Hiatus v. lacuna

I expected that my return after nearly 9 months of silence would be with the word hiatus. And appropriate word. But I got inspired by the previous comparison of explain v. define. However, not to miss my return word, I give you:

Hiatus comes from the Latin for "hiare" for "to gape open". Of course, this began with a physical opening, but from clefts and fissures in organs and body parts to missing pages in manuscript, it came to be applied to the intangible c. 1613 as an interruption of an event or missing information in a sequence to just something anticipated which is missing. Meanwhile, its obvious comparison is lacuna, coming from the Latin "lacuna" for "a ditch, pit or hole", and although it also came to be applied to missing information in a sequence this is an existing deficiency, of something that was never present.

There has been a hiatus in my regular blog definitions due to my overwhelming rehearsal schedule and the needs of two kittens. Yes in usage and yes in context. I apologize for the latter. Note that this is written in third-person, because I am not the gap but rather that the gap occurs to things relative to a sequence that I create. Arguably, I have been on sabbatical, but that's another word for another time when I've been away. There has not been a lacuna in my regular blog entries as that would imply that something was supposed to be there which was not. I try to write these as often as I can, but that does not presuppose that I am required to write them, therefore, it is only an anticipated lacking, not an actual lacking or deficiency. The third-party perspective is also required for lacuna, as I am not the deficiency, but the event or thing has the deficiency. Plaintiff's counsel's opposition to my motion had a lacuna in his argument which caused the Court to rule in my favor. Yes. Here the missing thing was required and therefore, the fictional argument was deficient. Perhaps the lacuna was due to a hiatus in his concentration? Yes, since there is no requirement that he has to continue to concentrate in order to write the motion--he could just be incompetent. So, hiatus is missing something hoped for and lacuna is missing something which should have been there.

Of course, both words apply to sentient activities (e.g., argument, thinking) and not just intangible activites of people (e.g., music, sleeping) or information created by people (e.g., pages in a book, assembly lines). There was a lacuna in the production line at the widget plant due to the daydreaming, a veritable hiatus of thought, by the worker. Ok, simple and easy, although it does appear that lacuna is applied more to the tangibles and hiatus to the intangibles. Let's try to flip them. An unexpected hiatus in the music occurred when the concert master broke a string. Ok. And, a lacuna in her acceptance speech was due to an uncontrollable emotional outburst. Ok, so they do work both ways, even if I did stretch the lacuna usage a bit. Was a really a deficiency, of something missing, or just a big pause? Maybe it better stated that there was a lacuna in her acceptance speech due to censoring or a sudden interruption by the Emergency Testing System? Yeah, that works. This does tend imply that in a lacuna situation you don't get the missing part back, whereas in a hiatus, it resumes where it left off after the delay. A cliffhanger ending of a television series which is renewed next season is on hiatus, while the movie missing the second reel is a lacuna. A rain delay after the 5th inning is a hiatus when the game resumes; but a game ended by rain before the 5th inning had a lacuna until it was rescheduled (since, for those of you who are not baseball fans, the game could not have been a complete game, and will, therefore, be replayed). I remember when I learned this word in high school I used it to apply to the space on a page while you were waiting for the white out to dry, but kept writing the rest of the sentence after it. It was a lacuna in the text in the one truest sense. And although there is no formal requirement from the definition for there to be a sequence, the implied currant usage seems to require continuity interrupted, rather than mere abstract existence of the missing element.

Can we use these words without superimposing continuity? She fell into the lacuna at the construction site and sued for her broken ankle. This completely accurate from its Latin meaning and just dumb. The real question should be how do we know that something is missing unless we can see the stuff around it to imply where the thing should have been? Doesn't that require a degree of continuity? How else do you define the hole? The dentist discovered a lacuna in her tooth. Yep, again, just dumb. This word is "cavity", which is technically a lacuna, but would be absurd to use this way. So, I would venture that lacuna would require some degree of continuity. I have less of a problem requiring continuity of hiatus since that word comes from "to gape open" which itself implies action that changes, as opposed to a pre-existing condition.

So, now, let's see where the edges of usage are. We know the words apply to sequences created by people; can they be applied to sequences created by cats or computers. There was a hiatus in her drinking when I entered the room. Possibly, but only if my cat starts drinking again regardless of my standing there. This is a still a stretch to use this word, when the real word is "pause". So let's really have fun and see how absurd lacuna is with my cat... Yeah, I give. My cat had a lacuna in her bathing which left a bit of ungroomed hair behind her left ear. Bizarre, but technically correct. If a caterpillar could metamorphose into a butterfly without going through the chrysalis stage, would that be a lacuna? Theoretically speaking, maybe, but is it really a deficiency in an expected progression or just a different type of progression. The problem may be that I can't really expect anything out of my cat that a lacuna would arise. Does my cat have some responsibility that she could be deficient? She is starting to come when I call her, but it is not a duty; just a convenience for her for petting. So, if it is an activity, there must be sentience ascribed to the completion of that activity for the lacuna to have deficiency. Now, as for hiatus, anticipation inherently requires sentience, to hope for the activity to resume, which through a degree of anthropomorphism, I can ascribe more readily. She hopes to resume bathing/eating/sleeping after the brief hiatus caused by my presence. I get that scowl all the time, so I know that thought is there.

As for computers, since these activities are merely extensions of activities of people, there's more play with lacuna. The computer had a lacuna when compiling the computer code. Essentially, the computer is only doing the work it was programed to do, much like the production line at the widget factory, which could have just as easily been a malfunctioning robotic arm as a daydreaming assembly worker. There was a hiatus in the computer's processing due to a brown out. It still feels like an object rather than ascribing artificial intelligence or anthropomorphism. Anyway, no harm, no foul on either word.

So, let there be no lacunas to my blog--I don't want that kind of responsibility--and may the next hiatus be shorter!

Explain v. define

I am enjoying my time with the daughter of a friend, Julie, and we came upon this comparison.

Explain derives from the Latin "ex" for "out or from" and "planarum" for "a flat surface". So how does this get us to anything making sense, whether figuratively or literally? Well, perhaps, when we explain, we "flatten" out a problem so that both sides understand. Works for me. Define comes from the Latin "de" for "of or out of" and "finire" for "to finish", which is to say that define is the final thought on a word. While gives the implication that to explain is open-ended.

She tried to explain to her sister why she read her diary. Yes. Absolutely. Of course this would be something that would require lots of further explanation, and not be the end of the discussion. Many different reasons, possibly even evolving reasons as the discussion continues. She will be explaining reading her sister's diary for quite a while, as I doubt her sister will ever understand. Also, correct, both usage and in substance. As a result of reading her sister's diary, her sister stated the definition for what is private. Yes, because the definition is concrete and not subjection to interpretation. Plaintiff's counsel explained to the Court why the opposition to the motion was late, but the definition of the rule for timely filing was clear. Obviously, people can explain and define as well as other animates such as these beings exhibit human characteristics and certain tangibles such as these are activities of people. Inanimates do not explain or define. The wind does not explain the weather, nor does it define the air. Not even metaphorically. The wind may portend weather and describe the air, but even "define" is pretty sketchy. DD does a poor job of defining words, and leaves many usages for outside explanation. My kittens cannot explain their needs to me, except by scratching, mewing and purring, and even then, I don't have a definition of what these signals mean. Yes.

I am looking forward to explaining the usage of more words as I define the difference of various alleged synonyms. Thank you for your patience!

Unctuous

This Thursday, I will be performing in the world premiere of William Bolcum's Eighth Symphony, a work commissioned for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It is a contemporary setting of selections of William Blake's Prophetic Books (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Jerusalem and America: A Prophecy). What does this have to do with "unctuous". In Part 1, "Rintrah roars", the tenors sing the line: Now the sneaking serpent walks in mild humility. The marking for that is "unctuous". I don't pretend to be a Blake scholar, nor do I really grasp a tenth of all the symbolism in these selections, but I do find this particular marking to be a riot. So, on that note (pun intended), I bring you: unctuous.

Unctuous derives from the Latin "unctus" for the act of anointing or smearing. It is related to "unguent", the thing that is smeared. And since this word developed c. 1350, its etymology is not so disjointed. From the oily or soapy feeling of the unguent, to having similar characteristics of a unguent generally (greasy or oily), to general characteristics which may be construed as slippery, and from there is just an easy leap to smug or suave, as a form of a slippery attitude.

Oatmeal soap is less unctuous owing to to the rougher texture of whole oats in the bar. Ok, but I don't think we commonly use unctuous to describe things that are actually slippery. Oil unlike ice is unctuous. Ice can't be unctuous since it isn't viscous, nor does it feel slippery until you are slipping. Oil is always slippery. And, sorry for the graphic reference, so is mucus. More often, now, unctuous is used negatively to describe people. Car salesmen have a reputation for being unctuous. Plaintiff's counsel's unctuous courtroom demeanor detracted from his credibility. Too easy. So, let's go back to the Blake excerpt. I think the serpent is a direct reference to the serpent from the Garden of Eden, and that this character would be "walking in mild humility", belies a certain slick character to try to seduce the listener. Whether the tenors can pull that off, I let you know after Thursday.

Mnemonic; metronomic

In honor of the newest additions to my household, Mnemosyne and Metis, two adorable kittens that I rescued from a local shelter last week, I offer mnemonic and metronomic.

Mnemonic derives from the Greek "mnemon" for "of or relating to memory" and the adjectival suffix "ikos". By mid 1700s it emerged in its current form, so having successful made it through the Dark Ages, it still retains it original etymological meaning as a noun for "of or relating to memory" and as an adjective, for "something assisting in memory".

For those familiar with ABC's Schoolhouse Rock, mnemonic is easy to use. A catchy short song is an excellent mnemonic for learning odd lyrics about parts of speech and the evolution of a bill into law--and commercial ads! Accordingly, music is the mnemonic device of the previous example. It should come as no surprise, then, that Mnemosyne, the Titaness of memory, is the mother of the muses, and that music is one of the great mnemonics. And mnemonic is not just something that you remember or can remember, like a scene of graphic violence or nudity in a movie, but something that is intended to help you remember something. Every Good Boy Does Fine was a mnemonic sentence I was taught to remember the keys of the lines on treble clef. FACE was the equivalent mnemonic for the spaces on the treble clef. Fortunately, I don't need those anymore... Lists are an obvious mnemonic for all kinds of things, but aren't nearly as much fun as something set to music or with a cute rhyme.

Now metronomic comes from the Greek "metron", a combinative form of the pre-Indo-European "me" for "measure" and "nomos" for "rule or law". This is the same "me" which is the root of Metis, the goddess of wisdom, skill and cleverness, and mother of Athena, who took on those characteristics subsequently. It isn't quite a stretch that the "measure" of a person would also be these characteristics. So, metronomic, then, is the adjective of metronome, a mechanical (or electrical) instrument which clacks out a measured tempo (Italian for time), and therefore, having such a audible measured tempo as if my such mechanical (or electrical) instrument. Being a musician, I have a variety of metronomes, although I still prefer my original Seth Thomas from when I was 5. My electrical one once scared me in an airport when it got accidentally switched on and did sound quite a bit like a ticking bomb.

Although I practice certain passages with a metronome, my objective is to make my performance of the piece convey the meter without sounding rigid and metronomic. Bored pencil tapping can have inadvertent metronomic qualities. So can certain alarm clocks and kitten mewing, which may or may not occur at the same time. It does, however, come down to a simple fact that the metronome is an audible mechanism, even though my electronic one has a flashing light only option. [Ed note: this is not as useful as the clacking sound to force you to pay attention to the beat.] And a metronome is supposed to measure a rate of time, not time itself. Therefore, metronomic should be audibly and consistently repetitive. After a long family drive, "This Old Man" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" become so metronomic, it gave both parents (metronomic?) headaches. Tiresome and tedious also work just as well, but the idea is that the song became monotonous and overly accented to just those repetitive beats. The metronomic opening statement by Plaintiff's counsel nearly put the jury to sleep. Ok. That's accurate, if a little opaque on the meaning. But most people know what a metronome is, so that makes it easy to get from context that it wasn't the content of the speech, but the manner of delivery. Think incessantly droning but with a clipped tendency as from the pendulum suddenly swinging in the opposite direction.

Well, neither of the kittens is particularly metronomic, even if they do wake me at 5:00am, and neither are they prone to mnemonics, or even really quite remembering from their mistakes as they are only just 3 months old. But they are exhibiting some of the qualities of their namesakes, and that's good enough for me! Welcome to my home. I'll work on your vocabulary later... :-)

Imprimatur; Indicia

A few days ago this word came up on DD, and it remedially tickled my fancy. Obviously, not too much, or I would have done this entry sooner, but what do you expect? I'm a busy person like everyone else, and not everything is immediately fascinating.

Imprimatur comes from the Latin "in" "primere" for "press in" as in to print by pressing. It shares a common etymological root to the word "impress" and therefore to the word "press", for quite literally to print by pressing or imprint. When we finally get to the command form of the verb c. 1650, the word took on the derivative meaning of "let it be printed", and retained that meaning through to the present, although now as a noun for an official printing, and therefore, a sanction or approval as for the printing or something that could be printed.

The securing of license of a copyright is an imprimatur. Ding. Technically correct. Idiotic to say. What it doesn't tell you about the word is redundant in the licensing reference so the sentence sounds unnatural, almost forced, which in fact it was because the first sense of the word, the approval to print, is not how it is most frequently used. As I've discussed with other words, the fun is in taking it out of the literal element. That the corporate president personally typed the plan gave it the imprimatur to implement immediately. Plaintiff's counsel frequently believes that because he asks for evidence to be admitted in a motion that the judge will give it her imprimatur. Doesn't even need to be in writing to have the usage work, although the writing would be a better inference from the word. So, the word works with things that actually are in writing, or could have been in writing (e.g., theories, ideas, hopes, dreams). When a dictator remarks on his desire this is as good as an imprimatur to make the desire a reality.

Ok, now that I've exhausted imprimatur, it occurs to me that truly interesting word is indicia. This is really just Latin borrowed into English without modification, like alumni, but at least in my circles, indicia gets inappropriately used for imprimatur, and so although I have my rules against defining foreign words, I'll make an exception for clarification.

Indicia is the combinative form of "in" and "dic" for "to show or declare" from the Indo-European root "deik", and gives us common words like indicate and index, and even the reference to index finger. Therefore, indicia is a sign that shows or declares something. A dog tag is an indicia of ownership of the pet on your leash. And herein lies the rub. Indicia is plural, indicium (like datum and memorandum) is singular. Therefore, technically, it should be a dog tag is an indicium of ownership of the pet on your leash, but now we've become overly erudite. It is Latin, and as such, we should observe its gender and number forms accordingly, however, I don't hear many people use datum correctly, either among scientists or lawyers, so to avoid being corrected, make sure your signs are always plural. The judge's frequent nods were indicia of agreement with the arguments I was making. Whew. Her groans were indicia that the masseusse had found the right tension points in her shoulders. Sometimes you might hear someone speak of an imprimatur of approval, and this is the misuse that I referenced. Obviously, we know that imprimatur is itself an approval so this usage is inherently redundant, and makes imprimatur into a sign, which as we know is indicia. Indicia of approval is the correct phrase. Signatures on the contract were indicia that the parties approved the terms. I will note that indicia are acts, not specific words, which show or declare, so the terms of the contract themselves are not indicia of the intent of the parties, but rather the signing of the contract which are indicia of the intent to abide by the terms. The negative can also be a sign. Her mother's unwillingness to sign the permission form for the field trip to go rock climbing was an indicium of her fear that her daughter would get hurt. Hyper correct and very odd sounding, indeed.

Personally, I like the word indicia much more than imprimatur, but I'm going to be especially vigilant to use imprimatur as the approval and not the sign and to see how the singular of indicia plays among my friends.

Friable v. Frangible

This is perhaps not the most auspicious post to mark my first post of 2008, but these words came up recently on DD, and I enjoy using them. Since, they're not interchangeable, and it's about time I learned the real difference! Call me inspired. I'll take it where I can.

Friable comes from the Latin "friare" for "to rub, break, or crumble into small pieces". Pretty straightforward to the current usage of "easily crumbled or reduced to powder". Must be because this word originated c. 1560, and not in the Middle Ages. What I find interesting is that it is related to "fricare" for "to rub", which gives us friction, but I'll save that for another time. Unfortunately, unlike the common word friction, friable doesn't have an easy association. Instead, it sounds like a word used to describe a cooking style or something having to do with the clergy, and not something which is broken through friction into small pieces.

Now, frangible comes from the Latin "frangere" for simply "to break", and is just as straightforward for its current usage of "easily broken, capable of being broken, brittle or fragile", even though it originated in the Middle Ages c. 1400. And just like friable, frangible doesn't give it's meaning away too quickly. Sounds like a pastry, even though I know with the "ible" suffix it is an adjective. Oh, well. Sometimes good words just need to be memorized.

So, with two straightforward etymologies to usage, the distinction is also blessedly straightforward. Even though friable has as part of its meaning "to break", in common with frangible, the difference is breaking due to the activity (rubbing) versus breaking due to the composition of the item (brittle). It becomes more obvious with usage.

Dry cookies are friable such that even milk can't revive them, but the glass the milk is served in is frangible. Children's toys are engineered to break in a frangible, not friable manner so that the child doesn't have an opportunity to ingest small pieces. Salt erodes concrete with friable results, back to it original sand and rock components. Snapping a pencil demonstrates its frangible qualities as well as the writer's total frustration. Ok, now that we've gotten the obvious usages out of the way. Because we have activity and composition at issue in the etymology of the words, the common usage is with tangible things. Forced to live in the South for too long, even her steely composure could be rendered friable. Perhaps a little too evocative and esoteric at the same time. You have to know that friable implies a rubbing element to understand that her composure was rubbed away. Not sure this works. Lashing out at a 4 year old may be a frangible result of holiday stress. Unfortunately, this usage also only makes sense if you know the brittle implication of frangible to understand that under the stress, the person snapped. Again, not sure this works, since no one would really understand what you meant to say. Plaintiff's counsel rubbed me all the wrong way with his friable personality. Ok, so it's a pun and it uses Plaintiff's counsel. Yeah, alright, next time I'll keep that one to myself. Plaintiff's counsel's friable client of the case crumbled under cross-examination. That's really just fragile, as well as requiring a colloquialism to get the point across, so, no. Whereas my frangible witness was subject to be treated as a hostile witness. Either that, or he'd be removed by a court officer. Yeah. Still not getting the meaning of this word from context, and my usages probably wouldn't motivate my listener to look up the word either. Friable ideas eventually yield to reason. Maybe, but just barely. Frangible ideas don't withstand even basic scrutiny. Also, maybe, but it leads me to believe that friable is a more versatile word. But I think it comes down to these words must be used with physically broken things in order to give your listener an opportunity to understand the word from context. If your listener is erudite enough to understand some nonstandard usages, then have fun!

Ultimate; penultimate

These two words aren't intended to be interchangeable as much as they are misused that way, so this one is just fun for me.

Ultimate has a circuitous etymology. It derives its meaning from the Latin "ultima" for "the last syllable of a word", a feminine derivation of "ultimus", the superlative comparative of "ulterior" which means "more distant or farther", and which is itself related to the prefix "ultra" for "located beyond" or "on the far side of" and the comparative derivation "ulter" for "beyond". I'll save "ulterior" for another day, and leave this one with the understanding that the use of "ult-" implies distance. Now, by applying it to a "last syllable", it goes from being a great distance beyond what can be observed or perhaps even comprehended (I'll foreshadow "ulterior") to simply last, where the distance is still present, but not required to be great. And from there, the physical distance requirement was dropped, leaving only the connotation that the thing had come to an end. It has to be the last by whatever distinction of last you choose to employ (e.g., maximum, highest, total, final)

Scientists have hypothesized on the ultimate boundary of the universe. A bit esoteric, but if you've ever studied astronomy, you may understand that the universe is expanding, and at some point, it may stop expanding. It should be noted that this is a mixed usage of time and space, so not quite a pure distance application. The ultimate loser of the marathon was the last person to cross the line, or arguably, the first person to quit running. Don't confuse the distance in the example of the footrace for a physical distance attached to ultimate. The "last" element of this example is time. Still trying for just distance. So much easier with the abstracts. Many believe the ultimate measure of power is money. Correct, but not necessarily true. Plaintiff's counsel's ultimate goal is to settle the case fast, even at the cost of getting more money for his client, therefore, the ultimate outcome of his incompetence was being fired. Note that a goal is not necessarily an end, so there is no redundancy, whereas saying "the ultimate end" would be. The ultimate point in the climb was the top of the mountain. Ok, it's distance, but you still have to get down the mountain, so shouldn't the ultimate point of any trip be to get back home? The term "ultimate destinations" is bandied about so freely as euphemisms for luxury destinations, but a true ultimate destination is really the ICU ward, or the hospice! Yeah, abstracts are much easier.

Meanwhile, penultimate is an odd little word that isn't used enough. So, now that we've been through "ultimate", the only difference is the Latin prefix "paene" meaning "almost", which, of course, gives us the word for "the next to the last" because what is "almost last" must be so close to last as to be the next to last.

Plaintiff's counsel's penultimate goal is to make his client happy, or perhaps not be reported for his ethical violations, while the ultimate goal is to make millions for himself. The penultimate point of my trip when I pass through U.S. Customs & Immigration successfully with all my international purchases. Ok, so I've gotten distance out of the way, but it doesn't sound quite right. Penultimate seems to have become solely attached to abstracts. Y is the penultimate letter of the alphabet. Pedantic and uninspired. Students whose last names start with Y were frequently the ultimate victim of Socratic method, but occasionally could be granted a reprieve to penultimate status if a Z last name enrolled. Italian is distinguished from French by the abundance of penultimate versus ultimate stresses. Try it. You'll see. Well, I think you get the picture. Basically, if it can end, it can be just before the end, and subject to myriad interpretations and usages.

So, I hope this is not the ultimate posting for this year, but as I have less than 24 hours and a small party to host, which will still require grocery shopping and cooking, it may well be. At best, if I can scrounge another easy comparison, one that doesn't go through the Middle Ages or require the magnifying glass with OED, this may be the penultimate post. But in any event, Happy New Year!!!

Remiss (remit)

I've frequently enjoyed this word, and now I have more cause to use it, given my recent lapse in posts.

Remiss is a derivation of remit from the Latin "mittere", which means "to send", and with "re" means "to send again", or more colloquially, "to send back". From there, to went from the tangible, of sending back something, to putting something back to its original condition as an extension of if the thing never needed to be sent back, applied to both physical and mental conditions, and then to pardoning as the ultimate way of putting a mental condition back to its original state. So, what does this have to do with being slack or relaxed or finally to "being neglectful of a duty"? Must have occurred in the Middle Ages... Yes, of course! Somewhere c. 1400, late Middle English created the word remiss from "remissus", the past participle of remittere, and as with so many words from this time, gave it some random attribution. Well, in the spirit of not being remiss, in any definition or etymological derivation, I'll give it a shot to reconcile this meaning.

When last we left the etymology of remit, it was to put something back to its original condition as if it had never occurred. And as long as we're going to pretend that something never occurred, let's just say that we're not being too strict in the application of the thing sent. From there, it is just natural extension to say that the failure to strictly apply the force or effect is carelessness or laziness. The requirement that there be a duty derives from the intent to have a force or effect from the thing sent. By a second route, there is the natural inference that the thing which was theoretically "sent back" had no force or effect. Now, of course, that requires a change in perspective from the recipient to the object being received, but from the lack of force or effect, which is a latent definition for remiss, it is an easy step to not having enough force or effect when such was expected, to simply being careless or lazy. In both cases, the lazy inherent meaning also gives rise to a sluggish or slow meaning, but the speed of the force or effect, or lack thereof, has no bearing on the etymology of remit or remiss, and is an inappropriate extension. Remiss is just about a failure to act when there is a duty to do so, at whatever pace that may be. That a failure to have force or effect may not be observed or acknowledged for some time is what gives the appearance of being slow or sluggish, but that's a relative perception based on context. In litigation, Plaintiff's counsel's failure to answer the emergency motion the day that it is received is just as remiss as his failure to complete discovery within the nine months provided by the tracking order.

So, in other usages... Her electricity will be turned off if she is remiss in paying her bill. My cat will meow at me if I have been remiss in feeding her enough roasted chicken. And finally, I have been remiss in posting entries to this forum. I fear that with my rehearsal schedule in the Spring, remiss may bleed into egregious. Bear with me, please!

Extirpate

Having just finished a major weeding project in anticipation of winter, this word seemed especially appropriate.

Extirpate comes from the Latin "ex" for "without" and "stirp" for "stem". I'll take a brief moment to discuss the suffix "ate", which originally in Latin was used with adjectives (making a verb into an adjective), but in English, "ate" is used to make other forms of words into verbs. Go figure. Must have occurred in the Dark Ages when everything seemed to be backward. So, literally, the word means "to make or cause to be without a stem", as something is pulled out by the root.

So, back to my weeding project... Extirpating weeds from a brick walk nearly impossible, so I prefer to burn the weed to the root. When you see a grey hair, do you extirpate it, or leave it be? Ok, while that's correct, it just sounds too funny. It's up there with extirpating the unwanted hair in your ear or between your eye brows. Waxing is just a fancy form of extirpation (and perhaps exfoliation as a side benefit). Anything that can be pulled out by the root. Weeds. Check. Hair. Check. It's easier to apply with things that have physical roots, but it could be just as easily extended to the intangible. Can we extirpate the root of all evil? Grammatically, yes. Theoretically, no. Now, could Plaintiff's counsel extirpate the lies his client tells him? Again, grammatically, yes. Theoretically, no.

