lush

Posted on October 26, 2008 | 1 comment

A soft, wet word to fall back into. It starts with the loving lick of a lateral liquid, peaks briefly with the most neutral and relaxed vowel available, and slides softly into sibilant susurration, like easing yourself from a large lotus leaf into a fresh rainforest pool. If it seems utterly lazy and relaxed, that may be because it comes from the same Latin source as French lâche and English lax. It may leave the mind heading towards luscious, and it seems like the love child of love and hush – and a soul brother to plush, though they’re not cognate – but it also has a shadowy alcoholic second sense. It is often seen lately in the company of lipstick, though it can still be found with tropical vegetation.

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metonymy

Posted on October 24, 2008 | Leave a comment

A companionable word needed by all, from the crown through the suits on Bay Street to blue-collar Main Street, but not so well known outside the ivory tower. It has a somewhat homely roundedness of soft nasals broken up by one crisp, pointy t. It may make Muppets fans (and others) think of “Mahna Mahna.” It could echo autonomy, but that word is open and clear where this one is covered and mutters. It may seem self-absorbed, starting with me and ending with the sound “me,” but its meaning is unavoidably self-effacing. It can’t avoid an arcane appearance with its twin y‘s in the back half (separated by an m like a comb between cowlicks). The ton in the middle may add some weight, though it has the most open part of the word, at least where tongue and lips are concerned, and it has a sound more echoing tawny. Word lovers are likely to recognize the onymy, but there is the risk of confusing it with onomy, as in astronomy; this one is as in pseudonymy – it refers to a thing done with words. And have you met the met? You have quite often, in its full form as meta, from the Greek for “with,” “after,” or “between.” So this is a word for using the word for something that goes with what you’re really referring to. Every blue-stocking should know that, but even a rough-and-tumble hired gun could use it.

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synecdoche

Posted on October 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

A connecting key clicking in a lock between part and whole. It may look like a ville in Lousiana, but it’s pronounced like a burg in upstate New York. Different readers are sure to find different highlights in this; many will have a strong effect of the syn – together – and some will see the ec and think of ectomorphs, ectoplasm, or ecumenism. A certain few may see a douche at the end, sans bag. It is possible that an s and n close together at the beginning of a long word may give a little hint of sn words such as snoot, snot, snood, snorkel, snicker, snip, snit, and the rest of their clan of nasal and puerile or prissy words snuffling like anteaters. On the other hand, it quickly slips from that into a tapdance, a mechanical clacking that might resemble the cocking of a rifle – or the sound of the understanding of a figure of speech clicking into place. The word may even produce a visual impression of startledness or stunnedness, with the c’s and the o between them showing the ring shape of the mouth. As to the meaning, well, any old lexicographic hand knows it, as do many bums in seats in reading rooms and theatres, and the press often make use of it: part for whole or whole for part. It’s no surprise that it comes from Greek – from a verb meaning “take with something else.”

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sketchy

Posted on October 22, 2008 | 1 comment

A catchy word that could be the sound of charcoal on paper – or dirty fingernails scraping for lice. The boat bookended in the middle produces at best a faint resonance; the stronger echoes seem to come from scratchy, catchy, itchy, edgy, and to a lesser degree the adventuresome or dodgy words starting with sk (skin, ski, skill, skew, skink, skit, skank, and so on) and the either chic or nasty words ending with a front vowel and ch (rich, fetch, match, bitch, kvetch, lech, wretch, etc.). But of course if you only know this word as relating directly to artwork, drawings, and impressions thereof, the more louche tones will be faint. If, on the other hand, your acquaintance with this term is founded more on its residence on the same block as dodgy and dicey, then the bon ton will be drowned out by the scraping of rusty razors (or of skis on rocks). The word comes from sketch, of course, which comes from an Italian word from a Latin word from a Greek word for something done offhand or extemporaneously. One may suspect that its less proper use has gone through a few of the, well, sketchier neighbourhoods of language change to get where it is.

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dwindle

Posted on October 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

A curious little word that twines itself around your tongue. It has little overtones of win and, with more gust, wind, but the phonaesthetic kick of the dw onset may come through more strongly, with echoes of dweeb, Dwight, Dweezil (for Zappa fans), and perhaps even the similar tw onset in twerp and twit. The stronger part, though, is the indle, which has the frequentive le ending we see in suckle, sparkle, sprinkle, fondle, handle, and on and on and on, with special echoes from the rhyming spindle and (for those who know it) brindle. You can’t really say this word without blowing a kiss, but that initial pucker and whistle (a vocal gesture that can be slightly modified to make water-drop sounds) ends with the lips spread and the articulation moving back – the tongue stays touching from the n on, but at the end there’s that velar raising to make what linguists often call the “dark l.” None of which really gives an  immediate clue to its sense of diminution, and yet somehow the word nonetheless seems apposite, presenting a picture of a pile gradually being blown away by the wind. And its source? An Old English word, dwine, meaning to waste away – which is related to the same Old Norse root that also lies behind die.

