis you’re making, which is not new but is not historical.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Margot declared. Other people in the coffee shop peered over their papers to see if there was some conflict that might prove entertaining. “We don’t form new words that way, so to heck with the old ones that use that.”

“So you’ll be chucking out woe is me too?” I said, arching eyebrow and relaxing back.

“That doesn’t have any genitive on it!” Margot protested.

“No,” said I, “it’s a retention of the whilom dative. ‘Woe is to me.'”

“Whilom!” Jess said. “I love that word. And I love that you said ‘whilom dative.'” She leaned forward and clapped her hands together. “Guess why.”

I paused for just a moment, then smiled. “Because whilom is dative.”

“Yes!” she said gleefully.

“You mean you date yourself by using it,” Margot said drily, then moistened with some coffee. Everyone else in the joint, sniffing the general topic, had gone back into hiding.

“That would be solipsistic,” Jess replied, and turned back to me. “Dative plural.”

“Right, of course, the most consistent case ending in Old English: -um.” Just to prove I was capable of even greater pretentiousness, I started in on Beowulf: “Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum…”

“Not hwæt,” Jess riposted, “hwile. Um.”

“It sounds more ho-hum to me,” Margot interjected.

“Now, don’t talk whilom speaking,” Jess said, smirking. Score one for the Jess. “A while is a time, and whilom – from hwilum – is ‘at times.'”

“But now it really means ‘at past times’ or ‘at a past time,'” I added.

“But why not just use erstwhile?” Margot protested. “It sounds more snappy.”

“You could,” I said, “erst being ‘first,’ just as it is in modern German. But whilom has more the air of sometime, I think, while, of course, bespeaking greater erudition.”

“Or pretentiousness,” Jess added. Hey, how come she gets to be the one who, while knowledgeable, comes across as down-to-earth? I didn’t want to play “good logophile–bad logophile” here.

But I ploughed on in usual fashion. “The tastes are different, too, even aside from the register. Erstwhile has the t stop in the middle, and that ers almost sounds like hitting the brakes before it. It also calls forth first by rhyme as well as the German connection. Sometime starts with a hiss, and calls forth a common word with its own implications – sometimes being used variously for ‘never’ and ‘almost always.’ Whilom is softer and rounder, a glide, a liquid, a nasal; a word to put a baby to sleep. For a while. To while away time. Why not?”

“There can be a voiceless glide in it, too,” Jess pointed out. “If you really say it as a wh word.”

“Which we whilom did,” I added.

“And you do from time to time,” Margot pointed out. “But, say, none of these words can be used just to mean ‘from time to time’ or ‘temporary, at whatever time.'”

“Naw,” I said, “I think we’re stuck with temporary for that. And momentary. And various phrases.” But I looked over at Jess and she had a heck of a glint in her eye. Her hands dived into her purse; there was a sound like a raccoon trying to escape a junkheap avalanche, followed by the prestidigitation of a small notebook, which Jess opened and thrust forth as though it held a pearl picked up off the sidewalk. Which was not too far from the truth.

“It’s obsolete, of course,” she said, her voice taking on a slight hush. “But revive it next time you want to say ‘temporary’ – or should I say ‘time-turning.'” We leaned forward to the lambent bond paper and pronounced the pencilled treasure that described its own transit in the English language: “Whilwendlic.”

Words I have tasted have from time to time been suggested by readers, and I have been remiss in acknowledging those who suggest them. I shall try to make a practice of acknowledging my muses. Today’s word was recommended by Wilson Fowlie.

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quodlibet

Posted on September 17, 2009 | 1 comment

“Is this some oblique DT arising from word withdrawal?” I asked myself, rubbing my eyes and rising to seated. Before me was a sort of comic chimera, half toad and half tome, and it uttered but one word: quodlibet.

Ah, whatever could that be, culling me from my cuddly bed? O bed quilt, have you formed in a fog this frog and quarto? Its presence seemed to coldly bid me to speak at length. I could leave it, but I felt obliged to quibble about it. “Have you ad-libbed this?” I demanded. But again it made its quiet, bold reply: quodlibet.

It is not, pace Aristophanes, a musical being, this ribbeting, quodlibeting thing that addressed me in the night, and yet a quodlibet, in the musical tradition, is a juxtaposition: a rendition of acquisitions – quotes of notes – in just the position to play them one against the other. Did the risible vision wish me to weave together “The Huron Carol” and “Paint It Black”? Vivaldi and Led Zeppelin? “Is it music you seek, o spectral freak?” But again it said but quodlibet.

