May 2005 Archives
"Colors of Spring" and
others: gamboge; cerulean; vermilion; coquelicot (nidgetty); virescent; primrose; purpure
Incommodating Eponyms: twiss; fontange; Oliver's skull; sacheverell;
furphy; crapper
Words of the Law: specific performance;
bright-line rule; safe harbor; stare decisis;
fiduciary; standing; amicus curiae
The issue of using "Hard Words": rebarbative; fulgurous (obloquy, contumely); vertiginous
(elegiac, mememto mori);
satrap; nugatory; jactitation (jactant);
antinomian (halakah)
"Colors of Spring"
and others
Quite some time ago we had a theme titled
"The Colors of Fall". Today, as spring blooms, it seems
appropriate to do a theme on the colors you will see about you in the season's
awakening.
gamboge a strong
yellow color (some say strong reddish yellow)
[from the older form of the name
We illustrate with a Walt Whitman passage, so beautiful an image of nature that
I must quote at length.
Among the objects
of beauty and interest now beginning to appear quite plentifully in this
secluded spot, I notice the humming-bird, the dragon-fly with its wings of
slate-colord gauze, and many varieties of beautiful
and plain butterflies, idly flapping among the plants and wild posies. The
mullein has shot up out of its nest of broad leaves, to a tall stalk towering
sometimes five or six feet high, now studded with knobs of golden blossoms. The
milk-weed, (I see a great gorgeous creature of gamboge
and black lighting on one as I write,) is in flower, with its delicate red
fringe; and there are profuse clusters of a feathery blossom waving in the wind
on taper stems. I see lots of these and much else in every direction, as I
saunter or sit. For the last half hour a bird has persistently kept up a
simple, sweet, melodious song, from the bushes. (I have a positive conviction
that some of these birds sing, and others fly and flirt about here, for my
especial benefit.)
Walt Whitman, Specimen Days (1892)
cerulean pure, strong blue, the color of the cloudless sky
[Note: the dictionaries say "pure deep blue", but to me 'deep' would
indicate a darkened color. Would you agree?]
vermilion - a bright
red or scarlet
Every year, in
mid-April, we stop the world and hike a short way into the woods to the banks
of Cub Run. There, we find the largest crop of
Elizabeth Foss, Arlington Catholic Herald, Apr. 28, 2005
Resplendent in their vermilion robes, the conclave chose the
first German Pope for 1000 years.
Liam Rudden, The Scotsman, Apr. 23, 2005
The lingerie section of this proto-mall displays underskirts in colours that would make a flamenco dancer proud - vermilion,
emerald, purple, crimson and blue satin
Robin Gauldie, The Scotsman, Apr. 23, 2005
The ladies will appreciate today's spring
color, for it has often been the fashionable shade.
coquelicot poppy-colored: brilliant red with
orange.
Jane Austen's
letter to her sister Cassandra, Dec. 18, 1798:
I took the liberty a few days ago of asking your black velvet bonnet to lend me
its caul, which it readily did, and by which I have
been enabled to give a considerable improvement of dignity to the cap, which
was before too nidgetty to please me.
I still venture to retain the narrow silver round it, put twice round without
any bow, and instead of the black military feather shall put in the coquelicot one as being smarter, and besides coquelicot is to be all the fashion this
winter. After the ball I shall probably make it entirely black.
on how James McNeil Whistler presented his 1884 showing in
The opening was limited to invited guests and was designed to attract the
attention of reporters eager to document the doings of the rich and famous.
Guests included the kind of wealthy Londoners whom the reviewer for [the
newspaper] Queen described simply as "fashionable people." Queen,
which was mainly interested in the clothes, noted that in the ladies' dress,
the fashionable coquelicot was
predominant
The fact that so many
fashionable women wore coquelicot
(poppy red) was probably intentional. Whistler often asked his lady friends to
dress in colors that would harmonize with his designs, and one of the most
vibrant "notes" that echoed through the installation was that rung by
the bright poppy reds that dominate several of the most striking figure
paintings ...
Kenneth John Myers, Mr. Whistler's gallery: the art of displaying art,
Magazine Antiques, Nov. 1, 2003
Bonus word: nidgetty trifling or fussy
[Extremely rare. Basically, OED has only the above Austen citation.]
virescent the light green of a newly-budded leaf (but see note below)
What a lovely color for spring! Once again, we have beautiful and striking
quotations.
