Impignoration - Random Word Find

As long as you have a mobile device with an Internet connection handy, you're never without a dictionary. Can't remember if you should use callous or callow in the sentence you're jotting while on the go? Just look it up! This is wonderful technology. But, to impersonate an old fart Luddite for a moment, we're losing something valuable in the exchange of paging through a paper dictionary for looking up words online. We lose the possibility of stumbling across interesting words along the path to finding the word we went searching for.

If you're not sure of the spelling of a word you're typing into Dictionary.com, you simply get a "no results found" message. If you're unsure of the spelling while paging through a hardback dictionary, you're bound to get pleasantly distracted along the way by intriguing or exotic words that call out like so many carnival barkers, enticing you to step off your path for a moment to see something strange and new.

Impignoration got me tonight as I leafed through the OED en route to check the meaning of impolitic. The word beckoned from the top left corner of the page on which my destination lay, it's all-caps, bold font virtually jumping off the page to grab the attention of the random passer-by. Of course I had to stop to look. Impignoration is "the action or fact of impignorating," a verb which means "to place in pawn; to pledge, pawn, or mortgage." It's a "chiefly Scottish" term, the dictionary notes.

Ok, so maybe this isn't a term I'm going to add to my routine usage anytime soon, even with the ongoing mortgage crisis still coming up occasionally as a topic of conversation. But it was fun to take a brief side trip along the way to the definition I needed and discover an interesting new term. I could indeed have found impignoration in Dictionary.com. But only if I'd purposefully gone looking for it.

Decrepit - Creaking Along

I like Reggie from Chesterfield, Va., a 6-foot-5-inch, Lincoln Town Car-driving gent who called in this past weekend on Car Talk, the automotive-themed radio program on NPR. It wasn't Reggie's jovial voice punctuated by a slight Southern twang or that he's gotten a highly commendable 432,000 miles out of his 1995 Town Car. No, it was his use of decrepit.

Reggie called the show to mull aloud whether to take advantage of the "Cash for Clunkers" program or keep the car and its lifetime warranty on a complete engine replacement, labor charges included. One disadvantage to ditching the car would be finding a comparably roomy vehicle for his expansive frame. As he put it, his commute to work covers 65 miles each way and "within an hour I have to be able to stretch my left leg out because I'm old and decrepit and it cramps up really bad."

Reggie could have called his body worn-out, run-down or beat-up; he could have described himself as rickety or infirm, done-in or burned-out. But decrepit is a mighty fine term. Its Latin root crepāre means "to crack, creak, or rattle," according to the OED. Decrepit describes the state of being worn out or infirm because of age, long use, or neglect.

The term's noun form is quite a hoot, too: decrepitude. It sounds like being worn out but with conviction. It conveys more than a little creaky or shaky; it sounds like a roof ready to collapse in on itself if just one more splat of bird poop lands on it.

Maybe decrepit would be a more applicable descriptive for a car with more than 400,000 miles on its odometer. But Reggie clearly was attached to the old vehicle, praising the smooth ride it delivered compared to a more contemporary Navigator. When connected to age or long use, decrepit can sometimes convey a sense of endearment.

The Velveteen Rabbit eventually became decrepit with age and play in the classic children's book. But as the Skin Horse told him, "Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Rachitis & Pellagra - Scourges of the Past

Through literature, authors bequeath to us not just ideas but also sights, sounds, tastes and smells from the past. And wonderful heirloom words. My pal Claudette has been vicariously experiencing the flavors and milieu of the Great Depression by reading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. She shared this sentence, which sent her to the dictionary more than once:

The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides.

Rachitic -- there's a lulu of a word! I wasn't even sure how to pronounce it let alone define it. Thank goodness it's a word consigned for the most part to historical narratives here in the U.S. because it means "related to or having rickets." Rachitis, a Greek word referring to inflammation of the spine, is the medical term for the condition, which entails softening of the bones due to a vitamin D or calcium deficiency, usually as a result of malnutrition. The disease manifests in weak, bowlegged or misshapen limbs. (Rachitic is pronounced "rah-kit-ick" by the way.)

Pustules of pellagra certainly induces a wince; even if you're not sure what pellagra is, anything involving pus can't be pleasant. Pellagra turns out to be the term for a wasting disease associated with niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency, which is characterized by skin roughening and lesions as well as diarrhea and dementia. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

Diseases associated with malnutrition and carrying archaic sounding monikers like rickets and pellagra seem like historical artifacts in this era and nation of plenty. Yes, there are still people in America who suffer these scourges, some because they're poor, some because they're addicted to drugs or alcohol, some for other reasons. But even among those struggling to make ends meet, such conditions are no longer the norm. In fact, we've traded diseases of dearth for diseases of plenty.

Obesity now looms as America's greatest health threat, sending rates of heart disease and diabetes to alarming levels. Medical professionals no longer refer to "juvenile" and "adult-onset" diabetes. Now it's "type 1" and "type 2" diabetes given that so many teens were developing the adult form, mostly as a result of their weight.

Will future novels that chronicle American society describe obese children laboring to breathe as they cross a schoolyard flanked by unused playground equipment, an abundance of cheap, high-calorie chips, snack cakes, fries, and sugary sodas surrounding them in vending machines, fast-food restaurants and cafeterias? Is it any less a wince-inducing scene?

Gallimaufric - Jumbled With Flair

I've been gobsmacked by a new word. Deep into John McPhee's The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, the author hit me with gallimaufric. My eyeballs tripped over this vocabulary stumbling stone and tumbled into the gutter of white space between the lines. Here's the exact reference:

His ambitions and interests were, as they developed, gallimaufric. He invented, among other things, the combination lock.... He invented the wickless oil lamp. He invented a kitchen range for anthracite. As mayor, and also president of the board of health, he designed and built the Perth Ambroy sewer. In barracks constructed by the English Army in the eighteenth century he established workrooms for the manufacture of his inventions, which also included a fumigator, a forging press, a velocipede, a machine to crack nuts.

You get the idea.

Gallimaufric is the adjectival form of gallimaufry, meaning "a confused jumble or a medley of things," according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. Per various dictionaries, it refers to "a jumble or hodgepodge;" "a hash or ragout;" "mishmash or melange." (Incidentally, hodgepodge is an alteration of a Middle English term hochepot, meaning a stew. All these references to food are making me hungry!)

Unless you're a gourmand or Parisian expatriate, perhaps hodgepodge, medley, or jumble are more straightforward terms than gallimaufry. But what then would be the adjectival form? Hodgepodgy? Medleous? Jumbled would work, but it's kind of prosaic. Gallimaufric: now there's a word with panache! (Once you know what it means, that is.)

Callow & Callous - Bald & Hard

Some words are like red Jelly Belly beans. You pick one out thinking it's a particular flavor, like cherry, but then you realize you just bit into a cinnamon instead. Likewise, it's easy to mistake words that sound similar but have totally different meanings.

Take callow and callous. Callow means "inexperienced, immature;" it's also frequently used to mean "gullible, naive." Callous means "displaying an insensitive, unsympathetic or cruel attitude."

People who believe rumors that current proposals for health care reform include having government officials force end-of-life decisions on people are callow.

People who think it's no big deal that millions of Americans go without any health insurance so long as they have theirs are callous.

Interestingly, these words have distinct roots as well. Callow derives from the Old English term calu meaning "bald," and probably came from the Latin term for bald, calvus. The word originally referred to an unfledged (hence bald) bird and was eventually extended to any immature thing. Callous comes from the Latin callosus and ultimately callum meaning "hard skin." The term shouldn't be confused with callus, the word for a hardened spot of skin, like you might have on the balls of your feet if you have a job that keeps you hopping all day.

Propinquity - A Close Look at a $10 Word

John McPhee employs some interesting terminology in his intriguingly titled book, The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed. Speaking of Olcott, the test pilot tapped to fly, or at least attempt to fly, a prototype airship -- an "aerobody" as its zealous lead backer William Miller dubbed it -- McPhee wrote:

Why Miller hired him to test the 26 was in part the result of propinquity. Olcott's daylight work was at Aeronautical Research Associates of Princeton, Inc., in Princeton Junction, and a couple of rooms above a bank on Nassau Street in Princeton happened to be the home and only offices of Aeron Corporation.

Propinquity is an interesting word choice. You can make reasonably good assumptions about its meaning from the context if it acts as stumbling stone along your reading path. The term simply means "nearness."