Let us work to extirpate poor word usage wherever possible.

Deipnosophist

Finally! A word from DD that I couldn't resist! So, in honor of Thanksgiving, we have:

Deipnosophist. Well, clearly, this word comes from the Greek "deipnon" for "meal" and "sophos" for "clever or wise". A "sophiste" then was a clever or wise man, who in ancient Greece was paid to give instruction. The term was derogatory as their arguments we often specious. This contextual meaning was retained in the idea that a deipnosophist was good at table talk, which carries with it some connotation of worthlesness or insignificance. The word was first used c. 200 AD as a title of a work by Athanaios, a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, Deipnosophiste, as it presented a first person account of a banquet and the conversation which occurred on a range of subjects from the dishes to literary issues to points of grammar and the esoteric. Then, apparently, the word wasn't used again until c. 1650 (at least it was past the Dark Ages!), as one who is skilled in the affairs of a kitchen, where the meal occurred, to one who adept at table talk, where the meal really occurs, since there is no further presumption that the meal is eaten in the kitchen.

Ok, so once we understand the evolution of the word, and that it derives from a partially derogatory root, usage is fairly straightforward. Her husband was a brilliant deipnosophist, able to engage in polite chit chat at any business lunch. Hopefully, I will not be accused of being merely a deipnosophist at the holiday feast, but remembered for something useful I contributed to the discussion. I will probably never have occasion to determine if Plaintiff's counsel could have been a deipnosophist, since I find his company barely tolerable just in court.

May you all be better than a deipnosophist today--Happy Thanksgiving!

Regardless v. Irrespective; Regard v. Respect

This one is by request, but it does intrigue me, and no, I will not be attempting to define "irregardless".

In fact, this comparison is really regard v. respect, since both words contain modifiers for the negative ("ir" and "less"). Regard has a complicated etymology. Regard originally derives from Indo-Europen "wer", through Middle English "warde" (and its variant spellings) through German "warten" to Old French "garder" for "to watch". Regard, then, literally means "to watch again", however, figuratively, it means "to pay attention to" as it derives from to the idea of watching again and again being that you don't stop watching, or paying attention. The word evolved into "to think highly of and/or with a particular feeling" as if when you are truly paying attention it is because you would think highly of the person or have a particular feeling that would inspire the attention. Therefore, regardless naturally means inattentive or unmindful.

In contrast, respect comes from the Latin "specere" for "to look", and thus, respect means "to look at or consider again" and by extension, finally, to mean "deference". Therefore, irrespective means without a second look or thought.

So, the real issue is given the closeness of the etymologies, how does respect differ from regard? Respect has its origin from watching with a purpose, hence the evolution through guarding and paying attention and imbuing the watching with a higher sense of worth, while respect is just looking with no purpose, and then as a result of what you see, paying closer attention and giving the look higher worth. The intent of the initial observation is different, leading to a different purpose for observing, although quite probably leading to the same type of ultimate observation. However, there is a separate distinction through the implied usage. Regard looks at the physical characteristics, again, the reason for guarding or watching. Respect looks at a quality of a person, the reason for giving a second look. Now, a quality of a person may be a physical characteristic (a pretty smile, a scar), but it was not the reason for having to watch the person. Therefore, we give regard to pedestrians at a crosswalk, and we give respect to the police car stopped on the side of the road. The pedestrians are a group of people who need protection against traffic and therefore give continual watching to, while we have no particular interest in the police car except for what the officer may subsequently decide to do which could affect us, therefore, we pay more attention until its relevance is moot. We regard beauty as an asset, and at some point we hope that others will respect the person for more than pretty looks. To take some common and easy ones, we are told to respect our elders, implying that we would not give such notice on first glance, but we should look deeper to find something worthwhile and therefore, worthy of deference. We don't regard our elders. That just sounds odd (like a malapropism), unless they are feebleminded and need elder care. Then, it's appropriate.

When we return to regardless v. irrespective, however, these words are generally used on a meta-level to regard v. respect, as in the fact or quality of what should be regarded or respected. Regardless of the fact that it was physics exam, the student answered the essay questions with dissertations on economic philosophy. True story. Irrespective of his desire to maintain his 4.0 GPA in economics, the physic professor graded the essay. Regardless has the idea of ignoring something to which you should have paid attention, while irrespective is dismissing something to which you had no need to pay attention. Regardless of the weather, my friend and I go walking every morning (almost true, but not due to the weather). Irrespective of his 7 y.o. daughter's whining, he goes to work every day. Ok, that might be a little harsh. Depending on the parent, it could just as easily have read, regardless of his 7 y.o. daughter's whining, he goes to work every day. So, depending on the person and the societal norms of what we should "regard", and even just cautious politeness, regardless has a broader usage. Irrespective, then, is almost flippant, as well, the lawyer in me prefers "notwithstanding" as a more generic, and perhaps obscure substitute. Irrespective of the judge's counseling, Plaintiff's counsel proceeded to attack the witness's credibility on his extra-marital affair. Only Plaintiff's counsel would actually presume to defy a judge so blatantly. For the rest, it would be regardless of the judge's counseling, the attorney continued to zealously represent her client by cross-examining the witness on his extra-marital affair to attack his loss of consortium damages.


So, irrespective (or perhaps regardless, as you see fit) of what you think of my analysis, perhaps we should work to err more on the side of regardless.


Ed note: I started this comparison over a month ago, but it took some time to really process the subtle differences, and I couldn't extract myself to work on any other words until I finished it, hence the extreme delay. Again, thank you for your patience. Hopefully, other words will not create such obstacles...

Seep v. Percolate; Steep

I think someone has been drinking to much coffee, but by request we have seep and percolate, and I'll add steep for the tea drinkers out there.

Seep comes from the Dutch "sijpelen" for "to ooze". Then through the German "sifen" to Old English "sipian", until finally, c. 1500, "sipe" by way of a diatectic variant became seep. Still meaning to ooze, though. Whew. Meanwhile, percolate came solely from the Latin "per" meaning "through" and "colare" meaning "to filter" (from "colum" for a "sieve"). Now, both mean that some liquid passes through small openings, but seep has the liquid coming through on its own and at it own rate, while in percolate, the liquid is forced by something (usually thought of as heat). That's it. I will make one observation that percolate tends to have a connotation from certain usage that the liquid has to go through the porous material more than once, but the etymology and derivation only require that the liquid be forced. The number of times, even as few as once, is irrelevant. Now, steep, as a verb, has a questionable etymology from the Old Teutonic "staupjan" for the vessel storing liquor OR from the Danish "stope" or the Norwegian "stoypa" for "to steep" when used in reference to malting, although OED opines that these Scandanavian reconciliations have a basis in "cast down" relative to metals into molds. I suppose its not a great leap to derive that molten metal might have a tendency like other liquids to earn this definition, but steep is more akin to the process of diffusion as may be involved in fermentation. Regardless, steep, in contrast to seep and percolate, simply involves dunking or soaking in a liquid for the process of extracting impurities or flavor.

So, the usages are fairly straightforward. If I were to drink coffee, I would percolate water through the grounds, whereas since I usually drink tea, I just steep the teabag in nearly boiled water. If my cup is broken, either drink might seep onto the table. Ok, those are the obvious sentences. A hot bath does wonders to steep the tension from my shoulders. Possibly, although it would be more acceptable with something that could actually be leached from your system. A hot bath does wonders to steep toxins from my skin. After a long performance, sweat practically seeps from my body. Hmm. Perhaps overly graphic, and seep has the connotation of being a little thicker in proportion to the size of the porous material to account for the slow rate. Sweat isn't ever thick, and skin is really quite porous, so the better physical usage would be after a pricking my finger, blood seeps from the wound. However, sweat might percolate from my body in a sauna. The forced aspect has no relation to the size of the porous material; only that the liquid is coming out at a faster rate than normal. Now one might argue that in a sauna, the liquid is coming out at a rate commensurate with the temperature, and there is no "forcing", but why else does one go into the sauna if not to force sweat?

Now, this wouldn't be a regular post if I didn't try to expand the usage. So, these words all derive from liquids, so anything that could act like a liquid is also fair game. Mice seep from a hole in the wall or percolate through the walls? Maybe, but not likely. Animates (even a stream of animals) and tangibles are hard to analogize like liquids. But intangibles are fair game. While writing my opposition to Plaintiff's counsel's motion for summary judgment, a myriad of arguments and ideas percolated from my mind, and seeped onto the page. And then, after losing his ridiculous motion for summary judgment, Plaintiff's counsel steeped in his own humiliation and anger.

The problem is, though, that, aside from intangible usages, percolate has taken on a very specific identity with coffee, while seep and steep have broader usages more generally. Although technically correct that when I squeeze my teabag before removing it from my cup that I am percolating the tea, that just conjures vile tastes in my mind of mixing coffee and tea, and no self-respecting tea drinker would do that. Meanwhile, steep can be used to describe infusing flavors (the pineapple was steeped in vodka), and seep for anything that is leaking (milk is seeping from the carton).

Hopefully, you will find that your vocabulary is steeped with good words, which may percolate to others and seep into better usage.

Incite v. Inspire

I've been grading some Moot Court briefs, and this one came up.

Incite comes from the Latin "in" for "in" or more realistically, "to cause a person to be in" and "ciere" for "to set in motion" through a Late Latin derivation "citare" for to summon to a church court (related to citation). So it is not a big leap to get to the current usage of "to cause a person to be set in motion" or "to stir, encourage, or urge on; stimulate or prompt to action". Meanwhile, inspire comes from the same Latin "in" and "spirare" for "to breath", so quite literally, "to breathe into". It was originally meant as to breath life into, and then "to give rise to" like breathing life not just into a physical body, but into activities, and then their ideas, and then all intangibles. The initial usage has been abandoned mostly, but all the others remain in varying degrees. So pretty much, you can inspire anything.

So, what is the difference. Motion v. breath (life). Hmm. Well, incite can only be used with an activity as from the etymology, whereas, inspire is broader. English teachers incite reading with summer reading lists. English teachers inspire reading? Maybe, but not really. English teachers inspire writing novels. Incite requires an impetus--a deadline or an adjudication or guilt to motivate the action. Waiting for the opposition to my motion, my call to Plaintiff's counsel finally incited him to send it to me. Having promised his mother that he would clean his room, the threat of being grounded incited him to actually do the work. Inspire requires a new thing come from the action. While writing my opposition to Plaintiff's counsel's motion, I was inspired not just to attack it on the substance, but also on issues of bad faith. While cleaning his room, he was inspired to wash the car and take out the trash as well. Yeah, like that would ever happen. As for things beyond activities, the rousing cheer of the fans inspired the rookie with confidence to hit yet another double. In am not infrequently uninspired with any ideas for sentences using the wotd. I may be inspired to incite Plaintiff's counsel to be a better lawyer. However, I cannot incite Plaintiff's counsel to inspire his client to settle.

Consort v. Valet (vassal)

By request we have this analysis.

Consort comes from the Latin "con" for "with or through" and "sors" for "lot" as status or class, with some Indo-European roots in "sers" for the same. Then through the French "consort" to Middle English, it came to mean "to associate" and then the noun as of one who associates with another. It is now used predominantly to describe a spouse of a monarch.

Meanwhile, valet is a Old French derivative, c. 1560, of vassal which is a Middle Latin derivative ("vassallus"), c. 1300, of the Welsh "gwas" for "a young man" and Celtic/Irish "foss" for "servant". Of course, vassal still retains the meaning of a servant (a squire or a page to a nobleman), but c. 1600 came to be used exclusively with one who was tied to the land from the Feudal system. It's an interesting bifurcation of the word, needing one for the man and the land (vassal), and one for the man and the person (valet) generally inside the home. Today, valet is typically used for someone who takes care of clothing or your car. Odd division of labor, but both functions are still relative to the personal property of the "lord", and now the "lady".

Now the interesting comparison is that valet in the technical etymological sense would accompany the noble, much as the consort in the literal etymological meaning would, however, a consort had no particular gender associated with the position, and was frequently applied to women (that the reigning monarch was almost always a man until modern times), whereas a valet was only a manservant to a gentleman. There is also an inherent usage with consort that the individual is not a servant, although not an equal, but more of a companion. We can make all kinds of disparaging observations about the role of women relative to men in society, but there is no reason to give such a companion a different title when the word servant (or it's equivalent) already exists if his/her sole function were just as a servant.

That said, these words have fairly limited and specific usages. When I arrive at the hotel, I send my dress to the hotel valet to be pressed before the concert. Her husband has often extolled the virtues of having a personal valet, but the best she did was send his shirt out to be laundered. Since watching Ferris' Bueller's Day Off, I don't like having my car parked by the valet--never know what they do with it while I'm having dinner. Boring. After the Trojan War, the women of Troy were apportioned to the victorious Greeks as consorts (some may say concubines, but we'll deal with that word later). Prince Philip is the consort of Queen Elizabeth. Ok, you get the picture. The unequal spouse.

Abscond

Another of my favorites that rarely gets used.

Abscond derives from the Latin "ab" for "away", "con" for "with or together" or alternately, "completely", and "dere" for "to put or place". From there, it took form as the Latin "abscondere" for "to conceal". And finally c. 1605, abscond emerged for "to depart in a sudden or secret manner" particularly so as to avoid capture. This is beginning to feel like a steeple chase with these hurdles. So, "to put away completely" becomes "to conceal". Ok, perhaps not such a great leap. But from to innocently "put away" to the neutral or borderline secretive, we get the nefarious overtones to stealing and withdrawing with the booty. Something that needs to be kept hidden. But of course, because the word did not originate in the Middle Ages, at least the meaning is linear to the tone of the evolution.

So, why do I like this word so much? No, I am not a cleptomaniac. I like to use it completely for the sarcastic value. I will not infrequently abscond with Plaintiff's counsel's brief before my boss "loses" is in the paperwork on his desk. Or I will abscond with the DVD that I loaned to my friend when I asked her if she done with it since I saw her using it as a coaster. Of course, there is nothing illegal or even remotely wrong with what I am doing, but the idea that I need to "steal" the brief or the DVD before worse things happen to these things, and withdraw before I am caught is the real merit of the word and its humor value. I probably would even tell my boss that I am "absconding" with the document--so he'll know where to find it later--which of course, defeats the implied usage of the word, but it still sounds funny.

As for correct usage, which is not nearly so much fun... She should have absconded with her grandmother's necklace before it became part of the estate and was given to her sister. On New Year's Eve, the employees frequently absconded from the store with a bottle of good cheer. People who fail to abscond with their unpaid goods are prosecuted for shoplifting. Since it derives from to put an object away, abscond must be used with a tangible. You can't really abscond with an idea. That's stealing or plagarism or just plain theft. Plaintiff's counsel absconded my theory of the case for his closing? Well, that sounds stupid for several reasons, not the least of which is that we're on opposite sides of the case, so my theory could never help him. She absconded the tractor from the farm. No. Abscond is an intransitive verb, so it doesn't take a direct object. She absconded from the gang my moving to Utah. Maybe. She absconded from the farm with the tractor. Better, although not sure how secretly you can depart with a tractor, but you get the idea. The word requires surreptitious behavior to leave and usually taking something which is the basis for the need to leave. The inside man on the bank job absconded with the money. Yes. Now, how often do you have need to use this word? Hopefully not that often, which is why I so seldom hear it, but it has so much possibility, I'll hope it can get more humorous use.

Inane

Well, I absolutely love this word. It does not roll trippingly off the tongue, so it must be said with intent and clear diction. I don't think people use it enough, and I certainly don't think that those who do, use it correctly, so, let's dig in...

Inane simply enough comes directly from the Latin "inanis" for "empty, void or worthless" through the French "inanité". From c. 1400 to c. 1800, the word went from empty in a physical sense (including as a technical term for the void between dominant realities or the space between atoms) to empty-headed in an conceptional sense to silly in a behavioral or connotative sense. Ok, natural extensions. Nothing in space, nothing in your head, nothing worth hearing. So, of course, while it still retains a probably archaic usage about space from its etymological origins, now it refers to the things that empty-headed people would say. Which segues nicely into my first usage.

Plaintiff's counsel's inane arguments did not persuade anyone. This should draw the natural comparison to "insipid", which I analyzed earlier this week, and which means basically uninteresting. Certainly, Plaintiff's counsel's arguments could be both inane and insipid--silly and uninspiring--but I would probably lean towards inane. Although along the lines of rhombus and square, something which is inane could be insipid as the thing which is silly may also not inspire. But the articulable difference between inane and insipid is that insipid generally refers to intangibles which have "taste" from it origins in the taste of food, while inane may refer to anything which should have intellectual value. His thesis was filled with inane theories. Ok, if this was an astrophysical thesis, it could be a double entendre, but as a medieval literature thesis, it should be implied to be only the "modern" meaning. Her new novel had an inane plot where the dog did it. Blondes have a bad reputation for being inane. It doesn't work as well with people, as with their thoughts, but since this reputation is based on vacuousness and/or ditziness, the empty-headed and silliness works particularly well. Plaintiff's counsel is inane? possibly if he didn't study hard in law school and barely passed the bar exam. He would be technically devoid of knowledge. She gave him an insipid look indicating that she did not understand his discussion of the nuances of binary coding. I prefer vacant here. I still like inane better as a modifier of the intellectual thought, not a modifier of the alleged intellectual, but it has raised for me a number of words which may describe the void as well. Ah, well, as I said, I love this word, but I think I use is exclusively with Plaintiff's counsel. That I have so much occasion to use it just indicates the state of tort law. You'll need to find your own group of incompetents to apply this word (e.g., teachers, bosses/supervisors, coworkers, customers, relatives). Hmm. Maybe I need to use this word more...

Inconceivable

In keeping with the words that "do not...mean[] what you think[] it means", this is a classic. When you get the reference, you'll understand why.

Like many words starting with "in" for "not", their given etymologies make you hunt all over a dozen other words to find what is really means. Conceivable comes from Latin "con" for "with or together" and "capere" for "to take" as the latter was derived from the Indo-European "kap". The Latin derivative was "concipere" which then became "conceivre" in Old French. Add a little suffix, "able" meaning "capable of", e voilà, we have "incapable of being taken with or together". Inconceivable. Yep. That does it for me. Not. Back to conceivable. Conceive generally refers to pregnancy, with a secondary meaning of creating an idea, not just life. [Ed. note: conception is not a related word, but there is the similar pair of concept, as an idea, and conception, as an creation of life which is interesting.] So, by extension, inconceivable should mean incapable making life. But inconceivable has no element of "life" associated with its usage. Somehow, c. 1631 when this word originated, creating life wasn't as important as stating what couldn't be understood. So the implication of creating an idea from conceivable became not being able to understand the idea for inconceivable, which is an incorrect negation of conceivable, which should instead be unable to create the idea. And we are left with the usage of "unimaginable, unthinkable and unbelievable". Oh, well, it wouldn't be the first word which etymology to usage is slightly askew.

That said, the usages of inconceivable, notwithstanding the movie, are pretty straightforward. It is inconceivable to me that people would not use the subjunctive tense, while it may be inconceivable to many more that the subjunctive tense still exists. The jury found Plaintiff's counsel's theory of the case inconceivable and awarded a defense verdict. I'd probably just go with unbelievable, but inconceivable adds a meta level to the unbelievability. Not just that the theory was unbelievable, but you can't imagine how anyone else could believe it. It is completely incapable of being grasped by anyone. Quantum physics, black holes, and imaginary numbers should be inconceivable, and once were. The homecoming queen found it inconceivable that she would not be admired by the entire school. A bit banal, but it does the trick.

Suasion v. Persuasion

Here's another archival post of mine.

Suasion. I remember this word raising my hackles a couple of years ago when it was the wotd on DD. Merriam-Webster defines both "suasion" and "persuasion" as "the act of persuading". Now, normally, I would reiterate that there are no true synonyms and distinguish the etymologies on each, except the etymologies are a little fuzzy. Suasion says it comes from Latin "suadere" for "persuasion" or "to advise", while persuasion says it comes from--wait for it--"per" and "suasion",so these are unhelpful. The mere addition of the "per" meaning through, doesn't add anything to the etymology or the meaning. Persuasion does not really mean through suasion, because the definition of suasion is backward to that construction. Suasion means through persuasion and therefore should actually be "perpersuasion" (Or do the “per”s cancel?) So, I think we have an issue of lazy usage being justified retroactively, since these words both originated in the late Middle Ages, c. 1380. But, I'll make one last stab at a distinction, just for old times sake. The usage of suasion from the examples from DD is non-specific, to a general perspective (e.g., moral or cultural norms), while persuasion is for a definite idea or opinion. I regularly persuade the judge to my argument, or try to persuade people to order different things off the menu so we can share and sample, but I might try to suade a child to be kind to animals or to always say please and thank you. Still not much use for suasion. Perhaps suasion is just insipid.

Insipid

I'm on a roll... This was not a DD wotd, but it sparks my interest as another word which may be both underutilized and misused.

Insipid derives from "in" meaning "not" and "sapidus" meaning "tasty". Cute. So "not tasty" becomes "flavorless" (not a big stretch there) to "without distinctive, interesting or stimulating qualities" generally. Ok. It's part of the natural shift to broaden the usage. At least it isn't a complete reversal of the word's etymology. Probably because this word evolved c. 1650, and not in the Middle Ages, either (see facetious and sarcastic). Was civilization smarter then? I'll leave that for someone else's discussion forum.

So, this insipid soup needs more herbs and definitely more salt. Poaching tenderloin makes great soup, but insipid steaks. After having found a recipe for pie crust that uses vodka, no one will claim that my apple pie is insipid. Alright, so that's the classic usage of the word that no one really uses. We just say bland. Now, the real fun begins with the expanded usage. Some words that DD proposes on wotd are just insipid. Jeremiad, pukka and mulct just don't inspire me. [Ed. note: These are words I do not intend to discuss on this forum. Look elsewhere if you want to know about them.] As a rule now, since I don't have time to deal with wotd on the daily basis that DD intends, I just skip the truly insipid ones and swoop for the most interesting (to me). Plaintiff's counsel's arguments are insipid. Insipid applies to intangibles and tangibles that rouse the taste element. The table is not insipid. The design scheme is insipid. Plaintiff's counsel may even be insipid, but I have some reservations about using this word with people or animates. I think since the modern definition comes from tasting, it has to be something that we perceive like a taste. I can "taste" the design scheme or the argument. I don't taste the furniture or the person. So I would use it sparingly with inedible tangibles, unless you're going for the sarcasm. I am diminishing Plaintiff's counsel to a bowl of soup. Sounds good to me. That's a double entendre of sarcasm!

Facetious v. Sarcastic

Facetious popped up a few days ago, while I was too busy to deal with it, but I think I'll go on a kick to discuss words that we hear all too commonly and wonder whether they are being used correctly. So...

Facetious comes from the Latin "facetus" for "witty" through the French "facetie" for "jest". It is a rare word, indeed, that maintains it etymological roots. Probably because the word didn't originate in English until after the Middle Ages, c. 1590. And today, it still means "not to be taken seriously or literally" or "amusing or frivolous" as from lacking serious content. Contemporaneous to the evolution of frivolous, sarcasm came into being, from the Greek "sarx" or "sarkos" for "a piece of meat" and pre-Indo-European base "twerk" or "thwares" for "to cut", and by a further Greek derivative through "sarkasmos" for "to sneer" and then the late Latin "sarcasmos". Approximately 100 years later, sarcastic came into being. Why it took 100 years to get the adjective from the noun, we may never know. Now, this may seem odd, to get from rending flesh to sneering, but the idea of the sneer is the biting comment, harsh or bitter derision, akin to rending flesh not with an instrument, but with words. So, the difference appears to be that facetious is a comment that is cute and not hurtful, while sarcasm is irony intended to taunt. Of course, many mask sarcasm in the guise of facetiousness, so as not to offend (as much).

When he whistled at the girls on the street while leering from his convertible, it was easy to make a facetious comment that he was acting like a dog. When he whistled at the girls on the street while leering from his convertible, it was easy to make a sarcastic comment that he was acting like an angel. Too easy, and going to get boring quickly. Facetious and sarcastic both refer to speech. Since these words refer to the witty or biting remarks of people, it doesn't work with acts of people. Plaintiff's counsel's facetious conduct to twirl his pencil while in Court just doesn't make sense. Plaintiff's counsel's facetious remark about the witness' disheveled appearance as indicative of whether the witness cared about his testimony was not appreciated by the jury. I make sarcastic remarks about Plaintiff's counsel's lack of competence repeatedly in these posts. Again, much too easy. The only thing I will add is that the type of speech to which facetious and sarcasm apply is usually not formal. It's not a facetious statement or a sarcastic order. both are off the cuff, not formulated or memorialized. Sarcastic has a sotto voce or behind one's back connotation to its usage since you should not be inclined to make hurtful statements deliberately to someone. Telling your adversary that she is your best friend is sarcasm. Telling your friend that the big pink bow she is wearing in her hair makes her look 10 years younger is facetious, and borderline sarcasm.

