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.

Update: Prevaricate -- A Policeman's Take

Overheard: A deadpan police officer speaking to one of several young men who had been detained and cuffed beside the Verizon Center arena in downtown D.C. on Friday night as we walked past....

"That is what we say is contradictory to the truth."

How apropos -- prevarication in action!

Prevaricate -- A Bit of a Stretch

I was overheard today on an elevator using the phrase, "prevaricating too much." Sharing the elevator car were several coworkers who know my penchant for big words and who are understandably quite willing to rib me about it. Prevaricating, one person noted, that's lying. "How much prevaricating is too much?" quipped another.

It took me a couple of hours to get to a dictionary and see if I had indeed bungled the term (wouldn't be the first time). Though I don't have my trusty OED handy, I'm relieved to note that several online dictionaries have vindicated me. To prevaricate is to stretch the truth. (If there were an emoticon for a fist pump, I'd put it here.)

Merriam-Webster gives the definition: "to deviate from the truth: equivocate." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary says: 'To shift or turn from one side to the other, from the direct course, or from truth; to speak with equivocation; to shuffle; to quibble." The American Heritage Dictionary gives its meaning as: "to stray from or evade the truth; equivocate." But, yes, right afterward it says, "See synonyms at lie."

So my colleagues weren't wrong, either. Lie is given as a synonym for prevaricate by several sources as are fib, falsify and deceive. So are dodge, evade, exaggerate, hedge, beat around the bush, and stretch the truth. I think I can indeed argue, given the nuances of this word, that you can prevaricate, or stretch the truth, too much till it becomes an outright lie.

But that begs the question, when is a lie a lie? Isn't the purpose of stretching the truth the same as a bald-faced lie, namely, to deceive? Are there shades of deception? The psychology of lying is a whole fascinating realm. This New York Times article talks about studies showing that exaggeration is psychologically different from lying in that it brings about none of the anxiety associated with lying. This LiveScience.com article on why we lie says it's a matter of self esteem and that "though many animals engage in deliberately misleading another, only humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others."

If we agree that a prevaricator is distinct from a liar, then the old "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" taunt won't work for the former crowd and we need a new one. Hmm -- "Prevaricator, prevaricator, pants in an incinerator?"

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [pri-var'-i-keyt]
Roots: Latin vāricāre meaning to straddle, derived from Latin vārus meaning bent.
1. To stray from or evade the truth; equivocate.

Exculpatory -- Don't Blame Me!

It sounds like a term related to a skin disease or some sort of diagnostic procedure, but if you're on the legal hot seat, like former Alaska senator Ted Stevens, exculpatory is a term you embrace with fervor and glee. Today, a judge threw out the corruption verdict against Stevens and ordered a criminal probe into how lawyers at the Justice Department prosecuted the case. The judge's foremost complaint was that prosecutors deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers.

"Whether you are a public official or a private citizen or a Guantanamo detainee, the government has an obligation to produce exculpatory evidence so that justice can be done," said U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.

What an archaic sounding term, exculpatory. From Latin root culp-a meaning blame, as in mea culpa or its contemporary equivalent, my bad. But the addition of ex shifts the term to mean out of blame. Which is what some of that evidence might have meant for Stevens. (Or not, but we'll never know.)

The term is largely confined to legal discourse. Us less lawyerly types are generally more apt to use excusable, defensible, justifiable, or pardonable. Athough exculpatory neatly conveys both the sense of excuse and explain in one word.

What counts as exculpatory evidence? Well, when you're scrambling to mount a defense, you might try just anything. Take Jake Blues's impassioned efforts to exonerate himself to the gun-toting ex-fiancee he abandoned at the altar in The Blues Brothers:

"Oh, please, don't kill us. Please, please don't kill us. You know I love you baby. I wouldn't leave ya. It wasn't my fault. . . . Honest. I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO G-O -O-O-D!"

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [ik-skuhl-puh-tohr-ee]
1. Of statements, evidence, etc. Adapted or intended to clear from blame or a charge of guilt; apologetic, vindicatory.

Hardy, Hearty, Har Har

It's cherry blossom season here in D.C. and this morning even the small grove of cherry trees lining the sidewalk near the Metro station seemed a picture of fuschia splendor. These same trees come late summer's swelter look so tired and worn, like they'll barely hold on to bloom again next spring. Several of them today bore bare twigs and branches between the puffy blossoms. "Too bad they aren't particularly hardy trees," I thought as I passed. "Or wait -- should that be hearty?" I secondguessed myself as I so often have with that particular pair of words.

Hearty. Hardy. They're almost homonyms (I'd say they are except among the most careful enunciators). But are they interchangeable terms? Hearty, I've tried to remind myself, is basically a shortened version of wholehearted, meaning heartfelt, ardent, enthusiastic, effusive. Hardy, on the other hand, is like a slightly longer version of hard and means tough, durable, rugged. So this morning, of course, I should've used hardy.

But wait -- other synonyms given for hardy are vigorous, lusty, hale and hearty. And other definitions for hearty include, robust, healthy, fit and flourishing, vigorous, and hardy.