According to the OED, the nearness indicated by the term may refer to spatial closeness, temporal closeness, blood relation or kinship, or similarity in nature, belief, or disposition. But all nearness, just the same.

So why propinquity, this $10 word? Why not proximity, an equally multisyllabic term with deep roots in good ol' Latin? Or, to be as direct as possible, why not simply nearness?

Perhaps in the early '70s when McPhee was penning Pumpkin Seed, propinquity was not quite so arcane a term. Perhaps for McPhee it is one of those preferred terms that many a writer cherishes, like a particularly fine tigereye marble, brought out on rare occasions. Or maybe it's just one of many terms that an accomplished wordsmith knows and uses to convey an idea without any particular intent to be fancy.

And convey McPhee certainly does. He is a magician with words, conjuring graphic images out of ink marks on plain paper. Take his description of an auto mechanic's tool:

Fitzpatrick got out a pair of gooseneck pliers that could have removed a tooth from the Statue of Liberty.

Or his description of the mechanic wielding those pliers:

Fitzpatrick was in his forties -- a short man, around five feet eight. His face was weather-lined, handsome, tough, and sad. There was a sense of grandeur in it, and a sense of ironic humor. His hair was dark and graying, and neatly combed. His body looked hard. He had a muscular, projecting chest. His stomach and abdomen were as flat as two pieces of sidewalk. He had the appearance of a small weight lifter, a German-shepherd owner, an old lifeguard. He was smoking the stub of a thin cigar.

The storyteller who writes in vivid pictures like this, who spins out page after compelling page on a topic as mundane as oranges, who can convince readers with zero interest in aerodynamics that perhaps the world gave up too soon on dirigibles, that storyteller is bound to control a vast vocabulary as myriad as the Pantone shades available to a graphic artist.

Propinquity, proximity, contiguity, vicinity, adjacency, nearness, closeness…

Excoriate - A Tough Scrape

Michael Chabon's collection of essays, Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, contains this wonderful vocabulary aside about literary criticism:

"To be excoriated, by the way, literally means 'to have one's skin removed'; it's the heavy-duty version of exfoliated."

Suddenly, pumice stones and gritty facial scrubs sound as soft and gentle as dust bunnies.

This literal meaning is borne out by the term's Latin roots: ex meaning "out of" or "from" plus corium for "skin" or "hide," according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. The OED's definitions for excoriate are, essentially, to strip or peel off, as in a skin or hide; to remove a surface or lining by corrosion or abrasion. In other words, to flay or disintegrate.

My childhood reading included its share of pirate stories -- always good fodder for adventure with a touch of villainy and gore. But it wasn't until I ran my hands over the serrated surface of a barnacle-encrusted piece of wood during a beach trip that I truly appreciated the horrors of keelhauling, the practice of dragging a sailor along the underside of the ship, combining the flaying of flesh with the terror of drowning.

As a metaphor for criticism, excoriation is therefore truly the most severe form. Such is the price of fame, I guess, since any writer or any public figure of a certain level of renown faces the potential of being excoriated by his or her critics.

Perhaps those of us who labor in obscurity have the consolation of facing no more than an occasional mild abrasion. However, the vast open ocean of the Web has brought out the pirates, judging by some of the anonymous comments I see posted on many a blog or online article, even some that are pretty obscure. And some of these comments make keelhauling seem like a mere buffing with a loofah by comparison.

Besmirch - Curses, Soiled Again!

I did it to her again. Finding our cat Ripley curled into a circle of dozing kitty fluffiness on the comforter, I couldn't resist pressing my cheek against her fur while rubbing her fuzzy head. Which she tolerated for about 1 minute before hopping up and stalking to the far corner of the bed where, after casting a baleful glance in my direction, she commenced meticulously washing. Look at that, I said to Mark; her body language almost shrieked, "you have besmirched my lovely coat!"

The prim sound of besmirch aptly fit Ripley's huffy attitude. Sully, however, would have been an equally good choice. Besmirch literally means to soil or discolor as with dirt or soot, as in to drag one's dirty feet or fingers over a surface, leaving behind tracks and smudges of filth. Although the OED is vague on the etymology of besmirch, the word could be a derivation of besmear given that the tome offers besmire as an obsolete form. The ultimate root of besmear is the Old English term smeoru or smeru for ointment or grease. That's definitely smeary stuff!

But the more frequent use of besmirch is metaphorical, as in to dim something's luster, to damage or dishonor someone's reputation. "The candidate's attack ads aimed to besmirch his opponent's stance as a fiscal conservative."

Certainly, my petting in no way tarnished the luster of Ripley's fur or her reputation as a gorgeous feline. Though in her mind, I'd clearly defiled her pelt.

Sully, likewise, means to blemish something's cleanliness or luster, to taint or contaminate. And it also can be used to indicate the marring of the purity of something, such as a reputation. "Her drunken bouts sullied her good name in the community." Sully derives from a French term souiller meaning simply, to soil.

So, there you go: Two fun terms for times when soil or tarnish simply aren't sufficient.

Vertiginous -- Dizzying Word Choice

In a recent review of the new Sasha Baron Cohen film Brüno, critic Ann Hornaday made this laudatory reference to the movie's predecessor: "These are all quintessential Cohen moments, and in Borat they possessed the vertiginous sense of spontaneity, danger and unwitting honesty that made that movie a cross between Jonathan Swift and Andy Kaufman. But in Brüno, the skits don't add up to anything substantive."

Vertiginous? Ok, so I admit, I had to look it up. My brain got sidetracked by the vert- which led me to thoughts of "green" and "fresh." If I'd paid closer attention to the first two syllables I would've realized that vertiginous is the adjectival form of vertigo and means, "whirling, spinning," and "affected with vertigo or capable of causing a state of dizziness."

So, the real question raised by this is not whether Hornaday is spot-on or off-her-nut in her assessment of the virtues of Brüno v. Borat. It's whether a word like vertiginous belongs in a newspaper movie review. Dredging through my vague recollections of my collegiate journalism courses, I recall the adage that newspapers are written at a fifth-grade reading level. Have they ever challenged the contestants on that "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" reality show to define vertiginous? The point being that if readers have to run for a dictionary to get the gist of what you're saying, you've failed to communicate. And, some might say, you've contributed to the melting of the paper's readership.

On the other hand, I'm tickled to see a term like vertiginous show up in a film review, especially one about a movie making equal opportunity fun of elitist sensibilities about high culture and P.C.ism as well as lowbrow prejudices and willful ignorance. But vertiginous is a 10-dollar word, I grant, and dizzying would've been a perfectly fine, more readily accessible word choice. So does a preference for vertiginous reveal me as one of those latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, sushi-eating, New York Times-reading, Hollywood-loving, liberal elites -- what Sarah Palin perhaps would call one of the "un-real" Americans? Maybe (though I drive a Prius). But I'd note that my propensity for 10-dollar words puts me in a camp that includes columnist George F. Will, whose word choice merited notation in his Wikipedia entry -- "[his] columns are known for their erudite vocabulary" -- and National Review founder and Firing Line host William F. Buckley Jr., whose prodigious use of arcane words led to the creation of The Lexicon, an entire book devoted to citations of the unusual words he employed.

Though I just checked and vertiginous isn't in The Lexicon.

Facetious -- Frivolous Word Play

I have to grudgingly give credit to the most recent Sunday Puzzle segment on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday for providing me new appreciation for the words facetious and facetiously. I say grudgingly because I'm not a huge fan of this feature of the show, particularly since they added guest stars' recitations of the rote list of prizes players receive, like it's so much more exciting to hear some minor celebrity's prerecorded voice yammering about lapel pins and dictionaries than hearing show host Liane Hansen tick off the prizes. Anyway, this weekend's puzzle player, Bob Brereton of St. Paul, Minn., enlightened me to the particular significance of facetious and its adverbial form: "[These] are great words because facetious [contains] all the standard vowels of the alphabet in order, and facetiously incorporates the y," which can be used as a vowel, too. That's pretty darn cool!

According to the Web site Fun-with-words.com, the shortest word in English with all five standard vowels in alphabetical order is aerious meaning "airy." The longest such word is phragelliorhynchus, a protozoan (although y as a vowel intrudes before the u so I would argue this isn't a perfect hit). The site also notes that suoidea, meaning the taxonomic group to which pigs belong, is the shortest word in English with the standard vowels in reverse alphabetical order, and the longest such word is punctoschmidtella, a type of crustacean. (Check out the link for more vowel word records.)

