October 2007 Archives
Disagreeable Sorts: vulgarian; lickspittle; Grobian (parricide);
clodhopper; fussbudget; curmudgeon; Sassenach
What's our theme?: temulent; escarpment; kinesthesia (proprioception);
agnate; mystagogue; internaut; nolens volens
Interesting Etymologies: redingote (dingo); sabot (sabotage); googol (googolplex);
demijohn; ้tui/etwee (huswife); ostracize
Book: Extraordinary
Popular Delusions: vis et armis; venial; pottage; sylph; undine; auditory; immure; endue; indue; circumjacent; gambol;
rick; evolution; stultify;
purloin; grimoire; prognosticate;
irrefragable; coeval; diablerie; list of mancy words
Disagreeable Sorts
For
this week's theme, let's look at various kinds of unpleasant characters.
vulgarian an unrefined person, especially one flaunting
newly-acquired power or wealth
To
my mind, this quote offers a perfect picture of the concept.
In 1960 the premier of the Soviet Union came
and spoke in the
Peggy Noonan (columnist), Wall Street
Journal, Sept. 28, 2007
lickspittle a fawning underling; a toady (but more commonly used
as an adjective)
The
origin of lickspittle is obvious, I assume?
"This is a lickspittle
Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W Bush."
MP George Galloway (replying to US Senate
committee's charges that he received potentially lucrative oil allocations by
Saddam Hussein's Iraq), in BBC, May 12, 2005
grobian a slovenly boor; a lout
Bonus word: parricide the killing of [or the killer of] ones
own parent usually the father or other near relative
In
The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian, two diners discuss with wry irony
the sailing crew they have hired. (OBrian also used grobian with
different humor in Post Captain, our second quote.)
Indeed, said Jack as they ate their supper, I do not remember an
easier, more satisfactory manning. We have a good third of our people seaman,
and many of the others look stout, promising material.
There were many sad brutish grobians among those I
examined, said Stephen, who was feeling disagreeable and contradictory
Oh,
of course there are always some odd fish
; but this time we have very few
downright thieves: only one parricide
; and after all he will
scarcely carry on his capers here he will scarcely find another father
aboard.
Yet he was nowhere near being solvent, and
it seemed inevitable to him that others too should see him as Jack Aubrey,
debtor to Grobian, Slendrian and Co. for ฃ11,012 6s
8d.
Slendrian is not a word in English, but I gather that in German, schlendrian
means something like a lounger or loiterer.
clodhopper a clumsy, coarse person, esp. a rustic (also,
a big heavy shoe)
As
with lickspittle,, the origin seems obvious.
Their manager was a mute clodhopper
whose sole project seems to be how much tobacco he could cram into his jaw.
How did a politician once derided as a
provincial clodhopper transcend such narrow visions to become
what his image-molders depict as a statesman?
New York Times, Sept. 16, 1995, speaking
of Helmut Kohl
What
do Felix Unger, Henry Higgins, and Minerva McGonagall have in common?
Tony Randall, the sardonic actor
his
signature role as the fussbudget Felix Unger in the classic
television series "The Odd Couple"
New York Times May 19, 2004
Henry Higgins, the fussbudget
linguist from the classic film "My Fair Lady"
I am, I suppose, a fussbudget,
although I prefer the term "nit-picker." Most of my adult life has
been spent campaigning against apostrophe abuse,
The Intelligencer (
When fussbudget Professor
McGonagall (Maggie Smith) tries to teach [Harry Potter] to waltz, he's too
mortified to blink.
fussbudget a person who fusses over trifles
curmudgeon an ill-tempered person (typically old), full of
resentment and stubborn notions
Wes was, as he put it, "an antisocial curmudgeon
born in the wrong century," who had little use for modern society.