Both great words. Use them well. Use the comments which are the basis of the words sparingly.

Sempiternal v. Eternal

Well, this comparison came up quite sporadically from a book I wasn't reading, but got dragged into discussing notwithstanding. Apparently, the word sempiternal required just slightly less than forever to process...you'll get the joke later.

Sempiternal comes from the Latin contraction of semperaeternus for "semper" meaning "always" and "aeternus" for "eternal" from "aeviternus" meaning "of great age". This might seem redundant on first blush. Of course the immediate question is what could be less than eternal that it would require a modifier of always, and then if sempiternal means always eternal, what does mere eternal mean? Eternal, like all the crazy connotations, evolved in the Middle Ages, c. 1350. Sempiternal came about 100 years later, c. 1450. If the connotations are to be believed, sempiternal refers to an enduring thing which came from a known beginning, while eternal refers to something which had neither a beginning nor an end. But the definition of sempiternal is hazy, at best, and doesn't make the distinction as clearly as the definition of eternal implies. Moreover, sempiternal notes that the definition if "literary", as if to imply that only if you are a published writer/author could you possibly use this word. Perhaps the real intention was only if you were a published writer/author would you possibly use this word...

I have to confess that, as of late, my tolerance for idiotic and obtuse etymological evolutions has become strained. And OED is just so heavy and awkward. But, OED confirms that sempiternal is to "endure without end", implying that it had a beginning, and eternal is "infinite in past and future duration". Pretty clear now, although still potentially useless.

Diamonds are not forever; they are merely sempiternal. Yeah, that's romantic. Many arguments by Plaintiff's counsel seem sempiternal. There are rules requiring cases be disposed of within a prescribed period so they do not take on the appearance of sempiternality. A postings to the internet automatically becomes sempiternal. Ok, you get the picture. Meanwhile, very simply, a concept that has no known beginning as well as no known end would be eternal. Love is eternal, even if the diamond isn't. Arguably, murder is sempiternal from Cain and Abel, but revenge according to the ancient Greeks was eternal. And of course, there is the eternal line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. yes, that one was sarcastic. But while the difference is definable and clear, use sempiternal in causal, non-literary circles, and you will draw more blank stares than using animadversion. I'll save an analysis of "forever" for later to see if that word may be used as a catch all.

Egregious

After all that antiquare/antiquate nonsense, I just needed a simple happy word: Egregious.

Egregious derives from Latin "ex" and "grege" for literally "out of the flock", or poetically, "rising above the flock" or pre-eminent, outstanding. Of course that has good overtones, but a mere swing of the pendulum and some time later during the Middle Ages (of course!) we get the exact opposite meaning. That standing out is a bad thing, a glaring or conspicuous in its error. Archaically, it still retains the original meaning of exceptional, but no one would believe that usage as anything more than irony, so the the negative connotation it is.

Failure to use the subjunctive tense is no longer the egregious grammatical error that it once was, although it should be. While sight-reading the new piece, she mispronounced all the Latin, breathed in the middle of words, and didn't observe the subito piano marking in time to refrain from being the unintended soloist, evidencing her egregious musicianship. Never me! Plaintiff's counsel's arguments contained egregious misstatements of the law. Too easy. Enjoy!

Antiquarian v. Antiquated

I've always liked the word antiquated, largely because I am not chattel, but I am not infrequently reminded of those old laws, and antiquarian reminded me of that.

Antiquarian derives from the Latin "anti" for "before" and pre-Indo-European "-okw" for "appearance". Of course, during Medieval times, it started taking on other forms and meanings. First, the Latin derivative "antiquus" came to mean "former, ancient", then antiquity meaning "olden times", then c. 1550, "antiquarius" for "a student of the past" (antiquary in modern usage). And finally, antiquarian for "pertaining to antiquaries or their studies". It should be noted that antiquities was just the adjectival form of "old", but has come to mean from the period of time before the Middle Ages (a.k.a. really old). Meanwhile on a separate etymological vein, and just for sake of completeness, c. 1700, antiquated sprang into existence for "obsolete". Somehow the idea of old evolved into simply outdated. Another 100 years later, and we have antique proper, for an old and collectible thing, although that's not necessarily outdated (e.g. furniture and china). It isn't until the early 1920s that we get antique as a verb for "to give an antique appearance to" when we return to the worn out concept, an adjective to describe something that is old and collectible, and finally, another verb for the activity of collecting these old collectibles. It's all so confusing, but basically there are two threads: antiquarian and all the "r" derivatives for really old and antiquated and all the "t" derivatives for outdated.

Ok, so I guess I'm not as enamored of antiquarian as I am of antiquated. It's so easy to say that Plaintiff's counsel's calling me "little lady" was an antiquated sentiment from a chauvinist era. Blue light laws prohibiting coin operated laundry on Sundays are similarly antiquated. But there are few examples of antiquarian music. Hmm. that's not quite right, or at least, it shouldn't be. Antiquarian relates to those who study the past or their study of the past, not the past itself. An early musicologist is an antiquarian pendant. Oh yeah, that's clear, as well as a double entendre. Who would even say such a thing? And I know some early musicologists! The Magna Carta is technically not old enough to be of antiquarian interest. ugh. It's correct, but dumb. Can I just give up on this word, and condemn it as esoterically useless. Why does DD continue to do this? Antiquated has so much more possibility. Perhaps antiquarian is an antiquated word. I'm going to treat it as such.

Evince v. Evidence

As part of my backlog of words, evince roused the lawyer in me today.

Evince comes from the Latin "e" meaning "out of, from, or thoroughly" and "vincere" meaning "to conquer". And somehow "to conquer thoroughly" now means "to show clearly". More trial by combat. Compare evidence which comes from the Latin "e" and "videre" meaning "to see". So in this instance, "to see thoroughly" means "to show clearly". This is just the blind leading the blind. Amazing how two completely different etymologicial roots can come to the same alleged usage. Well, almost. Say it with me: there are no true synonyms.

Ok, so what is the difference. Since evince comes from to conquer, it is a personal activity, therefore, the things shown are personal traits or qualities, not impersonal facts. And while it expresses the traits and qualities of humans, it may expand to animals or inanimate objects as these may exemplify human traits or qualities. The miscreant youths evince their low aspirations by loitering in the mall. I evince sympathy with my eyes alone. I evince cold. No. I evince that I am cold. Yes. As a result of his last favorable jury verdict, Plaintiff's counsel evinces haughtiness. My cat evinces her distaste for her food by ignoring it. Yes, because she has such personality. Lions evinces their superiority in the jungle with a loud roar. Yes, because we ascribe human qualities to "the king of the jungle". My stereo evinces life-like sound. Probably as it mirrors human sound, but the better word would probably be evoke. Meanwhile, evidence demonstrates a fact, but is employed solely from the non-human perspective. My cat evidences that she is hungry by sitting at her bowl and yowling. Yes. He evidences that he is annoyed by scowling. No. The bills in the box evidences that the mailman delivered the mail today. Yes, although as an issue of circumstantial evidence, the better word is indicates. Plaintiff's counsel's haughtiness evidences his last favorable jury verdict. Yes, but it it's not likely that he won against me.

The trouble with this pair is that evince has been roughly subsumed by other words that don't sound like evidence, and evidence is rarely used as a verb, since when evidence is used, even as a noun, is suggests a legal meaning. Therefore, evidence supplants evince, perhaps as evince may be a malapropism for evidence, and everyone just uses it as a noun to make things clear. The evidence will show that my cat is hungry, that I was was cold, and that Plaintiff's counsel is haughty.

Roué

As long as I'm in a French mood, I'll delve into another French word...

First of all, roue, as DD spells it, is misspelled. Roué has an accent. Otherwise, you wouldn't pronounce the "e". It would just be roue (pronounced roo), which rhymes with roux, which is the white sauce.

Now, etymologically, roué derives from the Latin "rota" for a wheel, and evolved from the past participle of the French "rouer" for "to break upon a wheel". The insinuation is that the individual is so sinful as to require the punishment of being broken upon the wheel, a throwback to a torture predominantly of the Middle Ages (the Catherine Wheel) designed for execution. As I continue to analyze the etymologies and uses of words, and I am more and more intrigued by the sharp shift in the evolution and derivation of words which occurred between 900 and 1600. I'll have to explore that more, and augment my postings with my findings. So the crimes of a man who was to be broken on the wheel were so morally repugnant that he was not eligible to be execute by the gallows, normally reserved for common crimes like theft. But now we just think of the roué as someone who is devoted to sensual pleasure, which may or may not have been actionable on the wheel in 1450. Whether our tolerance for these crimes has abated, or whether our connotation of its has evolved, it seems that the meaning is debauchery, and not a capital crime, like leading a riot or a gang of brigands.

An admitted roué, he drank all the wine in the cellars and cleaned out the stores in less than a week. Too easy. Oscar Wilde wrote of the prototypical roué in An Ideal Husband. Also too easy. Plaintiff's counsel wined and dined his soon to be divorced client and cleaned out her bank account in the process as only a roué could. Still too easy. As I try to formulate these sentences, I am struck with the overwhelming feeling that roué and effete belong in the same sentence. A gluttonous roué at Thanksgiving and Christmas, he lay on the couch, effete from trytophan overdose and watching football. Yes, I note all my roué are men, but the definition was "a man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure." A woman knows better!

Atelier

Having recently returned from Paris, I remember passing by an atelier or two in the 1er Arrondissement. It's not quite the same thing there...

Atelier comes from the Latin "assula", a chip or splinter, as a diminuitive of "assis" for a board. Through a series of variant Latin spellings, we add a "t" and end up with "astulla", which through Old French becomes "astelier", for a carpenter's shop. The loss of the "s" now does not change that it is still a woodshop, and not just the commonly known workshop. In Paris, the atelier is where they make and repair furniture. Elsewhere in the world, even when talking about France, it is a place for work of the hands (painting, pottery, jewelry).

Ah well, as a purist, you know where my tendencies lie. My usage will only be for the carpenter's shop, but it's hard to find an atelier in the Yellow Pages, and if I ever want a place for my budding dress-making business, I'll just have to rent a studio.

Intrepid

Ah, yes, this is a great word, not used enough.

Intrepid comes from the Latin "in" for "not" and "trepidus" for "anxious or disturbed", and thus meaning "calm", but now means "bold or fearless". I love it when the pendulum swing of the "not" gets wildly distorted 180 degrees, rather than merely coming to rest at equilibrium. Calm as in not anxious or disturbed could simply mean inactive or at rest, and not requiring the action inherent in bold or fearless. Ah well, as Newton's First Law states, objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and this definition's evolution was well in motion. Lord only where it will end up, but if the pendulum keeps swinging, it may end up at anxious or disturbed again...

Intrepid climbers of Mount Everest may also be called stupid or foolhardy. Tune in next week to see how our intrepid heroes escape from the villain's obvious trap. Despite the law being against his client, Plaintiff's counsel presented his argument before the Court with intrepid aplomb. It is an intrepid woman who knows when to confront her significant other when he treats her like chattel despite her significant contribution to his fledging business. 'nuff said.

Turpitude

Yes, this is another of my favorite words. Don't ask.

Turpitude comes from the Latin "turpis" for "base or vile" and "tude", the suffix which makes the adjective into a participle. And that makes this word as clear as mud. We all have a general understanding of what base and vile mean, but now its important to know what these words really mean. So, for the meta level we have vile, which comes from the Latin "vilis" for "of little worth, base or cheap" but which has come to mean things associated with the poor of the Dark Ages (wretched, filthy, repulsive, etc.) and base, which comes from the Latin "basus" for physically low or short, and which has come to have a similar connotation as with those of low birth (not refined, worthless, morally low). Ok, so back to turpitude. While base and vile etymologically have no origin in depravity, the ongoing association with the individual who were literally base or vile tended to create that connotation and it stuck, not just to base and vile, but by extension to turpitude. The irony is that as now the moral depravity is implied, turpitude is usually paired with moral in an almost redundant fashion. Moral turpitude, as if there is another kind of depravity. Could we really fathom political turpitude? isn't that really moral/ethical anyway. economic turpitude? that just sounds implausible. But ultimately, this is just another connotative association from something of little worth to people without money to what people without money may be forced to do by society a millenium ago to just that conduct generally and finally to a moral issue. Naturally.

As usual, turpitude applies to people and the activities of people almost exclusively. It's kinda hard for my cat to engage in an immoral act, but I suppose it is possible. Let's not go there either. So, the Pennsylvania school authorities maintained the right to fire a teacher for moral turpitude. This was how it actually expressed its right, amusingly for an educational system using the redundancy, and it is still just as vague now as it was then. Adultery, while still on the books as an offense, is no longer actionable for divorce as an independent cause, and therefore, socially, may no longer be considered turpitude. True, although esoteric. Miscreant youths loitering in the mall for shops to close in order to mug the last customers engage in a unique form of turpitude. It is turpitude, however, to misuse a word? Depend of how egregious the misuse. Misusing well and good? probably. Failing to use the subjunctive tense? definitely!

Fungible

Since I have a backlog of over 100 words from DD, I can at least chose my favorite words for my return posts. Fungible is another of those.

Fungible comes from the the Latin "fungi" and "vice" for "to perform" "in the place of". Therefore, fungible means "freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind" or "interchangeable". Pretty straightforward. Of course, the original root of "to perform" likely meant that it was intended to apply to people (servants, foot soldiers) but now it applies to any asset (commodities, money) and in deference to not alienating people (and the fact that the feudal system has largely been abolished), it is used almost exclusively with these tangibles.

While assembly line workers may be fungible, only an unfeeling corporate behemoth would refer to them as faceless, impersonal assets for fear of a union strike or a mass exodus of their labor force. Comingling client assets may make money fungible, but it does not erase their paper trail. Livestock are a fungible good for slaughter, but not for breeding. yes, although its dull and very clinical. I'll stick with financial instruments (stocks, bonds), money (duh--did you really expect to get that specific $20 that you deposited 5 years ago?) and people (for the sarcastic element). Often during my college education I felt that the University treated its students as no more than fungible--just like every other sucker from whom it could gouge exorbitant tuition while providing the bare minimum of services and herding us from class to class. Your mileage may vary.

Recreant v. Miscreant

Recreant was a recent DD wotd of which, quite honestly, I had never heard. Probably would have thought it was a derogatory way of describing someone with too many weekend pursuits (he's a real recreant of tennis, golf and pool), but that's clearly not right. Of course, this immediately conjures miscreant in my mind as a pair ripe for comparison. Miscreant is a great word, and a personal favorite of mine to describe some teenagers or those obnoxious 'tweens who lack direction.

Recreant comes from Latin "credere" for "to believe" through the French past participle of "recroire" meaning to "yield in a trial by combat" or more figuratively, yielding the cause. Ok, so I may find this an unusual etymological evolution, so I'll start with the prefix. "Re" usually means again, but it has another limited usage meaning "back", as in to take back, which would make more sense in this context as to "take back a belief". Unfortunately, that only gets us part way to its current meaning of "cowardly" or "disloyal", but if knights originally took oaths of duty and loyalty to defend and honor the beliefs of the king and, by extension in Medieval times, the church, to yield those beliefs was cowardly and disloyal, as well as obviously "unfaithful". Whew. Compare this to miscreant, which has the same Latin root, but with the prefix "mis", which means "wrong". Therefore, miscreant means one who has a wrong belief, compared to recreant as one who has given up a correct belief. Now, just to compound matters, over time, miscreant has taken on meanings of vicious and depraved, and not just heretic and infidel, which reference the boundaries of having a wrong belief system, likely as an extension of the common thought of what people were like if they didn't have the proper and accepted belief system. Meanwhile, recreant has some overtones of being a traitor, implying that by abandoning the cause, you have gone to the other side, which is not a logical extension (you could abstain). It is a fine line between retreat and crossing over, but what we see is that in Medieval times through the Renaissance, any waiver of faith was as good as sinning. Recreant, miscreant, you were still damned and outside of society.

Now for the fun part--application. Pretty clearly, both of these words apply to people and the activities of people. Miscreant youth loiter in the mall waiting for stores to close so they can mug the last customer. Recreant youth engage in a night of binge drinking and then cheat on a test the next day, despite the honor code, just to maintain their 4.0 averages. He's a real miscreant for cheating on his wife, but a recreant for walking away from the argument. Yes to the first, maybe to the second. However, since both miscreant and recreant have "belief" in their origins, this requires sentience and intent to abandon or reject the belief. Therefore, these words cannot apply to other animates, or tangibles or intangibles, except, as always, to the extent that we try to give them such cognitive powers. The miscreant dog may urinate on the carpet, but it was merely a biological function, and not a deliberate act to annoy me. The miscreant cat which defecated in my shoe because I didn't clean the litter box...that's another story. Recreant is harder to use since it requires double the cognitive intent--the first to engage in the act and the second to withdraw from it. The dog was initially anxious for his morning walk but immediately became recreant upon realizing the intense rain. This just sounds stupid. The proper word is reluctant, or possibly reticent, or even just unwilling. I think the extra level of cognitive process of recreant restricts it from usages, no matter how sarcastic, beyond people. The recreant Plaintiff's counsel asked the Court to withdraw as attorney of record for his client when he learned that his client was lying to him. Since nearly all plaintiffs lie to their attorney about something relating to their case (how the accident really occurred, how much pain they really have...), to suddenly be put off by the lie is akin to yielding the cause, and litigation is the current form of trial by combat, so this works quite well. The miscreant Plaintiff's attorney would steal the retainer and do no work. Miscreant is just too easy to use. All you have to do is think of amoral activities or people. Recreant requires more nuance of someone who has lost faith in the cause. Dropping out of high school from teenage pregnancy is recreant? Possibly, although adversity is not the condition for yielding. Dropping out of high school because your senior advisor said you won't amount to anything. That's a better and more accurate usage. Education is supposed to help you aspire to better goals, so accepting the opinion that you can't make any of those goals is yielding the cause of education. Ok, perhaps a little to esoteric, but you get the picture. So, let us not be recreant in our usage of the English language that these words may be used in a miscreant fashion.

Growing

Being a language purist, nothing bothers me more than a word which has been bastardized into a cute marketing expression. So, although I don't do phrases, a request has been made for "grow" based on "to grow one's business".

Well, this is new to me. Grow is one of those base words from Medieval English "growen" from Old Norse "groa", and it has always meant "to grow". No derivations, no deviations, no distractions. Just grow. Now, of course, there are over a dozen variant definitions of the use of the word grow, but I'm going to focus on the misuse I stated above. And how does this differ from my prior suggestions to use words out of context? Because grow was originally an intransitive verb requiring helping verbs (He has been growing a rate of 1" each month; our crops have been growing well now that we have installed the new irrigation system), and only in the 1800s was it expanded to include living things directly (We grow grapes and roses; violets grow best with incandescent lighting), but the application to nonliving things was a sound byte apparently coined by President Bill Clinton in 1992 in his remarks to the People of East Lansing ("...that we not only could, but we had to grow the economy and improve the environment.). And the phrase took off, unfortunately. I suppose it's not such a bad misuse if you truly believe a business is a living organism, or analogous to one, which it not a big stretch. But this misuse was from "growing the economy" subsequently extended to "growing a business". Now, I am not a farmer, but I don't view the practice of planting, nurturing, pruning, weeding, harvesting, and selling of produce to be the equivalent process of trying to improve the economy, which is more like trying to make a path through a Brazilian rain forest with a butter knife. Therefore, you may, potentially, grow an idea to solve the deficit, as the idea may be germinated and nurtured, etc., but you cannot grow the economy all by itself--the economy was not a developed idea, but an analysis of an existing trading system, and you certainly cannot grow the deficit down (that just defies basic agriculture, physics, and common sense).

So, while I don't like "grow your business", as long as it can still be reasonably compared to farmer's crops, it is a not unreasonable extension. A small business owner may grow his business, but Microsoft may be beyond that analogy. You will note the legal caveats that I have included. I could never use this expression. My expansion of usage is only for sarcastic effect. There was no sarcasm in the 1992 speech or any other misuse since then. President Clinton meant it seriously (I hope), and one can only hope that he hired better speech writers since then. Meanwhile, although the expression is here to stay (I have heard it used in Fedex commercials), we can do our part to try to minimize its impact. For my part, when I hear such misusages, I try to rearrange their sentence/sentiment in my immediate response to properly use all the words. "I've got some great ideas to grow my legal practice," says the Plaintiff's attorney. "And what are your ideas to make your business grow?" I reply, with just a hint of irritation. After all, I don't like talking to stupid Plaintiff's attorneys generally, and worse when they misuse the English language they rely on for their livelihood. Let's not grow the English language this way. Yeah, that really does just sound wrong. Let's allow the English language to grow only in reasonable and proper ways. Better.

Lauwine

Well, this is certainly an unusual word, and one that I had never heard, so a rousing thank you to the individual who precipitated my return with this request.

Lauwine, accordingly to OED, apparently derives from the German "lau" for mild or tepid, from the actual German word lawine, which quite simply, means an avalanche. But lawine derives more realistically from the Latin "labina" for "sliding, chutes" from "labi" for "to slide". The derivative spelling was only in favor in English in the 1800s with its advent in Byron's poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and shares the same "lau" with the Sweizerdeutsch ("laui", "lauene", and "lauine"), which is more likely the source of the extra "u", rather than some forced meaning with "tepid".

As for use of the word, I think your audience would be more perplexed and put off by a literal use of lauwine ("let's see if this dynamite will trigger a lauwine"), and as a warning, it would be just about useless (Run! the lauwine is coming!) Now, for connotive usage, I love the word "flood", but I could give "lauwine" a try for some variety, after all, it is just another state of water. Instead of a flood of applications for the prestigious internship, one could reference a lauwine of applications. From context, the listener should get it, although I would still imagine with a perplexed look. Are you trying to sound pretentious? Probably. Why not. It's lauwine! What else are you going to do with this word besides relegate it to the archives? Good luck, and don't let all those old words cover you in a lauwine.

An Apology

To those of you who keep coming back to my site to see if I've posted anything in recent weeks, I thank you for your dedication and perseverance. To those of you who have posted and emailed to prod me gently to action, I thank you for your enthusiasm and patience. My summer music schedule has been completely (and wonderfully) subsuming to me, but does not abate until late September when I return from the European Tour with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

My apologies for this lengthy lapse, and again, thank you for your interest and support. I hope to have many interesting stories to weave with all the words I have stored from DD over this time.

Lauren

Nonpareil

Technically, this is a phrase, which has been misspelled as a single word for the benefit of English, and a foreign word (phrase), and therefore, excluded from discussion, but I'll make a a brief exception because it is French.

Nonpareil comes from the Latin "non" (not) and "par" (equal). Literally, not equal, but figuratively, for unequaled or without equal. Old French kept the "non" and used a diminutive "pareil" for equal, so the etymology to usage is still direct, as is the current spelling.

Which leaves us with usage, and here I will digress, since I think the appropriate usage would be to keep it as two French words "non pareil" and write it in italics to indicate the deliberate usage of a foreign language. This phrase is French, and should stay that way. She hopes that her theory will be non pareil when presented to the Court. Equally, she strives that her musicianship and preparation for rehearsals will be non pareil, and set the standard for other chorus members. Of course, if you insist, just take out the space and lose the italics and see if it doesn't look like a typo...

Moil v. Toil

From the past two weeks while I was "otherwise occupied" with work and recuperating, I have such a backlog of DD words, that I think I can keep up the French trend for some time.

Moil derives from the Latin "mollis" for "soft" as related to "mollia (panis)" for "the soft part (of bread)", through Old French "moillier" for "to soften as from having been made wet" and eventually to Middle English "moillen" for "to soak or make wet" which of course led to manual labor because why else would anyone c. 1400 get wet other than toiling in the mire??? And that's the definition that we are left with--toiling, drudgery and hard work, and some latent description of the churning water as from the labor in the mire. Ironically, this word has no relationship to turmoil, which derives from some mill activity.

Now, compare toil, which derives from the Latin "tudiculare" for "to stir up or beat" as from a machine which crushed olives, through the French "toiler" for "to contend". It is hard to see how "crushing" becomes "contending", but ultimately, in Middle English c. 1250-1300, the word came to mean just hard and continuous labor. Maybe they were just contending against the daily grind. :-)

So, how does moil differ from toil, other than the initial consonant? Well, since moil derives from water, there is still the residual implication of churning in the work, while toil is has the residual crushing. Therefore, the busy receptionist's attention diverted by walk-ins, phone calls and doctor requests added to the moil which was her work environment, while the incessant HMO paperwork only added to her toil. The first is a flurry of activity like a whirlwind, while the second is the crushing blow. Daily teacher's toil away under adverse circumstances of dwindling resources, striving to keep each classroom from creating a moil. I like the first usage, but the second becomes a bit vague. Children after eating too many sweets are a moil of restless energy? Better, but still a little opaque. Depression moils in a downward spiral unless checked. eh. Basically, I don't like this word, even if it does have a French etymology. It's a bit useless and obscure. I'll keep working at it. See if I can make it work for me without too much moil--or toil.

Pastiche

Still working through my French words, although this one has a more circuitous evolution.