Facetious is also curious given the dissonance in the tone accorded to the term by various dictionaries. The granddaddy of dictionaries, the OED, defines facetious as a positive quality: "Characterized by or addicted to pleasantry; jocose, jocular, waggish. Formerly often with a laudatory sense: Witty, humorous, amusing; also gay, sprightly." The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as a negative quality: "Treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant." The American Heritage Dictionary says simply: "Playfully jocular; humorous," while the Random House Dictionary offers both: "1. Amusing, humorous. 2. Lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous."

The term came to English from the French facétieux and facétie, which the French had in turn incorporated from the Latin facetia meaning "jest," from facetus meaning "witty."

Vocabulary an Alzheimer's Shield?

A sophisticated vocabulary helps ladies stave off Alzheimer's disease, says a health news story today. Yeah, in your face, brain lesions!

As someone who works in the health arena, I'll be the first to say NEVER believe without question everything you read or hear about the latest, hottest new health finding. Health research is a gradual accretion of discoveries and evidence, some of which hold up over time and some of which are refuted by further investigation. The researchers who conducted the study that's the focus of this news report cautioned that no conclusions can be drawn from this small, preliminary study.

But I sure hope further research confirms this tantalizing suggestion that women who developed sophisticated language skills as young adults were less likely to develop dementia or Alzheimer's later in life -- even if they had the tell-tale lesions associated with Alzheimer's at their deaths. The hypothesis is that developing complex language skills builds neural connections that may help stave off the ailment's symptoms. I hope it proves true, because then I could add a tagline to my blog that says, "Vocabulary: It's Not Just Fun; It's Good for You, Too!"

Encomium -- No Faint Praise

To say the media and blogosphere have been filled with encomiums for Michael Jackson would be like saying the OED contains a smattering of words. Today, the date of his massive memorial service in L.A., you could hardly escape the tidal wave of encomium for the late King of Pop short of renting a rocket ride into near-Earth orbit. A week ago, I'd already found myself rolling my eyes at the outpouring of emotional language about Jackson. I admit, I couldn't quite fathom the level of public reaction even though I once eagerly absorbed the videos for "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Thriller" on that dazzling new medium called MTV back when the "M" actually stood for "music." Still, for heaven's sake, I said, he was just a singer and dancer!

My dear hubby has had his fill of the Jackson coverage, too. But as he noted, it's not inappropriate to say that Jackson's death is the contemporary equivalent of the passing of Elvis. And when people mourn the death of a major star or pop culture figure of their time, it's as much -- or more -- some element of their own lives for which they're feeling those heart pangs. Jackson's hits certainly permeated the 80s and 90s: "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," "Rock With You," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "P.Y.T.," "Beat It," "Billie Jean," "Man In the Mirror," "Human Nature," "Bad," "Black Or White," "Smooth Criminal," "The Way You Make Me Feel," and, of course, "Thriller." Jackson's songs provided the soundtrack for many a date, school dance, amusement park thrill ride, smooth move at the roller rink, beach trip, slumber party, pool party, talent show, summer camp, cruise down the highway, yearbook work weekend, etc. etc. Kids of all ethnicities in middle schools and high schools across America mimed his signature moonwalk step -- they certainly did in the thoroughly white-bread suburban schools I attended.

Yes, Jackson's music was part of the soundtrack of my formative teenage years, too. Though I was not necessarily the typical teen. I hazard a guess that I'm among the very few people who thought that the most impressive element of "Thriller" was that they got Vincent Price (!!) to do that voiceover punctuated with his diabolical laugh -- although the dancing with zombies was pretty sensational, too. But none of Jackson's songs was an "our song" for me and hearing "Don't Stop" or "Billie Jean" doesn't carry me back to a particular youthful experience on a wave of nostalgia. Even so, I can certainly understand how Jackson's songs evoke those memories and emotions for millions of people. And I can understand the pangs of the sense that some part of those memories has slipped away, making those ghosts of feelings seem a little thinner and fainter.

Hence the use of encomium to describe the accolades heaped upon the entertainer today at his memorial service and carried across airwaves and cyberstreams throughout the day. Dictionaries note the formal character of the term. It's more than praise. It's "a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly," says the New Oxford American Dictionary. Encomium derives from the same Greek roots as eulogy: enkōmion from en- meaning "within" and komos meaning "celebration."

I will be thrilled when the media hoopla over Michael Jackson dies down. But I will not roll my eyes at those who tell me they had a videostream of the live coverage of the memorial open on their computer screens all day or that they pulled out and played all their old Jackson albums one evening after hearing about his death. I get it.

Inculcate -- Making an Impression

As a word connoisseur, I'd like to argue that use of unusual, attention-grabbing terminology would aid listeners' memory by making a real impression. However, I disprove my own hypothesis. On Tuesday, my wandering attention snapped back to a speaker's presentation when my ears caught the word inculcate. Ooh, there's a choice term! However, for the life of me I couldn't tell you now what exactly he was saying should be inculcated.

Even so, the word has stuck in my brain with the stubborn clinginess of a dryer softener sheet on a wool sock. Which is kind of apropos considering inculcate basically means "to impress upon" as well as "to influence" and "to instill via teaching."

Now, maybe it's just me, but I can't help but think the word sounds kind of sinister, its syllables punctuated by the sharp raps of those two hard c's. But obviously you can't always judge a word by its sound any more than you can tell the state of a politician's marital harmony by how many times he invokes "family values." The usage is what counts.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines inculcate as: "1: to teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions; urge on or fix in the mind. 2: to cause (as a person) to become impressed or instilled with something." The term, the dictionary notes, derives from the Latin root culcāre meaning "to tread on, trample."

So inculcate seems to occupy linguistic terrain somewhere between "to teach" and "to indoctrinate." It's not directly synonymous with brainwash, but it means more than simply "to present ideas for consideration." Many an independently minded student has posed the question: Where does teaching stop and indoctrination begin? It comes down to the intent behind the action. Likewise with inculcate: Do you intend to impress an idea on someone or to have your ideas tread on someone else's?

Concatenation -- The Chain Gang

During a recent catching-up-on-our-lives chat, my college friend Claressa reminded me once again why I've always admired her. Talking about her lab work or new beekeeping hobby -- can't remember which -- she employed the term concatenation. There was no particular motive: She wasn't aiming to be formal or ironic or anything else. We were casually chatting. She just knows such words and employs them as breezily as others use the or going. (And before you go thinking she's just some prissy vocabulary geek, let me note that this is a woman who introduced me to Sid & Nancy, who cultures Legionella bacteria, and who displays on her mantel a black velvet painting of Yoda that she got as a gift from a Hell's Angel.)

Concatenation has been stuck in my head since I started this blog with my hubby's encouragement. Among the helpful tools he bought to noodge me into the blogosphere was a copy of The Lexicon, a compendium of words collected from the writings of wordsmith William F. Buckley Jr. Flipping through this pocket-sized tome, one of the first words I landed on was concatenation. As Mr. Buckley knew, the word means "a series or order of things depending on each other as if linked together," or, in the most basic sense, "a chain of events." It's not a term I happened to have had at the ready in my vocabulary bag of tricks at the time. Nor is it one I've had opportunity to employ since then. So my ears pricked up and I had to smile a little when concatenation tripped off Claressa's tongue. Ah, there it is! If I can't get around to using it, I'm glad someone else could.

Dictionary Definition:

Roots: Latin catēnāre, "to bind," from Latin catēna, meaning "chain"

Pronounced: [kon-kat-n-ay-shuhn]

1. union by chaining or linking together

2. union in a series or chain, of whihc he things united form as it were links

3. an interdependent or unbroken sequence

Lachrymal -- Up to Here in Tears

Ok, call me a softie, a bleeding heart, whatever, but sure enough, three-quarters of the way through the opening sequence of Pixar's new movie Up, my lip was quivering and the moisture gathering on the edges of my lower eyelids threatened to trickle down my cheeks in the image of the waterfall depicted on-screen. And this is a cartoon, for Pete's sake! What gives with this lachrymal impulse?

Up isn't the first movie to get me teary-eyed and won't be the last, I'm sure. Earlier in our marriage, when Mark was traveling a fair bit, I learned the hard way that revisiting The Sixth Sense when he was away on a business trip wasn't perhaps the best cinematic option to watch solo. The penultimate scene, when Bruce Willis's character realizes the truth of what's happened, had me looking like a cross between a racoon and W.C. Fields, what with my smeared mascara and rubbed-red nose.

