November 2002 Archives
All the world's a stage: pule; hobbledehoy; aesthete (aestheticize); irascible; pontificate; senescent; edentate; glabrous
Water-metaphor Words: slough; limpid; wellhead-wellspring; quagmire; antediluvian; niveous
German Lingo Of Mental States: sprachgefühl; Anshauung; weltanshauung; schadenfreude; gemütlich; weltschmerz; Fahrvergnügen; katzenjammer; torschlusspanik
Words from Characters in Homer's Odyssey: circean; cimmerian; between Scylla and Charybdis; mentor; lotus eater (lotus land); siren (siren song); eumoirous
All the world's a stage ...
(Week of Nov. 4, 2002)
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
– Shakespeare, As You Like
It, ~1598
This week we will take words to exemplify each of Shakespeare's seven ages.
At first, the infant, / Mewling and puking in the
nurse's arms.
(mewl – to cry weakly; whimper; to squall)
The combined sounds of Shakespeare's verbs suggest
today's word:
pule – to whimper; to whine, as a complaining
child
Today's quotation, while not new, has a modern ring:
...it is the first and most important business of a nation to protect
its women, not by any puling sentimentality of queenship,
chivalry or angelhood, but by making it possible for them to earn an honest
living.
– Katharine Pearson Woods, What
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel /
And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school.
hobbledehoy – a gawky adolescent boy
What a perfect word. Its sound captures the essence of a scarecrow-awkward lad.
For early on,
girls become aware -- as much from their fathers' anguished bellows of "You're
not going out dressed like that, Miss" as from the buffoonish reactions of
the spotty hobbledehoys at the end-of-term disco -- of the power of
clothes to seduce.
--Jane
Shilling, Soft-centred punk, Times (
Motorcyclists are generally seen as hobbledehoys and
yahoos, unless they are Peers, in which case they are deemed eccentric.
– Viscount Falkland, in Parliament, 2 Nov 2000
And then the lover, / Sighing like furnace, with
a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress' eyebrow.
Surely, among so many words for various forms of
love, there must be words for this moony infatuation of sonneteering "a
woeful ballad / Made to his mistress' eyebrow". Yet the closest I can find
deal with the idealization but not with "man and woman".
aesthete – one of excessive or affected
pursuit and admiration of beauty
aestheticize – to depict in an idealized or artistic manner
When they range too far from experience, aestheticize life
too much, the pictures are disappointing.
– Village Voice
Then a soldier, / Full of strange oaths and
bearded like the pard, / Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, /
Seeking the bubble reputation / Even in the canon's mouth.
irascible – prone to anger; easily provoked or inflamed
"I could really give a s--- what you people have to say,"
[hockey player Tom Barrasso] snapped at [a reporter]. Obviously he doesn't have
the skin of a rhino, just the temperament. "Tom the Irascible"
might be a suitable nickname for the 17-year vet. When he's done with hockey,
he won't be taking up a career in public relations.
– Jim Kearney,
And then the justice, / In fair round belly with good capon lined, / With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, / Full of wise saws and modern instances; / And so he plays his part.
pontificate – to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way
The announcement of a daily lottery has caused the media to pontificate
on the rights and wrongs of tempting the lumpenproletariat to part with what
little cash they still have.
– Sunday Times (
The sixth age shifts / Into the lean and slippered pantaloon / With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; / His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide / For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, / Turning again toward childish treble, pipes / And whistles in his sound.
senescent – growing old; aging; decaying with the lapse of time
Senescence begins,
And middle
age ends,
The day your
descendents
Outnumber your friends.
–
Last scene of all, / That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere
oblivion, / Sans teeth,
sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
We end with a couple of "sans" words,
"without" words.
edentate - sans teeth
glabrous - sans hair; bald
I'm not clear whether glabrous means specifically without hair on the head, or includes loss of hair on the body. Can anyone help?
A reader responds: Glabrous means "hairless", "smooth". You wouldn't usually describe someone as glabrous when you mean "without any hair on his head"; you'd use "bald" -- unless, of course, he had no hair anywhere else either.
Water-metaphor Words (Week of Nov. 11, 2002)
This week we'll present words dealing with water,
with a metaphorical sense.
slough (rhymes with "glue") - a depression filled with deep mud or mire; a stagnant swamp;
also a state of deep despair or moral degradation
In the allegory Pilgrim’s Progress by Bunyan, Christian has to cross a deep bog called the Slough of Despond.
Michael Owen is a striker who has mislaid his ability to strike. Since
he is also such a high-profile player this has led to all sorts of speculation
… But … he may have discovered the route by which to escape from his personal slough
of despond.
– Richard Williams, The Guardian, September 25, 2002
(I gather this pertains to British football.)
limpid – clear, transparent; as, a limpid
stream
also easily intelligible; clear: writes in
a limpid style
also calm, serene
The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as
the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid.
Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another.
– Gösta Mittag-Leffler, quoted in N Rose, Mathematical Maxims and Minims
[Soprano Margaret Lloyd's] voice is so fresh, limpid,
beautiful, and musically intelligent that she didn't have to affect any fake
'little —girl' voice to be utterly charming."
–
wellhead; wellspring – a source, spring, or fountain.
also a principal source; a fountainhead: a
wellspring of ideas
Distinction: a wellspring is not usually just the beginning point but also source of continuing supply. (J.N. Hook, The Grand Panjandrum)
Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath
it; but the instruction of fools is folly. -- Prov. xvi. 22
Our public-school and university life is a great wellhead
of new and irresponsible words. -- Earle
quagmire – land with a soft muddy surface.
also a difficult or precarious situation; a
predicament.
While the Nobel Prize in Literature … should have signaled the pinnacle
of Camus's career, it came at a time when he was struggling in the deepening quagmire
of the Algerian war.
– Isabelle de Courtivron, "Rebel Without a Cause," New York Times,
December 14, 1997
antediluvian – of the period before Noah's
flood;
also very antiquated, so extremely old as
seeming to belong to an earlier period; as, an antediluvian vehicle.
In total, the word's latin etymology means "before washing away", suggesting a need to clean things up. Antediluvian "before Noah's flood" = ante- "before" + diluvium "a flood". Going further, diluvium for "flood" traces back to mean "to wash away" (dis- "away" + -luere, comb. form of lavere "to wash").
The correctional service's own prison expert...called the penitentiary
structure 'antediluvian'.
– Toronto Star, May 29, 1999
niveous – resembling snow; snowy; also
snow-white
There's an odd schism in how the lexicographers handle this word.
AHD gives "resembling snow; snowy", but
omits the specific definition as "white". So do the other on-line
dictionaries: generally, they do not specifically note niveous as
"white".
But the thesauri -- even the one at AHD's site -- consistently list niveous as a synonym for "white".
German Lingo Of Mental States (Week of Nov. 18,
2002)
Our new theme will be German "mental"
words that English has adopted verbatim.
Let's face it: last week's theme was weak. So rather
than play it out to the 7th word, we'll cut it off early and start the new
theme early. This decision displays our:
sprachgefühl (literally,
"language-feeling")
- an intuitive sense of what is linguistically
appropriate
- also, the character of a language
One thing ... which is absolutely essential to literary translation, is
the whole question of what the Germans call Sprachgefühl, the
language sense you have.
– John Hollander, recipient of numerous awards as poet and as translator, as
interviewed in The Poet's Other Voice: Conversations on Literary Translation
(ed. Edwin Honig; 1985)
Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary provides a word for another aspect of the "unconscious awareness" concept of yesterday's word:
Anshauung – intuition; sense awareness or
perception
English rarely uses this term alone, but more often
uses another term building upon it:
weltanshauung – a comprehensive view of the
world and human life; the overall perspective from which one sees and
interprets the world
(literally, "world-view"; AHD gives "worldview" as the meaning of the term)
With respect to the First Amendment, Joseph Story, who served on the
Supreme Court, explained: "The promulgation of the great doctrines in
religion, can never be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community.
It is, indeed, difficult to conceive, how any civilized society can well exist
without them." Of course, contemporary American society, or at least its
social elite, may not still share this religious Weltanschauung.
– Gregory C. Sisk, Drake Law Review (1998; excerpted)
A delicious word:
schadenfreude – a malicious satisfaction in
the misfortunes of others.
from Schaden, damage + Freude, joy. often capitalized, as it is in German.
The historian Peter Gay -- who felt Schadenfreude as a
Jewish child in Nazi-era Berlin, watching the Germans lose coveted gold medals
in the 1936 Olympics -- has said that it "can be one of the great joys of
life."
– Edward Rothstein, Missing the Fun of a Minor Sin, New York Times,
February 5, 2000
... this summer's favorite guilty pleasure -- delighting in others' misfortune,
or "Schadenfreude." Between Martha Stewart, Michael
Ovitz, Dennis Kozlowski, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling and Samuel Waksal,
there's plenty of misfortune of various kinds to go around and, as it turns
out, plenty of delight. "Right now the Schadenfreude is
flying high," said John Portmann, the author of When Bad Things Happen
to Other People.
– Warren St. John, New York Times News Service, August 25, 2002. from an
interesting
article, noting how scientists are studying this emotion
A cheerful word:
gemütlich – warm and congenial; pleasant or
friendly
(noun form gemütlichkeit – warm friendliness; amicability)
Not long ago, I was sitting, enjoying with my cherished spouse our
anniversary dinner in the Hotel Post at Freudenstadt in the Black Forest ...