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cloaca

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

It may have the sound of a cloak, but its object is best cloaked; the vague resonances of chocolate are best kept at bay, and the easy anagram “lo, caca” is apposite, if puerile. Makers of laxatives seem to have found a certain effect from the combination of [k] and [l], given the names some of them give their products, and this word may partake of any such effect as well. The aspirated voiceless stops, the first of which saps the voicing from the following liquid, give a crisply whispered air that a synonym such as “sewer” can never quite attain. Five of the six letters have rounded shapes; the exception is the linear (but liquid) l. Make of that what you will. This word, though originally applied to public sewers, is now most likely most familiar to zoologists, especially ornithologists and monotremologists but also ichthyologists and reptilologists, due to its application to a feature their subjects have and humans haven’t. Classic historians may think immediately of the cloaca maxima, the great Roman sewer, and indeed the word has come to us straight through from Latin, undigested. In Latin it was derived from a verb meaning “purge.”

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hiatus

Posted on October 18, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word that manifests a gap between classical Latin and modern English pronunciation. When it was at home, the vowels were i as in machine, a as in father, and u as in flute. And so it came into English. Then the great vowel shift happened, changing long vowels into diphthongs, and the short vowel was reduced further and the h came to be pronounced. Now the word sounds like it was invented to be squawked by nasal northeastern Americans (perhaps from Hyannis? more likely Avon Lake, Ohio). It starts with a greeting or an altitude, then there is a quantity or a meal, and finally we have us, which is us or just a Latin suffix such as you’ll see on onus or dorcus or diabetes mellitus. Nothing in the sound or spelling displays a lacuna as such, unless it be the gap in voicing heard with the h, which also shows up on fellow-travelling words: hernia, holiday, hole.

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rocket

Posted on October 17, 2008 | 2 comments

From the earth to the sky and beyond: a word that begins with an inert hard lump of silicon and, boosted by two diminutive letters – and often brainpowered by myriad tiny silicon circuits – becomes a heaven-bound vessel. Mirror the last two letters onto the end again and you get a leg up. Attempts at onomatopoeic association would be off base unless the astronauts were toads. And the shape: do the three round letters remind one of rockets viewed from above or of the planets they are aimed to visit? Does the k seem vaguely gantry-like? But this word brings with it a galaxy of collocations and connotations. Red is a common colour, sometimes glaring, often associated with transportation. Speed is a must. British cooks’ minds may fly to arugula; ecclesiasts may have surplice thoughts. Those hearing it may think it an imperative to be applied to a boat, a cradle, a trailer, or various musical expressions (e.g., this town, inside out). And where does this word come from? Ironically for something that has long been associated with masculine bravado, it was first named (with an Italian word based on a Germanic one) for what it was shaped like: a little distaff.

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repugnant

Posted on October 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

A fist in your ear and a blight to your senses. The middle syllable, like a plug-ugly little dog, bursts out strong and loud – if you said pugnaciously, you’d be right. It is couched in the re of repel and rebarbative rather than that of resign or reacquaint. The end is the arms-akimbo noun suffix, not a busy ing or an officious tion but an ant in active stance, even antagonistic, all the more so because of the negative little n that attaches to it. The re draws back, the pu spits in distaste and the gn gulps a a gag reflex. This word is sometimes seen with physically, which is nearly redundant, but of late keeps company often with morally. The soul recoils, then fights back – pugnare, Latin “fight,” is what punches this one through.

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curmudgeon

Posted on October 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word to be grumbled or growled with a voice soaked in whiskey, cigarettes, or mere cussèd impatience. It starts with a low gurgling throat rumble and then bares its teeth, which are munching on a crummy cigar. The whole word can be said with the teeth clenched. A mean dog, a dirty mess, the back end of a greedy bird… this word is made up of bits that bespeak intolerance, resistance and grudges. But how much of it is really just for show? Many now take the label upon themselves as a protection of filthy rust around a heart hinted to be of nobler metal, and 16th-century users of the word would have been surprised to hear the common modern collocation “lovable” with it. There have always been curmudgeons, of course; they seem to come out of some unidentifiable place, born already old – like the word itself, which has not been successfully traced to its roots. Speculation abounds as to how it came to be… and why its objects can’t smile just once for the camera, please?

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