October 2003 Archives
The Seven Deadly Sins: superbia/orgulous; ira/oxythymous/irascible; gulosity; invidia (epicaricacy); luxuria/lenocinant; acedia
Words from Baseball: goose egg; charley horse; cat-bird seat; ballpark (ballpark figure); rain check; hot stove league; switch-hitter
It's about time: hesternal; yestreen; quotidian-diurnal-circadian; hebdomadal; lustrum; sempiternal; bimester
Words from Dorothy Parker: lodestar; gyve; sapience; fardel;
extemporanea; leal; quondam
The Seven Deadly Sins (Week of Oct. 6, 2003)
Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) described the Seven
Deadly Sins in his Moralia in Job. This week we'll give the obscure
words that are the "official" names of the seven deadly sins (pride, envy,
anger, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth), plus some slightly less obscure
words.
We begin with pride or vanity, of which St. Thomas
Aquinas said "inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin."
superbia unreasonable and inordinate
self-esteem
orgulous prideful; haughty
The latter may be preserved in our dictionaries because of the opening words of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida:
In
The princes orgillous,
their high blood chaf'd,
Have to the
Fraught with
the ministers and instruments
Of cruel war.
The sin of anger:
ira belligerence aroused by a real or supposed wrong (the formal name of the deadly sin)
ira furor brevis est Anger is a brief
madness.
oxythymous quick-tempered; easily riled
irascible prone to outbursts of temper; easily angered
Back when I started in the newspaper game and was so full of myself I
nearly burst my irascible old chief reporter told me in no
uncertain terms: "Just remember, Mr George, that you have just one job to
do and that's to help to fill in the spaces between the ads. And remember,
too, that those pearls of prose you are so proud of writing today will be
wrapping fish and chips tomorrow night."
Garth George, The
The deadly sin of "gluttony" (formal name
"gula" from Latin gula gullet) refers to excess. It is
not limited to food; it would include, for example, such things as conspicuous
consumption by the nouveau riche.
gulosity greediness; excessive appetite
This definition makes one wonder if gulosity should be presented under the sin of gluttony or under the sin of greed. Roget's Thesaurus classifies it under the heading "gluttony," from which I glean that it refers to greed and appetite for food. Can readers confirm or refute this?
Envy
The sin of envy is known as invidia. Hieronymous Bosch's painting titled The Seven Deadly Sins depicts invidia as two dogs and a bone, per the Flemish proverb "Two dogs with one bone seldom reach agreement."
Chaucer's parson, in The Parson's Tale, explains that there are two sorts of envy:
There is,
first, sorrow for other men's goodness and prosperity; and prosperity being
naturally a thing for joy, then envy is a sin against nature. The second kind
of envy is joy in other men's harm; and this is naturally like the Devil, who
always rejoices in man's harm.
For the first sort of envy, I know of no word other than the obvious "jealousy". Can any of our readers supply one?
For the second sense of "envy" we have our
previous word schadenfreude
(week of Nov. 16, 2002). That word was taken from German, but English already
had a little-known synonym:
epicaricacy a joy at the misfortunes of
others
This word does not appear in OED, but can be found
in respected earier dictionaries. It was discussed on our board by Mr. Ammon Shea,
who discovered it amid the dusty volumes.
Lust formal name luxuria
Our "luxuria-word" will be sexual, but the
deadly sin of luxuria may have a broader meaning than sex. It seems to
mean a driving force to do things that are harmful to you, usually for some
useless reason. For example, one who lusts after ease might take a cushy but
low-paying job, living in a poverty to the detriment of his family.
lenocinant lewd, lascivious
[Latin lenocinans, a form of the verb lenocinari to pander, cajole; akin to leno pimp.
One wonders where Jay Leno's name comes from.]
Sloth: formal name Acedia. The concept is
akin more to apathy than to laziness.
acedia spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui.
"Acedia" in Latin means sorrow, deliberately self-directed, turned away from
God, a loss of spiritual determination that then feeds back on in to the
process, soon enough producing what are currently known as guilt and depression
...
Thomas Pynchon, Nearer, my Couch, to Thee, New York Times Book
Review, June 6,1993
It was in the 1970s, when America ... contended at home, with a widespread
demoralization that sprang from the psychological acedia of
Woodstock, the military defeat in Vietnam and political corruption of
Watergate.
William F. Buckley Jr., baccalaureate address at
Words from Baseball (Week of Oct. 13, 2003)
Noting that our board has enjoyed talking about the
current baseball playoffs in the
goose egg zero, nothing; especially : a
score of zero in a game or contest
Wordcrafter note: I would add that the term, in
non-baseball use, implies zero results despite effort.