Such a word, as though from a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Clearly Latin; I rose and took to my books. It seemed a word built of spare parts: round rocks rolled at front, and at back, and in the middle a sheaf of papers or a stock of books. And it was made from two joined parts: quod, “what,” libet, “pleases.” “And so what pleases you, o syncretic beast of synthetic word?” And still it coldly bid: quodlibet.

On I read, to find that Renaissance scholars would expatiate or debate ex tempore on a nonce topic suggested by one from the audience. This academic cadenza was the first object of this word. And then from that came a smaller sense, an equivalent of “quibble.” “So then,” I said and turned again to the exigent amphibian, “the occasion of this invasion is an improvisation on a theme? Pray what, o fiend from a dream, is the topic on which I shall exhaust the capacity of my sagacity and loquacity?” And once more it broke the sound of silence: quodlibet.

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Arcadia

Posted on September 16, 2009 | 11 comments

My abode is a serene island of peace and literature in the sky; looking north from my desk, where I write this while eating Cajun spice potato chips, I can see late-night office tower lights winking off and on: the vertical constellations of urban troglodytes. Looking past my poinsettia and aphelandra, out another window I can see Berczy Park. Crossing to the south side of my heavenly box, I can see Tommy Thompson Park, a spit of land in the lake turned into a nature preserve, crumbling blocks of construction detritus slowly being reclaimed by encroaching nature and birds, so many birds. Three times three times three floors down from my downtown view, the massive ark of my building meets the street with massive arches: an arcade running the length of our frontage and that of the neighbouring hotel, providing not only shelter from weather but an exceedingly popular spot for nuptial photography. I feel that I live in a most beautiful location.

Ah, et in Arcadia ego, as Nicolas Poussin put it. Well, now, admittedly, he put it on a tomb, a crumbling cube of stone in the midst of nature, and there remains debate on to whom it was dedicated or directed, and for that matter exactly what the phrase was saying – well-formed but ambiguous Latin that it is. It has been used by some as a key to cryptic constructions, fanciful mysteries involving blood and grails. But the scene in Poussin’s painting is reminiscent of the Arcadian: idyllic, pastoral, even if contrasted by Poussin with death. Arcadia has long been idealized – since Virgil’s Eclogues – as that unspoiled world of nature, home to shepherds in lambskin breechclouts bearing Pan pipes, and nary a structure in sight – certainly not stone arches, nor a fortiori entertainment arcades. So how may I say that I, too, am in Arcadia?

First, let us place Arcadia on a map. It is the heart of that nursery of eponyms, Peloponnesus, north of Laconia (home of the laconic and spartan Spartans), west of Argos (who actually play west of where I live, in the whilom Skydome), southwest of Corinth, south of Achaia (a name you may have seen on bottles of wine) and north of Kalamata (a name you’ll know from jars of olives). I note that this archetypically bucolic locale has, ironically, a town in it named Megalopoli – the first town in Arcadia, built in 371 BC, which gained its name by its growth (it had a theatre that seated 20,000, more than twice the town’s present-day population).

Arcadia, home turf of Pan, was said in myth to have been named after its first king, Arcas. His mother, Callisto (from Greek Kallisté, “most beautiful”), was a nymph, one of many maids seduced by Zeus; for this, her reward – aside from pregnancy – was not marriage but to be turned into a bear by Hera. She and her son now occupy the heavens as the Great Bear (Greek Arktos) and Little Bear (Greek Arkas). The Great Bear is the cynosure that points to Polaris, that sign of sure north and marker of the Arctic. (Yes, that’s where arctic comes from: the Greek “bear,” and this bear in particular.)

The idealization of Arcadia in idylls – in literature of Roman and Renaissance times, and into the neoclassical revival – made it a byword for sylvan beauty, so that Giovanni da Verrazano (he of the New York narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island) applied it to the Atlantic coast north of Virginia. The region so designated crept northwards, but en route lost its r. It came to name a national park in Maine and, more importantly, a whole realm of New France in the Maritimes, formally established as Acadia in 1604, a third of a century before Poussin’s famous painting. And then, when in 1755 the British forced expulsion of those who would not swear fealty to the crown, some 7000 moved south to a new French enclave in a warmer area, and Acadian was further eroded and respelled to Cajun. And, as we know, the megalopolis of the Cajuns, New Orleans, though on the Gulf coast, nearly suffered the fate of Atlantis.

Arcadia also gave its name to a man named Arkadios, who became a saint of the Orthodox tradition. Thanks to him, there are many Russian men now named Arkady; one may think of Arkady Islaev, the owner of a country estate in Ivan Turgenev’s play A Month in the Country (jealous husband of a younger wife, who was bored out in the boondocks), and Arkady Renko, the protagonist in Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park, which takes its name from a Moscow amusement park.