Dean Koontz, Watchers
We
end our Disagreeable Sorts theme with the Scotsmans name for folks from that
insignificant and unpleasant country to the south. <Wordcrafter has tongue
squarely in his cheek.>
Sassenach Scottish & Irish; derogatory: an English
person (adj. English
[Scottish
Gaelic Sasunnoch, Irish Sasanach, from Latin for 'Saxons']
It's amusing to discover that the Sassenach
tendency to resent being ordered about by dynamic, talented and intelligent
individuals from north of the border is nothing new.
Independent (
What's our theme?
This
week, you're challenged to figure out what our theme is. I'll do my best to
keep it suitably camouflaged.
(Suggestion:
those of you who opt to post speculations here might want to do so in white
type, so that anyone who wants to work on the puzzle alone can do so.)
Let
the game begin!
temulent drunken, intoxicated
The criminalization of uncoerced sexual
intercourse as rape
undermines the gravity of true rapes.
Drew Douglas was
once a student at Harvard University
He was expelled from Harvard and
convicted in a court of law for having failed to understand in his state of
severe inebriation what she might have said in her equally temulent
condition.
Columbia Spectator (a university
newspaper), March 2, 2001
escarpment a long, steep slope at the edge of a plateau or
separating areas of land at different heights
[from
Italian scarpa 'slope', though French]
Though
an escarpment can be a large area (first quote), the second quote is the more
typical usage.
In this group of oases lay the true centre
of
T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom:
A Triumph
At the foot of a towering escarpment,
part of the rock had fallen into a loose tumble, overgrown by moss and lichen,
small saplings jutting drunkenly from cracks in the rock.
Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn
kinesthesia the sense or perception that detects ones bodily
position, weight, or movement
A
similar term is proprioception, which stresses such perceptions from
stimuli arising within the body.
Consider
the task of a coxswain, the steersman who directs the rowers (typically
eight of them) of a racing shell.
sight is secondary; an experienced cox
steers mostly by feeling, by kinesthesia. The hull of a
rowing shell is only one-sixteenth of an inch thick or even thinner; it is a
skin, a membrane through which the coxswain senses the river and its response
to the boat. The water talks to the coxswain through the hull. Through specific
touch points backside on the seat, feet on the hull, hands on the rudder
ropes the steersman feels.
any shift in the set, pitch, or heading
of the boat reaches the cox instantly. The coxswain reflexively balances these
inputs
. Reason is too blunt a tool for steering; you steer an eight by
instinct.
Craig Lambert, Mind Over Water: Lessons
on Life from the Art of Rowing
Etymology: Greek kinein to move + esthesia feeling;
sensation.
The
same roots are in "kinetic energy" (the energy of a body's motion)
and "anesthesia".
By
the way, "anesthesia" ("no-feeling") was coined in 1846 by
Oliver Wendell Holmes, physician-poet (whose son, of the same name, became a
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). It was listed in Bailey's dictionary of
1721, but with a different meaning.
agnate adj.: related on the father's side; noun: a
person so related
Male agnates
are often
entitled to a share of the inheritance, even if there are closer female
relatives, under Sunni law, but they are likely to be excluded from inheritance
under Shiite law.
John L. Esposito, The
mystagogue one who initiates another into a mystery cult
Would
this word serve as a derogatory alternative to "guru"?
This secret
is transmitted from generation
to generation, but good usage prefers that mothers should not teach it to their
children, nor that priests should; initiation into the mystery is the task of
the lowest individuals. A slave, a leper or a beggar serves as mystagogue.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Sect of the
Phoenix (translated; grammatical error corrected), in Labyrinths:
Selected Stories and Other Writings (New Directions paperbook)
internaut one skilled in navigating and using the Internet; a netizen
The Internet knows no international
boundaries. Internauts are logging on from
Carl A. Nelson, Import/Export: How to
Get Started in International Trade
public libraries are one of the few public
meeting places that have continued to work.
Most public libraries
provide
meeting rooms for community organizations
We hear much about virtual
communities on the Internet, and such communities have their uses but they do
not replace physical gatherings.
