June 2008 Archives
2008 Scrips Spelling Bee: tralatitious; guerdon; diener; piacular; torii; senectitude; tonneau
Knitting Lingo: knit
(purl); Stockinette or Stocking Stitch (Garter
Stitch, Ribbing); tinking (frogging); felting
(spit-splice); stash (stash
enhancement, stash diving, souvenir stash); UFO (BUFO,
FO, WIP, SIP, KIP, KAL,
Newspapers give less-obscure words: doughty
(herpetologist); pandit;
neuron (synapse); to kneecap;
Manichean; erstwhile (haphephobia); miscreant
Words better known as negatives: exorable;
evitable; vincible;
regardful; corrigible (ruly);
maculate (immaculate); gainly
(gain, ungainly)
2008 Scrips Spelling Bee
As
is our annual custom, we take this week’s words from the current Scrips
spelling bee, whose 2008 contest has just been completed. We’ll select words
which, though be extremely obscure, are interesting.
A
very useful word today. Would that it were known. The dictionary definition
might seem positive, but the usages seem to show that it’s meant in a negative
sense.
tralatitious – passed along from generation to generation
[Wordcrafter note: but not in the sense of an heirloom (complimentary) but
rather in the negative sense of “dubious received wisdom; fossilized
doctrine”.]
Among biblical critics a tralatitious
interpretation is one received by expositor from expositor.
– W. Withington
… works like these are not simply unthinking
assemblages of tralatitious data …
– Simon Swain et al., Severan Culture
It is high time that we free ourselves from
this tralatitious error. Let us, without any preconceived
notions, consider …
– John T. Ramsey et al., The Comet of 44
B.C.
This
year’s winning word:
guerdon – a reward or recompense
Scarlett
and Ashley, in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind:
She wrapped the bright lengths about his
slender waist, above his belt, and tied the ends in a lover’s knot. Melanie might
have given him his new coat but this sash was her gift, her own secret guerdon
for him to wear into battle, something that would make him remember her every
time he looked at it.
diener – an assistant in a morgue, pathology lab, or other death-oriented
facility
(A
responsible position but not the boss. Creepy overtones. Think of
Frankenstein’s Igor?)
[German
Leichendiener, literally “corpse servant”.]
So
few dictionaries have this word – it’s not even in OED – that I provide a
definition of my own writing, based on usages. For example:
“I'm qualified as a diener.
I did that at night during nursing school.”
“You worked your way through LPN school as a
morgue attendant?”
“Yes, removing bodies from crime scenes and
assisting at autopsies.”
– Thomas Harris, Hannibal. (“
– Beverly Connor, Dead Secret
[Dr.] Marty Roberts entered the basement
pathology lab. His diener, Raza Rashad, a handsome,
dark-eyed man of twenty-seven, was scrubbing the stainless steel tables for the
next post. If truth be told, Raza really ran the path lab. Marty … [had] come
to rely on Raza, who was highly intelligent and ambitious.
– Michael Crichton, Next
piacular – making expiation or atonement (also, rarely:
calling for expiation; sinful, wicked, culpable)
[in
–
We’ve all seen this
kind of Japanese-style gateway. But what do you call it? A torii. (When
I saw the word I thought it was simply the plural of torus – a donut
shape [further meanings in other fields]. I was mistaken: that plural is tori,
with only one “i" at the end.)
torii – a Japanese gateway of light construction,
often put at the entrance to a Shinto shrine; two posts and two crosspieces.
[from Japanese for “bird’s nest”]
Our
quote emphasizes the friendly, welcoming informality of a torii.
I rushed to … where the Gion Shrine stood. I
climbed the steps, but I felt too intimidated to walk beneath the great
two-story entrance gate with its gabled roof, and walked around it instead.
Across the gravel courtyard and up another flight of steps, I passed through
the torii gate to the shrine itself. There I threw the coins into
the offertory …
– Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
senectitude – old age; elderliness
During the first third of the twentieth century,
a few scholars and popular writers challenged the assumption that older people
were doomed to become “geezers”. In [1922] psychologist G. Stanley Hall
hypothesized that "intelligent and well-conserved senectitude
has very important social and anthropological functions in the world."
