Tag Archives: word tasting notes

exophthalmic

Posted on August 8, 2010 | 1 comment

Now, there’s an eye-popping word. Seriously, what are the odds your eyes even know what to do with the phth – other than bug out at the sight of them? The first three letters even look like the sequence your eye goes through when seeing a cluster like this: e squint, x close tightly for a moment to readjust, o open wide! The forest of ascenders makes it hard to see the trees – and, for that matter, it’s not the most natural thing to type, either.

In fact, in the most common word using this root – Greek οφθαλμος, ophthalmos, “eye” – people tend to reduce it in the thinking and saying, away from the watermelon-seed-spitting double fricative followed by tongue-tip liquid and towards a pair of stops with much less sliding: ophthalmologist is often thought to be optomologist (and why not? their partners in trade are optometrists and opticians).

But today’s word is not common enough to get that sort of shop wear. Like ophthalmoscope, it has retained its fricatives. It’s a special word, kept in a velvet-lined drawer with assorted other curious instruments, some gleaming, some tarnished, to be brought out when one fancies just the right amount of erudition or scientific bent – words such as etiolated. Now, one may have few chances in real life to use it, but if one is writing fiction, one may of course create a character to whom to apply it.

Indeed, as Margaret Gibbs has informed me, in every one of P.D. James’s novels there is a character with eyes described as exophthalmic – and another character described as etiolated. (“You find yourself waiting for those characters so you can get them out of the way and start following the plot instead,” Margaret says.)

Now, you may have sorted out that ex means “out” and ophthalmic relates to the eyes. Does that mean that exophthalmic means “having lost an eye or eyes”? No – rather, that the eyes look as though they are straining to leave the head. That is, they are protruding. The condition, called exophthalmus, exophthalmos, exophthalmy, or exophthalmia (talk about four eyes!), is often called bug eyes or pop eyes. Not something you see all that much in real life, but it does seem appropriate to mystery novels, no?

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minion

Posted on August 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

The archvillain looks archly and villainously over his dominion, his assembled army like so many huddled masses, here and there a spear or torch or tall head jutting above the rest. It is an ominous, inimitable, inimical sight, layers and layers of them like some enormous human onion, murmuring, rumouring… the sight and the sound alike say it: minion minion minion. Many minions. (But is any one his favourite?) The archvillain’s patience is at a minimum; with some animus, he declares “I’m in no…”

But wait. These minions are kind of cute. That one there especially. Is that reasonable? Decent? Sensible? We know what minions are; how could one be some kind of mini son, perhaps even un peu charmant?

Well, in fact, although we see the plural of this word more often than the singular nowadays, and typically relating to some evil figure, be it the devil (or, occasionally, Bill Gates) or some lesser dark power, originally a minion was a favourite hanger-on of some powerful person (king, prince, what have you). Fitting enough if he got his fill of the filet, for this word comes from the French mignon – “dainty, charming, cute, etc.” It seems to have come to the “sidekick” sense by way of a term for a lover. (It is not related to minyan, the quorum of ten males required for Orthodox Jewish worship.)

But over time it came to refer to anonymous replaceable henchmen, the sort to which the boss may simply say “Do, minion” to exercise his dominion, the sort that are mown down innumerably in movies. No doubt the negative sense came in pretty much from the beginning, though: resentment and insinuation come with the turf – as in Marlowe’s Edward II (1593): “The king is love-sick for his minion.” The insecure sneers of a more benighted time. How easy it was for it to become a simple typecast.

There is another type of minion I’d like to cast eyes on, though: a typeface made by Adobe. It’s an elegant, economical serif face with some modern touches. It’s among my favourites; I’ve used it in laying out magazines. And I am not at all alone in my liking for it: when you settle down to feast your eyes on the great dominion of the planet with a copy of National Geographic, the stories you read are all set in Minion.

Thanks to Rosemary Tanner for suggesting minion after watching Despicable Me.

fraught

Posted on August 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

There are some subjects and areas that you see looming large, like a freighter in the night, coming towards you, laden with loathsomeness, decked with difficulties, manned with merchants of mischance and minions of mendacity, ready to swamp you. And as the roiling waters close over you and the ship overbears you, you cry out, “And for aught? Augh!”