Internauts eventually realize
the need for more human contact and add real-world organizations to their
virtual communities.
Walt Crawford, Balanced Libraries:
Thoughts on Continuity and Change
It's
time to reveal our theme this week. We've been presenting Camouflaged Animals:
temulent, escarpment, kinesthesia (kine
is an antique plural of cow), agnate, mystagogue, internaut, and today's word, nolens-volens.
nolens volens whether willing or not [Latin "unwilling-willing"]
The nurses
disapproved, she knew (except
the student), of her breastfeeding Stephen. They thought Sloan and her
obstetrician, Dr. Turner, were balmy. But they too were impressed, nolens
volens, by the evidence of the scales. The child was
growing,
Mary McCarthy, The Group
Nolens-volens is Latin for "unwilling-willing". There was a
similar English phrase, will I, nill I, with "nill" being an
antique word meaning "will not; unwilling". And this will I, nill
I became shortened to a single term willy-nilly, with the same
meaning as nolens-volens.
But
take care using willy-nilly this way, for it has gained other meanings
too. Will I, nill I could be taken to mean "I can't make up my
mind," and willy-nilly was erroneously used in that sense too.
(1883: "The willy-nilly disposition of the female in matters of
love") With time it came to be an accepted meaning. Still later, willy-nilly
evolved even further to also mean "without direction or planning;
haphazardly."
Interesting Etymologies
This
week we'll look at the interesting etymologies behind some words.
redingote
● for men:
a long double-breasted topcoat with full skirt. [Wordcrafter note: I believe
this can be for women too.]
● For women: a
full-length coat or dress open down the front to show a dress or underdress
The redingote is a very
feminine body-conscious shape, curvy and close to the body until it flares out
at the short hem.
This
word crossed and re-crossed the
By
the way, redingote also fits last week's Camouflaged Animals
theme:
dingo a wild dog, native to
Today's
word comes from wooden shoes. A sabot is a wooden shoe of the sort you
associate with the Dutch, made from a piece of wood shaped and hollowed out to
fit the foot.
As
you can imagine, walking in sabots makes a good deal of clatter. The French
made sabot into the verb saboter, "to walk noisily,"
which evolved to mean "to botch up a job, as in 'murdering' a piece of
music." Later, French trade unions adopted the word to their tactic of deliberately
botching up a job.
In 1904 and 1905, the chief labor agitators
of France felt the need of a weapon less in the nature of a boomerang than a
strike, and in order to hit employers without hitting workingmen they advised
the latter voluntarily to spoil their work, to turn in work of such inferior
quality that it would be unsaleable. Thus they would get their wages, and the
employer, instead of getting his profit, would get a dead loss. To those acts
was promptly applied the name "sabotage" from the verb
"saboter," which meant "to do a thing quickly and poorly; to
botch a job." Typical instances of "sabotage" would be the act
of a dissatisfied bakery worker putting ground glass in the dough.
New York Times, May 17, 1909 (letter to
editor; ellipses omitted)
The
word was soon extended from 'botching up one's work' to 'botching up'
destroying the employer's machinery or the like. As such, it was picked up in
English press reports of French labor unrest.
sabotage destruction of property to interfere with another's
normal operations; more broadly, deliberate subversion
Today's
words were invented on-the-spot by a nine-year-old boy. Kasner & Newman
explain in their book Mathematics and the Imagination.
The name "googol" was invented by
a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name
for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it.
At the same
time that he suggested 'googol' he gave a name for a still larger number:
'Googolplex'.
It was first suggested that a googolplex should be 1, followed
by writing zeros until you got tired.
but different people get tired at
different times and it would never do
googol the number written as 1 followed by a hundred zeros
googolplex the number written as 1 followed by a googol of zeros
Googol
is also used to mean a very large number or quantity.
Peanuts comic strip from the 1960s, Lucy in
red and Schroeder in blue:
Schroeder, what do you think the odds are that you and I
will get married someday?