– W. Andrew Achenbaum, Older Americans,
Vital Communities: A Bold Vision for Societal Aging
tonneau:
–
the rear seating compartment, in a car with separate front/rear compartments (e.g.,
a
–
the open area behind the front rear seats, in an open-top car (e.g., a
two-seater sports car) or a pick-up truck
Here’s
a memorable scene in a tonneau. I vaguely recall such a scene in some movie
(James Bond?) Can anyone recall it?
It was very hot in the car. The windows were all shut and
the glass partition behind the driver's seat was shut all the way across. The
smoke of Hugo [Candless]'s cigar was heavy and choking in the tonneau
of the limousine.
Candless scowled and reached out to lower a window. The
window lever didn't work. He tried the other side. That didn't work either. He
began to get mad. He grabbed for the little telephone dingus to bawl his driver
out. There wasn't any little telephone dingus. He bent forward and banged on
the glass with his fist. The driver didn't turn his head. Hugo Candless grabbed
viciously for the door handle. The doors didn't have any handles-either side. A
sick, incredulous grin broke over Hugo's broad moon face.
The
driver bent over to the right and reached for something with his gloved hand.
There was a sudden sharp hissing noise. Hugo Candless began to smell the odor
of almonds.
–
Knitting Lingo
Today is World-Wide Knit in Public Day. To celebrate, one of our readers, a dear
friend and an avid knitter, has gathered up a skein of knitting terms into a
theme for us. I’m editing somewhat, but will let her voice ring through.
Over to
you, CW!
There are
a lot of interesting terms in knitting, as in any hobby. I’ll do my best to
define some of the terms we use in my groups. Some are common, official
vocabulary, and some are the adopted vernacular of rabid knitters of the 21st
Century.
First,
I’ll define the basic knitting stitches, Knit and Purl.
The knit stitch is often the first stitch knitters
learn. It is what I always consider the “front-wards” stitch. The needle goes
into the front of the next loop, and it forms a stitch
where the “nub” of the former loop ends up on the back of the knitted work. A purl is the opposite of the knit stitch. It is
what I consider the “backwards” stitch. For a purl, you put your needle into
the loop from the back, and the “nub” is left on the front.
An
interesting note: if you turn the work over after knitting a row, it looks like
purl stitches from behind. And the corollary is true; if you turn over a purled
row it looks like knitting from the back.
The word knit is related to knot; purl comes from an old word meaning “twisting”.
(True, a purl produces a nub,
facing you, which looks a bit like a pearl. But that’s coincidence, not the root of the
word.)
For a very
nice set of video clips demonstrating the stitches, check out knit and purl.
Knitting
and purling can be mixed up with one another in a nearly endless variety of
ways to create varying patterns in the fabric. Today, I’ll share some of the
most commonly seen patterns of knitting and purling stitches.
Stockinette or Stocking Stitch is a pattern that is very smooth and even.
All of the “nubs” are on one side of the fabric (generally used as the back).
When knitting back and forth on straight needles, you need to knit one row,
turn the work, and purl the next row to achieve this pattern.
Garter Stitch is
a rougher fabric, with ridges on both sides. It is the same texture on both
sides of the fabric, and is created, when knitting back and forth on straight
needles, by knitting every row, regardless of direction. Because it only
requires knowledge of one stitch, it is often the first stitch pattern
beginners use.
Ribbed for
your Pleasure? Ribbing is often taught very early in a knitter’s
education. Ribbing is formed by alternating knit and purl stitches in a steady
pattern, maybe 1x1 or 2x2 or sometimes 3x1 (3 knit, 1 purl), repeated across
the garment. Stockinette curls easily, and ribbing on the edges will allow the
fabric to lie flat. It’s also a springier fabric, and works well for the cuffs
of socks or sleeves, and necklines and hemlines.
<CW
still speaking>
I’ve
talked about all of the positives of knitting, but today I will talk about the down-side.
What do you do when you make a mistake? Ack! You’ve just spent 8 hours knitting
up a sweater for your Sweetie, and you see that you’ve made a mistake in the
pattern, say, 20 long rows previous to your awakening. Horrors! You need to
either decide that it is a design feature, or you need to go back and fix the
problem. Today’s terms deal with this “going back” process.
Tink – Tinking is when you un-knit. It is when you go,
stitch by stitch, backward through your fabric, carefully taking each stitch
back. It is time-consuming, but if you fear that you’ll lose control of your
pattern otherwise, or if you only need to go back part of a row or just a few
rows, it is worth it for the control you have.