[first attested 1866 in baseball slang; from the numeral on a scoreboard, shaped like a large goose egg.]
After months
of increasingly noisy protests, ... the Justice Department has given its first
public accounting of how many times it has used its newfound counterterrorism
powers to demand records from libraries and elsewhere. The answer, it said
Thursday, is zero. Justice Department officials and their supporters pointed to
the goose egg as evidence that the raging public debate over the
government's expanded powers has been much ado about nothing.
Eric
Lichtblau, The New York Times, Sept. 18, 2003
Heading into the election, predictions were that not one of the Tories
eight seats would be safe and that the Progressive Conservatives would be in tough
to capture a single seat within any of
Ken Shular,
charley horse a muscle cramp, esp.
in the upper leg, from a muscular strain or a blow
[Originally baseball slang, c.1888; origin unknown,
perhaps from somebody's long-forgotten lame racehorse. Or perhaps from pitcher
Charley Radbourne, nicknamed Old Hoss.
At least one theorist speculates that it may trace
to the constables, or Charleys, of 17th century
The term has moved beyond slang: information is that as far back as 1946 and article published in the respected Journal of the American Medical Association was titled Treatment of the Charley Horse, and not Treatment of Injury to Quadriceps Femoris.
Following the goose and the horse, one more animal
term from baseball:
cat-bird seat a position of power or
prominence. Used in the phrase "in the catbird seat".
This is a regionalism from the
[I understand that in
With a sour economy and growing rejection of President George W. Bush's
domestic policy, the Democrats would seem to be in the catbird
seat this year.
Louis Weisberg,
On the game show front, there's The Weakest Link (NBC), a UK
import that hopes to nudge Regis Philbin and his still-popular game show, Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire, out of its catbird seat ...
Belinda Acosta, Austin (Texas) Chronicle, April 20, 2001
The definitions I find are inadequate; these come
from my own pen.
ballpark adj: approximate (used of
quantity; you would never say, for example, "That is a ballpark copy of Da
Vinci's painting.")
ballpark noun: the approximate range of
ballpark figure an approximation; typically an initial or early approximation
Doug Nurse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 15, 2003
While the Bush administration and Congress turn a blind eye to the threat posed
by uninspected cargo in passenger plane holds, the Massachusetts Port Authority
is starting to test screening technologies and procedures at
The
rain check an assurance that an offer, not
accepted now, will be repeated later (esp., a seller's commitment to
sell an out-of-stock item at the advertised price as soon as it becomes
available)
So says the dictionary. But I would suggest that the
term more generally means (without regard to any "offer") "a
deferral," as in the British examples below.
[The phrase originated (1884) with the meaning of "tickets to rained-out baseball games."]
Mr. Hammond: Would maternity pay apply for the full period in that
circumstance?
Alan Johnson: I am fairly confident that that is the case, but I shall take a raincheck.
Parliament, 10 Jan 2002
Remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and British Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook, February 9, 2000:
FOREIGN SECRETARY COOK: I regard Madeleine as a strong friend. It is,
therefore, a pleasure for me to be here to make sure that we renew that
friendship and we take a raincheck on all the many issues around
the world in which we are involved together, making common cause and standing
up for the same interests and the same values.
hot stove league informal speculation among
devotees of a sport or other narrow activity, during the activity's off-season,
of what the future holds
[Imagine the old-timers of 1890 gathered in the
country store of a winter afternoon, warmed by the pot-bellied stove, whiling
away the hours in talk.]
The above definition is my own, for I disagree a bit with the sole on-line dictionary that defines this term. There it is defined as "devotees of a sport, esp. baseball, who meet for off-season talks." To me the term means the discussion, not the devotees, and it needn't concern a sport. Here are three non-sport examples:
Those days are over.
Marybeth Brennan, What's At Stake When The F.C.C. Enables Big Brother?,
The American Reporter, August, 29, 2003
... at least talk radio was able to act as the local cracker barrel or hot-stove
league. The community could mix it up verbally ... Issues
impacting local schools, government, and neighborhoods would get an airing.
I haven't seen it noted and it's probably arcane information of interest only
to members of the hot-stove league of political observers who are
always talking politics. But ... should the president be reelected, the Bushes
will have the opportunity to become the longest-serving family in the White
House.
Godfrey Sperling, Comparative American dynasties, Christian Science
Monitor, October 1, 2002
You'd think Gov. Roy Barnes has enough on his plate to keep him ... busy at
least until the state election of 2002. But the hot-stove league
of presidential campaigns keeps buzzing about Barnes and a Democratic Southern
strategy as if the national elections were just a calendar page away.