I do not recall
ever seeing the aurora more active.
At first it was a sheaf of tremulous
rays; then it became a great river of silver shot through with flaming gold.
It began to pulsate, gently at first, then faster and faster. The whole
structure dissolved into a system of virescent
arches, all sharply defiant. Above these revolved battery upon battery of
searchlights, which fanned the heavens with a heightening lustrousness.
Pale greens and reds and yellows touched the stately structures; the whole dark
sky came to life."
Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Alone
Between them stood a table covered with green baize, which, reflecting upwards
a band of sunlight shining across the chamber, flung upon his already white
features the virescent hues of death.
Thomas Hardy, The Hand of Ethelberta, ch. 39
Note: The definition
above is my own, for it seems to me that the dictionaries' definition ("greenish;
becoming green") does not match how the term is used. In usage, the
color 'virescent' is predominantly green not a
yellow shaded over towards ('becoming') green and the green is modified by a
lighter color (yellow or white) rather than a darker one (black, brown or
blue). If you start with black, adding green until just before (or just after)
the green dominates will not produce the color called 'virescent'.
Put differently: the color 'virescent' is a green that has been yellowed or lightened,
not darkened. If some other color (yellow, for example) has a greenish tinge,
it might be called a 'virescent' yellow, but it is
not the color called 'virescent'.
primrose a pale
yellow color
[from the plant of the same name, bearing spring flowers of that color]
In careless patches
through the wood
The clumps of yellow primrose stood,
And sheets of white anemones,
Like driven snow against the trees,
Had covered up the violet, But left the bluebells bluer yet.
A. A. Milne, The Invaders, in When We Were Very Young
the design really springs to life in strong pastels. How about shades of
yellow from pale primrose to deep golden yellow with sky blue,
lavender and mint green centres?
Kaffe Fassett, Family
Album: Kniting for Children and Adults
purpure purple
This term, now confined to heraldry, is the older form of our word
"purple". The word has a fascinating history. The story is long;
let's begin by noting how this color was associated with royalty, and how the
r-sound at the end of purpure changed
to the l-sound in purple.
Because dye of this color was extraordinarily costly to make, purpure cloth was associated with royalty and eventually
reserved for royalty only.
[No one may] use
or weare in any maner their
appparell, or upon their horse, mule, or other beast,
anny silke of the colour of purpure,
ne any cloth of Gold of tissue, but onely the King [and certain close relatives].
English statute, enacted 1533
The name first came into English in 893 as purpuran, but an ending with the l-sound, 'purple',
soon developed, and by about 600 years later had supplanted the r-ending.
... consonants and
vowels alter because of nearby sounds
Certain sound such as 'r' and 'l' are
particularly susceptible to this process. For example, the word grammar
has two 'r's and for some dialect speakers during the
late Middle ages this proved just far too tricky. So they changed the first 'r'
to an 'l' and grammar became glamour.
. Speakers also remodeled
the Latin words marmor, turtur
and purpur to marble, turtle and purple.
(Compare the colour purpure
in heraldry, which is conservative and retains the original 'r'.)
Kate Burridge, Blooming English: Observations on
the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language
So long ago as 1400 B.C. the Phoenicians of Tyre produced a fabled, extraordinary and
"fiendishly expensive" dye. The art later spread to the Greeks and
thence to the Romans; the Iliad and Aeneid
each mention garments so dyed. The dyed cloth was "worth more than gold
itself
In the third century A.D., a pound of purple-dyed wool cost around
three times the yearly wage of a baker." Only royals could afford it
It was so expensive because the dye was extraordinarily difficult to produce.
One problem was getting the shellfish extract. "It is no easy matter to
extract the [shellfish's] organ," said Aristotle. Each shellfish yielded
only a drop of extract, and "one ounce of the [final] dye required the sacrifice
of around 250,000 shellfish. The shell piles of the Phoenicians still litter
the eastern shore of the
However, the color was not what we call purple. It varied
"from bluish to a deep red," depending on the preparation and
application. It could be "the color of clotted blood;" or "that
precious color which gleams with the hue of a dark rose", or have a form
with form with "black hue [with the] severity and crimson-like sheen which
in fashion." (Pliny) Thus, throughout the ancient and medieval world, purpure could equally mean a shade of dark red or
crimson, and indeed is steeped in associations with blood." Robert
Browning (1855) recalled another shade:
Who has not heard
how Tyrian shells
Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes,
Whereof one drop worked miracles,
And coloured like Astarte's
eyes
Raw silk the merchant sells?