Frog – Frogging is when you have made a very big mistake
(like, for instance, knitting a sweater that turns out to look like it was
designed for some mutantly-shaped alien) and you need to rip out most or all of
the garment. This term comes from having to say “Rip it! Rip it!”
This term has
also spawned (pun intended) variant phrases such as “frog-free zone” for
people who hate to rip things out, and “go to the frog pond” for when
you must intervene in a friend’s knitting. When you need to frog, it’s best to
have a friend with you to wind the yarn back into a usable ball so that you
don’t end up with a mass of knots.
“When
yarn sticks together”
felting – Have you ever washed an all-wool
sweater in the machine by mistake? You go to the washing machine or dryer to
discover that your 2X sized sweater is now better suited for a toddler. That is
what felting is. You knit the fabric, sometimes into the basic shape that you
desire, and then you wash it until it shrinks and loses it’s stitch definition.
Sometimes you want yarn to be loopy, with the strands to smoothly pass one
another, stretching or relaxing to keep the wearer snug. Sometimes, however,
you want the yarn to stick together, creating a solid fabric that will keep out
the wind, or will keep the small bits with-in the bag from falling out.
Felting is
a great process for re-using unwanted sweaters, too. You can felt (a.k.a. ruin)
the sweater, then cut up the new, thicker fabric and sew it into something new,
like a hand bag or a hat.
spit-splice – usually, a knitter needs several
balls of yarn to complete a project. When one ball ends and another must be
added, we often will use a splice to join the ends of the yarn, eliminating the
need for either knots (NEVER!) or having to weave in the ends of both strands
later (boring!). This works best with 100% natural fiber, preferably wool.
After fraying both ends, the crafter will put both ends into her palm, facing
one another, spit into her palm, and then rub the ends together until they are
conjoined or felted. If you’re really good, you can achieve this and knit on,
making the fabric look as if it’s all one enormously long strand instead of
several distinct balls of wool.
The yarn
in a knitter’s life tends to accumulate. We love the feel of the fibers, and we
have a tendency to buy more than we will actually knit.
stash – this is what we call our extra
yarn. My stash is kept mostly in neat plastic bins with snap-on lids. Some
folks keep their stash in bags, in the closet, in dresser drawers or other
obvious storage places. Some, however, are completely out of control in their
consumption, and will end up hiding yarn in every spare bit of space, including
cooking pots and inside hats.
There are
many related phrases, including:
stash
enhancement – shopping and buying more yarn
stash
diving – finding yarn in your stash for the new project instead of purchasing
new yarn
souvenir
stash – yarn you bought on vacation that reminds you of the place, but which
you can’t knit because, well, it reminds you of your vacation
Knitting rock-star
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, a/k/a the Yarn Harlot, talks a lot about stash yarn and
what to do about having such a big stash. One of my favorite books by her is Yarn
Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter.
P.S. by
Wordcrafter: The above was CW, but I'm
interjecting a comment. According to her link, "More than 50 million
people in
Commonly
used acronyms:
Knitting,
like nearly everything else, has become a very web-friendly art. There is a
large, worldwide online knitting community, and, like other online communities,
we’ve got our own alphabet soup of acronyms. Sometimes we will pronounce these
as if they are words, and sometimes we will say the letters. Today, I give you
a smattering of knitterly snippets.
UFO – unfinished object – those
projects that are languishing while you work on other projects (similar to BUFO – boring UFO)
FO – finished object – we celebrate
these with great glee! Some of us who are short-attention-span knitters will
have many UFOs on the needles at one time, and then suddenly, in a spurt of
“finishitis” will achieve several FO’s in one weekend.
WIP – Work In Progress
SIP – Sock In Progress
KIP – Knit In Public – National KIP day
is June 14, 2008 – this is used like its own word, as in, “Anyone want to KIP
with me tonight?”