Bill Shipp, Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald, May 23, 2001
switch-hitter
baseball one able to bat either
right-handed or left-handed; "going both ways"
slang, by extension a bisexual person
usage found, but not in dictionaries person
or software able to perform well at any of two or more functions
Exemplifying the last usage:
Buffalo Philharmonic has witnessed the
keen achievements of one of Buffalo's native sons in the person of Salvatore
Andolina, who is now the Orchestra's switch-hitter in his
permanent position as clarinetist, bass clarinetist and saxophonist.
website of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
[M]any of
those testifying in the Arthur Andersen trial have not always danced with the
one that brung 'em. From star government witness David Duncan equivocating on
when he knew he had criminal intent, to defense witnesses saying they saw
unprecedented shredding by Enron auditors, just about every witness has been up
for grabs. Certainly, the testimony of witnesses can backfire on the lawyers
who called them. But ... just about every witness has been a switch-hitter.
Mary Flood, Houston Chronicle, June 15, 2002
On TV, actor Christopher Meloni is already a switch hitter,
playing sensitive sex-crime detective Elliot Stabler on Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit and sexually carnivorous inmate Chris Keller on Oz.
Derek de Koff, New York magazine, July 30, 2001
It's about time (Week of Oct. 20, 2003)
This week let's unearth some obscure words for times
and time-periods.
hesternal pertaining to yesterday
There as he smoked and puffed, and looked out upon the bright crocuses,
and meditated over the dim recollections of the hesternal
journal, did Mr. Briggs revolve in his mind the vast importance of the borough
of Buyemall to the British empire, and the vast importance of John Briggs to
the borough of Buyemall.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (he of "It was a dark and stormy night" fame),
Pelham, Chapter XXXVI
yestreen yesterday evening
[A reader notes: This is a Scottish dialect word. It is/was not part of the "mainstream" English language.]
Here is the first verse of a lovely 1789 song by
Robert Burns.
I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen,
A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue;
I gat my death frae twa sweet een,
Twa lovely een o'bonie blue.
'Twas not her golden ringlets bright,
Her lips like roses wat wi' dew,
Her heaving bosom, lily-white
It was her een sae bonie blue.
(I went a woeful way last night,
A way, I fear, I'll dearly rue;
I got my death from two sweet eyes,
Two lovely eyes o'bonie blue.
'Twas not her golden ringlets bright,
Her lips like roses wet with dew,
Her heaving bosom, lily-white
It was her eyes so bonie blue.)
"Daily" can be a difficult concept to pin
down. For example, "daily changes in temperature" could mean either
changes within the day, or changes from day to day. The Spectator
recently noted that it found no word to specifically refer to variations within
a day.
Further, though several words mean "on a daily cycle", all are either ambiguous (having other meanings) or are limited in application.
quotidian occurring or returning daily: a
quotidian fever
diurnal recurring every day (diurnal
tasks); or on a daily cycle (diurnal tides)
circadian occurring regularly at 24-hour
intervals
BUT:
quotidian also means: of an everyday
character; ordinary, commonplace, trivial.
diurnal also means: active chiefly in
the daytime (diurnal animals), as opposed to "nocturnal"
circadian applies only to biological processes; one would not speak of "the circadian motion of the sun"
As one site
cleverly notes: "Well, of course the word of the day is quotidian. If it
wasn't quotidian, it wouldn't be the word of the day."
Citation for the 1996 Ramon Magsaysay Journalism Award:
[Nick] Joaquin also mastered the Philippines' most popular and widely-read
literary form, the newspaper column. ... he dished out regular rounds of
history, opinion, and gossip with such flair, candor, and intelligence that he
managed to raise this quotidian newspaper exercise to an art.
hebdomadal weekly; occurring every seven
days
[Some medical sources refer to the first week of a newborn's life as the "hebdomadal period". I do not find this usage in the dictionaries.]
... since the dawn of human civilisation, some days, usually on some hebdomadal
rhythm of the kind that we have in our Christian culture, have been reserved
for holiday and have been kept special. Since the dawn of time, those
protections have not simply been cultural, but have been enforced by law and by
politicians. In a way, Sunday, and the hebdomadal system,
sanctify a human necessity.
Remarks in Parliament by Mr. Boris Johnson (Henley), May 16, 2003,
whose eloquence is well worth reading
lustrum a period of five years
[from the name of a ceremony the Romans held at that interval]
But for Bob Downie, Britannias director, there is quiet satisfaction at
a lustrum which has seen 1.6 million visitors - 60 per cent
higher than expected - and a clutch of awards.