All was gemütlich, the waiter hovered, the candles threw their
beams, and joyful serenity prevailed.
– John Gould, in The Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1997
E.Y. ("Yip") Harburg, the lyricist of the movie Wizard of Oz and of many much-loved songs, including Over the Rainbow, put a twist on this word:
The Nazi, whom we did abhor,
Is now gemütlichkeiter,
For when he isn't making war
No one could be politer.
He woos Miss Liberty with zeal;
He bows with grace and rigor,
To kiss the hand and click the heel --
Before he clicks the trigger.
weltschmerz – sadness over the evils of the
world; esp. as a romantic pessimism. more generally, sentimental pessimism.
literally "world pain". Often capitalized
Coined in German by the Romantic author Jean Paul (pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) in an 1827 novel, but not adopted into English until nearly 50 years later. "Weltschmerz" initially came into being as a by-product of the Romanticism movement in Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Romantic poets were a notably gloomy bunch and "Weltschmerz" aptly captures their melancholy and pessimism .
Carol was plunged back into last night's Weltschmerz.
– Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920)
German critics have written of a cosmic Weltschmerz afflicting
all the noblest spirits of Europe in the era following the Napoleonic wars.
– Times Literary Supplement, August 1950
Fahrvergnügen - driving pleasure. Used by Volkswagen in an advertising campaign
The other day, I learned that Fahrvergnügen is a real
word, not just a creation of the folks who brought us the New Beetle."
– Andrew Gore, Experience iBookgruven Macworld, Jul. 2001.
Already television viewers in the U.S. have seen signs of a heightened
linguistic confidence on the part of the Germans. One example: a Volkswagen ad
campaign that centers on the word Fahrvergnugen, or joy in
driving--however mispronounced it may be in the commercials. Only a few years
ago, the use of a German word in an advertisement in English would have been
avoided, if only because the sound of German was associated with the bad guys
in World War II movies. Today Fahr--and other Vergnugen--may be here to stay.
– Daniel Benjamin, "And Now for Sprachvergnugen", in Time,
Jan. 9, 1990
I've not checked whether OED has accepted Fahrvergnügen. And since I don't speak german, can anyone tell me what Sprachvergnugen would mean?
A reader replies: Sprachvergnugen means "joy in speaking".
Another reader adds:
Sprachverderber - a corrupter of language.
Sprachverein - a linguistic society.
Sprachneuerer - a language reformer
Sprachregelung - prescribed phraseology
Sprachschnitzer - a grammatical blunder
Sprachshöpferisch - creative in the use of
language
Isn't German wonderful ?
Still another reader adds: And you may call yourself a sprachwissenschaftler if you consider yourself a linguist. That is, if you can pronounce it.
katzenjammer - a hangover (also, a
discordant clamor)
from Katzen = cats + Jammer = distress, wailing
Alas! as I was to learn at a later period, intellectual intoxication
too, has its katzenjammer.
– Jack London, John Barleycorn, ch. XXI, (1913)
Ending this theme with a worderful word:
torschlusspanik (literally "shut door
panic") -
a sense of panic in middle age brought on by the feeling that life is passing you by
One type of failure afflicts people in their forties and fifties-the
depression and panic that comes from realizing that, even though they have
successful careers, some of their goals will never be met. German being the
language of the consulting room, this condition is known as Torschlusspanik,
or the panic due to the closing of gates. This, and the other crises of life,
lead approximately 20 percent of executives to suffer from psychiatric
problems, with depression and substance abuse leading the list.
– David S. McIntosh, Center for Business Information, reviewing The
Leadership Mystique by Manfred Kets de Vries
But the term has broad application. One finds it defined or
applied as:
– middle-aged men pursuing young women
for a final fling "before the gates close"
– young women fearing they will not be married until they are to old to have
children
– the woman who longs to rediscover the excitement of youth and fears being
left "on the shelf" (OED)
– a rush to get in on a financial opportunity before the door shuts: either to
buy (in a financial bubble), or to
panic-sell when the bubble bursts
Words from Characters in Homer's Odyssey (Week of Nov. 25, 2002)
We have done a theme on words from Iliad-characters.
Quite naturally, we turn now to Odyssey-characters.
circean - pleasing, but noxious
after the enchantress Circe (Odyssey XIV), who first charmed her victims
and then changed them to the forms of beasts
Like an Irish Circe, the nymph in Portrait has the
potential to drag Stephen down into the emerald-green nets of Dublin paralysis.
– Suzette Henke, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Narcissist, 1997
It has been theorized that the enchantress Circe may
also be the source of the word "church", which comes from OE circe.¹
OED traces this Old English-circe back to a word unconnected with the
Odysseus-Circe (specifically, to Greek kurios = lord), but at least
source one doubts that there are two different kinds of "circe" in
this sense. I cannot evaluate whether that doubter is crackpot.