KAL – Knit ALong – this is when a group
of knitters will all choose the same pattern to knit simultaneously and share their
progress and challenges with one another along the way, often on a dedicated
website for the purpose
We'll
finish the knitting theme with terms for starting and finishing a knitting
project.
cast-on – this word can be a verb or a
noun. Casting on is when you put all the original loops onto the needle at the
beginning of your project. Your cast-on is that beginning row of loops. There
are many ways to cast-on the yarn, including “long-tail”, “cable”, “single” and
“knitting” styles.
cast-off (also known as bind-off) – this is how you get the
loops off the needles at the end. Sometimes it means that your project is done,
but often you will still need to do other “finishing”, perhaps even including
picking up stitches, knitting or crocheting a border or edging, or sewing
different pieces together for the final product. There are myriad ways to
cast-off, including “knit”, “purl”, “suspended”, “crochet”, “three-needle” and
lots of variations to achieve different effects (mainly stretchy or not).
Newspapers give less-obscure words
“I need
words that are less obscure,” says a reader.
We are
customer-responsive! So this week we’ll enjoy words taken from the current newspapers,
words which, though they may stretch us a bit, wouldn’t sound odd-ball to an
ordinary audience.
doughty – brave and resolute, stouthearted
[Some say
it’s only used to be archaic or humorous. I disagree.]
We quote
an article musing on two classics from the 1890s, Kipling’s Jungle Book and Second
Jungle Book.
The best-known story in "The Jungle Book" is
"Rikki-tikki-tavi," … about the doughty
mongoose who does battle with Nag the cobra. … Kipling not only conveys a vivid
sense of danger and wickedness but also describes the appearance and defensive
behavior of Naja naja, the Indian cobra, with as precise an eye as any herpetologist.
– Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2008 (today)
The author
illustrates by quoting Kipling:
From the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a
low hiss -- a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet.
Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the
big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had
lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro
exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki
with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the
snake may be thinking of.
Bonus
word:
herpetologist – a zoologist who deals with
reptiles and amphibians
pandit – a wise or learned man in
[An
alternative from has become more familiar to us: pundit. from Sanskrit for “learned,
scholar”.]
Although Kipling routinely (in every sense) invoked the
Christian God in his patriotic verse, he himself was an atheist. This
passionate champion of the
– Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2008 (This is the article
we quoted yesterday.)
neuron – a nerve cell
synapse – the gap between two neurons,
across which impulses are transmitted
[From
Greek sun- together + hapsis joining]
Evolution's recipe for making a brain more complex has
long seemed simple enough. Just increase the number of nerve cells, or neurons. [T]he
interconnections between neurons, known as synapses, until now have been regarded as a standard
feature.
But in fact the synapses get
considerably more complex going up the evolutionary scale. If the synapses are
thought of as the chips in a computer, then brainpower is shaped by the
sophistication of each chip, as well as by their numbers. The computing
capabilities of the human brain may lie not so much in its neuronal network as in the complex calculations that
its synapses perform.
– New York Times, June 10, 2008 (ellipses omitted)
– UPI, June 2, 2008 (ellipses omitted)
to kneecap – to hobble or cripple by one’s deliberate
action
[Originally,
referred to Irish terrorists’ tactic of crippling by shooting or smashing the
knee. The dictionaries have only that definition, but I suggest that the
figurative usage I give is now far more common.]
Yesterday, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was sending up
similar distress signals. … [G]oofy ideas like Ottawa Liberal Leader Stephane
Dion's carbon tax tied to income tax cuts would be a loss/loss deal for
–
Manichean – viewing the world as a stark
conflict between good and evil, “black vs. white”, with no shades of gray
[Not the
standard definition, but I believe it’s the accurate one.]
The ideology that motivates al Qaeda is that believers
have a duty to carry out the excommunication (and execution) of unbelievers, or
even of those who collaborate with unbelievers, or refuse to resist them. This
ideology posits a Manichean world, divided into two camps: one
practicing the terrorists' version of Islam, the other not. This is a fantasy,
but a distressingly powerful one. Our vision is a pluralistic world with many
peaceful and productive choices on how to order one's life
– Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2008 (today); ellipses
omitted
erstwhile – former; at a previous time
Robert Mugabe’s erstwhile diplomatic allies are deserting him in
droves, yet the Zimbabwean president shows no sign of heeding their advice to
abandon Friday’s presidential run-off election in which he will be unopposed.
– Financial Times, June 25, 2008 (today)
This is a more
common word than I’d thought, so I’ll supplement it with a more obscure one,
also from today’s paper.
haphephobia
– fear of being
touched
miscreant – behaving badly or unlawfully (noun: one who behaves that way)
[originally
meant “a heretic”. Thus mis wrong + creant believed (akin to credence and credit).]