Sharon Ward, Scotland's favourite day trip, The Scotsman, 20 Oct 2003
American Heritage Dictionary, doubtless influenced
by our theme, has chosen this "time" word as its word of the day for
today.
sempiternal enduring forever; eternal
How does this differ from "eternal"? Some authorities say that "eternal" means "having no end or beginning", or that it means "existing outside of time".
On September 1 [1983], the Soviet Union had shot down a Korean Air Lines
passenger jet that had strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people
aboard ... Chuck was serving as chief alternate U.N. delegate at the time,
under Ronald Reagan's first ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Together, they
roiled the career diplomats at the State Department and the sempiternal
peace camp.
Claudia Winkler, Chuck Lichenstein, 1926-2002. An honest diplomat heads
off into the sunset, The Weekly Spectator, Sept. 5, 2002
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding (opening lines)
bimester a period of two months
Note: this words seems to be used quite a bit in academia, but very little elsewhere.
Mexican sales to Canada increased 1.1 percent in first bimester
In January and February of 2002 Mexican exports to Canada increased by
a rate of 1.1 percent, compared to the increase of almost 12 percent during the
same period in 2001, reported the Canadian Statistics Agency. Mexico exported
merchandise to Canada worth almost 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, only 12 million
more dollars than in the first bimester of 2001.
Maquila Information Center (Mexico), April 19, 2002
Words from Dorothy Parker (Week of Oct. 27, 2003)
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Dorothy Parker, News Item
This past week I've been enjoying Dorothy Parker's poetry, so let's take a look at some of the words she used. She's sure to provide amusing quotations for our usage-examples. And perhaps I'll add some further poems of hers, just for fun.
All quotes this week
are Ms. Parker's, unless otherwise noted.
lodestar one that serves as an inspiration, model,
or guide
(from the
archaic meaning: a star that leads or guides; esp. north star)
Social Note
Lady,
lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one . . .
Lady, lady, better run!
gyve noun: a shackle or fetter,
especially for the leg.
verb: to shackle or fetter
Portrait of the Artist
Oh, lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the window passing
well,
And gyve my
wrists and ankles.
Oh, wrap my eyes with linen
fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me
there,
Nor tell them where to find me.
Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double....
Come back in half an hour or
so,
And I will be in trouble.
sapience wisdom; sagacity
[from Latin
sapere to taste, be wise]
Ballade at Thirty-Five
This,
no song of an ingιnue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments,
I loved them until they loved me.
And let's
add another Parker poem, just for fun.
General Review of the Sex Situation
Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of
it,
What earthly good can come of
it?
fardel a bundle or little pack; hence, a
burden
Personally,
I think of the backpacks in which today's students carry their schoolbooks.
Prologue to a Saga
Maidens, gather not the
yew,
Leave the glossy myrtle
sleeping;
Any lad was born untrue,
Never a one is fit your weeping.
Pretty dears, your tumult cease;
Love's a fardel,
burthening double.
Clear your hearts, and have you
peace-
Gangway, girls: I'll show you
trouble.
You won't
find today's word in the dictionaries, not even in OED. Yet it is used in print
occasionally, and the meaning below, which I've gleaned from those usages,
seems to be a useful concept.
extemporanea casual and spontaneous acts or remarks
[The
dictionaries have no noun-form of "extemporaneous" for particular
acts, but only for the general "quality or state" of being
extemporaneous.]
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
Some
further examples:
Those of us who just don't have time in our 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s to sit
around with our friends regularly and engage in repartee are cheating
ourselves, filling our time with "purpose" ... But learning how to
just be, after being conditioned for decades to do and do more, takes training.
It's like getting back to childhood, to the land of extemporanea.
... It's very hard, in fact, to go to leisure.
Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, Aug. 13, 1998, writing of a daily gathering of retired men
Benchley Despite Himself is a one-man, one-act stroll through the glory period of literate
American humor. ... Due to the wide variety of subjects treated by Robert
Benchley in his writings, films, musings, mutterings and extemporanea,
we could not pin the author or actor down as to just what he will discuss.
Blurb for the play
leal (chiefly Scottish) faithful;
loyal; true
[akin to
"loyal" and to Latin legalis legal]
The Leal
The
friends I made have slipped and strayed,
And who's the one that cares?
A trifling lot and best forgot
And that's my tale, and theirs.
Then if my friendships break and bend,
There's little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die.
Dorothy Parker
quondam that once was; former
the
quondam drunkard, now perfectly sober Bret Harte.
This is the
quondam king. -
Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III
Symptom Recital
I
do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.
I hope you've enjoyed Ms. Parker's wit as much as I have.