So the joke's on me. All this time I've been wondering if I've been erroneously conflating the meaning of these two words and it turns out that they are synonyms in some contexts. Still, hearty has some meanings that diverge from hardy. For example, offering your hearty congratulations to a colleague expresses your heartfelt sentiments in a way that a hardy congratulations doesn't fully convey. You'd be better off praising the troops for their hardiness in the face of the perils of war. And while you might refer to your hearty or hardy grandfather's ability to still cut a rug at age 87, it is more precise to speak fondly of your goofy uncle's hearty penchant for telling silly knock-knock jokes.

Dictionary Definitions:
Hearty
Pronounced: [här'-tē]
Roots: Related to roots of heart: Old English heorte, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch hart and German Herz, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin cor, cord- and Greek kēr, kardia.
1. (of a person or their behavior) loudly vigorous and cheerful; e.g., a hearty and boisterous character, he sang in a hearty baritone.
• (of a feeling or an opinion) heartfelt; e.g., hearty congratulations.
• (of a person) strong and healthy; e.g., a white-bearded but hearty man.
2 (of food) wholesome and substantial; e.g., a hearty meal.
• (of a person's appetite) robust and healthy; e.g., Jim goes for a long walk to work up a hearty appetite for dinner.

Hardy
Pronounced: [här'-dē]
Roots: from Old French hardi, past participle of hardir ‘become bold,’ of Germanic origin; related to hard.
1. robust; capable of enduring hardship, rigors of weather, difficult conditions.
2. bold, courageous, daring.

Pickles & Plinth - A Vocabulary Comic

Oh, joy; I opened the Sunday comics pages this morning to find a vocabulary joke featured there, this time in the Pickles strip. Earl is learning a new word each day and plinth is his new word this particular day.

(Note: these are the last 4 frames; full Sunday strip won't fit here, but you can see it via the link above to Comics.com)

For the record here are the details on plinth:

Dictionary Definition:
Pronounced: [plinth] (just like it looks like it should sound)
Root: from Latin plinthus, from Greek plinthos meaning ‘tile, brick, squared stone.’ The Latin form was in early use in English.
1. a. the lower square member of the base of a column or pedestal.
b. a block of stone, etc., serving as a base or pedestal to a statue, bust, vase, etc.
c. the projecting part of a wall immediately above the ground; also a course of bricks or stones in a wall, above ground level, by which the part of the wall above is made to be set back in relation to the part below.
2. the uppermost or projecting part of a cornice or of a wall. Now rare.
3. a shallow wooden cabinet in which a record deck is mounted. (*Not indicated as rare, but seems like it should be, if you ask me)
4. a block sited on the floor and forming part of the base of the molding of a door or window.

Scarified -- Scratching the Surface or Digging Deeper?

I had the privilege to hear eminent biologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson speak on protecting the planet's biodiversity at the National Academy of Sciences on April 2. This is a man who seems to appreciate the richness of vocabulary almost as much as the rich diversity of species filling the planet, as he sprinkled his talk with terms like supercilious, venerability, and chimera as well as some earthier words like stupid. There's a reason he's a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his writings.

While answering a question from the audience, he mentioned a recent excursion to a pond where, he said, "the surrounding forest had been scarified," leaving the animals that came to the pond to breed little place to shelter. Scarified. It sounds so harsh, that hard c followed by the rasping r. It brought to my mind an image of desolation. Yet, when I sought out the term's exact meaning in the dictionary, it seemed at first blush to mean something less devastating.

The foremost definition of scarify in dictionaries is a variation of, "to make a number of cuts or scratches in the surface; to cover with scratches or incisions." Certainly, scarification still wouldn't be a good thing for the wooded area surrounding the pond, but it doesn't sound that terrible. Does that mean Wilson misused the term? Plucked a rhinestone rather than a diamond when riffling through his bag of vocabulary gems? Should he have used razed instead?

Well, a secondary definition of scarify is from an agricultural context, "to break up or loosen the surface of, especially soil." It refers to the rows of jumbled, overturned earth after a tiller has rumbled through. Perhaps the scene Wilson visited bore the marks of undergrowth clearing and soil disruption, but not wholesale slash and burn of all growth. If so, razed would be overkill and scarified could fit the bill.

Wilson's talk on the importance of protecting the biodiversity of Earth and how we can do that mixed optimism and pessimism. The 21st century, he said, "is a time when we will either settle down or finish wrecking the planet." He went on, "we could lose half the animal and plant species on Earth by the end of the century. The loss, even if we can slow it, will inflict a heavy price in wealth, security and spirit....The radical reduction of world biodiversity is the folly our descendants will least likely forgive us because they will remember that a thousand years from now." But he added, "if we pass through the bottleneck we are in now, that combination of continuing overpopulation, of very high and rising per capita consumption, if we find that the quality of life is more important than the amount of consumption and stuff we own, then the 22nd century, I believe, will be a paradise." Well said!

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [skār'ə-fī']
Root: from Old French scarifier, via late Latin from Greek skariphasthai meaning ‘scratch an outline,’ from skariphos meaning ‘stylus’
1. To make a number of scratches or slight incisions in a surface.
2. To make sore or wound; figuratively, to distress deeply, lacerate, as with severe criticism
3. To break up or loosen a surface (ground).