Oh, Id say about googol to one.
How much is a googol?
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
**sigh**
[Pianist Arthur] Rubinstein put on something
of a show, making a grand entrance, lifting his hands high at the keyboard,
always conscious of his audience. Rubinstein knew the value of charisma, an
element he possessed in googol quantities. In an interview, he
once said that the younger generation of pianists played better than he did,
but when they come on stage they might as well be soda jerks. Nobody ever
accused Rubinstein of being a soda jerk. He adored playing in public, and his
audiences adored him.
Harold C. Schonberg, The Great
Pianists: From Mozart to the Present
In
1997 the developers of a computer tool called BackRub decided to rename
it. They were thinking of todays word when they choose their new name Google
(Perhaps you've heard of it?), and today their company headquarters is called
the Googleplex.
The
different spelling probably began as a misspelling, but was kept because the
domain name was available only when misspelled as google.com. Another story is
that Googol was intended but an early investor misspelled it on a check he
wrote to them. With check in hand, they feared he might get cold feet if they
asked him to correct it, so they simply changed the company name to match his
check.
demijohn a large bottle with bulging body and
narrow neck (it typically holds 3 - 10 gallons and is encased in wicker, with
one or two handles for carrying)
[From
French damejeanne "Lady Jane," probably because its shape
suggested a stout woman. I suspect "Dame Jeanne" may be the French
equivalent of Jane Doe or John Q. Public. Other languages
(Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic) each have a similar word.]
a demijohn of rough red wine
passed from hand to filthy hand.
Rick Atkinson, The Day of
the man's body was tilted back to balance
the weight of the demijohn he held to his lips and his throat
jerked regularly as he swallowed. The crowd around his feet were chanting:
'Drink it, down, down, down, down.'
Wilbur Smith, When the Lion Feeds
Recall
that in old print-styles the letter s was often stretched tall and thin,
and could easily be confused with an f. That may be part of how today's
word evolved into a familiar, everyday term.
้tui (or etwee; accent on second syllable) a
small case, usually ornamental, for small articles such as needles, toothpicks,
etc.
A
synonym is huswife, related to modern housewife.
"I can't stand it any longer. I've not
had a decent smoke since yesterday noon. Excuse me a moment." And from a
buff leather etui monogrammed in silver, he extracted one of his
Maria Mancinis [cigars] lovely specimen from the top of the box, flattened on
just one side the way he especially liked it
Thomas Mann, The
The
plural etuis, etwees came to be thought of as a singular noun. (Why?
Perhaps because in print the pluralizing s looked much like an f;
in fact it was sometimes printed as an f, as estuife, estwefe.
With s and f confused the plural estuife seems to end much
like the synonym huswife, which is singular.)
In
any event, plural etuis, etwees came to be thought of as a singular
noun, spelled etweese. Then the unstressed first syllable dropped off,
leaving us with tweese or tweeze, which first meant the case
itself, and later the object in that case. The object, the tweeze,
became a tweezer and then, probably because it is double-pronged, a tweezers.
ostrakon Greek for potsherd (related to osteon
bone and ostreion oyster)
By
vote, ancient Athenian citizens could temporarily banish, for ten years, any
citizen whose power or influence was considered dangerous to the state. The
custom was named for the pieces of potsherd (ostrakon) used as ballots,
and that name has come down to us as today's word.
ostracize to exclude from a society or group
Poor Amber. Still so self-conscious
, still
worried that if the girls whom she seeks to impress were aware of her humble
beginnings, they might sneer at her, might ostracize her from the
in crowd.
Jane Green, Swapping Lives
Other
ancient Greek cities had similar practices. In
Book: "Extraordinary Popular Delusions"
Any
book that's still on the bookshelves of popular stores, though published so far
back as 1841, must have something special to recommend it. Such is the book I'm
currently enjoying, Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the
Madness of Crowds. The subject is interesting, the treatment light and
accessible with nice touches of irony.