Of course, these cinematic scenes strive to be lachrymorose, to jerk those tears right out of our lachrymal ducts. And also, of course, some efforts work better than others and what elicits sniffles from one person as easily evokes snickers from others. But I expect that for just about everyone, there's a scene or song or some other surrogate that has elicited that lachrymal reflex.

So how does this happen? How can a bit of what's so clearly fiction incite this kind of emotional response? The ancient Greeks understood the power of fiction to hold a mirror up to life and to purge oneself emotionally through the experience of catharsis, a term originally meaning "cleansing" and "purification."

But why do we respond with such real emotion to something that we know is, well, not real? Empathy. I can watch Carl's life with Ellie unfold onscreen in Up and relate to these cartoon characters' all too believable experiences. I can see Bruce Willis's character's emotion as he watches the video of his wedding and feel the emotions of my own wedding. Doesn't matter if their fictional experiences are not mirror images of my own; the emotions are the same.

This is the boon of consciousness, the ability to relate to the experiences of others -- even strangers -- because in them we can recognize ourselves. It's both selfish and altruistic at the same time.

So I don't apologize for my lachrymal response to Up. Those tears are part of what makes me human. The trick to being fully human, however, is to be as equally open to the real scenes and emotions around me in the offscreen, mundane world and to be as equally emotionally responsive to them and not jaded or flummoxed into inaction. That's harder than when you're sitting in a theater or movie seat and the lights come back up. A curtain will not magically fall over the hurts, the hunger, the loneliness of the real people around me. Catharsis and tears may be about purging, but it doesn't hurt if they provide a solid kick in the conscience, either.

Acidulent -- Sour Grapes

Acidulent tripped me up on FreeRice.com tonight and prevented me from donating 450 grains straight without missing a term. If you've never tried FreeRice, give it a whirl. It's a vocabulary building quiz AND hunger-assuaging program all in one site. The site donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for every vocabulary word you get right on its quiz.

FreeRice is based on the principle of synonyms. Space on the site is limited as is people's time. Who wants to read long, detailed dictionary definitions while playing a quick game between attempts to finish the document you need to turn in already, because, after all, it's good to stimulate your brain's thinking capacity and get the juices flowing when writer's block has derailed your ability to finish that draft you're already past deadline turning in, right? On FreeRice, you select from four possible synonyms (or an occasional phrase like "strip blubber from") for the word you're given.

Synonyms are useful, but sometimes seem lacking. For example, I recognized that the correct choice for capricious out of the four options given was whimsical. But I think of capricious as meaning "fickle" or "volatile" more so than "whimsical." Still, someone will get some rice for that right answer on the quiz.

But acidulent got me. My choices were "inharmonious," "frisky," "sour" and "temporary." "Sour," I should've concluded, made the most sense given that citric acid is a puckering substance. But I second-guessed myself and bet my grains on "frisky." Doh! Darn my capricious gut instinct! Instead of free rice for a hungry person, I got sour grapes for my wrong answer. Oh well, the next word pops up straightaway, so you can make up for your mistakes and fill that rice bowl.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [uh-sij-uh-luhnt]
Also, acidulous
Root: Latin acidus meaning "sour"
1. slightly sour
2. sharp; caustic: the movie critic's acidulent tone

Laodicean -- Lukewarm About Bees

What does it mean to own a word? Is it that you know how to pronounce it correctly? Is it not until you can spell it accurately? I think most of us would say you don't really own a word till you can accurately use it in speech or writing. My personal take is that spelling and pronunciation are nice and useful to be sure, definitely preferable, but I'll chuck 'em for a solid, spot-on usage any given day.

I suppose that's vocabulary heresy, especially coming right on the heels of the crowning of 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar as this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. Spelling bees have elevated the art of stringing letters together to the status of gladiatorial competition. As The Washington Post noted:

The high-gloss event, televised on ESPN and prime-time ABC, is perhaps the one time a year that sportscasters cover the English language with the same alacrity they do college football. The contest bore the trappings of an athletic event, with sweeping boom cameras, heavily made-up announcers and 41 semifinalists, who had been winnowed from a field of 293.

Spelling bees edged into popular culture with such fare at the critically acclaimed 2006 movie Akeelah and the Bee and the success of the Broadway production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which earned six Tony award nominations in 2005.

I celebrate bees achieving this level of appreciation and attention, and at the same time, the elevation of spelling over meaning irks me. Oh, sure, the contestants can request the meanings of the words or their parts of speech and ask to hear them used in a sentence, but such information is not always requested and really, did learning or knowing that Laodicean means "lukewarm or indifferent, especially in religion or politics" help Kavya spell it correctly?

In terms of the workings of language, meaning preceded spelling. Well before we finally agreed that it should be spelled l-a-u-g-h and most of us decided to pronounce it as |laf| rather than |lahf|, we in the English-speaking societies agreed that this set of letters and this sound means "to express one's amusement through a vocal exhalation produced by a series of facial and bodily movements." The simple word where has enjoyed a variety of spellings through the years, including wher, wheare, wair, whair, and were. A contemporary middle school student may find it a bit slow-going, but I dare say probably could comprehend one of William Shakespeare's plays with all the words as he originally spelled them (provided of course footnotes explaining archaic terms such as petard).

I'm not anti-bee, however. I guess you could say I'm somewhat Laodicean about them. Maybe I'd be fully enthusiastic if contestants were given points for being able to themselves correctly define the words they're challenged to spell or to use the terms in a sentence. Just think: it would add a whole new level of drama after the nail-biting wait to hear if the contestant correctly used ae instead of y to spell maecenas (meaning "generous benefactor" and the word this year's runner-up missed). A spelling and usage bee -- now that would be real competition!

Abide -- An Enduring Term

Twice today I used the word abide to mean endure in the sense of tolerate or put up with. The word randomly popped into my mind when I could've just as easily said put up with instead. But I like what the brain sometimes comes up with when it goes into vocabulary shuffle mode, spinning through the collection of synonyms stored in all those terabytes of memory and popping out a random term, perhaps one that hasn't touched the tongue for a while, but you welcome again when it turns up, remembering what a fine, versatile term it is. And like a song, words can churn up feelings, like nostalgia or bemusement.

Abide, for example, conjures for me the velvet-cushioned pews, suppressed coughs, stretching effect of high ceilings on shadows, and poetic psalms from the churches of my youth along with the sonorous lyrics of that oldie but goodie hymn, "Abide With Me." I can't sing the lyrics anymore, but still that slow, dare I say ponderous, tune abides with me, imprinted deep somewhere in my cerebrum, perhaps.

And yes, abide also means endure in the sense of to last, to continue on without fading away. Which evokes a chuckle from me as I hear in my head Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey Lebowski intoning in that middle-aged slacker voice, "The Dude abides." Ah, The Big Lebowski, a witty cinematic confection from the Coen Brothers, full of all manner of memorable quotes!

Abide means "to live or dwell with." It also means "to remain stable or fixed," "to stand fast and unyielding." And it's also used to mean "to submit to" or "to tolerate," as in to abide by a decision or precept. To endure and to endure.

We call on God to abide with us, seeking a steadfast, unwavering presence to see us through life's vagaries. The Dude assures us that he abides. The Narrator at the close of The Big Lebowski tells us, "I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals."

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: ə-bīd
Roots: Old English ābīdan meaning wait from ā- meaning ‘onward’ + bīdan.
1. accept or act in accordance with (a rule, decision, or recommendation)
2. able to tolerate (someone or something)
3. continue without fading or being lost.
4. (archaic) live; dwell

Apoplectic -- Rage Hard

The driver behind me in the big white SUV was in the throes of an apoplectic fit. It was quite a sight filling my rearview mirror. Hands and arms jerking in gesticulations of rage, mouth stretched wide in one bellow after another, veins in his neck throbbing. Even his eyebrows seemed to stand up and bristle. If the hairs on his head could've acted independently, I'm sure they would've cussed me out in semaphore.

I could indeed see all this pretty clearly since he was tailgating so close he might as well have been in my backseat. My crime? Refusing to drive over 70 mph in the far left lane on the Dulles Toll Road. Ok, sure, I could have taken the hint from his gestures and moved over a lane to let him fly by unimpeded any longer by my pokey vehicle. But I had gotten over to the left so that I could exit onto the access road for the airport where I had a flight to catch. Yeah, I got over a few miles earlier than I really needed to, but I didn't want to miss the exit and besides, this is a 4-lane road and anyone behind me who insisted on doing no more than a minimum of 70 on this 55-mph-limit highway had plenty of space to go around me on the right. Which is finally what my neanderthal buddy did, though he kept pace alongside me long enough to send a few more choice words my way along with a copious amount of spittle. He even tossed a Coke can out the window as he gunned the engine to fly ahead.