Ah, yes, those things in our lives that are fraught. How frightful! And doesn’t fraught seem like it should be a past tense of fright? But actually it’s related to freight – it was first a noun for the cargo of a ship, then a verb meaning “load a ship”, and finally a past participle adjective (unchanged in form) meaning “laden” or “equipped”.

Now, in all of that etymology, did you see a negative tone? Indeed, this word was not originally fraught with negativity. But over time the cargo has come to be a frightful one, and how can we not suspect the influence of fright? True, there are echoes as well of freight and fruit, but the English ablaut vowel progression of strong verb past tenses would seem to connect fright and fraught more strongly – and fret and fray may have a piece of the action too (not to mention fraud). And there’s that “aw” sound, with the mouth open as in shock of apprehension… Or as in the Charlie Brown exclamation of dismay: AAUGH!

And so, when something is fraught with something else (and with comes after fraught most of the time), that something else is danger, peril, difficulties, problems, risk, tension, uncertainty… often of a political nature. Something can also be fraught with potential, however… but that’s potential problems, potential for misunderstandings, potential conflicts of interest, potential for violence, potential pitfalls… you get the picture. Or it can just be fraught, and you are expected to understand (you are always expected to understand without being told!) what sorts of things it’s fraught with. Whoever is telling you may be good enough to say emotionally fraught.

This word certainly is dramatic, and rather high-toned. And, again, political, as in “the personal is political.” You may find it in literature, or magazine articles, or – I think almost inevitably – faculty meetings. The one thing you may be sure of is that it does not augur well; one would sooner hug a fart or, uh, graft a thug, frankly, than face that fraught freighter in the frothing firth.

Thanks to Rosemary Tanner for suggesting fraught.

ebriety

Posted on August 3, 2010 | 2 comments

I’m reading Nancy Huston’s Dolce agonia right now. It’s a book by an Albertan author, about Americans living in the Boston area, written in French, with an Italian title. Yes, it’s written in French; Nancy Huston lives in Paris and is a very popular French author, her English name and Albertan background notwithstanding. It’s set at that quintessentially American event,* the Thanksgiving dinner with an assemblage of various persons. And everyone is speaking idiomatic American English, as translated to French (or, really, written originally in French by a native Anglophone). It’s a bit disorienting, a bit giddying, a bit like being drunk. Which, given the alcoholic consumption at this particular party (especially of the host), seems suitable.

And on page 195, the first page of chapitre X, I read today a most apposite word: ébréité.

Now, that’s a French word, and I’ll get to the English in a moment, but look at it! You see é é é – three sheets in the wind! (And, ironically, take those out and you are left with brit – one is tempted to take this as a French slur on British consumption, but actually the word comes from Latin ebrius, “drunk”.)

So if you were to translate it into English – the context is Sean est fier de son degré d’ébréité – what word would you use? Well, probably drunkenness. Now, that’s a good old English word, with its clunky and woozy sound and its three n‘s like inverted cups and its two s‘s like the result of excessive consumption. Not in the least elevated. Alternatively, if you wanted to be highfalutin, you could say inebriation.

And now here’s the trick: if inebriation means “drunkenness”, does that mean ebriation – or, as happens to be the word – ebriety is a synonym for sobriety? Nope, wrong in: this is the in that leads in, that intensifies; it’s the in of inflame. We already know what the Latin root is, and what the French is. Now you know another word for being sloshed, hammered, pisstanked, wasted, bombed, blitzed…

Of course, ebriety is a more expensive word, so one may wonder if one should reserve it for a celebrity who has had too many cl‘s.** But it’s really good for raising the tone whenever one has raised the cup. For when a fellow drinks excessively, he goes from sobriety to ebriety – so he goes from so to e, and it’s so easy! Ere long his lids are heavy e e, and he’s going from upright b to still holding his head up i to resting on his arms t to collapsed in the chair y. And then he may decide to change his beverage and call to his friend: “Ee! Bri! A tea!”