The shellfish, the dye, and the dyed cloth
were all called purpura in Latin, from Greek porphura. In 893 the Latin came into Old
English in the form purpuran, but meant
only "royal cloth" or "rich cloth". It later became a color
name used solely royal clothing but the color signified was apparently not
our purple but rather the crimson color typical of royal robes. By Chaucer's
time it had become a general color term; I cannot tell you when or how the it
came to mean the color we call purple.
Sources: Philip Ball, Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color,
and, for the last paragraph, OED and Ronald W. Casson's
essay in Color Categories in Thought and Language (C. L. Hardin, ed.)
Incommodating Eponyms
A handful of people, perhaps a mere half
dozen, share a unique distinction. They were an Australian manufacturer, a French
mistress, and (from
What did these diverse people have in common, that all the rest of the world
lacks? Each of their names became a name (eponym) for the equipment serving one
basic but unmentionable human function. I refer of course to the privy, the
chamber-pot, the commode and the toilet. (I leave it as an exercise to readers
to provide the distinctions between these four items.)
A caution: some of my evidences may not be solid. Some of my conclusions may
not hold water. But I've been able to verify that all these people were
connected to the subject, and for each at least one source stating that they
became eponymous.
twiss a chamber pot
For Richard Twiss, whose account of his travels in
�.
The Irish species are only remarkable
for the thickness of their legs, especially those of plebeian females.
�.
What little the men can obtain by
their labour or the women by their spinning is
usually consumed in whiskey, which is a spirituous liquor resembling gin.
The Irish were not pleased. A
Here you may
behold a liar,
Well deserving of hell-fire:
Every one who likes may p____
Upon the learned Doctor T____.
Thus the Irish had the last word a word
defined thus:
TWISS (IRISH) a Jordan, or pot de chambre. A
Mr. Richard Twiss having in his "Travels"
given a very unfavourable description of the Irish
character, the inhabitants of Dublin, by way of revenge, thought proper to
christen this utensil by his name--suffice it to say that the baptismal rites
were not wanting at the ceremony.
Col. Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(1811)
fontange a commode
The young duchesse de Fontange (Marie Angelique de Scorraille
de Roussilles), was 'beautiful as an angel, silly as
a goose", and led an active life. At 18 she became mistress of Louis XIV;
the next year she delivered a his child stillborn, and in 1681 she died at age
20. Meanwhile she launched history's most extravagant hairstyle, which remained
in style for over three decades.
The tale is that when her hair became disarranged during a royal hunt, she
resourcefully she piled it upon her head and bound it up with fabric she had
about her. (The saucy girl seems to have used her garter ribbons or lace from
her pantaloons.) The king admired the upswept look, and the ladies of the court
aped it and competitively elaborated it over the years into a pile of hair
towering two feet or more, bound by ribbons and lace and called the fontange. The French also called the hairstyle (or
the its supporting apparatus) commode, meaning 'convenient'; Brits
called the hairstyle both a fontange and a commode.
Some say that when one needed a polite euphemism for the other form of commode
(the one used for bathroom functions), one called it the fontange.
(Facts on File Encyclopedia)
A bit of skepticism is in order, though, because OED's earliest cite for this
sort of commode is dated 1851, well more than a century after the demise of the
hairstyle. On the other hand, we can be sure that the fontange/commode
hairstyle had not been forgotten: Grose's 1811 Dictionary
of the Vulgar Tongue mentions it twice. It seems curious that Grose would include a hairstyle in such a dictionary, but I
can offer no explanation.
Oliver's skull a chamber pot
This allusion to Oliver Cromwell, obviously from his detractors, was in slang
use from the late 1600s to the late 1800s. My personal guess is that the
"skull" alludes to the name of Cromwell's party, the Roundheads.
Can anyone tell me whether a chamber pot was roughly the size and shape of the
crown of an adult's skull?
