Margaret Gelling
The Economist has an obituary of Margaret Gelling, an expert on English place names.
She was a neat, keen, merry woman, “prissy” as she described herself, and sensibly shod and clad. The gear was appropriate for slopping through slæp, fenn, myrr and slohtre (the disappointing origin of Upper and Lower Slaughter), or stomping through leah, hurst, holt and græfe, where trees were felled and coppiced and axes rang in the woods.
I first came across her work when I lived in London, trying to decypher some amusing Tube Station names.
The New Yorker Funnies
In May 25th 2009 issue of The New Yorker there are two cartoons that could have been commissioned for theWORDjunkie.
Decimate and talk dirty.
The Wire Does Grammar
The Wire, Season 1, Episode 7—One Arrest
The beginning of this episode opens with the team analysing a conversation they’ve intercepted on the phone. In itself it’s interesting the way the dealers are using a language code, which the cops have to crack, but six minutes forty seconds into the episode, the fun begins. McNulty has submited a report which the judge is reviewing. The judge is having some trouble with McNulty’s grammar:
Judge: Look here Jimmy, you mis-spelled culpable, and you’re confusing then and than. T-H-E-N is an adverb used to divide and measure time… “Detective McNulty makes a mess and then he has to clean it up.”
McNulty: Thanks teacher. It’s great that you’re going through every word but…
Judge: Not to be confused with T-H-A-N, which is most commonly used after a comparative adjective or adverb as in, “Rhonda is smarter than Jimmy”. Yeah?
I love it.
Stolid
What a strange word.
Root: Obsolete French, stolide, or Latin stolidus, perhaps meaning foolish.
Definition: Calm, dependable. One who shows little emotion, doesn’t get animated.
Examples:
- Contrary to the typical rock star performance, Roy Orbison’s on-stage persona was extraordinarily stolid.
- The Indian bureaucracy remains terribly inefficient and stolid, taking over 200 days to issue a company license.
twj says:
“Stolid, stolid as a rock… oooohhh”, isn’t what Ashford & Simpson sang, but it might be more fitting, seeing as I’d describe your average rock as calm, dependable, and showing little in the way of emotion or animation.
It’s a bizzare word though, like solid gone wrong. Reminds me of stoic and stalwart. And the Soviet Union. Hmmm. “Everybody knew Ilya was a stolid, stoic stalwart for the Party.”
Klingon’s Linguistic Heritage
Speaking of a stoic people, Slate writes about the lingustic origins of Klingon, the invented Star Trek mother-tongue of the Klingon people. The article is penned by Arika Okrent, who is the author of “In the Land of Invented Languages”.
Stoic
Stoic has it’s origins in the philosophy of Stoicism, and to understand the word, we’re going to have to investigate the philosophy a little.
Root: Greek, stōïkos, from the Athenian Stoa Poikilē, or Painted Porch, where Zeno taught the philosophy we know as stoicism.
Definition: One who endures the ups and downs of life without expressing emotion or complaint; an indifference to emotion.
Examples:
- The Irish were ever a stoic nation, expressing their anger lament mostly through song and poem.
- Rachael knew her grandfather to be stoic of character. No one could have lived through so much pain and suffering and still diligently carry on with life.
twj says:
Stoic is stored in my mind beside the words stolid and stalwart. I think they form a harmonious triptych, not only in sound, but in meaning.
Anyway, let me introduce you to the Stoics. “Hello”. They were a bunch of Greeks who believed that it’s not what you say but what you do that matters. They favoured the development of self-control to combat destructive emotions such as anger and jealousy, through the practice of logic, contemplation and concentration. They tried to live a life in harmony with the universe. They saw all men as equal, even slaves, (no word yet on how they viewed women) and advocated a brotherhood of man.
Of course, this is only the most brief of introductions to a complex and quite noble philosophy. More info at The Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism.
The modern day meaning of stoic focuses on an indifference to emotion, which is a pity, as it strips away most of the beauty and grace of the philosophy.
Apostasy
Initial impressions… sounds like a curse…
Root: Greek, apostasis, defection, literally away from, standing.
Definition: In a religious or political context, to abandon belief.
Examples:
- Apostasy of the Muslim religion carries a sentence of death.
- The sexual and physical abuses of the Catholic clergy during the last half-century have done more to promote apostasy than evolutionists could ever do with their erudite arguments.
twj says:
I like the prefix Apo-. It’s a common prefix, and it always indicates from, away, quite, un-. It prefixes such words as apo-strophe (away + turn), apo-crypha (away + hidden), apo-calypse (un- + cover). I get great pleasure deconstructing words and then seeing where the journey takes me. We’ve just looked at apo-calypse, and calypse is quite close to Calypso, the nymph who kept Odysseus hidden in a cave on Malta for seven years. Is it any surprise that calypso literally means she who conceals?
Recidivism
Root: Latin, re + cadere, meaning back + to fall.
Definition: To reoffend, particularly used of a convicted criminal.
Examples:
- We call prisons ‘correctional facilities’. That’s a misnomer. The worth of the ‘correctional institute’ should be measured by the rate of recidivism.
- His was a recidivistic character, immune to reform.
twj says:
Although dry and technical, the root of the word is cool. To fall back. Although it’s normally confined to the realm of criminal behaviour, I wonder if it could share the burden carried by the word relapse, and be used to describe falling off the wagon, or repeatedly breaking a diet….
I also have an image in my mind of a chair with a wonky leg. That damn recidivistic chair.
keep looking »
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