*American Thanksgiving is not like Canadian Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving is another holiday Monday, one you probably get together with family for. American Thanksgiving is on a Thursday and is a sort of national psychosis: they all have to travel somewhere the day before, and the sidewalks are rolled up on the day of, and they take the day off and probably go shopping the day after, and they all call it Turkey Day. And massive feasts are expected, and if you don’t have family readily available you probably end up with a whole bunch of other people with whom you have just that one thing in common.

**In many parts of the world beverages are sold in bottles marked in centilitres, cl.

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etiolated

Posted on August 3, 2010 | 2 comments

I remember, back when I was young enough to be captivated by first reading of a Richard Scarry book, visiting some family friends who had a place somewhere rural. The house was new, and in front of the steps had been lain down a board on the grass for people to walk across. The board had slipped a bit and I could see revealed a tidy triangle of very pale grass, in stark contrast with the neighbouring blades.

Now, what could be the etiology of that? Ah, even at that age I could infer readily enough that it was lack of sun. But what I did not know then – did not learn until reading some French philosophy in graduate school – was the word one could use to describe that grass: etiolated.

Now, one needs to look at this word carefully. Although it has to do with lack of sun, is has nothing to do with presence of a star (French étoile), and although the colour may be flushed, there is no toilet in it.

Moreover, though the plant may seem violated, it would be a violation to pronounce this word to rhyme with violated. Rather, it is a dactyl and a trochee, the first three syllables said like “E-T-O” and the remainder like the latter part of related. In the ensemble, it has a slight echo of eat your lettuce, which, however, you probably don’t want to do if the lettuce is etiolated. You may also notice that all the consonants are on the tip of the tongue – none hiding back where the sun doesn’t shine, but also none blossoming on the lips.

Etiolated is not related to etiology, which is more originally ætiology. Rather, it comes – by way of various French phonological transformations – from Latin stipula, “straw”, and is related to stubble – and, yes, I should stipulate, to stipulate. And for those who are sad to see such a pretty word bleached by lack of use, you may be elated by this detail: it is often used (as I have adumbrated) figuratively, particularly of concepts and abstract qualities – such things as may be read of in library books, buried somewhere in chthonic bibliotechnic depths, far from the sun, printed on white sheets of processed plant matter…

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lackadaisically

Posted on August 2, 2010 | 1 comment

Oh, what to do on a lazy day? The air is hazy and slack, and you are dazed and sickly, and not merely from the blazing sun… You wish you had a daisy to pluck quizzically, but you lack even that. Alas! A lass! A lack! Alack! Oh, you shall surely evanesce…

The state described may make one think of various French films, but cross the channel and back up a century or two and you have a suitable sentiment for the lost languor and lazy or lonesome laments of one inclined to bemoan, as many an emotional invalid did.

Certainly from the later 1600s on for a pair of centuries those facing an unfortunate situation over which they lacked control or remedy could be heard – or read, anyway, in novels – to cry “Alack!” or “Alack the day!” or “Lack-a-day!” And one who was disposed to be so indisposed was lackadaisical, and to do things in the manner of one such was, basically, to do them lackadaisically. (For that matter, it still is, though we seldom say “alack” anymore.)

What is alack anyway? Why, a lack, which is to say ah, lack. Its origins are more direct than those of alas, which combines the ah kind of moan with a morpheme ultimately from Latin lassum, “wretched” or, originally, “weary”. Lack‘s meaning was originally broader: it covered “failure”, “fault”, and similar. So alack was a way to say “what a shame”. And alack the day meant “shame to the day” – you are ruing the day that this happened. As in the nurse’s exclamation in Romeo and Juliet: “She’s dead, deceased, she’s dead; alack the day!”

But one who is lackadaisical is not in a constant state of abject woe, really; the word is so sprawled out, as though languishing on a divan, slack, dazed, sickly, and the description at two removes – from the immediate cry, to a disposition to lament, to a resemblance of that disposition – that in its first appearances in the mid-1700s it was already used much as it is now, to describe a general blueness of mood and manner.