I'm only exaggerating somewhat. This guy was the picture you'd see in the encyclopedia entry on apoplexy, a term used since the days of ancient Greece to refer to the symptoms of suffering what we now call a stroke. It morphed into a figurative term for the sort of furor that makes people's eyes bulge and chests heave. The incident might've been -- perhaps should've been -- scary to me at the time given how close he followed for a while. It's funny in hindsight. Yet mostly what I felt at the moment was sadness. For him and for me. What a senseless waste of energy on this guy's part. All that anger, all that emotion, and to what purpose? It didn't get him anywhere any faster, didn't make me repent for being such an impediment to others and swear to mend my ways.

But perhaps it at least made him feel better to let off some steam? I have to think this guy was having a really bad day given the level of rage he demonstrated. Letting off steam is how I justify my own incidents of road rage. Which is why the incident made me feel sad for myself as much as for apoplectic SUV man.

I'd like to think I've never been as bad as this guy, but truth be told, I've done my share of top of the lungs yelling at someone who has cut me off, braked too sharply, coasted too slowly, or just generally driven in a manner that I consider to be moronic. Yet, to what purpose that waste of energy and emotion on my part? It didn't make the other driver mend her error, get me where I needed to go faster, or otherwise do anything other than send some ugly karma out into the universe. If I were honest with myself I'd say it didn't make me feel any better, either. It probably only helped the rancor linger since my pointing out the flaws in other people's driving has never yielded any signs of remorse on their part that would soothe my nerves.

This is true of so many of the annoyances and inconveniences we inevitably encounter throughout our lives. Airports with their long lines at ticket counters and security are notorious for such irritations. So, thanks to apoplectic SUV man, I arrived at the airport in a zen frame of mind. The teen sports team members who had no clue about the new security rules and held up the line? Whatever. The guy in front of me on the plane who reclined his seat as far back as it would go and then occasionally tried to treat it like a rocking chair? Eh, he never hit my book and interrupted my reading.

I can't promise that I'll be able to maintain this zen state of mind on a continuous basis. In fact, I've already reneged a few times since that flight. But I'm going to try to remember the sight of apoplectic SUV man in my rearview mirror and remind myself, you don't want to be such an unhappy, pathetic character yourself so just chill out.

Dictionary Definition:
Roots: Latin apoplecticus, from Greek apoplēktikos meaning ‘disable by a stroke’
Prounounced: ap-uh-plek-tik
1. Of, resembling, or produced by apoplexy, a sudden impairment of nuerological funtion esp. when resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage.
2. Having or inclined to have apoplexy; exhibiting symptoms associated with apoplexy.
3. Extremely angry; furious.

Humidity -- Oh, the Fun of It!

I have a new colleague who hails from northern California. She's a recent transplant to the D.C. region and everyone keeps warning her about what to expect during her first summer in the American South. Yes, D.C. is in the South, as much as folks here may wish to deny it, thinking themselves oh so cosmopolitan. (I remember when I was in high school in Birmingham, Ala. reading an article that noted "bama" was a slang term used in D.C. to denote a hick with no style. To which I say, bless their hearts, some of those D.C. denizens just can't seem to remember where that Mason-Dixon line runs.)

People who move to the South are given to fear humidity like brain-eating zombies or swine flu. Ok, yes, humidity feels yucky. Even us native Suth'ners cop to that. For those of you who've never experienced it, take a roll of cellophane and wrap yourself in it. The whole roll. From crown to toe. Once you're fully wrapped, have someone blow a hairdryer at you at full heat. While you're standing in a sauna. Now breathe.

Humidity in the Southern summer is that continuous clamminess that comes from hot, moisture-laden air through which you almost feel the need to push yourself with some amount of physical exertion. Fan blades turn slower in the South because the air is that much heavier. A glass of lemonade doesn't just sweat, it cries uncle 30 seconds after you take it out of the fridge.

Humid derives from a Latin term umere meaning "to be moist." It also relates to the medieval physiological term for the elements that, it was thought, determine personality, namely, the four humours. This concept fascinated me as a lit student when I was studying Chaucer and other middle English writers. Back then, people believed that their temperments were ruled by the balance of these humours in their bodies. Your level of blood (emanating from the liver -- so it was believed at the time -- and characterized by courageousness or amorousness), phlegm (secreted by the brain or lungs and associated with calmness or aloofness), yellow bile (stemming from the gall bladder and associated with anger and impulsiveness), and black bile (secreted by the spleen and linked to despondence and irritability) determined your outlook on life. Too much of one or the other explained why you were either melancholy, hot-headed, unflappable, or easily annoyed. I love the adjectives associated with each, pretty much still in use today (though not all in their original sense or usage): sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic, respectively.

Nowadays, humour in its medieval sense of fluids is no more and humor means laughable or having a sense of what's funny. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term humour led to the sense of "'mood, temporary state of mind' (first recorded 1525); the sense of 'amusing quality, funniness' is first recorded 1682, probably via sense of 'whim, caprice' (1565), which also produced the verb sense of 'indulge,' first attested 1588.... Humorous in the modern sense is first recorded 1705."

So the relationship between humidity and humorous is fractured. But if we Southerners couldn't make fun of all the Yankees wilting in the heat, what fun would we have?

Pluvial -- Rain O'er Me

I nearly had a heart attack today brought on by the shock of a sunbeam streaming through my office window, piercing the chilly clamminess in which I've worked for the past several weeks. It flitted away all too quickly and by the time I exited the building I was once again slogging through the rain, toes all too soon squishing against soggy soles, under the perpetual gray sky that has shrouded D.C. for what seems like weeks. I know it's good for my flowerbeds and shrubs. I know it's keeping the pollen down and alleviating my hubby's seasonal allergy misery. I know I'll be whining about the lack of showers come the dusty, droughty dog days of August. But right now I am sick and tired of this pluvial weather!!!

Not my friend Eric, however, who suggested pluvious to me, another adjectival variation of the term. Looking it up, I half-expected to discover that pluvious or pluvius (yet another accepted spelling variation) was the name of some minor Roman god of rivers, floods, or downpours. According to some online sources, Pluvius was one of a multitude of epithets attached to the big guy himself, Jupiter, the chief god of the Roman pantheon. Makes sense given that Jupiter, or Jove, was depicted as lord of the skies and hurler of thunderbolts. These sources suggest that drought-stricken Romans would pray to Jupiter Pluvius to send rain and relieve their suffering. Does the reverse work? Can I send him a prayer asking him to cut it out already?

According to the OED, however, the root of pluvial is merely the Latin pluvia, meaning rain. But pluvial doesn't mean just rain. It means lots of rain. Characterized by rain. Heavy rain.

Pluvial is a term more likely to turn up in geographical or geological contexts -- e.g., "there were two pluvial periods in the Pleistocene." I doubt Willard Scott ever uttered the term during one of his Today Show weather forecasts slash centenarian birthday shout-outs.

Checking the weather forecast for tomorrow: oh, surprise, surprise -- more pluvial weather! But there's the promise of at least a little sun in the morning, maybe even into the early afternoon. Maybe I'll be visited by that happy little sunbeam again, at least for a few minutes. Right now, I'll take every second's worth of sun I can get.

Factotum -- Jack or Flunky?

Mark has gotten a lot of attention for a column he did on high-speed rail, including invitations to chat with people in the business. "They do know you're just a dilettante expert, right?" I pointedly remarked, ever supportive of his journalism. Which ultimately led to my dubbing him a factotum (which, I thought, is the nature of the game in much of journalism) to which he took umbrage. "I am not a flunky," he retorted. Well, wait a minute; I didn't call him that. "No, a flunky is a sycophant. I'm calling you a jack-of-all-trades" (which, again, is the nature of much of journalism, or so I thought). Clearly, we had a difference of usage, and the way to settle that is to go to the dictionary.

OED notes the Latin roots of factotum, as facere, meaning "to do," and totum, meaning "the whole." The moniker "Johannes Factotum" and "Frère Jean Factotum" showed up back in the 16th century, meaning "John-do-everything." The term also is akin to the Latin phrase "Dominus factotum," meaning "one who controls everything." It's hard to tell if the term was applied from the beginning with complete straight-faced sincerity or ironically or has always had a dual usage, though the OED seems to indicate the former.