Pastiche comes from the French "pastiche" meaning "a medley" from the Italian "pasticcio" for both "a medley" and "a pastry cake" as derived from the Latin "pasta" for "paste" and "pastry cake", which took the word "pasta" from the Greek for "porridge or barley". There was a great joke about flour and water makes paste, but add eggs and sugar and you get cake--what happened to the paste? Well, this word evokes the joke. From the paste we get the pastry and then the imitation of the paste and/or the pastry from different pieces, and then just the disparate pieces in imitation of anything. It is certainly an eccentric derivation, but not without a rational thread, even if the evolution is due to lazy usage. What happened between the Latin and the Italian that the word came to mean a medley and not just a food? Was it something having to do with the combination of disparate ingredients of flour and egg to make the pasta that inadvertently came to be a cake and the medley of ingredient to make the cake? It's plausible, but still a little weak. However, as the Italian was arguably coined c. 1750, it is not improbable as the form of the pastry as a sweet was beginning to emerge.

A tart is a conduit for a pastiche of seasonal fruits. I especially love it when the literal the figurative merge. A quilt was originally a pastiche for remnant fabrics. P.D.Q. Bach employs a pastiche of elementary tunes from chop stix to childish taunts in his works. Statutes are a mere pastiche of unedited legal language from countless amendments. Since pastiche carries an element of creativity to the integration of disparate elements, it is typically used with artistic forms (music, cooking, writing). Therefore, although a homeless person's wardrobe may be a pastiche of charitable donations representing various decades of fashion, this may be a bit extreme. The decor of her home represented a pastiche of family heirlooms and curios collected from a myriad of exotic trips. Better. A mutt is not a pastiche of a its genealogy since it has no choice in the artistic make up, but a new breed may be so bred. Since pastiche is inherently artistic, there is an element that the creativity should be deliberate, and not merely by chance. The combination and/or imitation is intentional, and not a mistake in a new recipe or an inadvertent copyright infringement. Plaintiff's counsel's brief read like a pastiche of prior briefs for other clients, including the inadvertent typo of leaving in the other client's name, and therefore, carried no real persuasive effect.

Denouement

I'm on a French kick at the moment, being a latent Francophile, and this is yet another word of French origin that finally tickled my French fancy.

Denouement--of course it would be French with all those vowels in rapid succession, and the correct pronounciation dropping the final "nt" in favor of the nasal "e"--comes from the French "dénouer" for to untie from the Latin "de" meaning the negative of the following word and "nodare" for "to tie in a knot." So literally, the word means to untie the knot, and figuratively, that has been applied to the resolution of the complex elements of an event or the plot of a literary or dramatic work. Did dénouer in 1752 when the word was coined ever just mean picking at one's bootlaces? Possibly, but it does seem equally appropriate to unraveling the threads of the story lines of a novel, and then by easy extension, to unraveling any complicated issue. So, no major detours in the evolution and current usage of this word.

The denouement of any fairy tale is the wedding between the hero and the damsel with the coda "and they lived happily ever after". Perhaps fairy tales aren't complicated, but you get the point. A typical film follows a 3 act formula with a quick denouement in the last reel; however, the movie AI: Artifical Intelligence, had a 3 act denouement which was painful to watch not only for the additional length but also for the lack of understanding of when the picture would actually end. The denouement of an argument between friends should lead to reconciliation and apologies. Plaintiff's counsel enjoyed the sound of his own voice so much that he failed to present a proper denouement in his closing argument that the jury could understand what the point of his speech was. Isn't the graduation ceremony merely a denouement of four years in college? This word isn't hard to use in everyday life. Any time an activity is winding down, this word is appropriate. There is an overtone of resolution of a complicated issue, the idea being that the events have been building to a climax which is resolved. If there is no building, though, there may be little to resolve, and therefore no real denouement. Conversely, a denouement which leads to a cliffhanger may be unsatisfying as not really resolving anything. So using denouement outside of normally complicated resolutions gives that import to the thing, for effect or for sarcasm. The denouement of the work day is packing up to go home. Perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but that depends on how intricate one's work is and how difficult it may be to extricate oneself at the end of the day. The denouement of bankruptcy usually ends in a fire sale of assets. So many opportunities. So little time. The denouement of many entries in this forum involves a usage impugning plaintiffs' counsel. Enjoy.

Penchant

Love this word! I use it regularly, and never hear it enough. Whenever I do hear it used (not by me), it always makes me smile.

Penchant comes from the French "pencher" for bend or incline from the Latin "pendere" for "to hang or weigh" as devolved through the Latin "pendicare" for "to lean". So as the pendulum or pendant (both of the same origin) hangs and perhaps sways in a direction, perhaps from a perceived imbalance, a movement whether deliberate or by the earth's rotation or magnetism, or an architectural anomaly, the bob appears to "incline" towards something. Of course, like all good words related to the movement of objects, it was immediately applied to people where it stuck and the object origin was abandoned. Thus, penchant not only means the emotional inclination toward a person or idea, but a strong such inclination, as if the original "inclining" were due solely to magnetism causing an unnatural attraction of the pendant to the other object.

She has a penchant for exploring new blog sites. His penchant for forensic accounting made him a formidable business executive. Her cat's penchant for moist cat treats was guaranteed to bring the pet out of hiding just from rusting the bag. As an initial note, penchant is nearly always used with the preposition "for", which makes this practically a phrase, and it can be used with any sentient creature which could have a preferential liking of something without issue. Now, the old IBM 386's had a penchant for crashing just before the user tried to save. Possibly, if you think outdated computers like to foil user's reasonable efforts, and give such intent to the computer. Derelict buildings have a penchant for drawing crime. Probably not, even if one were being sarcastic. There's just nothing cognitive about a building that it could even be remotely analogized to a person. Vague political theories have a penchant for being bandied about by the uninformed. Again probably not, because the theories are not the ones with the liking that is causing anything. Politicians have a penchant for bandying about vague political theories. Correct. And of course, she has a keen penchant for picking on plaintiffs' counsel.

Pantheon

I normally would have given this word a miss, but the DD etymology got me so riled, I had to address it.

Pantheon derives from the Greek (finally! not another Latin origin) "pan" for "all" and "theos" for "god", so pantheon literally means "all the gods". There is nothing about a structure, despite what DD says. The Greek system of worshiping the gods was not restricted to a single building, but was a way of life which was embodied in all activities, much like many modern day religions which are not merely restricted to Sunday or Saturday services. To speak of the Pantheon then with a capital P was not referring to a temple, but to the Twelve Olympian, which represented the important gods, and the other gods were facets under these twelve (See e.g., Hermes, Hermes Argeiphontes, Hermes Cthonious (overlapping with Charon), Hermes Cyllenius, Hermes Trimegistis, Hermes Psychopompos (overlapping with Somnus, and his son Morpheus)). Gods not associated directly or indirectly with the Olympians were prior ancient deities being phased out as having been defeated by the Olympians (Titans and their "monstrous" progeny), deities in contravention to the Olympians for point of conflict (literally, Eris), and the vague deities of nature (e.g., Gaia, Eos, Nyx). So, to speak of the Pantheon is to speak of the twelve greatest gods of ancient Greece, and possibly the twelve greatest Roman gods as the same were subverted entirely into their religion. There was no single building in ancient Greece where all twelve were worshiped; that only exists in Rome, which makes it ironic that the idea of a structure is a Roman construct onto a Greek idea, literally and figuratively. Since there was no such building until Roman times, but the word is solely of Greek origin, it is clear that there was no intention of a building until the Romans took over the "Pantheon" from the Greeks. Therefore, being a purist, I would never use this word to describe a building except for the sole named building in Italy. Ok, stepping off my soap box now.

Quickly, then in practice, it should refer to a small group of the best of a category. Nobel prize winners represent the pantheon of academic scholars. Senior partners meet as a pantheon of legal minds. The special publication of the pantheon of papers was widely regarded as a "must have" for every library. The seven wonders of the ancient world are a pantheon of the greatest structures ever built. Works with people, places, things, ideas, basically anything that has a "best" which is everything. I'll leave you to your own sarcasm about creating a pantheon of things which are less than the best, but you know mine would start with Plaintiff's counsel.

Credulous v. Credible

My gut tells me that these are words frequently misused, so it's time I set myself straight, and DD has prompted me to do so.

Credulous comes from the Latin "credere" for "to believe", therefore, credulous means "believing easily", so it refers to the perception of a person and not the quality of the thing or intangible. Young children lose their credulous nature as they are exposed to the realities of the world around them. Naivete is merely credulousness in adults. Credulous clients allow Plaintiff's counsel's to convince them about the ongoing merits of their case, even in the face of negative court rulings. But not, the credulous witness or evidence was not believed by the jury. The correct word there is credible, which also comes from the Latin "credere". So the difference here is the suffix. "ous" means "possessing or being full of" the noun while "ible" means "susceptible of or capable of being" of that verb. The part of speech is largely irrelevant and only becomes an issue due to the switched perspective. Therefore, credulous correctly means "possessing or being full of belief" and credible means "capable of being believed". See various v. variable. Credible, therefore, can be used not just with people, but also with tangibles and intangibles, since the quality of capable of being believed is latent in the tangible or intangible until it is acknowledged by the potential believer. One who is credulous may believe too quickly that which appears tacitly credible. Fill in your own subjects; mine are Plaintiff's counsel and their own arguments.

Supplant v. Usurp

Both sublime words, not used nearly enough.

Supplant comes from the Latin "sub" for "under" and "planta" for "the sole of the foot". Therefore, literally it means "under foot", but poetically, as we have seen from other Latin derivations, the preposition comes after the verb, so it means to put one's foot under another, and thereby thrown that person down by tripping them. I suppose you would only want to trip someone who was under foot. From "tripping" someone, it is only a moderate stretch through "to displace or substitute" to "to take by force". After all, as we remember from grade school, when we "trip" someone, it is usually intentionally.

My cat regularly supplants my need for sleep with her need for affection. Someday alternative energy will supplant our reliance on fossil fuels. Plaintiff's counsel's client's whining supplanted his good sense not to take the case. Since supplant involves an issue of perception about the tripping or substitution, it works with tangibles and intangibles.

Now, the real fun is how it differs from usurp. Usurp comes from the Latin "usus" for "a use" and "rapere" for "to seize", and therefore means "seize for use". Usurp, by the etymology of "to seize", is more violent than supplant which was just tripping, and therefore, usurp has the connotation of being "without right" while supplant is just accidental or negligent. So, the uncle usurped the throne from his brother. Standard usage. Or building the fence 1" onto his neighbor's property, which position was not noticed for 20 years, allowed him to usurp the land through adverse possession. Perhaps a little less standard, but still correct. Having swapped urine samples, he usurped his competitor's place on the team. Ok, enough of standard usage. If we talk business, the release of the new Microsoft OS was intended to usurp Apple's dominance in the market. While not technically an issue of "without right", it gives the spectre of being underhanded or dirty as if it were "without right" from not being fair. The water cooler gossip of her affair which led to her promotion usurped her authority. Eh. Perhaps undermined would be better here, but it is possible that the gossip did replace her authority, and not merely countermand it. The water cooler gossip of her affair usurped the good reputation she had developed for her charitable work. Better, but still not quite right. It is violent enough in that the gossip is invidious, but the element being taken still doesn't appear to lend itself to such seizure. Plaintiff's counsel's client's whining usurped his good sense not to take the case. Hmmm. If he were weak-willed that his client could seize control of his good sense, maybe. Ok, well, basically, taking usurp to an expanded usage, it needs to have the appearance of being "without right" or raised to the level of appearing to be "without right" and the element being taken needs to be susceptible to being taken. She would never usurp someone else's idea or work and pass it off as her own, although she was often jokingly accused of having read everyone's mind.

We endeavor not to supplant our own word meanings, and thereby, not to usurp correct usage.

Indigence v. Destitute

These are such depressing words, but DD, in it's infinite wisdom, thought indigence was a good wotd, and that led to a natural comparison with destitute. At least indigence wasn't the wotd for April 15th...

Indigence derives from the Latin "indu" for "in or within" and "egere" for "to be in need or want", which appears to be a little redundant, but fortunately, since the meaning is still "in need", I don't need to go into a lengthy analysis of the etymology or the derivation. Perhaps the double "in" just gives greater emphasis to the state of need which makes it a "seriously impoverished condition" and not merely a basic "in need".

Destitute, on the other hand, derives from the Latin "de" as a form of "dis" for "out, off, apart, away, completely" and "stit" for "place or put". Therefore, destitute means "out of place" and by reasonable extension, without the comforts associated with place (shelter, clothing, food). Of course, then next natural and perhaps lazy association was just simply to be without something whether a basic necessity or not.

So, of course, this leaves us with two words which still appear to have the same meaning, of being without something necessary. Time for OED. Well, OED does shed some light. Destitute has a connotation of having been abandoned or deprived, and therefore, that the circumstances were brought on by another person, while indigence is from the personal perspective of being in want or need, not necessarily due to the actions of another person, and almost exclusively relates a lack of money as due, since with money we could fulfill these basic wants and needs. When she was evicted from her apartment, she became destitute, but she could not pay the rent because of her indigence from choosing not to work. Now, because we have to push the boundaries... Destitute can be used with any living being, but indigence from a standpoint of wanting and needing a basic necessity only applies to people. Standing on the T platform in the light snow, clutch her coat against the wind and half asleep after having missed her stop some 4 stops earlier, she looked destitute, and in pity, the T driver stopped to pick her up even though this was not the inbound platform. True story. When he was downsized from his place of employment of the last 30 years, he looked destitute and confused, but fortunately his 401k ensured that he would not be indigent. The lone obsolete 386 computer looked destitute on a table of Intel Core Duos. Possibly, it you think computers have basic needs (talk to Pixar), but this also goes to the original meaning of being abandoned and out of place, notwithstanding that it was intended for people. Many graduate students are indigent which is an unintended tax classification for living below the poverty line. Beggars on the streets of Cape Town are indigent but not destitute since they have their Township home. Animals in a humane society pull at our heart strings because they are destitute. I can't write any more of these "destitute" sentences--they make me sad. Ok, well, maybe one more. She smiled as the disbarred Plaintiff's counsel left his office, now destitute, and likely to become indigent as a result of being unemployable.

May you never be destitute nor indigent.

Blatant v. Flagrant

By request, and this is a particularly good pair.

Blatant was coined by Edmund Spenser in "The Faerie Queen" in 1596, its etymology is questioned from two origins: first, from the Scottish "blaitant", an archaic form of the word "bleating" and second, from the Latin "blatire" for "to babble or blab". It has been argued that bleating is less what was intended than the blabbing. Bleating connotes an annoying sound, usually pleading and whining, while blabbing connotes a loud publication, telling secrets and gossiping. Without getting too much into blabbing, it just doesn't work once you get past 4th grade and learn that telling secrets is best done sotto voce. But it seems difficult to describe a monster ("the blatant beast") as telling secrets more than as making loud and annoying sounds, and therefore, I would argue that in coining the word, Spencer perhaps intended both elements, folding on each other with a good double meaning. But that doesn't help us, because now we have a word that since its meaning has not been reconciled, still has two distinct and unrelated prongs: (1) the bleating and (2) the blabbing. What is important to note, though, is that there is no element of "obviousness". Loud and annoying does not necessarily give rise to "obvious" (particularly since obvious relates first to things that are seen, not heard). Therefore, DD's Random House definitions which opine for some level of obviousness are just wrong as an over-extension of the word, whereas OED and DD's American Heritage definitions, which are just about loud and annoying are correct. So ultimately, the correct usage of blatant is solely the loud and annoying aspects. That there is a connotation of offensiveness appears to be latent from the blabbing origins (when you give secrets you are offending someone) and/or because of the extent of something that is really that loud or annoying could be offensive. Therefore, blatant as it might mean offensive may only apply when something is extremely loud and annoying (i.e., vulgar) or when being disrespectful.

Therefore, it is correct to say that as he got more drunk, his one-uping stories became more blatant. Here it can mean both the loud and offensive connotation, probably works best because of the double entendre. The blatant barking of guard dog brought the police. It's just loud and annoying, but not offensive, even if it were at 4:00am. It is a blatant mistake to wear red and green to a Hanukkah party. Well, color combination is loud, but here, it was intended because of the annoying and possibly offensive aspects as being disrespectful.

Meanwhile, flagrant comes from the Latin "flagrare" for "to burn", and has come to mean "conspicuously bad, offensive or reprehensible", the idea that when something is burning it is noticeable to everyone and probably not desirable, at least back before modern fire-fighting techniques were available. Remember, even signal fires gave away position to the enemy. Flagrant also still carries the meaning about fire and the quality of fire (red, hot), and has been used metaphorically in that context when describing emotions, such as desire, or war, but I'll focus on the "offensive" aspect, since this is a comparison to blatant. Here, flagrant means obvious, and since obviousness is an evaluative measure, it doesn't apply to people or things, but rather to ideas and activities. He was a flagrant fellow often investing poorly. When applied like this, it tends to have the tangible qualities of red or hot, which would be inappropriate, or else it sounds like it is a malapropism of frivolous, and should just mean wasteful. His flagrant "investing" in Ponzi schemes earned him a financial custodian. Better. The tell-all book about the his patient's psychology sessions was a flagrant breach of the psychotherapist/patient privilege. [Ed. note: they can't all be about attorneys...] Speeding and weaving on the Beltway are flagrant violations of the rules of driving. Flagrant seems to work best with intangibles. "Sampling" his mother's birthday cake the day before her 50th birthday party showed a flagrant disregard for her feelings.

It was flagrant lie to say that she had not been swimming when she showed up in a bikini dripping wet, but it was merely a blatant lie when she proclaimed that she had not enjoyed herself when we were also suffering from the heat. The second lie may have also been flagrant, but getting chlorine or salt out of hair is sometimes quite hard and the effort may not have been worth it, so we can't know for sure. As psychopaths substitute fiction for fact, what they think are merely blatant breaches of etiquette are actually flagrant disregards of social norms. Plaintiff's counsel's motion for summary judgment contained many flagrant misquotes from the deposition which became blatant to me the more he kept repeating them despite correction in the opposition, at oral argument and from the bench. [Yes, there must always be an attorney...]

Immolation; Incineration

By request from my mother, who I thought would never get this forum, we have:

Immolation derives from the Latin "immolare" for "to sprinkle with holy meal before offering or sacrificing" from "mol(a)" for the sacrificial barley cake (see mill and millstone derivations). It has come to mean not just the sacrifice, but the act of sacrificing, and since the sacrifice was originally by fire, immolate means to kill as a sacrifice by fire, and therefore, immolation still has the implied requirement of fire.

We don't have too many sacrificial rituals left, but there are some easy comparisons. Political statements that used to be made by self-immolation are not made by suicide bombings. The executives were too late in their immolation of the financial records before they were seized by IRS subpoena. Feeding the dying fire on a cold night is an exercise in immolating logs. Maybe, if we are praying for the fire not to go out. Since it is not killed, a phoenix does not undergo immolation as much as spontaneous combustion. The volcano immolated the forest. Again, no. The act of "killing" requires intent, and therefore, must be the act of a person (all legal pretense aside). Animals kill other animals, but not in ritual sacrifice, or I'd have some accounting to my cat when I return home. Some days, I wish I could immolate certain words from usage. Eh. Better to say expunge or eradicate. The word has a very specific usage to "sacrificing" things by fire, and limited expansion since it is quite specific. You need the connotation of sacrificing and you need a good fire. One day I hope have a "Mortgage Immolation Party". Probably not, for many reasons. When the steak slipped through the grille onto the coals it was not just charred, but immolated. Was this truly sacrificed or just an unfortunate accident? She didn't like the "special seasoning" in his burgers and "accidentally" immolated them. Ok, now it's intentional, but is is really a sacrifice or just getting of something bad.

Now, incineration derives from the Latin "cinis" for ashes, and means "to burn, to reduce to ashes". So while immolate carries the fire requirement from the process of the sacrifice, incinerate is a fire without the sacrificial overtone. To incinerate something is just to burn it, without sentiment. The crematorium normally incinerates a coffin, while other articles laid in the coffin by mourners are immolated. Preventative measures to forest fires sometimes involve incinerating scrub brush before the dry season. I have recently discovered the joys of propane in incinerating the weeds in between the paving stones of my walk. Wear gloves!

Circumspect

Circumspect (DD definition link)

Well, I could probably do this etymology on my own, "circum" being Latin for "around" and "spect" for "to look". Let's see if I'm right. Except for the full verb form "specere", yep. So, literally, circumspect means "to look around". Now, in practice, it has taken on a greater meaning of not just "to look around" but to look at everything in order to be aware of everything, and then, that such observation is naturally cautious or prudent.

Of course, with such a meaning of "to look around" as a preventative measure, it really only gets applied to people (and their direct activities). Being an insurance defense attorney, she was religiously circumspect to her environment and any potential liabilities. Well, of course! Some of his more extreme circumspect measures included sweeping the room with infrared before entering. Now, don't confuse this word with "suspect" which implies that the activity is not reputable or credible. My black cat is less than circumspect when she enters a dark room and decides to lay in the entrance. Probably not. I could do to be more circumspect when I enter a dark room to make sure I don't kick my black cat. Better, although as per the above, I never do that. Plaintiff's counsel needs to be circumspect to the lies their clients tell them. Yes. After studying the etymologies of certain words, she will be more circumspect to their correct usage, lest she be misunderstood. Yes.

Gregarious

Ah, gregarious. At the outset, this word tends to be swapped with garrulous, but it is anything but. Garrulous means wordy or talkative, like the oral version of prolix, while gregarious... well.

Gregarious derives from the Latin "grex" or "gregis" for "flock or herd". "Gere" became the verb for "to gather or assemble". It's so nice when a word still means which it was intended to mean without any circular or stilted meaning. Gregarious still means tending to seek the company of others, as well as living in flocks or herds. Now, I will note one quirk. Gregarious was not coined as a word until c. 1668, so apparently, prior to that, people and animals assembled in different ways, or perhaps didn't assemble quite so socially, but for political, business or even just survival needs [compare: convene] or were brought together by a third-party [compare: assemble] or perhaps simply that gregarious doesn't operate as a verb, but only as a modifier and a noun. Gregarious zebras met gregarious ostrich at the watering hole. Yes, clearly. He was a gregarious fellow and could be counted on to attend each social event of the season. Yes. The annual Plaintiff's bar convention was a gregarious occasion, as well as an opportunity for a covert AA meeting. Possibly, as it may be extended to the activities of people/animals and of course this depends on how social you perceive attorneys to be. The teddy-bears on her shelf seemed spookily gregarious. Hehe. Technically, no, since gregarious like so many words, requires sentience, but for sarcasm it could work. Also, if you're like me, and you've seen enough B horror movies, you know that maybe the teddy-bears were sentient.

So, while there's so play with the word, it's still pretty straightforward. I hope that one day this may become a gregarious discussion forum. hmm. Have to think about that usage some more. The internet is such a vague form still--it is a person, or a letter or a telephone or a newspaper or an idea or other intangible. Regardless, it could work since the reference is a grouping conduit. Anyone want to expand the usage with me?

Unpack (Pack)

This was a word by request, but really from the phrase "to unpack a concept". As we know, I don't do phrases, so the question is whether "unpack" is being used correctly in this context.

Pack (unpack) came into existence as a noun c. 1225, having derived messily from Low German/Middle Dutch/Middle Flemish/Old Norse "pak" "pac" "pakki" etc. for a group of persons of low character. It started with merchants, but a pack of thieves might have been redundant, once. As the "group" evolved to a bundle carried by such individuals, it became another verbified noun of the act of making something into a bundle. Then by adding the prefix "un" (not) c. 1425, we get "not bundled" or more accurately "not making something into a bundle". [Ed. note: why did it take 150 years to get the things out of the bag?] So, "unpacking a concept" would be to undo the bundle or more figuratively, to unwrap the concept so one can get at the facets of the concept-bundle. So, the short answer is, yes this is a correct, if slightly expanded, usage of pack/unpack, but it is similar to the expression "mining an idea". "Unpacking a concept" does suggest that there is a finite number of segments within the concept that need to be taken out and addressed, while "mining an idea" has an unidentified number of segments that could be addressed (could be a good vein or nothing at all, but you won't know until you start looking at it), so the former is more definitive while the latter is more speculative. However, as these are both idiomatic phrases, whether one is more or less whatever is irrelevant since they are not being used for the specific meanings of the words. Nor is this a malapropism. Someone at some time deliberately matched "unpack" with "concept" (like "mine" with "idea") as an expanded and evocative usage descriptive of probably how tightly wound, obscure, opaque, etc. the concept was which required someone to carefully, methodically and deliberately dismantle the packaging so that we could get at and therefore understand the real issues inside, and now we are stuck with that pair. This is why I don't do phrases, and yet I seem to still find myself doing them....

Cogent

I just need to get a prolific distaste out of my mind...

Cogent comes from the Latin "co" meaning "with, together" and "agere" for "to drive". Crazy, I know. From "to drive together" of course, we get "convincing" and "relevant", but somewhere in between those two meanings, there was a detour through "forcing". I can see how driving together might be forcing, and then from there, "forcing" would arguably be "convincing", and by being convincing, it would arguably be "relevant".

So, cogent is used mostly with activities of people. Plaintiff's counsel could not make a cogent argument for his client's irrational demands. She gave cogent advice to her younger sister about how to impress her English teacher. She presented a cogent design for the layout of the furniture in the bedroom. Her son's cogent whining made her relent on her prohibition on ice cream. Not as good. Something about whining just isn't inherently persuasive as much as it is annoying, plus, since cogent is persuasive, it requires intent, not just sentience, and not just blunt repetition. My cat's cogent meowing reminded me to clean her litter. Maybe, if I elevate her meowing to talking to me and that she uses it rather effectively to motivate me. Similarly, computers do not generate cogent programs, but rather utilize such programs. So, I would stick to activities of people and only with people, unless you have a really smart pet.