Quite something, though, that this long word, bouncing as it does between clicks and liquids with a central buzz on the s, should not signify something more energetic or at least luxuriant. It seems to have its hair on end with all the ascenders (though this longest version finally goes down the drain at the end, y). With its l and two l‘s perhaps it says “Hell, it’s gone to hell.” But with the four a‘s, two c‘s, and two i‘s, how ironic that it should refer to a state too emotionally etiolated to make a foray to see with one’s own two eyes.

Thanks to Margaret Gibbs for suggesting lackadaisically – that is, for suggesting the word, not making the suggestion thusly.

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thelemite

Posted on August 1, 2010 | 8 comments

What sort of world would we have if we all could do just as we wished?

The question puts me in mind of the song “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” which describes a sort of hobo’s Cockaigne, with free booze, free sugar, nothing to do but lounge around… To me it sounds like a land of obese diabetic alcoholics with rotten teeth, and I say this as someone who enjoys alcohol, sugar, and unhealthy foods! A land “where they hung the jerk that invented work” is a land where nothing ever gets accomplished. But is this the sort of place that we would get if all could do as they wished? Or is it merely a fantasy provoked by lack of freedom?

Certainly there are many who think that following the dictates of our desires would actually produce the best results. Libertarians hew to a philosophy in that direction; so do Wiccans, whose creed (or, rather, rede) is “An it harm none, do what you will” (If it harms no one, do what you want). And so did Gargantua.

Who? Gargantua was a character invented in the 1500s by François Rabelais. (Yes, Gargantua was very large; we get gargantuan from him.) He founded an abbey with a swimming pool, maid service, and no clocks in sight. Here is a quote from Gargantua and Pantagruel:

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us.

And what was this abbey called? The Abbey of Thélème. From which we get this word that describes those who believe in doing just as they list: thelemite. The source of this is the Greek word θελημα, thelema, noun, “will”; in modern Greek, “I want” is θελω.

Thelemite may seem a rather lax, even effete, word, with its seeming lisp; the liquid /l/ in the middle adds to the relaxation, and the hum of the /m/ may seem to lull to sleep. It has echoes of such words as sodomite and catamite, which may not help its tone. There is that sound of might at the end, but is that strength or simply possibility that might or might not be fulfilled?

But, indeed, what is to say that these unfettered souls may not spend their time in producing great works? If one wants to do good work, then that is what one wants, and so mote it be. We all like to work on things we consider worthwhile: for example, it’s Saturday night on a long weekend, and here I am writing about words. So these thelemites might be formulating thrilling theorems or simply augmenting their wealth (selling thermite?). Or health: they could be setting new records in the swimming pool (though without clocks, how would they know?). Or they could simply be enjoying some vegemite on toast, brought to them by their maid, who perhaps is named Thelma.

Now, that maid, though, those maids… Are they also thelemites? And can one have thelemites without maids? This might be a bit of a dilemma of thelema…

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swelter

Posted on July 30, 2010 | 2 comments

We’re coming around to the most sultry part of the summer, when the cicadas buzz like oven timers. Many is the person who wants to stretch out panting like a dog in front of a fan. Certainly those who are well insulated may wish they were svelter. As the Lovin’ Spoonful sang in “Summer in the City,” “All around, people looking half dead, walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head.” For, as Noel Coward put it in “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “the sun is much too sultry and we must avoid its ultry-violet rays.” (Unless, of course, one is a mad dog or an Englishman.)

Oh, summertime, and the livin’ ain’t easy. Certainly not easy as pie, unless it’s Don McLean’s “American Pie”: “Helter skelter in the summer swelter.” Ah, now there’s the word for it: swelter. In this welter of swells sweatily waltzing the sun-walled sidewalks, every soul wilting, as wet as if wearing a sweater, what other word could carry not just the solar radiation (infrared!) but the humidity, the heat coming up as well as down, maybe an egg hissing as it fries on the sidewalk, and the sense of melting away unto death? It hisses, it swells, finally it burns off.

And, after all, swelter is related not just to sultry (via sweltery, at least as far as anyone can tell) but to death too: its origin is in the verb swelt, which meant first “die” and subsequently just slightly more figurative uses: “faint away”, “be overpowered by heat.” (Although perishing of heat may make you more svelte, svelte comes from Latin ex “out” and vellere “pluck”.)