Today, both terms jack-of-all-trades and factotum can be used either admiringly or derisively, meaning either one who can do a bit of everything or one who dabbles or meddles in everything. So, yes, a factotum can designate one hired because she is versatile or because she's suited to be a general go-fer. The OED seems to suggest that factotum is a term for someone above being a sycophant or simple go-fer. It notes that in modern sense, the term signifies, "a man of all-work; also a servant who has the entire management of his master's affairs." (Momentary pause to think that the "modern" sense in the OED still includes the idea of "masters" and "servants.") Our dictionary for college students defines factotum simply as, "an employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities."

Mark contends that using the term factotum to describe journalists is giving them too much credit. He believes dilettante is the appropriate term. As he notes, he has written articles about space travel, genetic enginnering, and any number of other complex things and yet he'd never proclaim any real ability in rocket science, genetics, or other fields. Upon reflection, I think he's generally right, but with caveats.

Dilettante is originally defined as, "one who cultivates [the fine arts] for the love of them rather than professionally, and so = amateur as opposed to professional." Yet, the term carries its own weight of deprecation as it evolved to also denote one who interests himself or herself in an area "without real commitment or knowledge" (see the New Oxford American Dictionary).

Well, the journalists I know and work with on health and science beats by and large are committed to understanding what they're covering even if they don't have M.D.s after their names. They strive to grasp the complexities of what they're reporting on and to present it accurately and in a way that we not-even-dilettantes can understand and care about. The loss of this dilettante expertise is what I most lament in the slow demise of traditional mainstream media.

(Thanks to spellcheck and dictionary sites for ensuring that I spelled dilettante -- a French term -- correctly throughout.)

Formidable -- A Force to Be Reckoned With

Formidable -- there's a term that carries some gravitas. Not a term to use lightly and not a descriptive you hear pinned to the average joe or jane. It's reserved for people like Bea Arthur, the actress who played TV's tough broad Maude in a popular sit-com of the 1970s. Several of the articles about her death last week employed the term formidable about her presence, about the characters she played, about her voice. "Tall and formidable, with that deep voice, Bea Arthur was a star for all the reasons that women aren't stars on TV," said a Washington Post writer.

Or like Britain's former prime minister, who was profiled in London's Daily Telegraph on Saturday under the headline: "Margaret Thatcher: Formidable, Determined, Kittenish, Kind." I wonder which reaction that headline evinced from "the Iron Lady," a smile or a roll of her eyes?

A cursory scan of recent news reveals that formidable turns up more frequently in the sports section than in entertainment or daily news. That's because it's most commonly used to describe a tough or fearsome opponent or situation, like a particularly challenging game.

Formidable has become something of a compliment, albeit a nuanced one. Interesting since the term's original meaning and its Latin root formidare mean "fear." Formidable's principal definition in many dictionaries is a variation on "inspiring dread." I'm sure that seeing a 6-foot, 250-lb. linebacker steaming toward you, ready to pound your helmet into the mud, probably inspires a certain amount of dread in many a freshman recruit. But for all that Arthur's character Maude occasionally made her TV hubby quaver and perhaps Thatcher had some British parliamentarians quaking in their brogues, it seems a little ludicrous to think of these ladies as menacing, terrifying figures.

Formidable has evolved through the years from its roots in fear to emphasizing the sense of admiration and respect that frightful and powerful -- or just powerful -- entities can evoke. You can use the term to convey dread or apprehension -- Rocky faced a formidable foe in Mr. T's "Clubber" Lang -- or respect -- see the references to Bea Arthur above -- and not infrequently both at the same time. E.g., Everest offers a formidable challenge to mountain climbers. Julius Caesar proved to be both a formidable military tactician and politician. In that way, I suppose it's no surprise that a tough, no-nonsense woman who takes charge and brooks no guff from anyone could find herself tagged with formidable in profiles and obits. I expect that a search of the reams of coverage of Hillary Clinton would turn up more than a few instances of the word. Whether you think that it evokes more respect or fear in her case -- well, formidableness is in the eye of the beholder.

Dictionary Definitions
The New Oxford American Dictionary says: "inspiring fear or respect through being impressively large, powerful, intense, or capable."

The American Heritage Dictionary gives: "1. Arousing fear, dread, or alarm: the formidable prospect of major surgery. 2. Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder: "Though a true hero, he was also a thoroughgoing bureaucrat and politician, a formidable combination" (Mario Puzo). 3. Difficult to undertake, surmount, or defeat: a formidable challenge; a formidable opponent.

The OED seems to resist the evolution of the term's meaning toward conveying admiration. It says, "That which gives cause for fear or alarm; fit to inspire dread or apprehension. Now usually (with some obscuration of the etymological sense): Likely to be difficult to overcome, resist, or deal with; giving cause for serious apprehension of defeat or failure."

Temerity -- How Galling!

"It didn't storm today, like the weather report said it would," Mark noted. "No, but it had the temerity to rain on my bike ride!" I retorted. We're still watching out of our windows to see when the downpour comes. But, meanwhile, I'm occupying myself exploring that choice word, temerity.

Whenever I see or say it, I can't help but think of termites. That's stupid, of course, and does nothing to help me retain the word's true meaning. Except if I think to myself, what temerity those termites had invading my home! Even if its framework is made out of wooden beams, like a giant banquet hall for these cellulose-chomping critters, I'm appalled that they'd invade my space! I did indeed endure a termite infestation in one of the apartments I lived in during my college years. It was mating season and an orgy was taking place in the living room, mostly in the sunlight of the one large window in that room. In hindsight, I should've burst into a resounding chorus of "Let the Sun Shine In." At the time however, I was reduced to semi-articulate shouting into the telephone to the apartment manager that I was very put out by the lack of effective pest control.

So, anyway, temerity has nothing to do with termites. No, it stems from Latin root temeritas meaning "rashness." Hmm. Accusing Romans of rashness needn't raise any eyebrows -- et tu, Bruté, and all that -- but kind of silly to suggest that the weather acted out of rashness.

Proper usage of temerity merited a special note in the New Oxford American Dictionary, interestingly:

THE RIGHT WORD
The line that divides boldness from foolishness or stupidity is often a fine one.
Someone who rushes hastily into a situation without thinking about the consequences might be accused of rashness, while temerity implies exposing oneself needlessly to danger while failing to estimate one's chances of success (she had the temerity to criticize her teacher in front of the class).
Audacity describes a different kind of boldness, one that disregards moral standards or social conventions (he had the audacity to ask her if she would mind paying for the trip).
Someone who behaves with foolhardiness is reckless or downright foolish (climbing the mountain after dark was foolhardiness and everyone knew it), while impetuosity describes an eager impulsiveness or behavior that is sudden, rash, and sometimes violent (his impetuosity had landed him in trouble before).
Gall and effrontery are always derogatory terms. Effrontery is a more formal word for the flagrant disregard of the rules of propriety and courtesy (she had the effrontery to call the president by his first name), while gall is more colloquial and suggests outright insolence (he was the only one with enough gall to tell the boss off).

I suppose I've been accustomed to using temerity as a direct substitute for effrontery to mean the derogatory sense of disregard for propriety and I need to adjust my terminology. Darn it, I knew I should've just stuck to good ol' gall! But then, did Woody Allen use temerity correctly?

From Love and Death:

(Allen as Boris) Don't you know that murder carries with it a moral imperative that transcends any notion of inherent universal free will?
(Diane Keaton as Sonya) That is incredibly jejune.
(Allen) That's jejune?
(Keaton) Jejune!
(Allen) You have the temerity to say that I'm talking to you out of jejunosity? I am one of the most june people in all of the Russias!

Dictionary Definition:
Pronounced: |tə-mer-i-tē|
1. excessive confidence or boldness; audacity

Enormity -- The Size, er, Wickedness of the Problem

I'm as ignorant as George Bush. George H. W. Bush, that is (the first one). I learned this from Bill Bryson, author of one of the funniest books I've ever read (A Walk in the Woods) and of The Mother Tongue, one word-man's study of how the English language got the way it is. According to Bryson, "The day after he was elected president in 1988, George Bush told a television reporter he couldn't believe the enormity of what had happened. Had President-elect Bush known that the primary meaning of enormity is wickedness or evilness, he would doubtless have selected a more apt term."

Ok, maybe you knew this, but apparently I've been coerced naively into the camp of usage anarchists who have contributed to the shocking degradation of this term into meaning "of great size; immensity." I shall begin acts of penance forthwith.