For
a word-lover, a special treat is the older language. It's similar enough to
today's English to be easy to understand (contrast Shakespeare), yet different
enough to provide interesting terms or usages of familiar words that we
don't
much
see today. This week we'll enjoy some examples. Quotes may be lengthy (forgive
me) to give enough context that you can enjoy Mackays entire tales, as well as
individual words.
"
in
Severe
punishment of the poison-concoctress "did not put a stop to the practice,
and jealous women and avaricious men, anxious to step into the inheritance of
fathers, uncles, or brothers, resorted to poison." In 1719
Tophania
"contrived to elude the vigilance of the authorities for several years,
[but] was at length discovered in a nunnery." When authorities demanded
her, "the abbess, supported by the archbishop of the diocese, constantly
refused
. The patience of the viceroy appears to have been exhausted by these
delays. Being a man of sense, and not a very zealous Catholic, he determined
that even the Church should not shield a criminal so atrocious. Setting the
privileges of the nunnery at defiance, he sent a troop of soldiers, who broke
over the walls and carried her away, vis et armis. The
archbishop
threatened to excommunicate
. All the inferior clergy
took up
the question, and so worked upon the superstitious and bigoted people, that
they were ready to rise in a man to storm the palace of the viceroy and rescue
the prisoner."
vis et armis by force [The usual term seems to be vi
et armis.]
A
rare term. Heres a fascinating example, which perhaps belonged in our recent
"Domineering Women" theme!
Many males [of certain
water-bugs] carried eggs, [and] Miss Slater found that the female, vis et
armis, customarily
lays them on the back of the unwilling male. Sometimes she has to struggle for
hours to accomplish her fell purpose, but she does accomplish it in the end and
her spouse is converted into an animated baby carriage. Says Miss Slater:
"That the male chafes under the burden is unmistakable; in fact my
suspicions as to the sex of the egg-carrier were first aroused by watching one
in an aquarium which was trying to free itself from its load of eggs, an
exhibition of a lack of maternal interest not to be expected in a female
carrying her own eggs. An egg bearer remains quietly clinging to a leaf with
the end of the abdomen just out of the water. If attacked, he meekly received
the blows, seemingly preferring death, which in several cases was the result,
to the indignity of carrying and caring for the eggs".
Leland Ossian Howard, The
Insect Book (1905)
You
can see Mackays subject and style in the start of his preface, 2nd edition. (If you want less reading, look only at the blue parts.)
In reading the history of nations, we find
that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their
seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We
find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go
mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed
with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new
folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from
its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory;
another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses
until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to
be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its
population lost their wits about the Sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in
frenzied multitudes to the
venial (of a fault or offence) slight and pardonable.
[from
Latin venialis "pardonable," related to venus
"sexual love, desire"
pottage a soup or stew (potage (one "t") a
thick soup
[lit.
"that which is put in a pot"]
Notice
also the two uses of "scruple",
the first one not in the modern sense.
In
a brief extract on the man who called himself Count Cagliostro (~1743-1790), we
show a bit of Mackay's wit, meet demons to honor Halloween, display an
antiquated usage, and echo yesterday's "nunnery" thought.
This famous charlatan was the arch-quack of
his age, the last of the great pretenders to the philosopher's stone and the
water of life, and during his brief season of prosperity one of the most
conspicuous characters of
[When a young man] he became acquainted with
the beautiful Lorenza Feliciana, a young lady of noble birth, but without
fortune. Cagliostro soon discovered that she possessed accomplishments that
were invaluable. Besides her ravishing beauty, she had the readiest wit, the
most engaging manners, the most fertile imagination, and the least principle of
any of the maidens of
After their marriage, he instructed his fair
Lorenza in all the secrets of his calling - taught her pretty lips to invoke
angels, and genii, sylphs, salamanders, and undines,
and, when need required, devils and evil spirits. Lorenza was an apt scholar:
and thus accomplished the hopeful pair set out on their travels, to levy
contributions on the superstitious and the credulous. [During their adventures]
the Countess, as usual, exercised all her ingenuity to support her husband's
credit. She was a great favourite with her own sex; to many a delighted and
wondering auditory of whom she detailed the marvellous powers of
Cagliostro. She said he could render himself invisible, traverse the world with
the rapidity of thought, and be in several places at the same time.