But of course many of us are not so oppressed now. We have air conditioning; we may retreat, we lucky ones, as William Vaughn Moody put it in “Gloucester Moors”:

To be out of the moiling street
With its swelter and its sin!
Who has given to me this sweet,
And given my brother dust to eat?
And when will his wage come in?

Swelter: roll the word on your tongue, verb or noun, and enjoy it. It’s a well-turned word. You need but taste it; you are not committed to it if you have it easy, if you have A/C.

There is cash to purse and spend,
There are wives to be embraced

Moody, by the way, had a larger view in his poem than some hedonism – no thelemite, he. He wanted to know where this ship of a planet we are on is heading. And as we sit in our cool buildings and look at the swelter outside, we ought also to ask:

shall a haggard ruthless few
Warp her over and bring her to,
While the many broken souls of men
Fester down in the slaver’s pen,
And nothing to say or do?

And are we festering… or haggard and ruthless?

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tmesis

Posted on July 30, 2010 | 8 comments

My word tasting class were having the discussion that all linguistics students have sooner or later, usually when covering morphology.

“So if I say absofreakinglutely, what is that?” Kayley asked.

“Rather tame!” Anna said. “I’d say –”

Kayley cut her off. “I know what you’d say. But what do we call it? It’s like we’re splitting absolutely into a prefix and a suffix and sticking them onto freaking.”

“Only,” said Brian, “it’s really absolutely that’s being modified and freaking that’s doing the modifying. So it’s an infix. And for any word you can predict where it will be infixed.”

“Only it’s not, really,” I said. “What’s a key feature of an affix? What kind of a morpheme is an affix? A prefix, a suffix: pre, un, ness, ing… Can I use them as independent words?”

“Nope,” said Anna. “They’re stuck freaking tight. Hangers-freaking-on.”

Brian nodded. “They’re bound morphemes.”

“Bound and freaking gagged,” Anna added.

“That would be nice,” Kayley said purposefully at Anna.

“An an infix is also an affix,” I said, “just one that’s wedged in the middle.” I tried to ignore Anna adjusting her shorts in response. “We don’t have them in English. So the best word for this phenomenon, I would say, is tmesis.” I wrote it on the board.

Jenna put up her hand. “I can’t read your handwriting. It looks like you have a TM at the start of the word.”

“That’s what it is,” I said. “From Greek for ‘a cutting’.” I said it again: “T’mee-zis.”

Rupert raised his hand. “That sounds like the capital of Georgia.”

Jenna looked incredulously at him. “It sounds like Atlanta?”

“The country of Georgia, in the caucasus,” I said. “The capital of which is Tbilisi.”

Brian was sitting back with his arm on the back of his chair, half-smiling. “It looks like a trademark infection.”

“Abso-Fuddrucker’s-lutely!” Anna giggled. “In-Viagra-fected!”

“Well, we might as well say ‘trademarkesis’,” Jenna declared. “We don’t start a syllable with ‘tm’ in English.”

“Except in this word,” I said. “But I know what you mean. It trips and stumbles when you say it, more like something was taken out than put in. To look at it, it looks like the m was just wedged in there, doesn’t it? Like the word is somehow misset, mixed up.”

“So tmesis means putting a word inside another word,” Brian said.

“Well, and there’s the rub,” I said. “Originally, classically, it meant inserting a word into a compound or set phrase. Like what Anna did with those phrases: Hangers-freaking-on. Or like saying Superduperman instead of Superman. Or even whatsoever instead of whatever, or chit and chat instead of chit-chat. Always fitting between the parts of a compound.”

“So not absofreakinglutely?” Kayley asked.

“It breaks it right in the middle of a morpheme,” I said. “Just like we would say heli-freaking-copter even though classically the split point would make it helicofreakingpter. So actually the word stuffed in is a rude interruption.”

Rupert raised his hand.

“Yes?” I said.

“Which seems to be the point,” he observed. “These words are rude, and they interrupt the main word. Rudely.”