Seriously, even people who savor words can be ignorant of their historic meanings. I avoid using the adjective true because one of the points of Bryson's book is there isn't a capital T true when it comes to English, and that's a good thing; that fluidity has contributed to the English language's richness, which is what this blog celebrates.

Peeking into the OED, I find the entry for enormity to read: "1. Divergence from a normal standard or type; abnormality, irregularity. Obs. or arch. [Note: these abbreviations signify "obsolete" and "archaic," respectively.] 2. Deviation from moral or legal rectitude. In legal use influenced by enormous 3. Extreme or monstrous wickedness. 2.b. A breach of law or morality; a transgression, crime; in later use, a gross and monstrous offence. 3. Excess in magnitude; hugeness, vastness. Obs.: recent examples might perhaps be found, but the use is now regarded as incorrect."

Now regarded as incorrect? Really? According to whom? Oh, wait, here's what our little ol' American Heritage College Dictionary has to say about enormity: "1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage. 3. Usage Problem. Great size; immensity. Usage Note: Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being enormous, but many would prefer that enormity be reserved for a property that evokes a negative moral judgment. Fifty-nine percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of enormity in the sentence At that point the engineers sat down to design an entirely new viaduct, apparently undaunted by the enormity of their task."

Oh, the "Usage Panel." Well then, of course, I any every other malingerer stands corrected in the face that that 59% of whoever the "Usage Panel" is. Especially when both the OED and American Heritage immediately follow up their definitions of enormity with their definitions for enormous.

OED says: "1. Deviating from ordinary rule or type; abnormal, unusual, extraordinary, unfettered by rules; hence, mostly in bad sense, strikingly irregular, monstrous, shocking. Obs. [Remember, that abbreviation stands for "obsolete"] 2. Of persons and their actions: Departing from the rule of right, disorderly. Of a state of things: Disordered, irregular. Hence, excessively wicked, outrageous. Obs. 3. Excessive or ordinary in size, magnitude, or intensity; huge, vast, immense." Note that there's no Obs. after that third definition.

American Heritage says of enormous: "1. Very great in size, extent, number, or degree. 2. Archaic. Very wicked; heinous.

Makes sense to you, right?

My point is not simply to blow a razzberry at fuddy-duddy "Usage Panels" trying to rigidly preserve definitions in the face of the great fluidity that has characterized English through centuries of conquest, accretion, invention, and yes, sometimes sheer laziness. It's to underscore that there is going to be evolution because such evolution is natural and it engenders variety both in biology, which makes us who/what we are, and in language, which enables us to express ourselves. In a case like enormity, where a closely related term like enormous has an accepted definition that's related to size and the term's historic meanings are acknowledged to be archaic if not altogether obsolete, I think it's kind of silly to try to stubbornly cling to a definition that's fading without some good case for preserving the original definition. Will a majority of readers/listeners today misunderstand that sentence about engineers and viaducts? No. The whole point of language -- to communicate ideas -- is achieved by the use of enormity in this context for the great majority, if not all, of the audience.

Which is not to say, let's throw up our hands and toss all usage rules out the window, but rather to be judicious and open to natural change at the same time. Bryson wrote: "One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change.

"But at the same time, it seems to me, there is a case for resisting change -- at least slapdash change. Even the most liberal descriptivist would accept that there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one's lap [not my cat, but hey] and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to housebreak. In precisely the same way, clarity is generally better served if we agree to observe a distinction between imply and infer, forego and forgo, fortuitous and fortunate, uninterested and disinterested, and many others. As John Ciardi observed, resistance may in the end prove futile, but at least it tests the changes and makes them prove their worth."

Parsimonious -- Frugal Is In

If ya got it, don't flaunt it. Wealth, that is. Not in this harsh economic climate when foreclosures, job losses, salary cuts, and unpaid furloughs have hit people across the demographic strata. Even well-heeled professionals earning comfortable six-figure incomes are choosing restaurants that offer half-price nights when they dine out and cutting back on clothes, entertainment, and other discretionary spending, according to a recent Washington Post article.

It's hard to look around a relatively wealthy area like the D.C. metro region -- to note the high per capita number of Beemers, Benzes, and Lexi; the Coach handbags on many a female teenagers' shoulder, the plethora of plastic surgery ads jostling for readers' eyeballs in local media -- and think bling is really out. Nonetheless, it looks like frugality is at least being invited to the party now, even if it's not being feted as the guest of honor.

Frugal is a term that people can accept, some grudgingly, some with chin out-thrust defiance, wearing it like a badge of honor. You can admiringly comment on your frugal mother's ability to feed a family of five on less than $100 a week. But I doubt frugal's lesser-known cousin parsimonious will attain any greater measure of coolness, let alone more frequent use, despite the times.

For one thing, it's a term that sounds antiquated. It makes me think of a poor country parson getting by on a meager salary, an image that has helped me remember the term's meaning all these years since I first encountered it in a high school vocabulary test.

For another thing, parsimonious is a term that has taken on a more derogatory meaning through the years than has frugal, even though it was an equally neutral term originally. The OED gives as the principal definition of parsimonious: "Characterized by parsimony; careful in the use or disposal of money or resources; sparing, saving." Its first definition of parsimony is: "Carefulness in the employment of money or material resources; saving or economic disposition. a. In a good or neutral sense." Only afterward comes, "b. In dyslogistic sense: Stinginess, niggardliness."

More dictionaries now emphasize that dyslogistic sense. E.g., the New Oxford American Dictionary defines parsimonious as: "Unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary gives us: "Exhibiting parsimony; sparing in expenditure of money; frugal to excess; penurious; niggardly; stingy." The American Heritage College Dictionary offers: "Excessively sparing or frugal," and defines parsimony as: "Unusual or excessive frugality."

I can't help but think it's a pity for that imaginary country parson with whom I associate parsimonious; I've always envisioned him more like a Friar Tuck of Robin Hood fame than an Ebeneezer Scrooge. I hadn't thought it would be an insult to comment on my mother's parsimonious ways, such as running errands only two or three times a week in a carefully planned route that minimized mileage and gas usage, keeping junkmail by the phone to jot messages rather than a notepad; squashing the sliver of nearly used up soap onto the new bar so as not to waste that last bit; or using as coasters those once ubiquitous AOL discs we used to get in the mail every other week it seemed.

Oh, sure, parsimony can go to excess, as the infamous casserole crumb topping incident proves (a mixture of the crushed remnants at the bottoms of the bags of three different types of breakfast cereal -- including store-brand Raisin Bran -- that she didn't see the point of just throwing away). But the lessons she and my father taught us about spending our money wisely, keeping enough back to build up a tidy savings account and make investments, avoiding debt when possible and taking on only as much as we knew we could handle have all stood me and my siblings in good stead.

My parents' parsimony allowed them to send three kids through college and supported my extra years in grad school. They don't worry about losing their house or whether they can keep up with the bills. They splurge on themselves occasionally, yet still manage their resources carefully. I may not have grown up an immigrant starting from scratch to build a life out of a few opportunities and meager possessions, as my mother and her family did, and I don't salvage every sliver of soap or avoid every unnecessary car trip. But I learned from her and my father to willingly wear either parsimonious or frugal as a badge of honor.

Flotsam -- Worthy Refuse

The homeless have been poetically called, "the flotsam of humanity," those who float unmoored through society. I find myself lately surrounded by these drifters, both literally and figuratively.

This morning I passed not only the man who regularly sits near the Metro station with eyes downcast, silently letting the sign proclaiming his diabetes and homelessness speak for him, but also the ragged fellow who sometimes appears near the State Department and loudly curses the world that has so keenly hurt him by shouting a blue streak of invective at passersby. I've been listening with interest to NPR's series on the changing atmosphere of L.A.'s notorious Skid Row, for so long a hangout for drug dealers, buyers and hookers as well as the homeless. Today's report included the story of Nathaniel Ayers, whose tale soon will hit movie screens when The Soloist premieres. Ads for this movie pop out at me from newspapers, magazines, the TV, and Web pages, urging me to immerse myself in the story of this gifted musician whose mental illness carried him from the lofty halls of Juilliard to the mean streets of L.A., his talents lost until a local journalist stumbles into his life.

Many people use the term flotsam to mean an accumulation of miscellaneous items, often with negligible value. "Somewhere in all the flotsam and jetsam on my desk is the contract we're supposed to sign." The term took on this meaning sometime in the 1800s, and then in the 1900s it migrated to attach like a barnacle to displaced people as well.