When people don't R.S.V.P. by a reasonable date, the host
should call the miscreant guests and ask them if they plan to attend.
– Chicago Tribune, June 27, 2007 (today)
Words better known as negatives
Quite a
few terms are much more familiar in their negative form (unprecedented; un-heard of) than in their positive
form (precedented; heard of).
We’ll look at some of them this week.
A bit from
Comedy Central of last March (ellipses omitted) inspires our theme (you can see video or transcript).
Remember how [
In short, this election could come
down to a lawsuit involving
Let’s look
at our terms. For example, we all know inexorable (impossible to prevent, or
impossible to persuade) and inevitable (certain to happen; unavoidable), but not
their positive forms:
exorable – capable of being moved by
entreaty
evitable – avoidable
[2000 article:] [T]hroughout last year, George W. Bush's nomination
had the aura of inevitability. Now that Senator John McCain crushed Bush in the
Republican primary in New Hampshire, [a] coronation at the G.O.P. Philadelphia
convention has become both evitable and exorable.
–
Sidenote: The above quote is of course
wordplaying. Now evitable is sometimes used “straight”, without
wordplay,¹ but not so with exorable, as far as i can find in recent use. When exorable appears, it is usually a mistake, where the
author has substituted exorable for inexorable,
or for execrable – extremely bad or unpleasant.
¹ The industrialization -- and dehumanization -- of
American animal farming is a relatively new, evitable and local phenomenon: no other country
raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as
we do. – New York Times, Nov. 10, 2002
We're
familiar with the word invincible.
vincible – capable of being overcome or
defeated
[from the
same root as Julius Caesar’s veni,
vidi, vici: “I came, I saw,
I conquered."]
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't
want to know.
– Aldous Huxley
Nice
quote.
We aren’t
limited to words that use the in- prefix to form the negative. For example, regardless has a positive counterpart.
regardful – mindful of; heedful (word has a
sense of respect and deference)
We must be especially regardful of local problems, local traditions and
local pride.
– John W. Tuthill, former
incorrigible – not reformable (with the sense of
depraved; delinquent; unmanageable; unruly¹)
corrigible – capable of being corrected, reformed,
or improved
[from the
same root as correct]
The current juvenile justice system is woefully
ineffective. It fails to treat youthful offenders as if they are corrigible, educable or redeemable. And … the present
system does more harm than good
–
¹ By the way, unruly also fits our theme: ruly, the positive form, is a
perfectly legitimate word, though a rare one. Oddly, AHD and OED conflict on
that word. AHD says that ruly was simply created from unruly, but OED says the opposite,
and dates ruly back to 1400.
maculate – stained; impure (less
commonly, spotted or blotched)
[from
Latin macula, spot. The negative form is immaculate – 1. perfectly clean, neat, or tidy 2.
free from flaw or mistake 3. pure; unstained; without sin]
… a decidedly maculate Congress …
–
Miami enjoys an image as a city with a short memory and
therefore as a great place to reinvent oneself … Miami has welcomed him [O. J.
Simpson] with the open arms usually reserved for murderous dictators and drug
profiteers who retire here to launder money and, more important, their maculate reputations.
–
gain is an obsolete word meaning
“straight; direct”, as in roads. It survives in the negative term ungainly – clumsy; awkward.¹ Once in a while you’ll
find the positive form. Interestingly, gainly is mostly used in an assertion that
something is not gainly. But not always (last quote).
gainly – graceful, tactful (of conduct); or: graceful, shapely (of bodily form or
movement)
She is six months pregnant and not as gainly as usual. (Telegraph, Nov. 16, 2002)
… the
[pheasants, bred to be hunted:] As fat as turkeys and
little more gainly, they
make intermittent attempts to get aloft … but many of them waddle obliviously
under someone’s tyres.
– Guardian Unlimited, Dec. 28, 2007
... the simple house is newly clad in gray shingles and
offers a more gainly profile to the street.
–
¹As in the first lines of The Dachshund, by Edward Anthony:
Because I waddle when I walk,
Should this give rise to silly talk
That I’m ungainly?
What’s ungainly?
I’m really rather graceful - mainly.)