I hope you find this entry cogent and useful!

Prolix v. Prolific

What a difference an x can make!

DD's wotd for today is prolix, a word I would not ordinarily consider using. Prolix just sounds hyper-pretentious, and wordy is sufficiently demeaning and verbose has a more neutral content. But it made me consider a word that I do use, prolific, just because they have the same initial sounds and a somewhat related usage. Could there be something more? No.

Prolix, therefore, derives from the Latin "pro" meaning "forward" and "liquere" as derived from "lixus" meaning "water". Thus, the etymology of water moving forward became "pouring forth", not just water, but as expanded to things that act like "water". At some point, though, the expansion got stuck with words. His first draft was always prolix and in need of good editing. Yes. The writer's meeting generated many prolix comedic ideas. Probably not, since prolix only has usage with words and writing, not ideas or word related tangibles or intangibles. And although I am a writer at heart, this word has an exceedingly limited usage.

Prolific, on the other hand, derives from the Latin "proles" meaning "offspring". Therefore, of course, prolific should mean not just the continued etymological meaning of producing offspring and fertility, but that it should be profuse! I bet a man made up that usage, just to keep a woman barefoot and prolific. [Ed. note: this is the converse of seminal, which is also a word I try to avoid.] She was prolific, producing yet another grandchild. This just sounds silly, although it is technically correct to the lesser usages. Her womb is prolific. Flowers are prolific in spring. Better. His demands were prolific of discord. Really poetic, technically correct and idiotic to state this way. Better to say his demands perpetuated discord. Plaintiff's counsel are good at manufacturing prolific litigation. Hmmm, yes, and it's not quite as offensive as I might find it otherwise since it is being applied to Plaintiff's counsel, who might better serve the legal community as barefoot and prolific. So, I think I shall abstain from using prolific except as it specifically refers to offspring, and use profuse or prodigious or some other word for the quality.

Alas, it seems today has been bereft of useful or good words, and now I feel violated and indignant.

Consort

By request as a further extension of Cavort v. Frolic, it seems that Consort was also raised.

Consort comes from the Latin "con" (with) and "sors" (a share or lot), and by derivation from "consortem" for a partner or neighbor. The nominative usage derives directly from the etymology for some type of partner, whether that be the royal spouse or an accompanying vessel or even just an agreement, but I'm focusing on the verb. By extension of the noun, it came to mean our current usage of not just one who keeps company, but the act of "keeping company, associating" or "uniting in company". After all, it is not uncommon to "verbify" a noun (e.g., Xeroxing, Googling, spamming).

Now, the reason this all came up was probably due to a malapropism of consort with cavort, giving lascivious undertones to the latter which were actually improperly attributed. So, we have usages like "to cavort with a fellow employee" as I previously stated, but really the better usage is "to consort with a fellow employee". The former is the extreme of the less innocent meaning, and still has the happy prancing, while the latter is true intent that these two are engaged in a tryst. In the converse, we have "to consort with the enemy" being mistakenly said as "to cavort with the enemy". Not that I don't think the listener wouldn't understand what was being said, but the former is correct meaning that the two were likely plotting some coup, which the latter really means that the two were prancing somewhere merrily. Could happen, but was probably not what was intended. After figuring out the etymology of cavort with the whole horse thing, I don't think I'll ever confuse these words, and I'll just reserve consort for any sexual overtones and keep cavort pure.

As for usage, it has to be among sentient beings since consort carries an implied meaning of consent to the association. Dogs don't consort with cats, is not just true biologically, but also in order to maintain a calm household. The queen and her consort attended the ball. Duh. Weeds attempt unsuccessfully to consort with grass. Possibly, in a more expanded usage, giving a sarcastic degree of sentience to the weeds. That chair does not consort with that table. No, unless you are a decorator. I don't deign to consort with individuals who misuse common words. Ahh. Now, I feel better.

Steradian

Well, this was a curious little word I stumbled upon last night as I was doing some editing. Steradian comes from the Greek "stereos" for solid and a derivative of the Latin "radius" for "a staff, spoke of a wheel or beam of light". So what does that mean for a "solid ray"? Well, in the technical geometrical sense of the word, it means a unit of area of a sphere proportioned to its radius. For those who don't remember their high school calculus, this can visually look like the rind of a wedge or pyramidial slice of a melon. The oceans represent 9 steradians of the earth surface. Probably. The Sydney Opera House is based on recombining all the sterandians of a sphere. Possibly. The astrophysicist was only able to view a fraction of a steradian of the North Ecliptic Pole due to the unusual telescope mount. Yes. But doesn't anyone really understand that, other than my husband, my husband's friends, my friends... Back to reality. How can I use this word in every day conversation? Well, the flashlight illuminated a steradian of light on the dark alley wall. hmmm. After our wonderful Chinese meal, we left steradian orange wedges on the plate? Throw out the blueberries if they are more than 2 pi steradian covered in mold. Accurate, but incomprehensible. I cut the cantaloupe into steradian slices to put down the garbage disposal? As I sat outside one hot sunny day, licking my Ben & Jerry's oatmeal cookie dough crunch ice cream, I contemplated the percentage of chocolate pieces that were visible in a given steradian of the scoop. If I can't see the chocolate, how do I know I got my money's worth??? She cut a steradian swath of grass on the hill? If pressed, and only if the hill is a hemisphere. His mohawk was nearly a perfect steradian of hair shooting from his head.

Well, that was fun to explore its application to spheres and spherical like things, but I think we can agree that even in the absurd, this word has no practical usage. It would confound and confuse the average listener. So, I'll leave this one to my scientist friends, who should be working now, and save its usage for me for those rare esoteric moments when I don't want to be understood.

Obsessive

This one came to me on a lark. :-)

Obsessive comes from the Latin "ob" for "over, on, toward or against" and "sid(ere)" for "to sit". The combinative Latin form of "obsidere" then came to mean "to occupy, frequent or besiege". I can see how "to sit on or over" might come to mean "occupy or besiege" c. 1503 as in to take over a place and then set up camp, but how does that come to mean "to frequent", except that it might take a few tries to actually conquer the area. But I'm not really happy with that transition. Apparently, the real transition comes that obsessed in the besieging sense came to be associated with evil spirits, and then c. 1605 that these spirits would possess the individual in a persistent influence or idea. [Ed. note: I'll have so see how this compares to "possessed" later.] Then it's just another little leap from persistent to frequent, possibly as the influence was not as pestering, but still regular, but persistent and frequent is a comparison for another day. From the derivation about the evil spirits, we end up with the current definition of something that occupies ones thoughts, feelings or desires.

Now, in practice, obsessive has some great usages, even beyond the OCD. She was obsessive about completing her wotd assignments. Yes, but unfortunately, I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be, and of my friends with whom I originally engaged in this diversion, they've fallen off a long time ago. His obsessive need for approval actual drove away most of his friends. Obsessive works with people and intangibles such as they derive from the activities or emotions of people, but obsessive requires a degree of sentience. My obsessive computer keeps asking me for my password. No, but cute, as it might raise the level of my computer to AI. My cat is obsessive about licking all the lemon juice out of my pores. Yes. Sentience doesn't require intent; just some degree of cognitive thought. After all, it is the evil spirit compelling the activity. After the attempt on her life, paranoia and depression obsessed her waking thoughts, while memories of the incident obsessed her dreams.

And finally, checking a blog every hour might be considered obsessive. Let me know.

Impugn

Hehehe. Let the evil laughter commence, even before I start to discuss the word, because I love this word...

Impugn comes from the Latin "in" (against) and "pugnare" (to fight, from "pugnus" for fist), meaning literally, to fight against physically, so it should come as no surprise that it has come to mean now just "to attack by words or argument, to make insinuations as to credibility", having lost the physical attack, although one of the obsolete meanings was to physically fight against. As I continue to explore these wotd, I find with increasing frequency that etymologies which had an element of physicality against someone became solely a verbal issue. Something to consider.

Of course, one of my favorite usages is the "archaic" one, about "to vilify", and there is actually a statement on the record in a deposition where I told Plaintiff's counsel "not to impugn my good character" with his remarks about the nature of my questions to his client. It was an ad hominum attack because he wanted to try to throw me off my game since it wasn't going so well for his client. Ultimately, got the case dismissed on a motion for summary judgment, which has about a 1 in 20 chance of succeeding.

But in more regular usage, all cross-examination implicitly impugns the credibility of the evidence being presented, and perhaps impugns the credibility of the person testifying as well. There distinction between the "archaic" usage and the common definition is whether the comment is directly or indirectly attacking the person. "You're stupid" or "didn't they teach you to xxx in law school" directly impugns, while "how could you know the color of the car when you were distracted and looking in the other direction" indirectly impugns. Now, since impugn calls into question credibility, it can only be used with the intangibles of people (statements, ethics, motivations). The obsolete usage of to physically attack someone is still between people. The lion does not impugn the lion tamer, even in the obsolete. Nor does the boxer doesn't usually impugn his opponent, unless it is a grudge match, because it still implies an element that there is a personal matter. After impugning the character of the lady, her champion took up a sword to impugn the scoundrel. Yes, getting at both usages. And finally, I regularly impugn the propriety of using words incorrectly. Enjoy.

Suasion

Because I'm currently out-of-town and don't have as much consistent free time to keep up with wotd (plus, there are some recent words that rather annoy than inspire me--trice? bedaub???), here is another from my archives.

Suasion. I remember this word raising my hackles a couple of years ago when it was the wotd on August 13, 2001. [Ed. note: why must DD recycle words so quickly? It became wotd again on September 10, 2006. Probably means we are due for it again on November 7, 2011. Get ready!] DD defines both "suasion" and "persuasion" as "the act of persuading". Now, normally, I would start with there are no true synonyms and distinguish the etymologies on each, except the etymologies are a little fuzzy. Persuasion says it comes from Latin, "persuasion", while suasion says it comes from "suasion", so these are unhelpful, and the mere addition of the "per" meaning "through" doesn't add anything. Persuasion does not really mean through suasion, because the definition of suasion is backward to that construction. Suasion means through persuasion (and therefore should actually be "perpersuasion"). Or do the “per”s cancel? So, I think we have an issue of lazy usage being justified retroactively. If only I were near my OED. Maybe I'll supplement later. But, I'll make one last stab at a distinction, just for old times sake. The usage of suasion in the examples is non-specific, to a general perspective (e.g., moral or cultural norms), while persuasion is for a definite idea or opinion. I regularly persuade the judge to my argument, or try to persuade people to order different things off the menu so we can share and sample, but I might try to suade a child to be kind to animals or to always say please and thank you.

Good luck suading or persuading, as you see fit...

Efficacious v. Effective

Part because this was the wotd a couple of days ago and part by request for the comparison to effective, I finally have time to think about how these words relate.

Well, it turns out, I don't have to think to hard. Efficacious comes from the Latin "ef", a derivative of "ex" for "out" and "facere" for "to do or make", meaning poetically, to bring about and effective comes from the same Latin origin. Thus, the etymology of effective is consistent with the current usage. So, the only difference is the second adjectival ending on effective making it into efficacious is, as we learned in "robustious", that the second adjectival ending makes the original adjective into "possessing the qualities of" whatever the original adjective was. As I described then, it is adjective-lite.

So, in practice, lawmakers aspire to make effective law, but only end up with efficacious law until it is overturned by the Court. Yes, and true. Efficacious medicines are good enough so that the manufacturers won't get sued, but not effective enough to actually cure the disease since there's no market for that. Yes, and cynically true. Telling the younger brother to stop hitting his older sister as they were driving cross-country was efficacious in short bursts, but playing the on-board DVD on "The Little Mermaid" was effective to stop not only the fight, but all whining, questions and other noises from the back seat. Yes, and it's a good movie. Plaintiff's counsel's oppositions to my motions for summary judgment are only ever efficacious. Plaintiff's counsel's themselves are never really effective. Do I need to state my position on this?

Therefore, I would tend to make effective use of effective, and save efficacious when I want to make fun of something that should have been effective.

Cavort v. Frolic

And since I am stuck in the airport, waiting for my flight, I will engage in a few more words.

Well, cavort just conjures images of prancing, which in turn raised frolic as an almost natural counterpart. I'll talk about frolic v. detour later.

Cavort has a questionable etymology, allegedly from Latin "cur(vare)" (curved) and "volvere" (turn or roll) through old French "vault" (arch), it became a curved leap, and then somehow, something someone would do when leaping from a horse, likely because c. 1565, this became a term in dressage (curvet for "little curve") for a leap a horse would do from a rearing position springing its hind legs and descending onto its front legs. Obviously, someone then either thought that the dismount was as graceful as the horse's leap, or that the rider was acting like a horse (or both), and c. 1790 the American term "cavort" was born of a "cavault", a curved leap, or the high spirited prancing of the horse. One step further and we get "lively and boisterous fun" likely from how much "fun" we think the horse is having when unnaturally jumping like that (or maybe the audience reaction). Whew.

Now, in practice, cavort has a broader usage. Of course, we talk about children cavorting in the meadow. That's harmless and innocent. Dolphins cavorting around the ship. Also harmless and innocent. And then cavorting with an colleague. hehehe. And therein lay the overtones of "making merry" more than the literal "leaping". Do I need to spell it out?

Back to innocence. Frolic has nothing to do with a horse, but comes from the German "frolich" for happy, ironically enough, coined at around the same time as the dressage term of curvet (c. 1538). Frolic just means happy, but through usage has also come to mean how one acts when one is just so happy, as in to be playful, prone to merrymaking, and possibly the occasional prank. How "happy" became "prank", I don't even want to contemplate, unless we keep it at the innocence of hiding books and tapping the wrong shoulder, and nothing malevolent. Think giddy, maybe even a touch loopy, and that's the level of prank that is really at issue. No one would ever say the frolicking children put tacks on the teacher's chair. But the frolicking children would cavort in the meadow. So compared to cavort, frolic just means the state of happiness which may be exhibited in some manner, while cavort means the leaping, regardless of the happiness, although the happiness may be implied by the fact of the leaping (or the fact of the proper type of leaping). I don't think the dolphins cavorted because they were intrinsically happy, but because the ship gave them a good draft to "play" in. While, his normal morning frolic through the office was clouded by the imminent IRS audit.

Well, my plane is going to board shortly, and thus I must abandon this frolic through wotd in favor of my detour perhaps to my destination, weather permitting. Just a quick foreshadowing.... ;-)

Bluster; Deluge

In honor of the East Coast weather, I have decided to abandon today's wotd in favor of two more appropriate words.

Bluster derives from the Norse "blastr" for "blowing or hissing", and still means to roar of be tumultuous, as a wind. I don't think it quite means the gale forces that are whipping around the house, now, but definitely enough to blow my hair in all directions. The aspect of the "hissing" has been mostly lost, transmuted into just generic loudness. And really, the wind doesn't make a hissing as much as it make a whooshing or howling, unless hissing is a bad whistle. But all in all, this word still retains much of its original etymology through to usage. Of course, the idea of the blowing wind also got applied to people who are so inclined as to sound like blowing wind, but that doesn't bother me. I probably would have made that leap anyway in my "expanded" usages. So, the blustering wind flipped over the boat last night and knocked down several power lines. All his blustering about the wind did not stop Mother Nature's onslaught. And I can only hope that my flight today will not be accosted by sudden drops in altitude due to blustering winds. Plaintiff's counsel's blustering did not conceal the fact that his client had stood him up for the hearing.

Now, it does appear to me that "blustering winds" has either become a catch phrase, or may be somehow redundant in the face of bluster referring to wind which already blows. If the wind doesn't blow, is it really wind? Or just stagnant air. But bluster does add a level of description to the wind well above breeze or zephyr. What is odd is that blusterer doesn't have the same connotation of being another noun shaving description of the wind unlike breeze or zephyr, but seems to apply more to the person who talks like such wind. A real blusterer, he was mostly ignored by his colleagues. Not, the blusterer unexpectedly tipped over the lawn statuary--unless this is the person pulling a practical joke. So, there is a need to still use "bluster" with "wind" in order to get at the noun.

And where there is wind, can rain be far behind? Deluge comes from the Latin "diluvium" for "flood" having gone through a couple of evolutions prior with "diluere" for "to wash away or dissolve", having derived from "lavere" for "to wash". I suppose with enough water, anything would be "dissolved" or "washed away"... And deluge still means a great flood or inundation of water. So, the rains on the East Coast are threatening to deluge most cities with a foot or more of water. Now, while I don't tend to use bluster outside the real wind, notwithstanding that I have met my fair share of Plaintiffs' counsels (they mostly grandstand, not bluster). But deluge! Now, there's a word I can sink my teeth into. She was deluged in paperwork, bills, discovery responses, accolades, blog requests [well, I can hope!]... Anything that can be likened to a flood works equally well with deluge, tangible or intangible.

So, please stay warm and dry, and may your wind and rain for today only be in the form of these words!

Accede v. Concede

Today's wotd, accede, has raised my own comparison that I have been want to do for some time, particularly given that these are verbs I use rather regularly. It's about time I understand their true nuances.

Accede derives from the Latin "accedere" for "ad" (to, toward) and "cedere" (to move, to yield). Poetically, then the word literally means to move or yield to or toward something or someone, and thus, to agree or assent. Meanwhile, concede derives from the same root "cedere", but with the prefix "con" meaning with or together. Therefore, poetically, concede means to move or yield with or together, and therefore, apparently derives to mean "to acknowledge as true, just or proper" or "to make a concession". Ah, the difference a prefix can make. Well, the evolution of the usage of accede makes sense, the idea that as one comes to accept a thought, one moves towards that side, whether literally (back when voting occurred by counting bodies on the two sides of a room) or figuratively (still retaining that convention). But the "con" prefix does not tend to add any veracity to the decision, except inasmuch as when people move "together" on an idea, they jointly (and severally) believe it is correct for whatever reason--else why would they yield to the idea.

Unfortunately, compounding the problem, concede and accede are used nearly interchangeably--that one may both accede to someone's wishes and concede to that same someone's wishes. So what is the difference? Accede connotes a degree of belief and willingness on the part of the one changing a position, while concede connotes a reluctance or pressure to make the change. Parents often accede to their children's whims every now and then. But the lower ranked chess player conceded the win to his opponent. Perhaps he shouldn't have--there is still much to be learned in losing a match. Boot camp teaches its enlisted personnel accede to the rigors of training, but never to concede to the enemy. Eh, in a pinch. To move on in oral argument to the substantive issue does not concede the procedural issue as much as accede to the wishes of the Court perhaps to discuss the weightier issue.

Ok, so my instincts have been right because the distinction has only been based on the connotations and not the etymology, or even the definitions. Go figure. I accede to my instincts, and concede that DD may never be useful.

Spoonerism; Metathesis

Today's wotd from DD is spoonerism. Ordinarily, I would be unimpressed with a word, the origin of which is someone's name, since that would seem very mean-spirited. But there we have it. Spoonerism derives from the Rev. William A. Spooner, who was known to swap the initial sounds of words (blushing crow instead of crushing blow). So, not only does this word have an uninteresting etymology, which, for what its worth, is still the sole meaning of the word, but it really only has that one usage. Drunk, he was more inclined to slurring words than demanding another "bold keer". Tongue twisters lead to interesting spoonerisms. Even as I put on my creative thinking cap, I still am having a hard time inventing any "expanded" or "extreme" usages for this word. Could it be a spoonerism to misintroduce a couple by identifying each with the other's name? A different kind of initial sound being swapped? Probably not because the reason one tends to do that is because a pair of names is learned in an order, and then the reflex is to say the names in that order regardless of where the people are standing relative to one another. It might be a stretch of a spoonerism to connect the leads backward on a switch, but probably not. Swapping alone is not the critical element. It has to be swapping of something initial of a multipart construction, whether that be a word or something else. Well, I'm not interested in trying to figure out any more potential misusages of this word. If I stumble upon one later, I'll update this post.

But knowning that I would find spoonerism dull, I thought I'd add metathesis, which I think is a fascinating word. Metathesis comes from the Greek "meta" for "to change" and "tithenai" for "to put or set", so quite literally, to change place or transposition. It applies to a physical transposition as well as a linguistic transposition, but the physical meaning has become almost exclusively reserved to chemistry, leaving the linguistic meaning to the lay folk. Thus, metathesis is the swapping of sounds when pronouncing a single word. "Psaghetti" "ephelant" or "methatesis". From the first two, you can guess that such pronounciations are usually done by children. Now, metathesis only occurs in pronounciation--in writing, the excuse is a typo. "Teh" or "adn" are not metathesis, but rather the fact that I can type faster than the computer can process my key strokes (although my spell checker may disagree for the number of times it hasn't auto-corrected "revelent"). And when I write longhand, that is still not metathesis because I haven't transposed anything as much as I've started the beginning of one word now with the ending of the next, and my brain has gotten ahead of my hand. [Ed. note: what's the word for that?] Pig Latin is deliberate metathesis. Transliteration of R/L by Asian speakers is not metathesis since there is no swapping of sounds self-contained in a word, but a swapping of sounds regardless of whether they exist in the word. So, like spoonerism, metathesis has a consistent usage with its etymology and basically one non-specialized usage. Now, does metathesis have more opportunity for expansion? Absolutely, just for using its basic meaning of transposition outside chemistry and linguistics. Children lining up for recess often undergo a hierarchical metathesis. Although applying both of those nickel words to children and recess just sounds like I'm writing some psychology dissertation. Mediators try to get the parties to engage in a mental metathesis to encourage them to understand the issues from the other side. Magic box tricks are not so much metathesis as sleight of hand.

So, I simply love this word, metathesis. It rolls so trippingly off the tongue and few people know what it means that I can yet again be opaque in my very explicit meaning. Unfortunately, I am more guilty of spoonerisms than metathesis, and would rather it be in the inverse so as never to have the word spoonerism applied to me. Still sounds mean.

Nescience

This is another archival post, and one of my favorites as well. Nescience.

Quite honestly, I never heard this word before, and that intrigues me. Nescience has a unique enough pronounciation that I don't automatically associate it with anything else. It's got "science" which is the knowledge part, but the "ne", doesn't leap out to me that it is negative prefix (unlike "un" "in" or "de" or just plain "not). Its Latin origins of "nescire" allegedly for "not" "to know" don't help either. So, given this word on the SATs, I probably would have gotten the answer wrong, and that intrigues me all the more. Her nescience on the derivation of the word nescience ensured that she would miss the question? His nescience on how a woman would respond to his plebian pick up line guaranteed that he would never have a first date. I wonder if it would apply to tangible knowledge rather than abstract concepts. His nescience on how to set up the TiVo despite the explicit instructions in the manual, which he stubbornly refused to read, meant that they were always tethered to watching prime time TV live? Seems a bit overkill. Her nescience about the ceiling collapse of the Big Dig stunned her listeners? Or her nescience about a recent Supreme Court opinion in her area of practice caused her to be fired? Maybe. I think nescience would best be paired with a lack of understanding or lack of knowledge of something that is supposed to be well, or at least widely, known, unless you really wanted to elevate the knowledge that the person doesn't understand for emphasis (i.e., raising the failure to know how to plug something in compared to knowledge of the problems of world hunger, as if to say everyone else but you knows how to plug in a TiVo). I'll have to mull this word over some more. Her nescience about standard choral music while being in one of the premiere choruses in the country continued to cause amusement and a bit of condescention from her fellow choresters. Nescience. Interesting. Has possibilities.

Ok, time to go do something less scholarly, like catch up on reading
Variety and The New Yorker so I have less nescience. Still sounds like it should be an adjective to me, even though that's nescient... I'll keep working on it.

Putsch v. Coup

Well, my gut response to Putsch was that was not a word, since it is capitalized, but then I remembered it was of German origin, where they capitalize all their nouns. My second response was what was wrong with coup? And therein lies the rub.

Coup comes from the Greek "kolaphos" for a blow or slap, through the Latin "colaphus" for a cuff or blow to the face/ear, and ultimately through the old French "colp" for "to cut or strike". It's not hard to imagine how a physical swift, unexpected slap to the face which impugns ones dignity could be used to mean a metaphorical swift, unexpected slap to ones dignity by removing someone from power. Meanwhile, Putsch comes from the same word in Schweizerdeutsch meaning a violent blow or push, from onomatopoeia for the action. Both definitely have the implicit meaning of usurping power in some manner, but Putsch is more violent in its origin than coup, a push being more physical than a slap, and therefore, a Putsch may be effect by mere brute force of numbers, while a coup is usually associated with a smaller group. Also, Putsch need not be sudden, unlike coup, which is unexpected to the recipient. Finally, Putsch evolved specifically in 1830 relative to a revolt in Zurich, while coup has existed to describe any clever, successfully executed but unexpected plan since c. 1400. Therefore, Putsch only refers to government overthrows, while coup has broader usage, even though it is colloquially immediately associated solely with government overthrow.