[But eventually the end came.] Cagliostro and
the Countess were arrested in 1789, and condemned to death. The charges against
him were, that he was a freemason, a heretic, and a sorcerer. This
unjustifiable sentence was afterwards commuted into one of perpetual
imprisonment. His wife was allowed to escape severer punishment by immuring
herself in a nunnery. Cagliostro did not long survive.
● sylph 1. an imaginary spirit of the air
(later: 2. a slender woman of light, graceful movement:
"Gwyneth Paltrow, in reality a sylph from
● undine a female water spirit
[each
was coined 1658 by the alchemist Paracelsus, from Latin. "Sylph is
perhaps from sylvestris of the woods + nympha nymph; "undine"
is from unda 'a wave' (as in undulate).]
● auditory (noun) archaic: an
audience
● immure to entomb in a wall, or to similarly
confine or imprison [from Latin murus wall]
For
Halloween, here's a history of haunted-house hysteria. It occurred in
Enjoy!
This is long by net-standards, but it's just a couple of book-pages of printed
text.
On the 5th of December, the inmates of the farm-house
were alarmed by observing a great number of sticks, pebble-stones, and clods of
earth flying about their yard and premises. The shower of stones continuing for
five days in succession, they came at last to the conclusion that the devil and
his imps were alone the cause of it. The rumour soon spread over all that part
of the country, and hundreds came from far and near to witness the antics of
the devils of Baldarroch.
After the fifth day, the shower of clods and
stones ceased on the outside of the premises, and the scene shifted to the
interior.
Spoons,
knives, plates, mustard-pots, rolling-pins, and flat-irons appeared suddenly endued
with the power of self-motion, and were whirled from room to room, and rattled
down the chimneys. The lid of a mustard-pot was put into a cupboard in the presence
of scores of people, and in a few minutes afterwards came bouncing down the
chimney to the consternation of every body. There was also a tremendous
knocking at the doors and on the roof, and pieces of stick and pebble-stones
rattled against the windows and broke them.
The whole neighbourhood was a scene of alarm;
and not only the vulgar, but persons of education, respectable farmers, within
a circle of twenty miles, expressed their belief in the supernatural character
of these events, and offered up devout prayers. The note of fear being once
sounded, the visitors, as is generally the case in all tales of wonder, strove
with each other who should witness the most extraordinary occurrences; and within a week, it was
generally believed in all the circumjacent districts that the
devil had been seen in the act of hammering upon the house-top of Baldarroch. One old man asserted
positively the strange gambols of the knives and
mustard-pots. It was also affirmed and believed, that a gentleman, slow
of faith, had been cured of his incredulity by meeting the butter-churn jumping
in at the door as he himself was going out -- that the roofs of houses had been
torn off, and that several ricks
in the corn-yard had danced a quadrille together,
to the sound of the devil's bagpipes re-echoing from the mountain-tops.
The women in the family of the persecuted
farmer also kept their tongues in perpetual motion; swelling with their strange
stories the tide of popular wonder. The good wife herself said that, whenever
they went to bed, they were attacked with stones and other missiles, some of
which came below the blankets and gently tapped their toes. One evening, a shoe
suddenly darted across a garret where some labourers were sitting, and one of
the men, who attempted to catch it, swore positively that it was so hot and
heavy he was unable to hold it. It was also said that the bearbeater (a sort of
mortar used to bruise barley in) -- an object of such weight that it requires
several men to move it -- spontaneously left the barn and flew over the
house-top, alighting at the feet of one of the servant maids, and hitting her,
but without hurting her in the least, or even causing her any alarm; it being a
fact well known to her, that all objects thus thrown about by the devil lost
their specific gravity, and could harm nobody, even though they fell upon a
person's head.