A reader notes: I have an early memory of running around playing soldiers with
my grandmother's chamber pot (empty and washed, I assure you) on my head as a
helmet. Perhaps the Roundheads' helmets reminded Cromwell's detractors of a
chamber pot?
Another reader notes: Pictures of a roundhead
helmet (bottom left; click to enlarge) and another.
Picture of three chamberpots (top left; note the scale given).
There's a definite
resemblance.
sacheverell a chamber-pot
In 1709 preacher Henry Sacheverell published violent
sermons against the Whigs' tolerance of religious dissenters. He became a hero
to the Tories and of course was hated by the Whigs.
Sacheverells name became used to mean a
stove-blower, the logic being (says Grose) that the
preacher "made himself famous for blowing the coals of dissention." Grose also tells us that Sacheverell,
like Twiss some years later, was portrayed in
portrait on the bottom of chamber pots:
PISS POT HALL. A
house at Clapton, near Hackney, built by a potter chiefly out of the profits of
chamber pots, in
the bottom of which the portrait of Dr. Sacheverel
was depicted.
At least one source reports that such a
chamber pot was called a sacheverell.
furphy Austral. informal: a far-fetched rumor [Wordcrafter: I would say "a latrine rumor"]
Reporter: Is it the
case that the Indonesian legal system is based on the presumption of guilt?
Prof. Tim Lindsay (Director of the
The World Today, April 29, 2005
Mr Herskope said rumours of 4000 job cuts were "a complete furphy.
John Hare Furphy
(1843-1920), Australian blacksmith, founded John Furphy
& Sons, a firm still growing strong today. In WWI the firm provided water
and sanitation equipment for Australian troops in the
The Furphy firms website proudly claims credit for
this word, citing Compact OED. Another theory, less likely, is that the term
comes from James Furphy, an Australian writer
who authored tall tales. (Few note that James was Johns younger brother.)
But the question remains: exactly which Furphy
products were involved? Furphy provided mobile water
tanks for delivering water to the troops; it also provided latrine buckets. The
company takes the genteel approach, attributing the term to "Furphy water cart operators ... renowned for
spreading gossip." But Australian language authorities of the 1920s
explained that "unfounded rumors seemed as a rule, to originate among the
sanitary squad, or from conversation among men visiting latrines, caus[ing] the word to be used in
this way." (Glossary of Slang and Peculiar Terms in Use in the A.I.F.)
crapper a flush
toilet
[from Thomas Crapper (1836-1910), British manufacture of such products]
Much confusing and contradictory nonsense has been published on this matter,
and copied uncritically on the web. It's amusing to note the source of the
confusion.
Turn to two books by Wallace Reyburn, tracing the
supposed history of the flush toilet and of the brassiere. Their very titles (Flushed
with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper (1969) and Bust Up: The
Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling (1971)) ought to
give a fair warning that the books are flights of fantasy, Reyburn
giving free reign to his imagination and wordplay. For example, the bra history
has such characters as Mr. Titzling, his German
assistant Hans Delving, his competitor Philippe de Brassiere, and the female
athlete Lois Lung. The toilet book tells that Mr. Crapper, to perfect his
toilet, required "many dry runs" before reaching the "high-water
mark" of his career.
But Reyburn wrote with the tone of serious history.
Some later and sober authorities were taken in, and have relied upon Reyburn as if he were gospel. Conversely others, noting the
fantasy element and the exaggerations, assume that nothing at all in Reyburn has any basis in fact -- indeed, that Thomas
Crapper never existed.
As best I can detangle it, the truth lies somewhere in between. Thomas Crapper
truly existed. The word "crapper", meaning toilet, comes from his
name. He is also responsible for "crap" meaning "fecal
matter", in that although the word "crap" predates him, it
basically had only other meanings, the "fecal" sense being rare and
obscure until Mr. Crapper came along.
My conclusions are contrary to OED. Here is my rationale:
Englishman Thomas Crapper truly did exist,
and truly did manufacture toilets and other sanitary fixtures. You can see his
factory pictured on the Thomas Crapper & Co., Ltd website.
'Crap' is a word of long-standing in
Further, although 'crap' was used in English before Mr. Crapper, this
does not prove that it has no meaning derived from his name. For until Thomas
Crapper came along, the word crap was not particularly associated with
dung. It had multiple senses pertaining to "rejected matter, residue"
-- the earliest being "chaff from grain" -- and OED notes, "It
is doubtful whether all the senses here placed belong to one word."