So, while I may not have much need for the use of Putsch, largely because so few people will know what the word means, and might think, since I can pronoun it with a proper German accent (I'll work on my Schweizerdeutsch later), that I am merely saying "push", coup has so much more potential. Was it a Putsch to try to impeach Clinton? This past senatorial election was a Putsch to the Republican leadership. Yes, and yes. But these sentences would sound just as good, and a bit more understandable with "coup". Was it a coup to try to impeach Clinton? The Democratic party mounted a coup of the Republican leadership in the last senatorial election. It may not have been sudden, but it was definitely unexpected to many. His attempted coup to have the house for an evening of beer and poker by encouraging his wife to go to the movies with her friends failed when she discovered the keg in the garage. Perhaps, but plan or scheme works better. It was a real coup to get the celebrity endorsement away from his competitor. This is a common expression, even without the express idea of taking it away from someone else, which is otherwise implied. Knowing that it was going to be cold that night, she staged a coup to get all the covers. Yes.

And again, while I don't do phrases or foreign languages, and particularly not the combination of both, I will make a passing reference that "coup d'etat" and "coup de grace", both French, utilize the meaning of "blow" for "coup", but still retain the meaning of taking power, either from the state (d'etat) or a final act (de grace).

Abecedarian

Prior to today, there had been a derth of good words (well, maybe just a lull), but I did promise some more nouns.

Yesterday's wotd was abecedarian, and I would sooner use animadversion in casual conversation than this idiotic construct. Abecedarian pretty clearly derives from the first four letters of the alphabet, apparently as coined by the Romans. [Ed. note: what were they drinking? Lead???] Ok, so clearly, it means at least on one level, of or relating to the alphabet, and then things that are arranged alphabetically (although that descriptor of "alphabetic order" seems pretty comprehensive and useful), and then finally, things that are as basic as the alphabet (or one who is just beginning to learn a new subject including the alphabet), and it is only in this last usage that we can really get to anything interesting. Well, there's the obvious that little children are quintessential abecedarians, without any derogatory overtones. They really are just learning everything, including the alphabet. 1Ls are abecedarians to the law, and remain so through the first few years of practice. True, and likely uncontested, but I might still prefer novice or acolyte despite the religious overtones. Most Plaintiff's counsel remain abecedarians as to how to evaluate a case, let alone how to write a motion. Accurate and derogatory rolled into one! And on the adjective side of the word, we have his files were not abecedarian, but chronological. Only because of the reference to chronological do we understand what was really intended by the use of abecedarian. Or after having read a sonnet for the first time, one has only the most abecedarian understanding of its depth or meaning. Yes, but rudimentary is better. Or Now, we get to the possible usage. The daughter of a wealthy merchant, she exclaimed "how abecedarian!" when presented with a ring of paste and plate gold, and carefully put the thing aside. But how many times do we really get to dismiss something as "quaint". Well, I guess only when get the mail. Most Plaintiff's counsel's arguments are so abecedarian as to be utterly laughable. Noun, adjective, it's still a questionable word, and it's usage, pompous. I've got better in my arsenal to use on Plaintiff's counsel than this fodder.

Rivulet

I find that I am rarely ambivalent about a word, and rivulet is no exception. I like this word. I use this word, even though it is limited in its usage. So, let's get started:

Now, even before I check the etymology of this word, doesn't rivulet look like it means "little river"? "Rivu" looks like it derives from some word like "river" and "et" is the diminutive ending for "little" ("et" for masculine gender nouns and "ette" for feminine gender nouns). So, it should come as no surprise that rivulet derives from the Latin "rivulus", a diminutive of "rivus" for river. That's it. Nothing special about the etymology to the current usage. Still the same little river. What is fun about this word is the usage. Of course, the torrential rains made every rivulet into a raging surge of water. Or after washing her car, the rain dripped off in myriad rivulets. Her tears ran down her face like rivulets. Bad wine doesn't have "legs" but "rivulets". So, clearly, rivulet can be used with the actual stream, water in other forms, and things that act like water (running, dripping, flowing). But that's too easy. Lacking a good vocabulary, his anger did not so much pour from his mouth as a stream, but rather as a rivulet. Maybe. Comments on her blog were barely rivulets. Possibly, and accurate too. Plaintiff's counsel's argument had all the force of a rivulet. hehehe. Life is like a rivulet... Ok, that was a bad attempt at humor. Clearly, rivulet can work with other intangibles that may be analogized (metaphorized???) to water, and not even just for sarcastic value! Now, just as an aside, rivulet is only a noun. Her ideas were rivuleting or his sweat rivuleted down his back? I won't even begin to discuss how wrong those are. It is a fine noun and has plenty of opportunity to be used just as the noun that it is. Let the usages of rivulet flow!

Obviate; Obfuscate

Well, obviate came up recently as a wotd, and I just couldn't get enough of words with a "b", ever since the silent "b" of ostensible.

Obviate comes from the Latin "obvius" for "against" "the way", but colloquially meaning "that is in the way; that goes against" which got conjugated into "to act contrary to; go against" for the act of the person rather than the physical placement of a person or thing. However, by the time of the Renaissance, the word then came to mean "to meet and do away with". So, how and why did the perspective of the word change from describing the impediment to getting rid of the impediment, for which DD is completely inadequate on this point. OED's entry may shed some light on this. Apparently, there is an obsolete [I'll get to this word later!] definition which means "to meet, encounter; hence to withstand, oppose (a person or thing)," consistent with the idea that meeting someone or something inherently in your way was acting against by withstanding or opposing this person or thing. A second usage evolved contemporaneously to this obsolete usage then that the act of meeting the obstacle [another word I'll get to later] was "to meet and do away with" the obstacle, and then rather than wait to meet the obstacle, the word's meaning evolved further to prevent the anticipated obstacle. So, we can see the rather straightforward expansion of the word, but in no way does it really mean with it's etymological roots suggest.

As for usage, this is a great word, but like clarion, has a particular catch phrase usage. Obviate the need or obviate a need. The anticipated closings due to snow may obviate a need to call in sick. However, unlike clarion, the word can be used without sounding odd alone. The video tape corroborating the defendant's alibi obviated all doubt as his credibility. It should be noted that obviate now as a preventative of the obstacle means that it will completely remove the obstacle, not merely mitigate or lessen. In fact, you might hope to mitigate the effect of an obligation you could not obviate, such as a family dinner. And as a preventative now, obviate works with abstractions which are based on perception/thought (duties, needs, tendencies) (his new medications obviated his thoughts of suicide) and still with the conduct which was in opposition (her co-counsel's offering to write the opposition to Plaintiff's emergency motion to compel obviated her having to stay late; Plaintiff's acceptance of the offer of settlement obviated the trial). Furthermore, the obstacle doesn't need to be so onerous or thorough as it once meant as long as the obstacle is perceived to be contrary to an implied desired action. So, perhaps Plaintiff's acceptance of the offer of settlement unfortunately obviated the trial since she was confident she could secure a defense verdict. That the conductor was not too familiar with the music to give appropriate cues obviated the chorus' from the need to memorize the piece. The usage is correct, although the sentiment is not. Sometimes is it more useful to memorize such music in order to deal with a tentative conductor. But I still tend to use obviate with a need, and reserve verbs which are more simply understood alone, such as exonerate, alleviate or just plain remove, and as for the family dinner obligation, that would be a stay of execution.

Now, obfuscate just sounds great, with all those consonants! It does not roll trippingly off the tongue, and in not doing so, it draws the attention of the listener, just as the people who have trouble saying it also draw the attention of the listener. So, practice this word at home before you try it in public. Similarly, in writing, it looks odd (that "bf" combo) that is also stands out, like a possible typo.

Anyway, back to the word. Obfuscate comes from the Latin "obfuscare" for to darken over. There still is a retained meaning of simply "to darken", but I can hardly ever believe I would say "Let's obfuscate the room, honey" or "the recent power outage obfuscated entire city blocks" or even "on a sunny day, only the clouds can obfuscate the hills". It's just too odd, although I will note that since obfuscate has that preposition of "over" from the original Latin, any use of "to darken" must be darkening by covering or making opaque so light cannot pass, therefore, only the last usage is really correct. Obfuscate the parrot cage for the evening. Obfuscate the light bulb by adding a lamp shade. But in the nature of darkening, as it covers or opaques something from view, obfuscate has taken on a meaning of covering or opaquing intangibles from understanding, and then finally covering or opaquing an individual from understanding. He successfully avoided the speeding ticket by obfuscating the officer in a lengthy explanation of his mother's illness which he just got the phone call from his ex-wife while he was at his daughter's piano recital... But I don't prefer that usage, since I don't really associate obfuscate with confusing people as much as with burying an idea that one does not want to be know. He successfully avoided the speeding ticket by obfuscating his need to get to the beach in a lengthy explanation of his mother's illness... That's better. I was never able to obfuscate my grandmother into thinking I hadn't had the candy. Maybe, in a pinch, although dupe is better. I was never able to obfuscate my fiendish designs to garner another piece of candy in the veil of innocent. Perhaps a bit too poetic, but passable. Plaintiff's counsel tried to obfuscate the judge of his client's weak case by arguing the equity rather than the law. Yes. And this is where I tend to use this word, and have heard this word used. So, second usage only for me as we try to obfuscate inconsistent theories, lame excuses, guilt, blame... You get the picture. Works like a charm, perhaps because the word obfuscate tends to obfuscate people.

Clarion

Well, if I must, but only because it popped up as today's wotd. Clarion comes from the Latin "clarus" for "clear", through the Middle Latin and Middle English "clarion" for a trumpet. And DD gives no indication of how or why that occurred. So, off to OED. OED doesn't have anything more to add, except for the irony that the primary definition of clarion given by DD ("loud and clear") is the 5th definition of OED, where the other four are the nouns relating to a trumpet or trumpet shaped thing. But I'm only analyzing the adjective here, since that twas the part of speech initially raised, and the trumpet aspect is obvious, at least among musicians. What OED does provide is an historical analysis of the etymology, and it appears that the first appearance of clarion in any sense was as the noun in 1325, although the first official listed usage wasn't until 1384 with Chaucer, again, as the instrument. The idea of the sound being a descriptor didn't appear until 1858. So, clearly, the instrument preceded the usage at issue, and the description of "loud and clear" evolved from the sound of the instrument, which name of the instrument evolved from the sound it created. Talk about circular reasoning. Cute. So, we have the clarion call of hungry children. Possibly. There is the inherent association with war which might be too far afield of hunger. The commonly understood clarion call to war probably originally was a trumpet sounding, and then when something other than trumpets provoked or signaled war, the metaphor was still retained. Telling the brass section to sound more clarion would probably be an insult, particularly if there were a clarion player. As I toy with expanded usages, it seems that as an adjective, clarion is inextricably tied to call. The clarion gun blasts at the firing range necessitated the use of proper ear protection. This just sounds silly, although it is technically correct. The installation of more cell phone towers is intended to make every call clarion. Do I need to say it? No. My cat's clarion mews are that much more pronounced in the bathroom. Possibly, where a mew is closer to a call or a cry. So, we are left with exploiting the phrase "clarion call". I don't typically do phrases, but I'll deign this once. The phrase "lights out" was a clarion call to sleep. Perhaps, just for the juxtaposition of the inference of war v. sleep. Being down by only one run was the clarion call to rally in the bottom of the ninth. Depends on how competitive you are that it would be akin to war. Plaintiff's counsel's rambling motion for summary judgment was the clarion call to write an opposition that would show him for the arrant idiot that he was. Yes!

Deign

Oooo! I love this word. I discovered it when I was a sophomore in high school, and as you may have already noticed from my older posts (Galumph), I actually still use this word in casual conversation, although since there is the condescention meaning, it's hardly a casual world. However, what I didn't realize in high school was it's unusual etymology. Deign comes from the Latin "dignari" meaning "to judge worthy", but along the way, that devolved into "to condescend". I suppose that if one is judging the situation or another to be "worthy" then the idea that someone could make such a judgment is rather arrogant, and the individual making the judgment might look at the one being judged as inferior. So, ironically, the condescention cuts both ways: that the individual judged is less than worthy of the interest of the one doing the judging and that the one doing the judging is so far above the one being judged as to make the judging a waste of time. In neither case is the inference pretty, so be careful when and where you use it.

Now, of course, the word should probably be used only with people, although my cat might disagree when she deigns to lay on top of me. But that may also be me elevating her conduct with a bit of sarcasm. Since the word requires a judgment, that implicitly requires a cognitive process to evaluate, which is almost entirely reserved to people or at least those mammals who think. The lion deigned to perform the tricks for the crowd. The chimpanzee deigned to complete the tests for the scientists. Probably, but again, it is sarcasm. It's almost always used with an infinitive following, although DD indicates it can be used without. He deigned her apology or he deigned his company with her for her embarassing him at the party. Yes, but it still sounds odd to my ear. Better to say: he deigned to accept her apology or he deigned to stand with her. And then by Hemmingway's standards, you can be that much more expressive because now you have two verbs. And just as a bit of further irony, those who are put in the position to judge by law do not deign anything--they simply judge. Therefore, deign requires that the one making the judgment either be self-appointed (I deign to use certain words which I otherwise deem unworthy; my grandmother deigned to hear my pleas to stay up late when I was little) and/or be viewed by others as not competent to make such judgment (I watched as she deigned to ladle soup at the homeless shelter; Plaintiff's counsel deigned to consider my reasonable offer of settlement).

I deign to endorse this word would be inappropriate since I really do think this is a good word. It can be said with great acerbity and get the point across even though people may not know exactly what you are saying. "Do you deign to speak to me?" tossed in during an argument can be quite off-putting. Enjoy and use wisely!

Robustious

I know, this doesn't look like a word, and I agree, but DD once said it was, and this was what I wrote about it then.

Robustious. Personally, I think this is a silly word, and I have seriously contemplated writing a humor article about silly words (leading candidates are sough, piebald and supposititious--DD likes those tacked on "ous" endings). This is yet another example of DD taking a perfectly good adjective and making it into—another adjective. Unless you really needed the alliteration, I'd just stick with boisterous (or vigorous) for the "ous" ending, which is the more common word or just use robust. "A robust romantic figure" is just as expository as "a robustious romantic figure". I find it amusing, additionally, that when you look up robust in DD, it does not list robustious as a related word. But again, returning to the theory that every word has a unique meaning, robustious must either have such a separate meaning (Hellenic v. Hellenistic being my favorite as the difference between pre- and post- Alexander the Great) or else be a mistake of English grammar (robust is sufficient for all usages, and robustious is just adding an unnecessary adjectival ending to a perfectly good adjective). The idea behind adding a second adjectival ending is that it makes it _like_ the original adjective, but somehow lesser than the pure original adjective, hence the Hellenistic period was like the Hellenic period as having derived from it, but not the same as it had been tarnished by the influence of Alexander. Historic v. historical works the same way, where the latter is pretending to be history ("history-lite"), not the history itself. An historical recreation versus an historic renovation. Which brings us back to robust v. robustious. DD defines robust as "1) strong and healthy; hardy; _vigorous_; 2) strongly or stoutly built; 3) suited to or requiring bodily strength or endurance; 4) rough, rude or _boisterous_; and 5) rich and full-bodied". Definitions 1 and 4 overlap directly with robustious, even to the point of using the same words without any modifiers or inferences of fuller meaning/usage. That robust has 3 other meanings relating to strength, and not just boisterousness or vigorousness, does not make robustious "robust-lite", since the "lite" words embrace all the meanings of the original adjective, and not just selected meanings, and there is nothing to suggest that "robustious" is in the style of being "robust" to make it truly "robust-lite" consistent with other adjectival pairs. Which isn't to say that "robustious" can't exist as a word, but one must be particularly careful to the allegedly interchangeable use of such related words. To the extent that DD can provide any examples of the use of this "word", I assert that O. Henry wrote at a period of time where it was stylish to make up words to smack readers in the face with their misuse (or perhaps he really meant that the voice was something less than robust but trying to sound robust--cute, and perhaps the sole correct usage of the word), and Stanley Kauffman should be chastised for his continued flagrant attempts to perpetuate this non-word in an inappropriate way. All that said, given the description of the sprechtstimme contemplated in Moses und Aron it is very likely that the bass singing Moses and Aron will hardly sound any more robustious in his roles than any of the chanting choir or wailing soloists.

Ok, time to kill some robustious wasps that are invading my front door...

Tenet v. Doctrine v. Dogma

Tenet being the wotd, it raised my interest in the comparison between doctrine and dogma, like I needed an excuse to discuss a word...

Doctrine comes from the Latin "doctrina" for "teaching", and still retains that meaning of a principle, position or policy that is taught (see indoctrinate). Dogma comes from Greek "dokein" for "to seem good, think" through Latin "dogmatos" for "that which one thinks is true". And tenet simply comes from the Latin "tenere" for "to hold", as in something (an idea or belief) which is held. Contextually, doctrine and dogma are used interchangeably, and all are listed as synonyms for each other, but, if we haven't already learned that by now, it bears repeating that there are no true synonyms.

So, I'll start with tenet which is a belief that one holds, and bears no relation to the truth of the belief or where one got the belief or what one does with the belief. Theoretically, you could hold a false tenet (a belief that has been disproved, but while one still clings too), since it is just a belief, and there is no implied requirement to impose a tenet on anyone else in any way. Dogma is a belief that may or may not be true, but one thinks it is true, still having no relation to how one got the belief or what one does with it. Perhaps this word has the greatest relation to faith, believing in an idea which cannot be demonstrably proven or disproven, but which is embraced as true, regardless, and therefore, dogmas are more abstract. This may also explain why dogma is most frequently associated with the church, and particularly, the Catholic church. Doctrine, then, is a belief that is taught, again, with no relation to the truth of the belief. We hope it is true, and perhaps by teaching it, we make it true because we have spread the knowledge far and wide, but the real distinction of this word is that it is something that is intended to be communicated to another for them to accept. Yes, conversion is an issue in religion, but not through dogma. It would be church doctrine to baptise all heathens, but the dogma would be to accept God. The heathen, so converted, may then choose to accept the dogma as a personal tenet in their daily life. Now, take this out of the religious context, and we have, it is the corporate doctrine to recruit the best and the brightest to solve the problems of the humanity, but the dogma would be to accept the capitalism, and Human Resources hopes that each employee embraces the tenet of "the good of the company" over "the good of the individual". Or, politicians push new doctrines in the form of proposed legislation, but the dogma of the country is democracy for all, while some taxpayers and constituents hold contrary tenets of the benefits of small versus large government. Ok, well, I think you get the point.

Now, do these words get misused? You bet! Dogma, still carrying that religious overtone, gets associated almost entirely with the religious sphere of influence, as does tenet, without distinction, while doctrine gets the non-religious. Which makes using dogma in a non-religious context tending to elevate the subject to religious fanatacism (tenet not as much, but still), and using doctrine in a religious sense tending to diminish the religious importance. However, like expiate v. atone, I prefer to emphasize the religious connotation in furtherance of the sarcasm, so dogma it is for me in casual conversation, and I'll stick to the absolute distinction for my oral and written advocacy in the formal settings. And tenet is still, just tenet, but it did start this particular discussion.

Errant; Arrant

Well, this is an interesting comparison, not because these words are related, but because they could be mispronounced and therefore, heard interchangeably, although I will start by saying that errant is the word most commonly used, heard and understood, while arrant is more obscure, and may remain that way in the shadow of errant.

So, errant is quite easy, deriving from the past participle for the Latin "iterare" for "to journey", but has a confused etymology from the Latin "errare" for "to wander", which the French adopted for "to travel". I suppose a journey without a destination would merely be wandering, so these are not unjustifiably related, although it does presuppose that the journey is without a destination. Perhaps that a distinction between journey and trip - whether the end is predetermined - but that's a comparison for another day. Therefore, the etymology of errant may be errant itself. His errant writing style made it impossible for the judge to follow his argument. Despite the party being only 6 blocks due south of the interstate exit, her errant driving ensured that she was late. The errant witness was delayed by poor directions. All errant ideas not related to study are driven from students while preparing for final exams. Words with people, things and abstractions. There is also a latent meaning of "mistake" and "wrong", with the implied meaning of guilt, perhaps from the intolerance of people who wander. His errant activities off campus earned him a suspension from college for public indecency. Parents should take care to ensure that their children do not engage in errant behavior. Therefore, we should be aware when describing the activities of people that the context is clear whether mere wandering alone is intended or if there is to be a condemnation about the activity as being outside what is expected or prescribed by society.

Now, arrant has the same etymological roots as errant for wandering (having arguably come from a variant spelling - who says spelling doesn't count?), but couldn't be any further from the prior word. The idea that arrant could describe thorough, complete or notorious, clearly now, the condemnation aspect has taken over to an extreme. She was an arrant fool for investing in the pyramid scheme. Although fool was sufficient, and utter would have been an acceptable modifier, if one were actually necessary, with clearer meaning. He was an arrant snob, disdaining the company of those whom he perceived were his social inferiors. Again, snob is enough. His arrant cowardice prohibited him from seeing even the most tame of horror movies. Just trying to use this word now, it feels as if you would toss the word in with the denigrating term as just a sotto voce throw away. "Arrant idiot," she exclaimed upon learning that he had filed yet another motion for summary judgment after losing the first. So, the word only works in the perjorative sense, as some degree of augmentation on the existing perjorative being applied to someone (fool, snob, cowardice). Personally, I don't have much use for arrant. Because of its aural and literal connection with errant, and its meaning of thorough and notorious, it doesn't lend any additional meaning when used correctly, and any attempted use in sarcasm (arrant politician, arrant leader, arrant bravado) only sounds like errant, or has no effect since the listener wouldn't understand the nuance of the insinuation. Plus, I've got other words to resurrect and bring into common parlance than to work at arrant, although "arrant idiot" has some merit, maybe solely as a catchphrase to describe Plaintiff's counsel!

Jocular; Undulant

Recent DD wotds have been less than inspiring because the words themselves have no interesting evolution from their etymology.

Jocular derives from a diminutive of "iocus" for joke (remember, there is no "j" in Latin), and gives a straight line to the usage "characterized by joking". A fitting word for April Fools Day, but there was no jocularity today. Just business as usual--singing, more singing, and judging moot court. Oral argument before the Supreme Court is no place to be jocular. While courts appreciate humor and the occasional wit, jocularity is frowned upon as too casual. His jocular attitude in class of making wisecracks often had him sent to the principal's office. And it only applies to people since people are really the only ones who can make a joke. The chimpanzee could only mimic a jocular demeanor, which was in fact, really only juvenile. A robot can only be programmed to respond in a jocular manner. But it is inherent in the word that jocular has creativity, so other mammals and certainly tangibles and abstracts are not jocular. A jocular wind would actually be "playful" at best. A jocular essay might work, but as discussed in past words, only because the thing is so closely associated with the actions of people. As opposed to a jocular bookcase, which might only exist in Lewis Carroll's imagination as warped and barely functional for it's intended purpose, although I'd say this would better describe whimsical or perhaps, dysfunctional or pointless.

Undulant on the other hand comes from the Latin diminutive "undula" for wave, again straight to resembling waves in form, motion or occurrence. So, we can discuss the height, depth and period of a wave. Ironically, undulating waves is practically redundant, but unfortunately, all too commonly used. The hills created an undulant landscape. The equation represented a simple undulating sine curve. A bit pedantic and geeky/poetic, but accurate. Her head undulated while she sang, demonstrating her poor technique and lack of self control. His undulant voice lulled the baby to sleep. Possibly. Her country twang had a pronounced undulant quality. His undulant moods betrayed his bipolar disorder? Yes. Even after several years, she was still struck with undulant bouts of inconsolable grief mourning the death of her father. Yes, absolutely, and quite evocative, although I might take it a step further with drowning bouts or floods or for the really bad one, tsunamis. So, yes, it works for people, their activities, tangibles and abstractions. Enjoy!

Sedition

How could I resist a word which means "conduct or language which tends to incite resistance or rebellion against lawful authority"! Sedition comes from the Latin "se" for "apart" and the past participle of "ire" for "to go", giving a meaning of "to go against". But unfortunately, like obstreperous, the etymology started with resistance without characterization of the passivity or activity of the resistance, and devolved into rebellion, which is often tied with resistance but which has an inherent quality of activity. A passive rebellion is practically an oxymoron, although perhaps in another post, I'll discuss the extremes of the use of that word. Is it sedition to lobby Congress to change legislation? Perhaps by a technical usage of the word, although to use it in this context would merely be high sarcasm. Just like describing the democratic election process, or even the news, particularly during this time and with an incumbent politician, as sedition, although I might agree to the literal meaning here more. And one has to wonder if a failed defense to a criminal charge is ex post facto sedition. But mostly it gets used with activities in deliberate defiance of a government, possibly since a government is the most likely candidate for "lawful" activity which would need to be overthrown. Just before the coup, all literature against the monarchy was banned for its sedition. That's correct, but substitute modern figures and it gets stretched perhaps too far afield. Just before the board vote, all emails against the CEO were suppressed for their sedition. It's funny, because of the inference that the CEO was perhaps a king or a dictator, largely due to the requirement of the action being against lawful activity. The rebel leader was well-known for his sedition. The student group engaged in mild sedition against the principal's new "open locker" policy by littering the halls with their possessions or putting their possessions into locked boxes within their lockers. Possibly, although anarchy or revolt or just protest would probably work better. Still, this at least shows that the word works with people, activities of people, and obviously, ideas.

So, in the end, nothing special in this word, but it is still fun to use.