Now, without assailing you with an asterism of asterisks, I leave it to you to connect the dots. How can my parallelepiped sans Pan pipes, my urbs et orbis, my tower of silence above the madding megalopolis, my words and plants perched between park and park, with stars to the north and water to the south, how can it be Arcadia without aid of a car? But how could it be anything but?

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cicada

Posted on September 15, 2009 | 5 comments

Oh, you know that annoying noise that you hear during the dog days of summer, that horrid buzz of torrid times, the sound that comes with people peeling off their clothes: the cicada. Jon Secada? No, but close: this one’s also Latin and also likes things steamy. The cicada is the heat-buzzer insect, harbinger of torpor. Its name is straight from the Latin cicada, meaning “buzzer,” only the classical Romans said it [kikada]. So how do we say it? Well, you say “si kay da,” and I’ll say “si kah da”… either way goes, though neither way goes as far in imitating the sound of the insect.

The shape of the word is not at all angular, though it does have pattern: cic mirrors ada its form, and while the a’s seem to reflect the c’s, the ci is like a separated d. Oh, it’s a pretty word, almost as though done by a fashion designer. The object of the word is variously pretty according to species; some people find it tasty, too. It is not to be confused with a cricket or grasshopper; a cicada may eat plants and make noises, but it does not swarm – though often many emerge all at once – and it does not stridulate. It simply beats its timbals rapidly – a little Ricky Ricardo, this one. Or perhaps a little Keith Moon, since it gets up to 120 decibels.

But most of the life cycle of the cicada takes place underground; they live on roots for years as nymphs – some do not come out until they are 17. But at last they emerge and leave their old skins hanging on trees, and make their début before the world in the full bloom of summer… rather as many a nymph of society leaves Roots behind and generates some buzz in the Escada summer collection. Ah, but fall is around the corner…

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Worcestershire

Posted on September 13, 2009 | 3 comments

I was in Boston for a word tasting event, and at the banquet I happened to find myself seated across from Jenna – a student from Tufts University – and her boyfriend, a “townie” from Medford, whose name I at first heard as Mack but realized on speaking further with him was Mark. Which should tell you a little something about his accent.

The table was well supplied with condiments. Mark reached for one bottle of dark liquid and said, “Wha’s dis heah sauce?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“What?”

“Worcestershire sauce, just like you said.”

“Wh—” he turned the bottle and saw the label. “Oh, hey, like the town here in Mass. Wista.”

“Yeah, exactly the same. It’s named after a county in England – Worcestershire – which is named after the town that the city here in Massachusetts is named after. Only in England they say ‘Wooster’ rather than ‘Wister.'”

“I always sawta wondahed wheah that came from.”

“Yeah, originally from the name of a tribe that lived there – back when the Anglo-Saxons had tribes – called the Wigoran and from Old English ceaster, meaning ‘town,’ which in turn comes from Latin castra, meaning ‘fort’ or ‘camp.'” I pronounced ceaster in the Old English way, rather like “chester.” “So the town may have grown,” I observed, “but the name keeps shrinking.”

“I’ll say,” Jenna said. “My student loan forms have return envelopes addressed to WORC MA. Double-you oh ar see. That’s down to four letters.”

“Well, dat’s cuz yah gonna write a letta home sayin’, ‘I’m gonna have to work, ma, to pay this off.'” I began to see what Jenna liked about Mark. “Anyway,” he said, flipping the top open to sniff it, “I hope this sauce ain’t the worst for sure.” Jenna smiled. Hey! How come this guy found a girl who likes puns? When I was his age such girls didn’t exist.

He looked at the bottle again. “Hey, this’s got a spellin’ erra on it.”

“Naw,” I said. It was a bottle of Lea & Perrins. What were the odds of their misprinting their label?

“Yeah, it’s missin’ the H. Waw-chesta.”

“There isn’t an H,” I said. “No H after the C.”

“Oh, it’s spelled differently in England?”

“No, there’s no H in the town here in Massachusetts, either. I know everyone says there is, but there’s not. It’s on the maps and the street signs – where they get past the first four letters. No H.”

“Naw, yaw full of it. I grown up heah.”

“There are people who’ve grown up in Toronto who think Eglinton is spelled Eglington,” I said. “There’s no H.”

“But you said ‘chesta’! So you know theah’s an H!” he exclaimed.

“In Old English they spelled that just with a C before the E,” I said. “Though in the name of the town Chester in England, they did add the H.”

