Tag Archives: word tasting notes

mumpsimus

Posted on March 10, 2009 | 7 comments

One of those words (like blivet) that are typically used so they can be explained. Imagine this word in old-style Gothic lettering – where m‘s and w‘s and u‘s and n‘s and, but for the dot, i‘s were all series of the same stroke, and nearly indistinguishable: the only things to stand out would be the p and the two s‘s. The rest lapses into incoherence. Swapping the initial m for an s would make it a bit better to read. But, oh, we couldn’t do that! We must keep the three combs (with three lines each) and two cups (with two lines each) and one candle (with one line and a dot) and it will all be neat and tidy, the way it was meant to be. Even if it does make one think of a childhood disease. In fact, it’s a bit of a dumb-sounding word, isn’t it? A bit thick and slow, perhaps. Well, and this is all leading up to the explanation (“At last!” you say, momentarily pausing your finger-drumming. “Well, get on with it!”). Erasmus, in 1516, recounted the story of an ill-educated priest who had been incorrectly reciting “quod ore mumpsimus” in the Mass instead of the proper “quod ore sumpsimus” (mumpsimus doesn’t actually mean anything). When someone corrected him on it, he replied, “I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus.” And so this word has come to signify someone who clings stubbornly to an error in the belief that it is the old true form, or to an ignorant archaic belief of whatever sort; it also refers to the error thus clung to. So it is actually a nice, useful word if you have an interest in the English language, which is plagued with mumpsimuses (I don’t say mumpsimi not only because it’s not actually a Latin word but because the supposed Latin word it’s taken from is a conjugated verb – the noun form is purely an English usage), such as those baseless shibboleths about “split infinitives” and not ending sentences with prepositions or starting them with conjunctions – cases where the “new error” is a time-honoured form and the “old right way” was someone’s misguided invention. Now let all those mumpsimuses and their mumpsimuses take their lumps and bumble off.

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fracas

Posted on March 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

This word may occasion a quarrel between Brits and Americans over pronunciation, with Canadians caught in the middle as usual. On the British side, partial (but only partial!) obeisance to the French source, sounding like “frack off” minus the final [f] (if you’ve ever watched Battlestar Galactica you will recognize “frack off”); on the American side, a rhyme with “break us.” Either way, it’s not exactly a word of quietude. It calls to mind the friction, fractures, and ruckus caused when a flic finds a flack in flagrante delicto with his fickle filly. That fr – you can get fried with frustration from frittering your time with frauds and their French frippery. And whether it’s “ack” or “ache,” whether it’s “caw” or “cuss,” you’re unlikely to find this word motivating you to fruition of friendliness, or at least a fricassee, even though the opportunity is there, phonetically. As to the fight between US and UK, the irony is that the “purer” version, adhering (only somewhat) to the French, is adhering after all to an alteration. The French fracas came from Italian fracasso, meaning “make an uproar,” from fra (from Latin infra) as an intensifier or absolutizer and cassare meaning “break.” Smash things up, in other words. Throw the plates. All of them. As Rick Simon (played by Gerald McRaney) might have said, “Things are gonna get mighty western in here.”

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wreak

Posted on March 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

A common dancing-partner of havoc, also seen out some evenings with with vengeance and occasionally damage. The word itself wreaks a little bit of havoc when it comes time to say it. Should it be like “reek”? But we don’t want to suggest that there’s a smell involved! Doesn’t “wreck” seem a better sound, given the usual usage? And so you will often hear it the latter way, though the dictionaries all agree it’s supposed to be the former. Many people will also swear that, even with the correct vowel, they say wreak and reek differently. It’s true that you round your lips a bit at the beginning of wreak. However, you also round your lips a bit at the beginning of reek. In North American English, with our retroflex r‘s, there is some labial coarticulation. Ah, who wrought such rot! But there it is. (Note that wrought is actually an old past tense of work, not of wreak: wrought havoc is from work havoc, not much said anymore.) But has this word any relation to wreck or to wrack? I reckon so. They all come from a Teutonic root meaning “drive, press, move,” cognate with the Latin that gave us urge. From that this word came to mean “banish,” then “vent, express,” then “inflict vengeance,” then “inflict damage.” Ah, such an urge, of which a wrong is the waker! But when one goes to wreak on another, which one is the weaker?