¹OED Dict. of Etymology. Curiously, MW and AHD give only cirice,
which OED lists as an alternate form. Webster's 1828 gave "Sax. Circe,
circ or cyric" (for this I quote a secondary source).
cimmerian - very dark or gloomy
"the Cimmerians who live enshrouded in mist and darkness which the rays of the sun never pierce neither at his rising nor as he goes down again out of the heavens, but the poor wretches live in one long melancholy night" (Odyssey XI)
Nepenthe lay veiled in Cimmerian gloom, darker than
starless midnight--a darkness that could be felt; a blanket, as it were, hot
and breathless, weighing upon the landscape. All was silent.
–South Wind by Norman Douglas (1868-1952), British writer and diplomat
between Scylla and Charybdis - in a position where avoidance of one danger exposes one to another danger
A strategy based on Washington's willingness to help Taiwan become
militarily self-sufficient offers the only realistic prospect of avoiding the Scylla
looming as a result of the Clinton administration's policy of ambivalent
appeasement or the Charybdis created by American warhawks who
want to give an explicit pledge to shield Taiwan with U.S. military forces.
–Policy analysis, 1998, by Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute
mentor – a wise and trusted counselor or teacher
also v. tr. and v.intr. to serve as such a counselor or
tearcher, esp. in a job-setting
1750, from Mentor, character in the Odyssey (often actually Athene in disguise), friend of Odysseus and adviser of Odysseus' son Telemachus; perhaps ult. meaning "adviser," since the name appears to be an agent noun of mentos "intent, purpose, spirit, passion".
It’s sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal
preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery
pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than
your child’s nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor,
your days take on a very different cast.
–Joyce Maynard, Parenting Magazine (June/July 1995).
Odysseus comes upon a people who, from feeding on
the lotus, live in a drugged, indolent state. His men fall under the influence
of drugs there and loose all ambition to return to their homes and real life.
Tennyson's poem The Lotos-Eaters also has this sense of languid unreality,
of "a land / In which it seemed always afternoon. / All round the coast
the languid air did swoon, / Breathing like one who hath a weary dream."
There, "with faces pale, ... / The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters
came."
In your Wordcrafter's judgment the dictionary
definitions do not capture this sense of drugged unreality.
lotus eater - a lazy person devoted to pleasure and luxury
lotus land - a place or state of languid contentment.
But in practical use, in US speech "lotusland" often means Southern California or to Los Angeles (reflecting the unreality); in Canada-speak it often means British Columbia. Residents of British Columbia are proud to call their home "Lotusland".
A Manchild in Lotusland: Inside the big world of Shaquille
O'Neal
-- Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker, May 20, 2002 (For those unfamiliar:
Shaquille O'Neal is an extremely large man who stars for the Los Angeles
basketball team.)
As winter approaches, cyclists on the roads dwindle like autumn leaves. Lotusland
residents who gloated to Easterners about wearing shorts in October resign
themselves to umbrellas, antifreeze, and an extra layer of insulating fat.
-– Lois Sommerfield, Don't Put That Bike Away, Newsletter of the
Vancouver (Canada) Bicycle Club (Nov. 2002)
siren – a dangerously fascinating woman.
More commonly used in the phrase:
siren song – an enticing plea or appeal, especially one that is
deceptively alluring
after those, in the Odyssey, whose beautiful singing tempted sailors to sail toward them into dangerous, fatal waters
Extremism and violence are our greatest enemies, our greatest foes. We
must not listen to the siren song of the bigots and extremists
who cloak themselves in false spirituality in an attempt to divide and weaken
us.
– US Secretary of State Colin Powell; welcoming remarks in hosting a November
18 Ramadan Iftaar ("breaking the fast") dinner for American Muslim
and Arab American community leaders
We end the week with extremely rare word that
expresses a lovely concept
eumoirous - happy because innocent and good
The quintessential guy in the white hat, [actor Roy] Rogers seemed to be
a truly eumoirous cowboy also. Charming, wholesome and constitutionally
pleasant, he made 87 Westerns, and built his career on fighting fairly and
compassionately.
– Kevin Johnson, whose spizzerinctum
site introduces obscure words by using them to report the current news
This word, though not in OED, can be found in other commercial word-sources. It is my speculation that it comes from the chararater Eumuaios, a man low of social stature (a swineherd) but great of spirit. (Odyssey, Books XIV-XV)
A reader notes: In fact 'eumoiros' comes from the paritcle 'eu' meaning good and 'moira' meaning fate. Eumoiros is thus someone who has a good fate, hence happy. I don't think it has to do with Eumaios.