“Look,” said Mark, not smiling, “everyone knows: you say it ‘Wista,’ you spell it ‘Waw-chesta.'”

“I know. But they should say you spell it like ‘Wor-sester,” I replied.

I glanced at Jenna. I could see that she knew I was right, but she wasn’t going to say so. Her lips were pursed to keep it from getting out. She decided to try a diversion. “Can I see the bottle?”‘ She reached for it abruptly, but Mark wasn’t quite ready to let go of it. The resulting jerk sent a spurt of sauce across the table and onto my upper torso.

Mark laughed. “Theah, that’s proof!” he said. “You wore it on yaw chest an’ shirt!”

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loom

Posted on September 12, 2009 | 2 comments

Daryl, Margot, and I were sitting by food court windows overlooking Yonge Street, observing the ebb and – mostly – flow of life below, and the conversation meandered into politics.

“In loom of a fall election,” Daryl said, “I –”

“Wait,” Margot cut him off. “In what?”

“In loom of a fall election.”

“You mean in lieu,” she said, her index finger admonitory.

“I sure don’t,” Daryl said. “In lieu means ‘in place of.’ I’m not talking about that. There’s a fall election coming, it’s looming in the near future, and we’re in the loom of it. It’s looming over us.”

“You can’t say that!” Margot protested.

“I think he just did,” I said. “But I haven’t heard it before.”

“Look,” Daryl said, “it gets used. Google it, you’ll find enough hits. Anyway, as it happens, I just saw it used in the news headline on that TV screen.” He pointed at one of the coven of screens stationed throughout the food court showing news and advertising. “If journalists are using it, it’s in use.”

Margot gave a little shudder. Her disaffection for the English of journalists was not a secret to those who knew her. “But what is a loom?” she said with asperity. “I mean, a device for weaving…”

“Originally a tool of any kind,” I said. “A good old Anglo-Saxon word, over the centuries narrowed in meaning.”

“A political machine,” Daryl said. “Not what I had in mind, though. Loom is the looming shape, looming presence. I looked it up. Something seen at first indistinctly, as, for instance, a ship on the horizon, is a loom.”

“But we’re not in it.” Margot jabbed her finger into her coffee cup, making a small splash. She sucked the coffee off her fingertip and added, “I think you’re a loon.”

“Loom‘s a word for that, too,” Daryl said. “A kind of loon – or its meat, for cooking – is sometimes called loom. Actually, loon comes from loom, not the other way around. Of course the etymology of this loom is different.”

“Well,” I said, “a fall election will eat up plenty of loonies, we can be sure.”

“And,” Daryl continued, “the etymology of loom, the verb, is different from that of loom, the implement, thought they’re both Germanic. But there’s a fair bit about the verb that’s obscured in the mists of time.”

“Looming, as it were,” I said.

Margot riposted. “I think you just grabbed this word, loom, because it has an echo of doom and other shadowy suggestions from that spooky oo, and this vague image of something overbearing in the fog, and you stuffed it into the form of an existing phrase in place of the lieu.” (“Not in place of the loo!” Daryl protested, crossing his legs as though interdicted from micturition.) “I find that a bit malapropriate,” she concluded.

“Can you say malapropriate?” I exclaimed. Daryl, meanwhile, was making spooky gestures with his hands and leaning forward saying “Loom! Loooooom! Llllloooooommmmm!”

“I just did,” Margot said to me, folding her arms. “So there. Malaprop plus inappropriate. Two can play.” (In fact, a bit of checking later showed that malappropriate exists as a synonym for inappropriate. Alas, there goes that bit of fun.) “Oh, knock that off,” she snapped at Daryl, “you sound like a sick cow.”

“Sheep would be more appropriate for an election,” I said. “Like lambs to the slaughter.”

“Looms to the slaughter!” Daryl said, clearly having a bit too much fun.

“Well, I don’t like this new phrase, in loom of,” Margot declared, in case we had missed the fact. “It’s bound to cause confusion, and it simply sounds ill-educated.”

“And you would use what in its place?” Daryl demanded.

“In the… in advance of… ahead of…” Margot winced; she knew that she had just uttered a bit of journalese: Ahead of a fall election, X is doing Y. “Um, With a fall election looming…”

“I like in loom of better,” Daryl declared. “And so do they.” He gestured at the TV. “It’s catching on.”

“Well, it’s appropriate for politics, anyway,” I said. “It may not be an heirloom, but it’s a hot air loom.”

“What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!” Daryl added.

“Such is the fruit of the loom,” Margot muttered, gazing into her near-empty coffee cup.

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