“But rhythmically,” Anna said. I was so used to her making off-colour tangents that it took me a moment to realize this wasn’t one. Or at least wasn’t just one.

“Indeed,” I said. “They stuff in right before a stressed syllable – primary or secondary stress. Now, that’s not what most references will tell you tmesis involves. So… tmesis or not tmesis? That is the question.”

“Absoscrewingbluingtattooinglutely,” Anna declared.

Brian had a clever-looking smile. “We can even use it to prove that tmesis doesn’t break English phonotactics. By proving that it has three syllables.”

I paused for just a moment. “You’re right, in fact.” I turned to the class. “Where would you put the tmesis in tmesis?”

“That sounds like autocopulation,” Anna said. “Tumescence!”

Kayley determined to oblige with a response to my question. “T’-freaking-alright-OK-shut-up-already-Anna-mesis!”

Thanks to Jens Wiechers for prompting me to do tmesis.

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just deserts

Posted on July 27, 2010 | 3 comments

There are times when your surety over what is the right form of a word just deserts you. In place of the usual fertile ground of your linguistic knowledge you find just deserts. Language may usually be a well-earned piece of cake for you, but sometimes there are no just desserts: instead, you are just stressed backwards and distressed in the mix. You have worked so hard to know your language; where are your just deserts?

Often such an occasion will occur when an idiomatic phrase makes use of a word that simply isn’t used anymore – a word, moreover, that is similar to an other, still-common word. There are many such cases in English, and they often lead to misconjectural reconstruals that seem to make more sense, what are called eggcorns, from the misconstrual of acorn. Eggcorns can even occur with phrases that use common words but in less-obvious ways. Common examples of eggcorns include veil of tears, deep-seeded, short-sided, slight of hand, pawn off, high dungeon, vocal chords, straight-laced, short shift, give up the goat, preying mantis, without further adieu, trite and true… and just desserts.

The problem with just deserts, which is the original form, is that the word deserts – with the stress on the second syllable – simply isn’t used anymore; it has deserted the language, or the language has deserted it, and, honestly, it may be deserved. It served its purpose and now it has largely been cleared from the banquet of words… except in one idiomatic usage.

And if you can’t help but think of food when you hear this word, well, it does serve that turn in its way. It come from French but its root is Latin deservir, “serve well”, which is of course also the root of its sibling word deserve. In its turn, deservir comes from de meaning “to the bottom” or “completely” – as in declare, denude, deplore, despoil, decoct, and deliquesce – and servir, “serve”. The meaning transferred from serving well to what you get for serving well.

And if you have been served well – at a banquet, for instance – then the next thing will be for the dishes to be cleared, or dis-served: Latin disservir, “de-serve, clear away”. What is served at the time of clearing away? You certainly hope it will be dessert – from French, from Latin disservir, transferring from the clearing of the dishes to what is served last – or you will have been done a disservice.

So dessert is the end of the meal, and the whole service is thereafter reset. And if in the end you get your proper end, what is coming to you, it seems reasonable enought that it would be your just desserts, doesn’t it? The cherry on top, the icing on your cake – savoy truffle, perhaps, as the Beatles sang, but heed their warning: “You know that what you eat you are, But what is sweet now, turns so sour.”

So it’s hardly surprising that just desserts is now more common than just deserts. We’re seeing a change in progress, and why not? It wouldn’t be the first eggcorn to become an accepted version of a phrase, even by those to the manor born. (Or should I say, as Shakespeare did, to the manner born.)

And, of course, the punning use of the phrase only further helps it to be established. There are, after all, numerous eating establishments called Just Desserts. (Torontonians will think immediately of an innocent-bystander shooting that happened at one such in 1994; the following trial was lengthy and nasty, but the killer did get what he deserved.) It would seem that what is trite has a way of being taken as true.

If you’re curious about the origins of desert, the dry place, or desert, the act of abandoning, they both come ultimately from Latin deserere, “sever ties with, leave, abandon”. They thus have little in common with dessert, aside from that you are likely to desert a table after dessert, and that standard English spelling pronunciation rules seem to have deserted all of them at the middle fricative.

Those with a taste for more eggcorns will like “My veil of tears.”

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