The specific "fecal" sense seems to have been barely in use before
WWI. OED gives a 1846 source which mentions "the crappy (sh-ten) end of the stick", and "a crapping
ken" (or privy). But apart from that OED has no "fecal" usages
until 1925 (John dos Passos: "You don't want to
shovel crap..all your life."). Until then, OED's
examples of the "fecal" sense are merely dictionary definitions (not
usage) of 'crap' or its forms, and OED's usage examples mean at most
"useless dregs, not necessarily fecal".
In other words, just as crapper (meaning toilet) did not appear until
after Mr. Crapper's career, so too the sense of crap as "fecal
matter" was at most practically invisible before then.
Words of the Law
This week we review jargon from the
sometimes-impenetrable world of law. These terms come from a
specific performance the remedy of having a contract enforced in
accordance with its terms
A court typically will not order specific performance for a breach of contract;
rather, a cash award usually suffices. For example, if I sue for goods which
you have sold to me but failed to deliver, my remedy will be cash sufficient to
buy those goods elsewhere.
Specific performance is used in exceptional cases where a cash award would not
suffice, typically because the goods are unique ones for which no equivalent
can be acquired for cash. For example, a painting by Van Gogh is unique, and if
you sell it but fail to deliver it, the court may order you to deliver it. Real
estate is the principal type of goods considered "unique". Thus, a
court may order a defaulting home-seller to convey the home, rather than
limiting the buyer to a cash award with which to purchase some other house.
[P]etitioners argue that they seek "to enjoin
respondents' failure to reimburse the Plan." But an injunction to compel specific
performance of a past due monetary obligation was not typically
available in equity. Those rare cases in which a court of equity would decree specific
performance of a contract to transfer funds were suits that sought to
prevent future losses that were either incalculable or would be greater than
the sum awarded. For example, specific performance might be
available to enforce an agreement to lend money "when the unavailability
of alternative financing would leave the plaintiff with injuries that are difficult
to value." Typically, however, specific performance of a
contract to pay money was not available in equity.
U.S. Supreme Court, in Great-West Life v. Knudson (2002; Justice Scalia; excerpted)
The law often
deals with broad general standards like "reasonableness", but
sometimes it replaces or supplements them with simple direct rule telling what
is permitted or forbidden. The rule may separate yeah from nay. Alternately, or
it may carve out a clear permitted area (a "safe harbor"), leaving
action outside that area to be judged by the broader but less clear standards.
Two terms, related in that they each deal
with ways of providing clear, safe standards in the law.
bright-line rule a legal rule of decision that tends to resolve issues, esp. ambiguities,
simply and straight-forwardly, sometimes sacrificing equity for certainty
safe harbor a provision (as in a statute or regulation) that affords
protection from liability or penalty
(definitions from Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed.))
[The proposed
statute] gives farmers who burn their fields a legal "safe harbor,"
saying they can't be sued under nuisance, trespass or other laws if they burn
in accordance with state smoke-management rules.
Betsy Z. Russell, The (Spokane) Spokesman Review, April, 2003
Edwards v. Arizona created a bright-line rule that once a
suspect invoked the right to counsel, all further interrogation must cease.
Douglas E. Wicklander, Practical Aspects of
Interview and Interrogation
Justice Stevens, dissenting, in Thornton v. United States, (U.S Supreme
Court, 2004) (excepted):
[T]here was a widespread conflict over the question "whether, in a search
incident to arrest of the occupants of an automobile, police may search inside
the automobile." In answering that question [in
Whether one agrees or
disagrees with that view, however, the interest in certainty that supports Beltons
bright-line rule surely does not justify an expansion of the rule
that only blurs those clear lines.
stare decisis [L. "let the decision stand"] the doctrine of
precedent, under which it is necessary for a court to follow earlier judicial
decisions when the same points arise again in litigation (Black's)
Consistency is a virtue. Justices Brandeis explained,
Stare decisis is usually the
wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable
rule of law be settled than that it be settled right. (1932)
He noted, "This is commonly true even
where the error is a matter of serious concern, provided correction can be had
by legislation. [But] stare decisis is not universal
inexorable command. Whether it shall be followed or departed from is a question
entirely within the discretion of the court."