Rumour continued to travel through all the
[Any skeptics] gained but few believers, as
so many persons had, in the most open manner, expressed their belief in the
supernatural agency, that they
did not like to stultify themselves by confessing that they had been deceived.
At last, after a fortnight's continuance of
the noises, the whole trick was discovered. Two servant lasses were alone at
the bottom of the whole affair, and the extraordinary alarm and credulity of
their master and mistress, and of the neighbours and country people afterwards,
made their task comparatively easy. Being themselves unsuspected, they swelled
the alarm by the wonderful stories they invented. They were no sooner secured
in the county gaol than the noises ceased.
endue; indue to endow with a quality or ability
[partly
from Latin inducere lead in, reinforced by Latin induere put
on clothes]
circumjacent lying around; surrounding
gambol to dance and skip about in play; to frolic [a previous
word-of-the-day, here]
rick a stack of hay, corn, or straw [among other meanings]
evolution a pattern of movements [among other meanings, of
course. from Latin unrolling]
stultify 1. to cause to appear foolish or absurd 2.
to render useless or ineffectual; cripple
More
Halloween: demons. Mackay relates the strange tale that an old Jesuit told of
the alchemist Agrippa. I particularly like the image of demons playing
leapfrog!
One day, Agrippa left his house and,
intending to be absent for some time, gave the key of his study to his wife,
with strict orders that no one should enter it during his absence. The lady
herself, strange as it may appear, had no curiosity to pry into her husband's
secrets, and never once thought of entering the forbidden room: but a young
student in the philosopher's house burned with a fierce desire to examine the
study; hoping, perchance, that he might purloin some book which
would instruct him. The youth, being handsome, eloquent, and, above all, highly
complimentary to the charms of the lady, she was persuaded, without much
difficulty, to lend him the key, but gave him strict orders not to remove
anything.
The student promised implicit obedience, and
entered Agrippa's study. The first object that caught his attention, was a
large grimoire, or book of spells, which lay open on the
philosopher's desk. He sat himself down immediately, and began to read.
At the first word he uttered, he fancied he
heard a knock at the door. He listened; but all was silent. Thinking that his
imagination had deceived him, he read on, when immediately a louder knock was
heard, which so terrified him, that he started to his feet. He tried to say,
"come in;" but his tongue refused its office, and he could not
articulate a sound. He fixed his eyes upon the door, which, slowly opening,
disclosed a stranger of majestic form, but scowling features, who demanded
sternly, why he was summoned? "I did not summon you," said the
trembling student. "You did!" said the stranger, advancing, angrily;
"and the demons are not to be invoked in vain." The student could
make no reply; and the demon, enraged that one of the uninitiated should have
summoned him out of mere presumption, seized him by the throat and strangled
him.
When Agrippa returned, a few days
afterwards, he found his house beset with devils. Some of them were sitting on
the chimneypots, kicking up their legs in the air; while others were playing at
leapfrog, on the very edge of the parapet. His study was so filled with them
that he found it difficult to make his way to his desk. When, at last, he had
elbowed his way through them, he found his book open, and the student lying
dead upon the floor. He saw immediately how the mischief had been done; and,
dismissing all the inferior imps, asked the principal demon how he could have
been so rash as to kill the young man. The demon replied, that he had been
needlessly invoked by an insulting youth, and could do no less than kill him
for his presumption. Agrippa reprimanded him severely, and ordered him
immediately to reanimate the dead body, and walk about with it in the
market-place for the whole of the afternoon.