Denizen v. Citizen

I am severely behind, having been in Boston for 9 days for a concert only to return to Rockville in time for the dress rehearsals for another concert. Plus, the current DD wotd offerings have been less than inspiring (so far). So, from my archives, I offer:

Denizen v. Citizen (DD definition link)

The denizens of DD need to come up with some better words. Actually, this is a mildly better word, which I might be more inclined to use. I am a denizen of several restaurants, longingly with a fantastic sushi restaurant in Natick, and now a pretty decent Vietnamese establishment, as well as a denizen of various hotels in Boston near Symphony Hall. So the only difference between "an inhabitant or resident" and "a regular who frequents a place" is that in the first, you are a putative permanent resident, whereas in second you are an overglorified temporary "resident". The physical existence of the place is irrelevant. Denizens of the internet are just as identifiable as denizens of a favorite watering hole. Now, the British definition is just an interesting legal twist on a status somewhere between wanting to be a permanent resident, but having only a temporary status at the time. As I one day might want to be a denizen of South Africa or New Zealand, both of which based their legal system on the British, I may have cause to use this word on myself. In fact, my husband's aunt and uncle may be working towards denizen status now in New Zealand. Which leaves (no pun intended) us with the plant/animal usage. So, I heard about all the quarantine laws in Australia separate from New Zealand as a result of the introduction of some type of squirrel/beaver in the latter for which they had to introduce a predatory bird which then took over, but these would hardly be considered denizens. Just as weeds would never make the grade as denizens of a garden. Of course, this word does make me wonder about its relationship to "citizen" which has quite a bit of a similar spelling. And having checked into the etymologies of these words, they are in fact related, which makes the real difference between these words the evolution from the French language (for citizen) and middle European (for denizen) both to the British legal system. Citizen was the original inhabitant and denizen is the later inhabitant being or in the process of being absorbed into the original population. Ok, I didn't expect that to be such the legal discourse, but then I never do.

Expunge v. Obliterate v. Efface

Today's wotd was expunge, but in the course of my cursory analysis, I got sidetracked by obliterate, which led me to what the real wotd should have been--perplexed. I'm not anywhere near OED, making this distinction more difficult, since in my gut, I think DD is yet again wrong, or at least incomplete and therefore, misleading. So, I'll start with the word that starts to bring this trilogy into focus:

Efface comes from the Latin for "out" "appearance", or to take out of appearance, which then evolved into "to rub out" [no, not to kill]. The physical act of rubbing was important, as if one rubs one's face to change it's appearance (i.e., get rid of sleep, make up) for tangibles (efface the spot from the carpet, efface the bubble on the SAT), but now has the connotation of the effect without the rubbing for intangibles (efface the memory of taking the Bar exam with lots of alcohol) and with intangibles, seems to be limited solely to the idiom of memory, knowledge or history, history being an effect of memory in some sense (efface useless knowledge, efface the culture of China before socialism). But now, it's also more than just rubbing, but the repetitive motion. Sandblasting effaced the gum from the sidewalk. The tides effaced the beach, as well as the sandcastle. Poor control of tourism and their touching of the engravings, effaced the fine details. Acid rain has effaced the carvings from many ancient Greek buildings. So, it's the physical act of rubbing or repetitive touching akin to rubbing tangible things out of existence, and rubbing out memory or memory-like things.

Expunge comes from the Latin for "to prick", as apparently it was used as an indicia that something on a list needed to be omitted. The black mark that we hear may be beside someone's name now means that this person gets left off the list, but according to DD, in current usage, it has some vague meaning of "to erase or strike out". However, in reality, it is only ever used to with removing things from records (whether legal or otherwise), the new list. Expunge his record of the DUI. Expunge her record of misidentification with the high school brawl. Expunge the minutes of the discussion about corporate expansion. Not expunge antiquated technology from the office. Nor expunge creativity from education.

And finally, obliterate, from the Latin for "to write over letters" or alternatively, "to forget". Of course, it is only used with tangible and intangible categories (no matter how much we want to, we don't obliterate our mothers-in-law or obliterate witnesses; we try to diminish influence and kill, irrespectively), and obliterate can be accomplished in a single or less than repetitive blow. The bomb obliterated all trace of the church. The Taliban's mission was to obliterate other religious symbols. The problem with obliterate, unlike efface and expunge, is that obliterate intends to remove all reference, knowledge, or existence of the thing, leaving nothing behind to remind, but if one is really effective at such obliteration, there would be no proof that the thing existed to prove that it had been obliterated. You could imagine the philosophical tautology of trying to explain that you had obliterated something but not being able to say what you had obliterated because to do so would be to bring it back into existence. Efface doesn't have that problem since it is a physical thing which still may be in memory (I remember where the lines on Washington's face on the quarter were before they were effaced by years of use) or not in memory but still in physical record (despite my attempts to efface my memory of studying for the bar, I still retain my bar notes as a good reference). And expunge is similar to effacing the physical form since there may still be memory of the alleged offense, charge or claim.

Ed. note. I still would probably never use efface, I already use expunge, in it appropriate legal context, and I prefer obliterate because it is so much more evocative.

Obstreperous

Today's wotd was so totally unfulfilling, and since I missed the "b" from ostensible, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and choose a better word that had the "b"!

Obstreperous

I use this word, not infrequently, to describe the small children who disrupt a movie with their in seat gymnastics, as well as to describe one of my more defiant moods. I never thought about why I liked this word, but I will now. It comes from the Latin "strepere" for "to make a loud noise" and the prefix "ob" meaning "against". Well, that can practically describe what I do any day in Court, or even just in my office after I read the latest Plaintiff's motion only to exclaim, "this is so stupid" so forcefully that other attorneys emerge to question me on the level of stupidity which I have encountered. It still is pretty much in line with its etymology in it usage, except we have now added "stubborn" to the definition, probably from the fact that when someone continues to be vocal against something that someone is usually unwilling to change his/her position, which may be viewed as stubborn. I suppose you could still be noisy against something as you are being hauled away by the police, and therefore, not stubborn per se (which is why some other definitions add "unruly" to the mix, but this is an unnecessary stretch), but more often than not the two actions/characteristics go hand in hand, like assault and battery (yes, I know. As I already discussed, you can have assault without the battery--threatening someone through a door, and battery without the assault--drawing on someone while they are asleep). Obviously, you can be quiet and stubborn--just remember the days when you couldn't leave the table until you finished your peas. It's unfortunate that noisy get associated with stubborn. Gives noisy a bad connotation.

But back to the use of obstreperous. The teenage boy turned on obstreperous music to drown out his parents' animadversions of his "friends". [ok, I tried, but animadversions just does not roll trippingly off the tongue, ever. Notwithstanding...] It is possible obstreperous could be used to describe inanimate and/or intangibles. Plaintiff's counsel's obstreperous theories about Defendant's negligence drew an admonition from the bench to "tone it down, Counsellor". Maybe. Plaintiff's counsel's obstreperous theatrical antics in the courtroom did not impress the jury. Yes. The dog's obstreperous barking at the burgular woke the neighbors who finally called the police. Possibly. I really think it has to be used with people or possibly people's activities, since the noise/stubborn attributes are in response to someone or something, and that requires cognitative thought. It note that all the examples given by DD were for people. The guard dog example might work only because it is in response to something which required noise and continuous noise until the situation changed, but you would never say "an obstreperous fire alarm." It is the cognitive thought of being stubborn which makes it indemic to humans. Is the guard dog being stubborn, or just waiting for someone to turn him off? Now, not to say that the little girl who was doing her best sommersault in her seat was doing this stubbornly, but the way she kept at it and kept it up was practically dogged, and therefore, I can elevate that, at least humorously if not literally, to a level of intent. After all, intent is in the mind of similarly situated individuals, so we do have to look at it from an 8-year-old's perspective. This was very clearly her commentary on a boring movie. So, my last question is what level of noise or clamoring against is required to rise to the level of obstreperous. It does not appear to be only loud noise, from the etymology, but now any such distraction as to be akin to noise. The Plaintiff's obstreperous eye-rolling and huffing at my questions which he though were not "the important ones" did not motivate me to change my line of questioning. Ok, there was a little noise in that example. Can it be done without any noise? Her obstreperous gesticulations to her younger brother to be the one chosen to help carry in the groceries ensured that she was chosen. Maybe, although it's amusing regardless just as visual. How "loudly" would she have to be gestering to be obstreperous...? Well, I'm willing to opine that I think it needs some sound, however minimal, so my complaint with the 8 year old was actually with the rusting of her clothes, the intermittent squeak of the springs and the metallic thud of the seat as she engaged in her gyrations, and probably the older sister was humming or something to get the attention of her mother to follow her directions. Once the pair of young German boys were told never to touch my seat and once I put on my headphones to watch every movie on board the 8 hour flight from Frankfurt to LaGuardia, their obstreperous activities of indentifying everying in sight while climbing over each other for the window seat directly behind me waned in my mind. Ah, those were the days...

Animadversion

Animadversion (DD definition link)

You have got to be kidding me! This is DD's wotd? It looks like a word which would describe either people who hate animals or Japanese cartoons. It just begs to be a malapropism. And how "mind turning toward" becomes an "unfavorable or censurious comment", I don't even care. What's wrong with just censure or criticism or rebuke or condemnation, or any of the other hate "synonyms" in another form? (Loathe, despise, abhor, etc.) It begs to be used: When the little girl said, "vanilla stinks," I pithily replied, "Such animadversion from one so young!" Of course, neither the little girl, nor her mother, nor the counter attendant, nor any of the other patrons in the ice cream parlor would have understood what I said, and the witty retort would have been lost to the ether. Better to have asked her "why do you think vanilla stinks" and then argue on the merits rather than on some meta-level about her voicing her opinion. I can't even fathom using this word, except as utter sarcasm. The journalist's animadversion to the recent opera workshop performance was summed up in the statement, "the people who left at intermission had the right idea". My animadversion to DD's insipid wotd's that are utterly unusable even in pretentious conversation cannot be expressed sanely in this forum. I'll work on it.

Putative v. Alleged v. Ostensible

Today's "wotd" offering from DD is "perforce," but I find this word stupid (from the French "par force" meaning, literally, by force, it goes nowhere), so I will ignore it. Instead, since I'm in a coy legal mood (I've been answering Plaintiff's counsel's idiotic discovery requests for the last two days), I've got my own word comparison that I've been meaning to do.

Putative v. Alleged v. Ostensible

Putative comes from the Latin, through the French (of course), putare for, of all things, "to prune, think" or "to clean, prune". Well, I get the "think" part, but "to prune"??? Surely, they don't mean the gardening technique, but rather the whittling away of a discussion or idea to its core in line with cleaning up an argument so it makes sense, but that doesn't really relate to a definition, which is "commonly regarded as such". In fact, it is possibly just the opposite. Something which may be commonly regarded as a person or thing may not be in fact the true person or thing, and therefore, would need to be cleaned up as to an understanding of the true person or thing. His putative title as heir to the presidency of the corporation upon his father's death, while it could be true at some point in the future when a specific announcement is made, such a title has not be officially conferred and therefore, is only speculative.

Now, alleged comes from Latin allegare for "to adduce in support of a plea", like that's going to make this word any easier to understand among the lay folk. Basically, it means to reason or argue a fact which is not readily apparent in your case. In law, we talk about "alleged" facts, those being the ones which have not been proven, admitted, or agreed upon as true. Plaintiffs raise innumerable "alleged" acts of negligence on the part of the Defendant in order to maintain their suit. Her alleged failure to maintain control of her vehicle caused her to hit the Plaintiff's dog. The company's alleged lack of supervision over the supervision of employees enabled the workers to leave the hole uncovered which the Plaintiff then fell into. The alleged unnatural accumulation of snow and ice on the public sidewalk caused the Plaintiff to slip and fall, breaking her leg. All of these "alleged" facts must be proven in order for the Plaintiff to prevail on the claim, and these facts must all be alleged in the Complaint in order for the Complaint to survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. So, what we have is a very legal word, which may be used in non-legal contexts to up the ante. In making his appeal for his mother's leniency, the boy argued that it was the alleged taunts of his older sister which made him hit her. Of course, no one would really talk like this outside a law office, would they? Notwithstanding...

And finally, ostensible. Well, first there is the odd etymology, which always makes things interesting. From the Latin a hybrid of "ob" "tendere" meaning "reverse or inverse" "stretch" perhaps poetically meaning not stretched, as in the truth or reality, we then get the past participle of "ostendere" (where we lost the "b") meaning just "to show". But the definitions still have an element of only fiction with "outwardly appearing" or "represented or appearing as such", and not actually being the thing represented or appearing.

So, what is the difference? In the examples, ostensible is used with intangibles (ostensible cheerfulness, ostensible truth). Ostensible mob boss? No. Although the ostensible "aunt", she was not invited to the wedding. No, but funny nontheless. Her ostensible dog walking business was merely an excuse to get out of the house? Probably not. Her ostensible knowledge of physics. Also probably not, although it does tend to diminish the knowledge to practically an intangible in a humorous sort of way. His business plan was really an ostensible recipe for disaster. Yes. I agree. I think ostensible really should only be used with intangibles. Compare, putative's single example as used with a person (putative mob boss). Although the putative "aunt", she was not invited to the wedding. Yes. Her putative dog walking business was merely an excuse to get out of the house. Probably. His business plan was really a putative recipe for disaster. No. His putative cheerfulness did not fool anyone of his underlying misery. No. The putative truth was easily contradicted in cross-examination. No, and for the converse, putative does not tend to raise an intangible to a level of anthropomorphism. So, putative should only be used with people, and perhaps with the activities of people. Her putative daydreaming about her upcoming vacation. Eh. If we must. His putative computer skills. Better. Largely because the activity is becoming more focused. Her ostensible happiness was merely a pretext for a putative plan to be released from the mental institution. Alleged is just the odd word out this time because while putative and ostensible don't really exist in truth at the time of the statement and have no motivation to be proven or disproven, alleged may be already be true and has the inference of needing to be shown as true. All alleged definitions of words in this discussion are based on my putative knowledge and ostensible intuition.

Atone v. Expiate

I should have posted this with the trilogy from earlier today, but quite frankly, I was too tired to hunt this old post down and add it then. So here it is now...

Atone v. Expiate

I think the Catholic church may have a monopoly on all words relatingto guilt and clearing of guilt, but that leads me to the obvious comparison of atone v. expiate. We always hear the phrase "atone for one's sins", not "expiate for sins" (despite the references listed--I think they're wrong. These words must have a unique meaning, and therefore, cannot be used interchangeably.). So atone has the religious overtone from the theological Latin meaning of being "at one", which should leave expiate to cover all non-religious usages. Therefore, to expiate for a wrong is making restitution to the wronged individual (a compunction which leads to expiation) and which coincides nicely with the Latin origins about to make good. A prison sentence can hardly be considered expiation since expiate also requires that it be done voluntarily, otherwise, it's not really making good, since otherwise it doesn't change the intent or perception of the individual who did the wrong. Atone would be to seek forgiveness by an act or deed from a third-party that may or may not be the wronged individual, assuming the wrongful act was against a religious organization. But that still leaves us with the quandary: why use expiate when atone has so much more meaning, and used in a non-religious connotation gives greater emphasis (remember, these are not malapropisms!)? I think I would choose to swap them just to make the point: to expiate a sin diminishes the act being amended (while contraception may be a sin, more individuals tithe to expiate their guilt than actually change their habits) and to atone for a wrong elevates it to a sarcastic proportion (woe unto those who do not atone for the wrongs of failing to watch what they eat!), but the best of all would be the extreme context: to expiate for a wrong in a religious context (for swearing in church, he had to rake all the leaves on the grounds to expiate his sin), while atoning for a sin in a non-religious context (breaking her mother's favorite vase, she was grounded for a week to atone for her crime/sin). And since I'm not Catholic, I'll just stick with atoning. I'll deal with my sins later...

Exculpatory v. Excusatory v. Expiatory; Accusatory v. Admonitory

This is a lengthy comparison which came recently by request. Some of these words tickle my legal fancy; others just seem interesting for whatever subtle distinction they may yield. Here goes...

Exculpatory v. Excusatory v. Expiatory

Exculpatory is an obvious legal word ("exculpatory evidence" in litigation or "exculpatory clause" in contracts being among my favorite phrases), and means "tending to clear from charges or guilt", directly from the Latin ex-culpare (out of blame). Excusatory just means serving as an excuse, which is unhelpful, but "excuse" means to release from duty, guilt, obligation, etc., from the Latin excusare for "to put outside" or "release" as from such duty, guilt, obligation, etc. So there is already a distinction in the person and the act in that a third-party will excuse a wrong, while a neutral thing (a document or testimony of a person) may exculpate an individual. Finally, expiatory means to "atone, make amends or reparation", deriving directly from expiare ("to make good"), which vests with the wrongdoer and implies greater action by the wrongdoer than merely asking for forgiveness. There is an putative reference to a moral sin by the definition of "atone", but this is incorrect. Expiate and atone are not synonyms, and cannot ascribe meaning interchangeably. So while there may be an overlap in these words generally, the person or thing doing the releasing and extent to which action is required to release, i.e., implicity (by the evidence), by word or act of acknowledgment (by forgiveness or by restitution), are the critical difference. The defendant's excusatory statement that he 'wasn't there" at the time of the crime was not credible until the exculpatory evidence of the missing security video tape proved his whereabouts, and provided a sufficient alibi, but neither the statement nor the video tape were expiatory for the defendant's conduct during the trial when he beat up his counsel, breaking her arm. Except for exculpatory, I think I prefer excusatory and expiatory as verbs (which I'll get to presently). The evidence of his brother's habit for "borrowing" his gun while he was sleeping tended to exculpate him from being responsible for the "accidental" shooting of the neighbor's dog. I suppose the only fun you could have with this is to use it outside the criminal context for which it is intended. Such as, if there is a particularly damning tort issue. Bringing his wife breakfast in bed, taking out the trash, and doing all the laundry, exculpated him for forgetting her birthday.

Accusatory v. Admonitory

This pair was lumped in with the prior trio, but on first blush, these are distinct since these words create the blame which is being released with the above words. Accusatory derives from accuse which means "to call to account" (and shares a common origin with excuse from "cause" meaning "reason, sake, or case"). Admonitory is a warning of current or past wrongdoing, from the Latin monitorius for "reminding or warning". The prefix "ad" has a directional inference, but could just mean "near" in this instance. Which makes admonitory less damning than accusatory, but again, both are better as verbs. My admonitory glances to make the children stop squirming go largely unnoticed, and my accusatory huffs of disgust are equally ignored by their parents. This doesn't really work too well. I admonish small children to stop squirming during movies, but I accuse their parents of failure to control their children. Much better! Plaintiff's counsel received admonitory advice from the judge to "move it along" with the witness and an accusatory glare from Defense counsel for wasting time. Again, it's correct, but it doesn't really convey the full meaning. The judge admonished Plaintiff's counsel for wasting time with this witness, and Defense counsel chimed in with a withering eye-roll accusation.

I think the only thing to be gain from using any of these words as adjectives is the emphasis for using what are otherwise known and used words in this unusual form. So, to expand an adage, choose and use your words carefully!

Empyrean

Empyrean (DD definition link)

Ordinarily, I'd be intrigued by any Greek etymology, but empyrean's origins for "of or from fire" devolving into "from the highest heaven" is due to a mistaken association with "imperial" and then an attempt to reassociate the word with "fire," in a pseudo-ex-post-facto definition. Yes, the heavens/sky were the realm of Zeus, the ruler of the Greek gods, but Zeus didn't control the sun (that was Apollo Helios), and the heavens weren't the highest realm of the Greek gods (that was the quintessence). There is some latent association that the heavens contained the "fire" element, but so did Hephaestus' forge, under Mt. Aetna, and we could just as easily be using empyrean to describe in the earth or hell then... So, we are left with an original meaning and usage which got bastardized along the way, and then wrongly reconciled with some lay understanding of ancient Greek culture. Anyone's use of this word is hardly empyrean? No. Planes fly in the empyrean realm? That just sounds pretentious and unnatural. We all aspire to reach empyrean heights in our lives? Again, too pretentious. Plaintiff's counsel had empyrean goals about winning his case despite the lack of credibility of his client? That's the ticket. If the word sounds too silly for ordinary, even among the erudite, usage, then its usage must be accompanied by sarcasm.

Adage v. Bromide

Adage v. Bromide

I suppose this isn't as complicated as I originally thought. Adage is an old saying which has taken on common usage by virtue of the amount of its usage, where a bromide is a dull or boring saying which is just common, inherently to the saying and not the usage. Adage comes from the Latin for "I say" (go figure), and bromide has a rather circuitous route from the element, bromine, which was apparently used as a sedative, who would make such dull/boring sayings. That's it. So, personally, I think bromide is itself a dull word, plus it would always sound like its elemental origins. "Just wait until you have children" is such an overused bromide. Certainly, there has to be a better parental retort than that??? "Look both ways before you cross the street" was never really a bromide, but more good advice and better still, a defense against liability. The warning "don't touch" is a pointless bromide for the stupid? I'll just stick with adage. I will note, however, that saying "old adage" is redundant, since adages are already inherently old. That said... "You are what you eat" and "think before you speak" are familiar adages, while "Plaintiffs lie" and "think before you litigate" should be.

Specious

I don't know that this word inspires me any more than any of the other insipid words from DD. Specious' Latin origins mean "to look at" (from "specere"), but that evolved to "appearance". So there is a definite shift from the act of the viewer to the condition of the one being viewed, which is both a perspective and a part of speech shift. I can overlook the latter, but the idea that the etymology was basically to gawk, and then it became how credible was the thing being viewed, seems specious all by itself. And then to further complicate matters, specious takes on a secondary usage meaning of "deceptively pleasing or fair", which actually is more in line with its etymology, than it current popular meaning. As usual, it would seem that the popular usage derived from an older, and therefore, secondary or less popular now, the latter of which is ironically, more accurate. From deceptively pleasing, we get just deceptive. I will note, however, that all usage examples provided only relate to abstractions, and not to the animate or inanimate. So, a specious visage belied of cosmetic surgery would not be appropriate, although it might be funny and perhaps even hyper-accurate. Nor would a designer's specious decorating style or DD's specious word choices for wotd. It most frequently gets used as the phrase "specious argument", and I will admit that I have used this phrase on more than one occasion in oral argument to describe Plaintiff's counsel's reasoning. I'll discuss later the distinction between specious and disingenuous, which is another word I frequently use to describe Plaintiff's counsel's reasoning. For now, though, I'll just stick with his specious experience as a seasoned trial advocate, was debunked at trial by her sustained objection for lack of foundation to a his admission of a business record.

Limpid

I'm behind. Events have conspired against my keeping up with wotd. It is always the case. But I do what I can when I can. Anyway...

Limpid. This is a dull word only because its Latin origins means "clear" (or "clear water"), and this word has retained that sole meaning to the current usage. The partial definition of "calm" directly relates to clear in that troubled waters are opaque as to what is beneath the surface, but calm waters are clear to the bottom. Similarly, the idea of "transmitting light" appears to derive from the idea that water refracts light, and clear water refracts better (and at all) than riled water. So... Her limpid green eyes shone through her tears. The limpid pool of water revealed the sunken treasure. And the limpid sentences demonstrated "clear" word usage. There. Works for animate as well as the inanimate and abstract. The only fun here is an oblique reference to a nymph (Latin lympha from Greek nymph) as an alleged water deity, but being versed in Greek mythology, we know that "nymphs" are merely the overarching names of long-lived nature spirits, but the water deities are actually naiads, neriads, oceanids, etc. depending on type of water (fresh, sea, littoral, riparian). The Latin improperly associated the whole genre with just water deities, ignoring the land spirits (dryads, hamadryads, etc.), and therefore, losing all the distinctions and inherent meaning. There was no subtlety when they absorbed conquered cultured. Ah, well. Je le souviens.

Taciturn v. Reticent

Taciturn v. Reticent

I actually love both of these words, although I probably favor reticent in my daily speech. Well, it's time I learned the difference. They both derive from Latin "tacit" for silent. The "re" prefix, meaning again, gives the inference that "reticent" means to be silent over and over again, thus, becoming a regular response, although not necessarily a constant condition. One could be reticent in the face of an argument or an IRS audit, but otherwise, conversational with friends and at work. Taciturn has no such prefix (or suffix) to give it additional meaning, thereby implying that the individual is already silent--the constant condition which was lacking from reticent. Her taciturn nature did not lend itself to litigation, but rather to being a legal librarian? Reticent has as one of its definitions "reluctant", as I note here, but not unwilling, while taciturn is described as "habitually". This lends further credibility to the idea that reticent is perhaps an event specific silence, while taciturn is a general silence. I am hardly taciturn since I enjoy singing in public, but I may be reticent when I need to hole up and write a lengthy brief. A taciturn Plaintiff's counsel may be grounds for malpractice, but a reticent attorney who does fails to accept a viable settlement offer before it is withdrawn will likely get brought up on bar charges. I'll try not to be so reticent in the face of uninspiring words that my friends will not think I am taciturn to this discussion forum.