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mildew

Posted on March 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

So much less refreshing than dew from the mill – in fact, the very utterance of this word may elicit a mild “ew!” in spite of its mellifluous form. It seems the echoes of mold in the onset, and especially in the common collocation, prevail. As does the awareness of the word’s object, of course. But are mold (a.k.a mould) and mildew related? Possibly – they may both come from the Indo-European base of, wait for it, meal. Eww! But it gets better: the more proximate meaning of the mil is a Germanic word for “honey.” And the dew is in fact the same as our modern English dew. So, wait, this is “honeydew”? The closest its object would normally come to that (as long as your fridge isn’t disgusting) would be an item on a “honeydew list”: “Honey, do the following, please: 1. Clean the mildew off the shower curtain. 2…” However, its original referent was a specific sweet, sticky substance on the leaves of diseased plants, and it just spread from there. So to speak. Other words that mildew is often found with: powdery, rot, smell, walls, and – of course – shower.

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venial & venal

Posted on March 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

What a pair these are. The difference in form is a mere jot, and both are also alternate forms of venous, but such different blood flows in their veins: sinner’s blood in both cases, but one has a much better chance of making it to Heaven – because someone kept an i on it. The form might incline a reader more towards a negative or sinful tone right off the top; voluptuous Venus vends venery from her v-neck sweater, and vermin envision the venom of such vile vices as they may venture to vent in vengeance… The v even looks like the tooth of crime, or various triangular shapes as may be seen in demimondaine etchings. Other echoes include menial and penal, denial and renal (what’s vile about kidneys? not everyone likes them in their pie, I suppose…). Of course, the al is just an adjectival suffix. The real roots – Latin both, naturally – are venum “that which is for sale or sold” and venia “forgiveness, pardon.” There’s something about that ven in Latin – along with other words mentioned above that came from various Latin ven sources, there’s the famous veni, vidi, vici. But tell me, adventurer: when you came, saw, and conquered (in whatever order), was it forgiveable? Or was it for money?

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pesto

Posted on March 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

This word comes to us from Italian, of course (Ligurian, to be precise), but it has gradually attained citizenship in our language. Its form still seems Italian, though we might note that if kid can become kiddo and boy can become boyo, then if the kid or boy is being a pest this word could be formed, aside from the dissonance between the tone of pest and the chumminess of the -o suffix. At any rate, this word seems, through the sapidity of its object, to have avoided taking on too much of the negative tone that pest could have given it. One might as soon think of pestle – after all, one could use a mortar and pestle to make pesto. Such a pity the words aren’t related: pesto‘s Latin source is pistum, past participle of pinsere “pound, crush,” whereas pestle‘s Latin forebear is pilum “shaft, stake, javelin.” This word can also call forth the st in taste due to the realm of reference, and of course those Thom(p)son twins of Italian cuisine, pasta and antipasto (which, like Thompson and Thomson – a.k.a. Dupond and Dupont – are not related, in spite of appearances). Other fainter hints include best and pistol. Anagrams include estop and poets. But the object, a sauce of nuts (typically pine nuts), herbs (typically basil), cheese, garlic, and olive oil, can top whatever taste the word may bring.