These figurative uses hark back to the word's original meaning in nautical legalese in which flotsam designates those goods or debris from a vessel accidentally lost overboard (e.g. items floating on the water after a shipwreck). This was to distinguish these materials from jetsam, goods that were purposefully jettisoned (e.g. to lighten a ship in distress because of storm or pursuit by pirates), and the lesser known ligan (or lagan), those items that are labeled by the owner (and perhaps attached to a buoy) before casting overboard so as to be retrieved later. In nautical law, these terms help designate whether it's finders-keepers or the item has to be returned. As such, these terms convey a sense of value to the items. Material from a shipwreck can be worth quite a lot as the rise of treasure-hunting to a profession shows.

Perhaps that part of flotsam's meaning holds true for its figurative application to displaced humanity as well. It's tough to see that, of course. I, like every other passerby I notice, frown and perhaps shake my head at the cussword spewing, rough looking man on the corner, if I bother to pay him any mind at all. And yet, I belong to a Unitarian Universalist congregation that espouses as the first of its core principles the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. It's a tough principle to live up to. It requires arresting the mind's leap to conclusions based on the scant evidence of surface appearance or audible clues. It even requires, dare I say, reaching out and making contact.

Mark helped out one night when our church temporarily served as a berth for homeless people during a cold winter week. He encountered people who'd allowed drugs or alcohol to set them adrift. He saw cases where mental illness had unraveled people's mooring lines. And he met people who were working hard at minimum wage jobs, but who just didn't have or couldn't maintain enough funds to pay rent in this pricey area. None of them appeared to be lost artistic prodigies like the extraordinary Ayers; none of their stories would likely be turned into a series of newspaper columns or a Hollywood movie. They are just so much flotsam of humanity. But flotsam is a word that that conveys value, too.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [flät'-səm]
Roots: Anglo-Norman French floteson, from floter meaning "to float."
1. Such part of the wreckage of a ship or its cargo as is found floating on or washed up by the sea.
2. figurative, people or things that have been rejected or regarded as worthless.

Sogginess -- Why Not Sog?

On the way to work this morning, I complained to Mark about the chances of my hair ending up "wet and soggy" during the rain-drenched commute. Soggy occurred to me a split-second after I'd uttered wet as my brain searched for a word that would convey a condition of being "wetter than just wet." Soggy hit me as a choice term, one that conveys a sense of being waterlogged, thoroughly weighed down with water.

The word prompted Mark to muse aloud, "Is there such a thing as sog?" Interesting question. Foggy is our way to describe an ample quantity of fog. Ditto for smoggy and smog. You can slosh your way through a bog and take photos of the boggy terrain. And you love your dog but wince at his doggy breath.

But there is no sog as a noun form of soggy. Well, not one in common usage. Oh, there's sog, a southwestern dialect synonym for bog or swamp. And there's sog, also a dialect term, meaning a stupor or daze. It's also an apparently obsolete term for a whale (used in no less a venerable tome than Moby Dick). And there is the verb sog, meaning "to saturate" or "to become soaked or saturated with wetness." But this also is a usage relegated to dialect. Don't look for these variations on the term in any unabridged dictionary; you'll have to heave out your OED, as I did.

It seems that out these obscure terms, the adjectival soggy is the form that managed to escape dialect and become accepted in broader parlance. That's not to say there's no name for the soaked condition you might find yourself in upon stumbling out of a heavy rain, your shoes squelching as you walk, leaving damp footprints on the linoleum. For that there's sogginess, a noun built on the adjective.

Dictionary Definition (soggy)
Pronounced [sä-gē]
Roots: from dialectal sog meaning swamp, or possibly from Scandinavian origins.
1. Of land, soaked with water or moisture.
2. Saturated with wet; soppy, soaked.
3. Of people or things, lacking in vigor; lifeless, dull.

Jack-in-the-Box -- Do You Know Jack?

A colleague recently suggested I consider jack-in-the-box for this blog, not for its meaning, but rather for the complexities of its plural form (thanks, Lauren). Which is it, jacks-in-the-box or jack-in-the-boxes? (Or how about jacks-in-the-boxes?) Short answer: either (but not the double plural form).

According to Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th ed.) and Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, the plural is -boxes. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, however, says either jacks- or -boxes is accepted (though it lists -boxes first). The American Heritage College Dictionary likewise gives both options.

How well does this convention hold for other jack-in- or jack-of- terms? (slight pause for a brief "Beavis and Butthead" snigger by anyone who just mentally added -off to that list).

For example, do you grow jacks-in-the-pulpit or jack-in-the-pulpits in your bog garden? The results mirror those for jack-in-the-box. Webster's New World and Random House give the plural as -pulpits only. Third New International and American Heritage, however, say either jacks- or -pulpits is fine. (The flower, by the way, got its name from its shape; a spike of flowers -- the "jack," perhaps a colloquial term for a country parson -- is surrounded and overtopped by a modified leaf that resembles the roofed pulpit found in some European churches.)

How about jack-of-all-trades, a fellow who dabbles in a bit of everything? Some dictionaries list this as a hyphenated word, but others don't. The concluding word is already plural, so not surprisingly, more than one is typically given as jacks-of-all-trades. There's also jack-o'-lantern, which is always pluralized by adding an s to the end.

But Jack doesn't get to have all the fun. Johnny does, too. Unless he's a Johnny-come-lately, a newcomer or person who arrives or gets on board late. The plural of this term is given variously as Johnnies-come-lately or Johnny-come-latelies. But more than one Johnny-on-the-spot, a person available and ready to seize an opportunity, would be a passel of Johnnies-on-the-spot. A bouquet of the small form of pansy called Johnny-jump-up is a cluster of Johnny-jump-ups.

The upshot? Pluralization of such terms seems pretty arbitrary despite efforts of the lexical attorneys general -- i.e., the dictionaries -- to arbitrate such matters.

Derailed -- We Gang Aft Agley

"Do you prefer the spelling DERAILLEUR or DERAILER?" asked the bicycle tutorial Web site at the close of an entry on how to adjust V-brakes. I demonstrated my total greenhorn status by choosing "(c) Doesn't matter." Turned out to be the sentiment of me and just 967 of the rest of us neophytes out of the 6,432 votes cast. Derailer is a term that refers to the device's role, which is to move, or derail, the bicycle chain from one sprocket to the next. This morning, the day of Mark's and my maiden voyage on our brand new bikes, the term seemed more apt to describe what the brakes on Mark's bike portended for our cycling plans. He'd noticed that one of the brake pads was brushing against the front tire with each revolution. An hour later of futzing with nuts and bolts and the brake cable and pads, we somehow achieved reasonable riding status. But heaven only knows what all we screwed up in the attempt.

Derailed literally means run off the rails, like a runaway train. Or figuratively, a project, campaign, marriage, career, anything that was heading toward a fixed destination. We start so many initiatives knowing where they are supposed to end up. The path is clear, the mileage clocked, the GPS will guarantee the exact route. And yet, so often in life, things get unexpectedly derailed. The chain slips off the sprocket and suddenly we're careening out of control. Don't even know why half the time. A bump in the road? Our own ineptitude? Doesn't matter how you spell it because either way, you're derailed.

So what can you do but reset or mend the chain and get going again? Maybe not on the same path. Maybe you have to backtrack a ways, even limp your way to a restarting place. It can take time to get everything back in working order. Time and will. That's the challenge for those with the consciousness to remember the troubles of the past and the foresight to project into the future -- how to muster the will to get back up and ride again. The Scottish bard Robert Burns perhaps put it best in his poem, "To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough":

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

"Gang aft agley" is often misquoted and made more familiar as "go oft astray." Is a mouse indeed better off than a man when a home and a lifetime's possession get turned upside down? Well, at least we have the option of getting insurance.

Luckily, our derailers didn't derail Mark's and my inaugural bike journey today. We pedaled along the W&OD Trail from Vienna into Reston, perhaps not as briskly as the many experienced cyclists who passed us nor as far as I thought we could go when we first set out. We're still learning and faltering, tentatively feeling our way, learning about gear shifting, road etiquette, starting and stopping, brakes and chains and tires and cables and car racks. But we're mapping our routes, laying our schemes, and keeping in mind what the bike shop mechanic said: "There are just two types of people -- those who've had flats and those who will." Yup, we got our spare tubes.

(In case you're wondering, the majority of votes -- 3,348 or 54% of the total -- went to derailleur.)

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [dē-rāl']
Roots: French dérailler
1. To run or cause to run off the rails.
2. To come or bring to a sudden halt: a campaign derailed by lack of funds; a policy that derailed under the new administration.