Moreover, a rule of "consistency" can be difficult to apply. Consider
sports. By the 1950s (after the government's Depression-era programs) the court
had a broad reading of "interstate commerce". But in 1922 it had
construed an statute regulating "interstate commerce", and concluded
that that term and statute do not encompass professional baseball. What would
the Court to do when sports again come before it?
The justices continued baseball's 1922 status on the ground of stare
decisis,Ή but disagreed as to other sports.(following two quotes)
Others said (final quote) that consistency required only that baseball, having
been adjudicated, retain its prior status.
The difficult
problem derives in relation to the appropriate compulsion of stare decisis. The most conscientious probing fails to
disclose that Congress excluded baseball but included football. Conscious as I
am of my limited competence in matters athletic, I have yet to hear of any
consideration that "the business of providing public baseball was not
within the federal antitrust laws," that is not equally applicable to
football.
It would baffle the subtlest ingenuity to find a [relevant] differentiating
factor between other sporting exhibitions, whether boxing or football or
tennis, and baseball If stare decisis
be one aspect of law, to disregard it in identic
situations is mere caprice.
Respondents' contention is that stare decisis
compels the same result [for football]. But [we] held the business of baseball
outside the scope of the Act. No other business has such an adjudication.
Ή"The business has thus
been left for thirty years to develop, on the understanding that it was not
subject to existing antitrust legislation. [Any] application to it of the
antitrust laws it should be by legislation."
fiduciary one who
is required to act for the benefit of another (within the scope of their
relationship), who owes to the other the duties of good faith, trust,
confidence and candor
Examples: trustee, executor of
an estate, corporate officer, lawyer acting for client
The classic statement of the role is by Judge Benjamin Cardozo,
New York Court of Appeals (1928).
Many forms of
conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm's length are
forbidden to those bound by fiduciary ties. A trustee is held to
something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but
the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the
standard of behavior. As to this there has developed a tradition that is
unbending and inveterate. Uncompromising rigidity has been the attitude of the
courts when petitioned to undermine the rule of undivided loyalty. Only thus
has the level of conduct for fiduciaries been kept at a level higher than that
trodden by the crowd.
Note: You will find punctilio discussed in the Wordcraft Archives
here and here.
The concept of an amicus curiae may be
seen as an exception to general notions of standing.
standing a party's right to bring a legal claim or seek enforcement of
a duty or right
[Typically, no matter how egregious the challenged conduct, one may not sue
unless he himself has been injured by it.]
Have the
appellants alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as
to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues
upon which the court so largely depends? This is the gist of the question of standing."
(Justice Brennan, 1962)
amicus curiae (L. friend of the court) a person who, though not a
party to a lawsuit, is permitted to file a brief because of his strong interest
in the legal issue
Amicus curiae participation is a staple of interest group activity in the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Paul M. Collins Jr., Law & Society Review, Dec., 2004
From amicus brief filed by Mother Theresa, 1993:
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE: Mother Teresa is the founder of
the Order of the Missionaries of Charity. Much of the work involves providing
charitable services to children and to poor families. Mother Teresa and the
Missionaries have a special interest in the welfare of all children, born and
unborn, and the familial relationship between children and their mothers and
fathers.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT: The unborn child possesses an inalienable right to life
which must be recognized and safeguarded by any just society.
The issue of using "Hard Words"
How do you feel about "hard
words"? As a word-a-day subscriber, you obviously enjoy them when
presented as daily curiosities. But how do feel when in your daily reading, the
author slips in a word that's unfamiliar to you or that hovers on the fringes
of your understanding? Perhaps you have mixed emotions: intrigued by the new
word, but annoyed that the author interrupted your understanding of what he's
saying to you.
From time to time James Kilpatrick skewers authors for using words he deems
overly hard. His columns provide most of this week's words. But Jesse Sheidlower, OED's editor for
Robert Burchfield,
former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, tells of overhearing a guest at
a cocktail party ask, "Why does Anita Brookner
use hard words like 'rebarbative and 'nugatory'?"
"One possible answer," opines Dr. Burchfield, "is that the
famous novelist does not regard them as 'hard.'"