Cogitate

I've been remiss in keeping up with the actual wotd in favor of other words, or even other work (go figure that I can't make entries 24/7). This word didn't inspire me when it came in, and still doesn't really. I was originally going to compare this word with "mull", but mull had a sketchy etymology according to DD from "perhaps...a dialect" of something, and OED was (and still is) too heavy and awkward for me to want to dig it out just to make work. Ponder comes from weighing, originally things and now ideas. Cogitate derives from the same root as agitate, "agere", to drive or set in motion. The prefix "co" more likely means "with intensive force" or "completely" than merely "with" or "together", giving the weight to the thought involved, but it is still odd how "to drive or set in motion" becomes "to think", except as the second definition, "to devise" becomes the idea completely formed and set in motion, and then the process of creating such a well-formed idea became a subsidiary definition about how hard the thought process must be. So, really, we should cogitate a plan for how to deal with poor word usage rather than merely cogitate about the poor word usage. Maybe that's why the thinking process requires a preposition afterward to make the verb work (i.e., about, on), whereas the devising process takes the verb without idiom. She cogitated on the judged's biased decision to determine the issues for reconsideration. But she cogitated how she would draft the motion without offending the judge, since she would have to appear before the judge again. Still, I prefer to muse on such lofty issues, and devise my own plans. Words for another day...

Resume v. Résumé

Resume v. Résumé

This one came by request. Normally, I try to say in the same part of speech, but this time, I was intrigued by the identical spelling (notwithstanding the accents) and therefore, what would appear to be the same etymology. So, if DD is to be believed, and perhaps by the time I get done with this post, I’ll have consulted OED, resume comes from the Latin “resumere” for to take back or re-take, (consistent with consume from “consumere”, to take up or take completely), where “emere” means “to take or buy”. So, resume has a direct etymological link to its origins of to take up an activity or place or condition where one left off as without interruption. She resumed her use of her sobriquet of “Mitzi,” rather than Madeline, in her older years in order to attempt to recapture her youth. He resumed his tenancy after the constructive eviction from the roof leak abated. She resumed writing her opposition to the Plaintiff’s counsel’s insipid motion after the telephone call from the Court. But résumé is odd. DD states that it is the past participle of the French résumer, and gives it a recursive etymology to “resume” which now allegedly means “to sum up”, but nothing in the definition or etymology of "resume" indicates any summing. So, yes, I’m off to OED now. OED gives the same etymology and general usage, except buried in meaning 5b., it says "resume" means to recapitulate or summarize facts (with usages c. 1675-1875), where meaning 5a. was to repeat a sentence or word in an admittedly rare usage (c. 1535-1825). How does 50 years in the 1800s make one word rare, but another not, is a rant for another day. But, finally! Something having to do with “summing”. So, it appears that for some unknown reason around 1600 there was a split in the word usage with an offshoot which, while its origins have faded into antiquity, the final derivative remains in common usage. At the moment, unfortunately, your guess is as good as mine. I’ll have to consult my French dictionary, I think, if I want to get any further on the why, but that’s not convenient now. Stay tuned…

Descry v. Espy v. Decry

Descry v. Espy v. Decry

Finally! Something interesting, and, I hope as I start this post, not too difficult to come to a conclusion.

Descry comes from Old French (descrier, to proclaim) for the call that comes with the discovery of the enemy, the game or land, whereas espy comes from German through French (espier, to watch) for watching for the enemy, the game or land. Therefore, the watch would espy the pirates and descry their location. Descry has lost the cry, and espy has lost the idea of watching, and now both seem to just mean seeing the tangible thing, but I would argue that the inherent etymology still remains in the usage. Now, by definition, espy has the distance and glimpse element of where the person is watching, and descry has the careful scrutiny and the inherent joy (read: call) of the discovery. So, one would espy the postman for the Bar results, but descry the exculpatory evidence which was buried in the boxes of document production. After all, why would you keep a good document to yourself? Occasionally, guests espy my cat, although I warn them not to descry her location to keep from terrorizing her. These words work well as pairs.

Now, decry comes from the same Old French, but in the ~400 years since descry came into being (c. 1250, descry v. c. 1610, decry), the true inferences of proclaiming, as well as the French root "crier", to cry out in protest, now seem to have taken new hold, along with the absence of the "s". So, decry meant to speak disparagingly of or condemn in public, thus making the thing decried worthless, and then was used to disparage as faulty or worthless, while descry probably was used to protest first the enemy, and got associated with a more general opponent or "enemy" (the fox, the lion), then just things that required an important call (the land before the ship), and then just meant to cry out upon seeing something important, and finally, just seeing the important thing. So, I decry poor word usage and particularly whenever I descry it in text. Probably not. I decry some Plaintiff's counsels as obstructionist to a smooth legal process and settlement, but these individuals are hard to descry until you are already in the midst of the case. Better. Writing a letter to the BBB allows disgruntled consumers to decry the "businesses" with which they have dealt, so others do not have to descry their unethical business practices independently. The former word, ok, but the latter word is dodgy with what may be construed as an intangible. Anyway, I think you get the point. As for the "s", I can't explain where it went, nor do I think I want to.

Concatenation

This is a more amusing entry from my archives to relieve the trepidation...

Concatenation (DD definition link)

Ok, I originally thought this word was pretty blah, and only useful in a very limited context dealing with actual links (a series of "if, then" commands in programming is quintessential concatenation, even to the point that "cat" is the command "to concatenate" the links). But as I started exploring the flexibility of this word, I immediately thought of dominos (a concatenation of dominos), but realized that was the wrong direction. Dominos, like Rube Goldberg puzzles, are pushed. The previous item drops/falls and propels the next item. A concatenation requires pulling, as in actual chain--that the second item can't go until the first one goes. So, that obviously led me to traffic (a concatenation of cars in stop and go traffic on the Beltway, or a concatenation of cars waiting for the red light, or the pace car at Nascar leading a concatenation of cars). Really works in traffic. And I suppose a concatenation of lemmings for the weak-willed metaphors.

Trepidation

Trepidation (DD definition link)

Well, from "agitated, restless, disturbed" we get "state of dread or alarm, nervous agitation, apprehension, fright". It's not an impossible stretch to get from agitated to nervous agitation, but certainly there are other conditions which cause agitation other than being nervous. I can easily think of anger, medication, too much noise, sleep deprivation, Plaintiff's counsel.... The idea that one who is restless also doesn't derive solely from nervousness. I am frequently restless when I am bored and have nothing to do, as when I am waiting for time to pass before I can do something, or for something to happen before I can respond. I am hardly nervous or afraid, but I may be agitated (I may also be agitating to others as they watch me pace and twitter). Disturbed is just to vague to get "nervous" from any more than any other modifier. I regularly describe some movies as "disturbed", not "disturbing" because I believe the movie is so inherently off kilter that it is the cause of its own problem, and not that it just might have that effect on viewers (see Leaving Las Vegas, Hostel, Trainspotting). These movies are hardly nervous, nor do they induce nervousness, and aside from the horror entry, the others don't induce dread, alarm, apprehension or fright, and much as disgust or depression. So, how do we get the nervous fear aspect from mere hype? Because, DD's etymology is incorrect! OED gives the Latin for "tredipus" as scared or alarmed and "trepidare" as to hurry, bustle, be agitated or alarmed. So that gets us the fright, restless and state of alarm elements, but not entirely the apprehension, nervous or dread since the latter are anticipatory of the states of being in fear and/or don't relate to mere "hustle and bustle". It is not unreasonable to tack on the preceding emotional states, but as we know in the law, you can be battered without being assaulted (just remember that the next time you think about drawing on someone while she is asleep). So certainly, you can be put in a state of fear without being nervous about being afraid. Someone jumps out in front of you with a gun, regardless of whether it was a dark alley or a dark and stormy night. Why does the definition of trepidation include the anticipatory states? Because, DD's definitions are incorrect! OED defines the relevant entry solely as "tremulous agitation; confused hurry or alarm; confusion; flurry; perturbation". Most these are similar to the DD definition: agitation, alarm, flurry (= restlessness). Except now we have element of shaking and confusion, which ironically, are effects of being scared. He scared her with the gun and then she shook with fear, unable to think straight for several seconds. Not everyone has to be that scared that they shake and are confused after being scared. Fight or flight allows for other responses. But trepidation does have an archaic usage for trembling, which may derive from either the extreme response to fear or from the perception of the bustling and agitation. More importantly, however, the OED definition brings into focus that the use of the word, although still not the etymology, is on the movement, not the emotional state which may have caused the movement. So, it appears that trepidation refers not just to the state of fear, but also restless energy. Funny, though how despite the convoluted definitions, the usage of the word probably remains the most accurate.

Either way, I'll take a strict and narrow usage of trepidation for only in the state of fear, alarm or agitation, and stay away from the preceding or antecedent states, and try to remember that it really should describe movement. Her trepidation about going to rehearsals unprepared and being singled out for an inadvertent solo motivated her to practice 3 hours that day. That works for the limited definition from DD and our understanding of common usage, but doesn't work with the OED definition, relative to the motion meaning. His trepidation immediately abated when he arrived too early for the hearing. Yeah, maybe, but even thought it may have meant the bustle and flurry elements, it still reads like fear. In her trepidation at what the police wanted, she could barely open the door. Still just fear.

Ed. note: DD normally gives reasonable etymologies, and certainly for average understanding and usage of words, its definitions are fine. But that's not what this forum is about. I don't want to just think I know what a word means and how to use it. I want to know why that knowledge is correct, and I have to follow my instincts when the analysis just isn't making any kind of sense. Thank you for your patience.

Nonplus

Nonplus (DD definition link)

There is a definite need for a word which means that "no more" can be said or done for whatever reason, however, this isn't that word. By the time the word got out of it's flat etymological roots, it took on a meaning of being too bewildered, confounded, or perhaps, just plain stupid, to say or do anything more. But I would never be nonplussed at oral argument. I would just be done. There wouldn't be anything more to be said not because I suddenly took leave of my senses, but because I would have said all that I needed to say. Perhaps after my three day, double whammy bar exam extravaganza, I was nonplussed, in the sense that I couldn't function properly, I was so effete, [Ed. note: I still don't think this word works for anything other than the debased meanings now.] but I'd still probably chose to describe that time with more obviously demonstrable words, like that I was a zombie. Plaintiff's counsel because so nonplussed with Defense counsel's cross-examination that he could not object? When I'm done cleaning the kitchen, am I nonplussed in my task? The problem with this word is that it sounds like it should mean that the person didn't care, and therefore didn't speak or act, as opposed to having nothing more to say or do. Honestly, this word is useless, and on that note, I am nonplussed why anyone would really use this word.

Sanguine v. Incarnadine

Effete left me a little bored today, so I went into my bank of other words that I've wanted to explore.

Sanguine v. Incarnadine

I probably should have saved these words for Valentine's Day, Christmas, some election, or another "red" day, but I was intrigued. They both mean blood red, but sanguine derives from "sanguis" (blood), while incarnadine derives from "carne" (meat, flesh). Thus, incarnadine or being made of flesh, can be both blood red and the fleshy pink color, making it very hard for interior designers to know what color is intended, while sanguine only ever means blood red, or cheerfully optimistic (as from an abundance of the blood humor from Medieval medicine and also gives us "bloodthirsty" Plaintiff's counsels). Whether sanguine is a sanguine color remains to be seen. Bulls don't seem to think so, but the Chinese do. And incarnadine as a color depends on how rare you like your steak. I'll take mine medium, which may already be a color in my basement, but I would hardly describe my skin color as incarnadine more than pale or anemic.

Effete

Effete (DD definition link)

I think my confusion about this word stems from the fact that I only knew it's latter meanings and not the earlier ones. I understand the etymology of being exhausted from giving birth to just a descriptor for being that exhausted, but through some misfortune, the word morally gets added before it, and suddenly we have depraved. So, what happened c. 1790 that the word "morally" got involved? Was it a commentary on the type of person who was so exhausted? After three days of taking the NY and MA bar exams, I was so effete, I couldn't think straight, much less stand. Yes, it happened, but no, I don't want to be described as effete. Sounds odd being used out of the decadent/effeminate context we all know so well. Many actresses playing effete women have never experienced childbirth to know how to act it properly. If you didn't know what the word really meant, this context could just as easily lend itself to the immoral usage, although I meant it in the first definition. Maybe that does go to show that the difference between being tired and being immoral is not that far apart. After all, sloth is a sin. Her effete study habits didn't last her through the overnight cramming session? Still can't tell which usage is being intended (decadent or worn out). Maybe the word has a deliberate double-entendre now. The effete assignment was tantamount to banging ones head against the wall for its frustrating uselessness. No. The effete song was played on the radio every hour on the hour until listenership diminished as a result. Probably not. Plus, invidious would be better here. I think since effete derives from childbirth, it should only be applied to acts of humans, and possibly elevated animals, but not the inanimate or abstract if you ever want to get at the original definition. The problem there is that every time effete is used outside the human context, it grows in the usage of the latter definitions (decadent, effeminate). Known by his students as an effete lecturer, he quickly put everyone to sleep. Maybe this gets across the idea of tired more, but I still wouldn't want to say it for fear of slander. And these "tired" usages still don't make the distinction that effete is a past participle--tired, worn out, not tiring or wearing out. The condition is already past hope at the time you use effete. The effete athlete was unable to be revived from dehydration after the triathalon. After 60 years of smoking, she took her last effete breath. Ok, I think we all get the point. Unless effete is used specifically to relate to childbirth, and that really great feeling right after 6-12 lbs is finally released, we will only use effete in the slanderous, degrading meanings. Effete is certainly an effete word.

Littoral v. Riparian

Littoral v. Riparian

This is another one from my archive. These are not even remotely synonyms, but are related pairs, and really must be discussed together.

Littoral is a PRIME example of a word that only has one usage and, in fact, is mainly a legal word. In first year property class we learned about riparian and littoral rights (both relating to water), but the first relates to moving water (rivers and streams; Riparian rivers) while the second relates to standing water (lakes and ponds; Littoral lakes). DD doesn't quite make that distinction when defining it, but all the example usages do. So correctly, one would never talk about a farm's littoral irrigation, but rather we can talk about the fact that after my recent sun burn while gardening, I won't be engaging in any littoral sun worshipping activities for the next month.

The definition of riparian is much better than the one given for littoral, which was a little vague on its specificity, and which prompted my legal analysis/discussion. Not that DD has redeemed itself by a slightly better definition which is actually accurate, because it hasn't. This is still a specialized legal word, and would rarely, if ever, be used in a non-legal context, even among erudite speakers. Using this word just makes every lawyer in the room perk up to make sure (a) that it's being used correctly and (b) that you aren't engaging in the unauthorized practice of law. So, enjoy and be careful!

Coterminous

Coterminous (DD definition link)

Interesting how a word whose origins derive from "boundary", a spatial relation, ends up with a usage of "duration", a temporal relation. Did the time/space continuum get warped for this word? Or does it have to do with velocity? a speed in a particular direction from which we can derive how long something takes by how far the thing got? In both cases, it would need to be a physical thing with the intent that it will end, as opposed to an abstraction. Despite the horizon and great cinematography, boundaries don't go on forever. Massachusetts is a coterminous state to Connecticut. That's too easy. Moreover, why not just say abutting or adjacent? They don't have to share the entire same border. Coterminous cubicles. That has some cute alliteration. Coterminous rip cords are precisely measured? Although technically they would have the same length and run out at the same time, it just sounds silly. The state and district courts share coterminous jurisdiction over certain tort claims. Although possibly accurately stated, it still not accurate. The phrase is only, ever, concurrent jurisdiction. Possibly because, as I discussed above, coterminous requires an ending and jurisdiction is an indefinite. Hmm. Something to consider later (coterminous v. concurrent). Their coterminous exams allowed them to meet promptly for lunch? It's harder to apply with the "duration" aspect. Their coterminous work schedules made organizing child care difficult? Again, concurrent works better, or even contemporaneous. So, in short, this appears to be a quirk of a word with no real common good usage. There are so many other words that are more nuanced to describe relatively the same thing. What is to be gained by using coterminous except the implicit idea of the finite ending which is knowable. Oh, well, I'll keep working on other near synonyms for coterminous, in the meantime.

Malapropism

I'm still a little behind on my wotd entries, although this forum was never intended to try to hit each wotd entry; just the ones that motivate me. Malapropism is not a word I like to use because I will try to respect people's "use" of words out of context as emphasis or humor value for what they are trying to communicate. As you may have noticed from my previous posts, I like to try to stretch the applicable use, but I would not consider some of my broadened uses to be malapropisms as much as evocative language. But that's the difference in the definition of malapropism between "intentional" and "unintentional". I go on record now that all my alleged misuages are "intentional" and therefore, do not meet the definition of malapropism. Just wait until DD gives me "satire" or "sarcasm". I also abhor words that are based on proper nouns, although this one has a latent Latin construction for "bad word use," more so than the "words" coined from Gulliver's Travels...

Her emphasis of accusing the TSA of fondling her during their pat searches was mistaken as a malapropism by the supervisor.

Collegial

Collegial (DD definition link)

I've been a little distracted lately for uninteresting words, but a conversation with some friends this evening made this word a little more inspiring, at least for usage. But first, a quick discussions about etymology. Ultimately, this word derives from "law", which, of course, intrigues me! Lawyers are hardly ever collegial. There's all that adversarial process, and competition for billable hours and getting plum projects, etc. So, the idea really is about simply working together, whether it be happily or otherwise. And the issue about "choosing a deputy" indicates that the co-worker would be subordinate. The connection that these co-workers must be at least tacitly happy is incorrect. There is an inherent power struggle and simply that these individuals must exist in the same association (whether office or clerical, in the religious sense). In practice, the responsibility is never shared equally, and by the etymology, should never be. Perhaps we can only be hopeful that these individuals will simply get along. Which now leaves me with my usage: Is there really a collegial atmosphere between tenured and non-tenured faculty? You pick your definition of collegial...

Indefatigable

This is a dull word. Unlike sagacious which had the extra “wise” in the definition which wasn’t part of the original etymology, indefatigable means exactly what it’s Latin origins indicate—not tired out or weary. Now, the pronounciation is a little odd, with the stress moved back a syllable, but this forum is not about how we say the words; just how we use them. So, the only fun to be made here is how to abuse the word. Well, clearly, fatigue has to relate to living beings, and by extension, the activities of living beings which, thereby, could suffer from fatigue. So, there is the indefatigable 1950’s housewife, and the indefatigable advocacy of the confessed murderer, and possibly the indefatigable mewing of my cat after I’ve been away for too long. How about an indefatigable cramming session for the bar exam? Well, that may be a lie, but that’s a separate issue. Or the indefatigable computer? Does that work only because of the inference of artificial intelligence? Or indefatigable cold and flu symptoms, not because they don’t make you tired but because they never stop making you feel miserable. That might be a stretch, but it has humor value, which if you actually felt that bad, might lighten the mood. So, while the word’s origins are uninspiring, the word does have its uses. If I weren’t so in-indefatigable lately, I might have cause to start using it more.

Germane v. Relevant

This is another old post, but I've added a bit more for my long-time readers...

Germane v. Relevant (DD definition links)

What is germane to this exercise is that we enjoy using the words, and find interesting ways to integrate them into our normal conversation. That was just too easy, and unfortunately, since I went to law school, my word has always, ever, only, been "relevant". Sorta becomes the red flag that I'm a lawyer (as if practically everyone didn't already know that) and raises the evidentiary issue, just for fun. Plus, the way I say it, it sounds like an objection already. There is no obvious noun form for germane (germanance???), which makes it impossible to use in the same way as just saying "relevance", with that indicting tone. So, although I like germane, its relevance for me is fleeting.

I suppose the real issue for me should be that germane derives from Latin for "of or relating to the same parentage" and relevant comes from Latin for "to relieve, raise up"! Neither of these etymologies have any obvious bearing on the connection of two items or subjects. So how did this words come to have this meaning? Does relevance "raise" a related issue somewhere of some type? While germane quite literally has the germ of the idea which grows directly into something else? Germane also has a latent meaning of being "closely" related to the issue and not any type of relation. Therefore, it appears that germane is more closely connected than mere relevance, which may be only tangential. But in law, relevant is relevant, regardless of the attenuation. It's still "relevant" for me, and possibly germane for anyone else.

Nascent; latent

Nascent

I've always liked this word. The idea that something comes into being, now expanded beyond the original etymology of being born, just lends itself to wonderful uses. A nascent plot for revenge or a nascent friendship after moving, being among the abstract usages. A nascent post to this forum or the nascent opposition to a motion for summary judgment after a weekend's legal research, being among the non-abstract usages. Just a great, and wildly underutilized, word.

Latent

Now compare nascent with latent. No, I don't profess that these are not even remotely synonyms, but more inverse meanings. Nascent is something known which has just been formed while latent is something that has always been around but was not known (until now). Many of the nascent examples also work quite well with latent, ironically. A latent plot for revenge (probably more likely to succeed), or a latent friendship (for the midnight tryst folk or the cheerleader/geek combo). Works well in the abstract. A latent post to this forum would be a perpetual draft that never gets published, and a latent opposition to a motion for summary judgment would be moot, probably as untimely filed. I'll deal with dormant and quiescent later...

Galumph; Sough

Galumph

In short, galumph fails the rule since it is no better than onomatopoeia. I don't care that Lewis Carroll coined it, or that it is "probably an alliteration of gallop" or "to gallop triumphantly". The fact that it came from the nonsense poem, Jabberwocky, belies it's true nature, and were I to deign to engage in this "word", I might one day find myself discussing the origins of "doh" or "psst".

But as long as I'm on a rant about DD's posting of utterly useless non-words which are barely more than onomatopoeia, I'll add a brief archival posting about:

Sough

Now, unlike other words, which I had never heard of before, but now own, sough has no real usefulness except to describe this particular sound of wind through something (hence the rustling AND sighing requirements). I can hardly say that Moses und Aron would require any voice to sough, although we did chant, sing off pitch, and wail. I almost wish we were required to sough as I think it would have been a lot more sonorous in places. I don't think this works. What a bizarre little word, with a bizarre etymology, and an even more bizarre choice of pronounciations. When did we lose the "w"? and why? and what does "swogan" mean??? DD got a little lax here. If I were to read my DD rantings aloud, would they only sound like so much sough to the uneducated or uninitiated ear? Better (and probably). And if I really wanted to describe the wind, a metaphor works so much better than some obscure word. "The whisper of the breeze through the leaves" creates so much more useful imagery than just sough. And when do you have occasion to want to make both a rustling/sighing sound of wind that you wouldn't describe what you wanted outright? A conductor would never tell the percussion section to make the sound of sough. That would be useless, on so many levels. He'd just say, he wants more rustling and sighing, like the whisper of a breeze through leaves. Perhaps I'm just being supercilious about the word sough.

Conspectus v. Prospectus

Being awake at this odd and borderline profligate hour, I thought, "what better to do now than another word analysis?" So I scrolled through my interminable list of old DD wotds that I haven't yet looked at in the last 5 months and stumbled upon "conspectus". And I thought, what an odd word. Looks like prospectus. Defined like prospectus. Smells like prospectus. What's the difference? Why would we need this word.

Conspectus (DD definition links)
Prospectus

Well, etymologically, both derive from the same Latin root, specere meaning "to look", so the only difference here is the prefix of con (with, together or in association) and pro (normally for or favor, but more likely here, acting in the place of). So, how does this small derivation devolve into a formal summary of a general subject versus a brochure or document describing a specific proposed business venture, including a contract for goods or services and including education? They both are written accumulations of information. The issues appear to be the depth of the subject against the degree of review of the information intended. A conspectus being more general in scope with less specificity, and therefore, not possible to give in depth review of the subject, while a prospectus, being a precursor to a contemplated business venture, should be more detailed to given the prospective investor more/enough information to make an educated decision on the risks of entering into the venture. It still seems odd. The "con" prefix shouldn't diminish the importance of the summary nor the "pro" prefix unduly elevate the summary, yet, these prefixes seem to lead to the conclusion that the "con"spectus should be viewed "with" other information, not alone, but a "pro"spectus would be sufficient "in the place of" any other information which could or should be available prior to entering into a contract. Would a Court view review of a prospectus alone as sufficient due diligence? I hope not! Otherwise, I would hope that the prospectus were not a mere summary as indicated by the definition, but were something more comprehensive, ironically, as stated as the possible first definition for conspectus. So, again, we are left with words which in usage, etymology and just common sense don't appear to work properly to convey the correct unique meanings. Perhaps they have just been used interchangeably improperly for a while that the misplaced contextual meanings have now been added. But I'll posit one last theory before I abandon this conundrum for a better activity at this hour: prospectus was first originated c. 1760, and conspectus c. 1830, making them both relatively new words to English and relating to marked periods in history for socio-economic advancement, therefore, the need for prospectuses and conspectuses evolved, but as technology caught up with the need for specific types of summaries perhaps the definitions have not yet. Thus, while there are myriad and detailed examples of the usage of prospectus, DD has not (and perhaps cannot provide) a single example of conspectus, even from antiquity, or even just under 200 years ago, which makes the actual and continuing use of this word suspect, or at best, antiquated or now at the level of industry jargon. My own cursory Google search showed only a series of journals named "conspectus XXX", which seemed to indicate that it was a compendium of knowledge on a subject (mostly technology, but some business and a fair representation of scientific methodologies). So, for the moment, I'll stick with prospectus, and I'll take all the back up documentation too, thank you!

The email prospectus was too vague for her to feel comfortable with the investment opportunity, although the alleged Nigerian Conspectus indicated that investing in domestic "pyramid schemes" was generally safe.