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mizuna

Posted on March 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

Does this word look like a brand name? Just look at the shape of it: the mi with the row of vertical lines and arches, and the curve repeated and rotated later on with the un, and in between that z… an escalator, a fancy desk, a sidewalk spinner, a lightning bolt… Even the oral locations of the vowels make a neat triangle: high front, high back (plus rounded lips), lower central. A brand designer’s dream! But you’d be thinking of Mizuno, makers of sports gear (an eponym at that – it’s a family name in Japan). It’s the same mizu, which is written with the character that in Mandarin is said shui (“shwhy”) and means the same thing: water. So this mizuna is water what? Hint: you may have some in your fridge, in a bag of mesclun, nestling to a kindred spirit, watercress. The na, you see, means “greens.” And the z may hint a bit at the shape: jagged leaves, a bit like dandelion greens (the taste is a little jagged too, peppery; it’s a mustard green). That z, since it’s from Japanese, is pronounced like an English z, giving the word a vague echo of mizzen, another word found near water. Since it’s Japanese, the zun is even more likely to remind anglophones of that most horridly overused, misused word, zen (a loan to Japanese from Sanskrit dhyana, meaning “meditation”), so often applied to commercial orgies diametrically opposite in spirit to Zen Buddhism. Is mizuna amenable to zen? Well, it is vegetarian. I’ll leave you to meditate on the remainder…

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slum

Posted on February 27, 2009 | Leave a comment

A word that seems just made to be down at the heels. The opening sl is wet or messy: don’t slouch or slur or you’ll slide down a slippery slope like a slug into the slush. It commects with um, heard in dumb and bum and, um, um – also in hum and strum and thumb and come and yum, but the sl opening and the definite slump echo are likely to clarify which set of ums it goes with! If this word sounds louche, well it should; it comes from the cant of the criminal class (attested by 1812), and originally meant a room. Of course, given whose word it was, it was not a high-class room, and soon enough it came to refer to the cramped quarters of the English outcastes. And if some toff wished to ditch his pile for some infra dig digs, he could cutely enough call it slumming – we now use the verb fairly broadly, but always with the sense of taking a downward holiday from one’s regular station. Slums are cramped quarters where many may brush shoulders, and this word brushes shoulders with quite a few in regular use: dweller, lord, clearance; also sprawling, housing, urban, city; lately Sadr City in Baghdad has come often in the same sentence; and, now tattooed into our tongue, slumdog (which for contrast goes with millionaire).

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languor

Posted on February 26, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ah, languor! Can you bear it any longer? Are you desperate, like Eva Longoria? Look: you are so weak u can’t even make it past the o. This word will not end as in favour or colour; instead, it has the beginnings of anguish but also of languidity. Such lassitude – confuse it not with lentitude, which may be present, but (to make a Tolkien mention) in Fangorn is no languor. This word starts out with la, which may be a listless note, perhaps sung in a boat adrift at sea, unable to make it all the way to land. The tongue lolls back, touching at the velum. There is the beginning of language, but it fails to come of age, stymied by choice: the or turns it aside, and then we lapse into silence. The very air in the mouth is viscous, as though gummed with guar. The word itself has made a stirring and lain back: it is Latin languor, same in sense, which in Old French tried to eject the o or the u, but they failed to achieve escape velocity. Its kin languish, a verb, managed some change, but this noun… ah, what can be done.

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koi

Posted on February 25, 2009 | Leave a comment

This word’s sound may suggest affected shyness on the part of its object, but one would hope otherwise. After all, if you have bought that common collocation of koi, a pond, you will want these variously coloured (selectively bred) fish to be on ornamental display, or else you will be more inclined to the English name of the species: carp. In Japan, whence this word, the fish are symbols of love and affection, because another word koi means “love” and “affection” (koi no ochiru is “fall in love” – or perhaps “drop the carp”?). So if you present a pond to your paramour, you will hope that neither koi nor companion will be coy. But spelling can matter more than just that much: the k beginning and i ending on this word both signal foreignness; a coloured carp pond is not exotic, and a coy pond would not seem so, but a koi pond, now, that “ain’t from around here.” One may be tempted to see the word in ideographic ways: the k like a fish tail, the o like an eye or a pond, and the i… well, perhaps like the lonely sweetheart standing by pond’s edge wondering where his fish and fiancée have fled to.

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