Being a person for whom rebarbative is not a hard word seems to me to be a
worthy goal indeed.
rebarbative repellently irritating
[OED's definition includes
more. But I think it mistaken, as discussed below]
[From M.Fr for 'to face [an enemy]', literally 'beard-to-beard' [Latin barba beard]. So the concept is beard-to-beard, or
what we'd now call 'in your face'. Compare our recent word cap-a-pie.]
Rebarbative is not in my
dictionary but it reminds me of something between regurgitate and vituperative.
My novel must be rebarbative.
Flannery O'Connor, private letter, Feb. 28, 1959
The sequence had been a matter of perfect orchestration of naturally
uncooperative elements.
Conrad Black,
I disagree with OED's definintion
of rebarbative as "repellent, forbidding,
unattractive, dull, unpleasant, objectionable". A stern judge is forbidding;
a boring companion is dull; a plain-faced woman is unattractive;
and rotting food is unpleasant and objectionable, but I'd think
we would not call any of them "rebarbative".
Some further examples:
P.D. James, A Certain Justice
the angry, rebarbative spitting-out
daughter
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Today we have a lovely, vividly-descriptive
word.
fulgurous (lit.
or fig.) flashing like lightning [conveys impressiveness]
[also fulgurant; fulgorous]
That erect form,
flashing brow, fulgurant eye. Robert
Browning (1868)
But the Presidents whom most historians today regard as the nation's greatest
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt came in for especially
fulgurous obloquy and contumely.
Paul F. Boller, Not So!: Popular Myths About
America's Past
As Stephanie grew up she had repeated in her very differing body some of her
fathers and mothers characteristics an interesting variability of soul. She
was tall, dark, sallow, lithe, with a strange moodiness of heart and a
recessive, fulgurous gleam in her chestnut-brown, almost
brownish-black eyes. She had a full, sensuous, Cupids mouth, a dreamy and even
languishing expression, a graceful neck, and a heavy, dark, and yet pleasingly
modeled face.
Theodore Dreiser, The Titan, Chapter XXIV
Do you agree with Kilpatrick about the
second quote (which he treats as being from a newspaper)? He says, "Fulgurous!
What an enchanting word! The adjective surely is clear in context, but would a
more familiar word have been better? Colorful denunciations? Angry
denunciations? Wrathful, fuming, furious, feverish denunciations? Howling,
raging, roaring, passionate denunciations?"
Bonus words:
obloquy strong public condemnation; or, the disgrace brought about
by that condemnation
[L. ob against + loqui to speak]
contumely insolent or insulting words or acts
[perh. fr. L. tumere to swell. The same root gives us 'thigh';
lit. 'the thick part of the leg']
vertiginous (lit. or fig.) dizzying, disorienting; the feeling of
looking down from a frightening height
[Recall Hitchcock's movie Vertigo,
starring James Steward and Kim Novak.]
[From L. vertigo, a turning or whirling round; giddiness, vertere, to turn; akin to the words reverse,
subvert, and versus. A secondary definition of 'vertiginous' is
'rotating; turning'.]
Look at the wonderful variety of usages, especially the third quotation.
[E]ven in a market that rises overall, you can still get many vertiginous,
one-day falls.
Benoit Mandelbrot, The Misbehavior of Markets
a G-string with some feathers attached behind it, quite like a rabbit's tail,
a pair of fishnet stockings, pink shoes with vertiginous high
heels
Melissa P., Lawrence Venuti, 100 Strokes of the
Brush Before Bed
When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.
Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. All photographs
are memento mori. Cameras began
duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to
undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of
forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of
time, a device is available to record what is disappearing.
Susan Sontag, On Photography
This was the home of creatures who could fly, and who had no fear of gravity.
It was nothing to come without warning upon a vertiginous drop of
several hundred meters, or to find that the only entrance into a room was an
opening high up on a wall.
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End
Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up too quickly even if you are
lying in bed half asleep. You hear blood rushing in your head, feel vertiginous
falling sensations. Your hands and feet are tingling and then they aren't there
at all. You've mislocated yourself again.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Bonus words (see third quote above):
elegiac wistfully mournful for something past and gone
mememto mori
a reminder of mortality
satrap a
subordinate official; implies one given to tyranny or of ostentatious display [also:
a provincial governor in ancient
[Ult. from Old Persian for 'protector of the
dominion', after passing through Gk. and L ]
[Note: I'd say that "tyranny/ostentation is part of the meaning, though
most dictionaries omit it. OED notes it and adds that "the sense
'domineering person' appears in med. Latin, and in all the Rom. langs."