The demon did so: the student revived; and,
putting his arm through that of his unearthly murderer, walked very lovingly
with him, in sight of all the people. At sunset, the body fell down again, cold
and lifeless as before, and his conductor immediately disappeared. When the
body was examined, marks of strangulation were found on the neck, and prints of
the long claws of the demon on various parts of it. These appearances opened
people's eyes to the truth; and the result was, that Agrippa was obliged to
quit the town.
purloin to steal
grimoire a magician's manual for invoking demons, etc.
[French;
alteration of of the word for grammar. It may be that Mackay's definition is
inaccurate, that a grimoire is not just any spellbook, but a spellbook
for invoking demons.]
Mackay
is particularly scornful of fortune telling.
An undue opinion of our own importance is at
the bottom of all our unwarrantable notions in this respect. How flattering to
the pride of man to think that the stars in their courses watch over him, and typify,
by their movements and aspects, the joys or the sorrows that await him! He,
less in proportion to the universe than the all but invisible insects that feed
in myriads on a summer's leaf, are to this great globe itself, fondly imagines
that eternal worlds were chiefly created to prognosticate his
fate. How we should pity the arrogance of the worm that crawls at our feet, if
we knew that it also desired to know the secrets of futurity, and imagined that
meteors shot athwart the sky to warn it that a tom-tit was hovering near to
gobble it up! Not a whit less presuming has man shown himself.
Later,
he tells one particular tale of prophecy, and deftly skewers it.
The
story has been often triumphantly cited
by succeeding astrologers as an irrefragable proof of the truth
of their science.
The only thing that detracts from the interest of this
remarkable story is the fact, that the prophecy was made after the event.
prognosticate to foretell, prophesy
irrefragable indisputable; impossible to refute or controvert
[You'd
think there'd be a word refragable, wouldn't you? A few dictionaries
have it, but it's never been seen in actual use.]
There
are dozens of special names for various types of divination. Mackay discusses augery:
(from the flight or entrails of birds), and necromancy: (from summoning
the spirits of the dead) for a bit, and lists 52 more:
|
Stareomancy, or divining by the
elements. Aeromancy, or divining by the
air. Pyromancy, by fire. Hydromancy, by water. Geomancy, by earth. Theomancy, pretending to
divine by the revelation of the Spirit, and by the Scriptures, or word of
God. Demonomancy, by the aid of
devils and evil spirits. Idolomancy, by idols, images,
and figures. Psychomancy, by the soul,
affections, or dispositions of men. Antinopomancy, by the entrails of
human beings. Theriomancy, by beasts. Ornithomancy, by birds. Icthyomancy, by fishes. Botanomancy, by herbs. Lithomancy, by stones. Kleromancy, by lots. Oneiromancy, by dreams. Onomancy, by names. Arithmancy, by numbers. Logarithmancy, by logarithms. Sternomancy, by the marks from
the breast to the belly. Gastromancy, by the sound of,
or marks upon, the belly. Omphelomancy, by the navel. Chiromancy, by the hands. Podomancy, by the feet |
Onchyomancy, by the nails. Cephaleonomancy, by asses' heads. Tephromancy, by ashes. Kapnomancy, by smoke. Livanomancy, by the burning of
incense. Keromancy, by the melting of
wax. Lecanomancy, by basins of
water. Katoxtromancy, by
looking-glasses. Chartomancy, by writing in
papers, and by Valentines. Macharomancy, by knives and
swords. Crystallomancy, by crystals. Dactylomancy, by rings. Koseinomancy, by sieves. Axinomancy, by saws. Kaltabomancy, by vessels of
brass, or other metal. Spatalamancy, by skins, bones,
&c. Roadomancy, by stars. Sciomancy, by shadows. Astragalomancy, by dice. Oinomancy, by the lees of
wine. Sycomancy, by figs. Tyromancy, by cheese. Alphitomancy, by meal, flour, or
bran. Krithomancy, by corn or grain. Alectromancy, by cocks. Gyromancy, by circles. Lampadomancy, by candles and
lamps. |