In the press, a remarkably high percentage the usages are from the press of
It was followed on
March 23 by an equally monstrous order by Martin Bormann,
the Fuehrer's secretary, a molelike
man who had now gained a position at court second to none among the Nazi satraps.
William L. Shirer, Rise And Fall Of The Third
Reich
However, there is no doubt that a reinvigorated team of ultra hawks, like Rice,
Rumsfeld and Cheney, will be out to test the will of
the world with their witches brew of more military adventures abroad.
For relatively
easier manoeuvres in
Karamatullah K. Ghori,
nugatory 1.
trifling; insignificant 2. of no force; inoperative or ineffectual
Here are one quote on the first meaning, and two on the second. We'll see
'nugatory' again in the future, within quotations used to illustrate future
words.
Many Britons, like
yourself, have quite forgotten that virtually all pianos are lockable. No doubt
the key to your secondhand piano went missing long ago, but, since there are
only about three variations on piano lock styles, you can order a replacement for
the nugatory fee of 11.75.
Dear Mary (by Mary Killen), The Spectator, Jan. 13, 2001
The peace agreements were thus effectively dead from the first moment. The
media responded to these unacceptable facts by surprising them. An honest
accounting
would have noted-indeed, emphasized- that the
Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought
Control in Democratic Societies
The writing was on the wall for Arafat last 11 September. But while his friends
in
Douglas Davis, The Spectator, July 20, 2002
You've heard today's term if you've seen the
excellent movie Inherit the Wind. Spencer Tracy plays a defense lawyer,
and as he examines a witness, the young prosecutor objects and presents a
fine example of the danger of using overly fancy words.
Prosecutor: Objection! This is an absurd piece of jactitation.
[Senior prosecutor turns; eyes junior queerly.
Judge: Counsel, uh, uses a word with which, er, the
court is not familiar.
Preening Prosecutor: Jactitation:
a specious or false premise. In this case, as to the murder of known or unknown
persons.
Judge (sighing): Objection sustained.
The further joke is that this whippersnapper misuses his fancy word and, by
showing off, is himself guilty of jactitation.
jactitation boasting, bragging, ostentatious
display (also jactation)
[The dictionaries are all over the place on these words; I've put it together
as best I can.]
[Further meaning: extreme tossing and turning in bed, as in disease.]
In old law, jactitation of marriage was
a suit against one falsely claiming to be married to the person suing. "In
order to prevent the common reputation of their marriage that might ensue, the
petitioner prays a decree putting the respondent to perpetual silence
thereafter." (1911 Britannica)
An irresistibly vivid quotation impels me to add a related, useless word.
jactant boasting, boastful. "The jactant self-importance assumed by the
cock-pigeon of the dove-cote." (Tait's Magazine,
1839)
Oddly enough, today's word 'antinomian' is not
the adjective form of 'antinomy'. An antimony,' as we've seen, is a
paradox in which two contradictory principles are both correct. (See wordcraft archives and dictionary). The adjectival form of
this is antinomic or antinomical.
Such an antinomic pair are those two great sayings
'He that loveth not knoweth
not God,' and, 'If a man hate not father, mother, wife, he cannot be my
disciple.'
Charles Kingsley (acknowledgement to OED)
'Antinomian' means something very differrent.
antinomian of the rejection the moral law (after a religious sect, so
named, which held that those who live in a "state of grace" are not
subject to moral law)
Bill Clinton's antinomian
morality ...
Linda Chavez, Jewish World Review, May 20, 1998
"Antinomic" means contradictory,
or rather self-contradictory in our context. This is not to be confused with "antinomian,"
which denotes refusal to recognize the authority of moral law. While the Rav loved a good antinomy," he
hated antinomianism, which espoused rejection of Halakha.)
Ronnie Ziegler, Introduction to the Philosophy of Rav
Soloveitchik (university lecture)
Bonus word:
halakah the body of
Jewish law supplementing scriptures; esp. the legal part of the Talmud