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.”
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.
Tryst
Root: Latin, tristia, meaning an appointed hunting place.
Definition: A poetic word implying a rendezvous between two lovers.
Examples:
- Their tryst this night, as on many others, was at the entrance to the apple orchard.
twj says:
The fun is, of course, not in using the word for lovers, but applied to innocent parties to imply that something more might be going on, or that there’s a secretive aspect to the rendezvous.
I do like the hunting root. The word has retained a sense of the hunting/chasing/danger in pronounciation. Short, sharp, succinct.
Calliope
Root: Greek, Kalliopē, literally having a beautiful voice.
Definition: Name given to a keyboard operated steam-whistle organ, mostly found on old steam-ships.
Examples:
- As she forged through the waters, her calliope could be heard whistling away.
twj says:
This is another example of language being used for hollow showmanship. Calling a steam-whistle organ Calliope is a travesty of lingual heritage. It’s like calling the diggeri-doo celestial, no offense implied to diggeri-doo aficionados.
Calliope was chief of the nine Muses of ancient Greece, the muse of singing. The word should be kept in a velvet-lined, gold-plated box, and carefully removed and pronounced only when absolutely necessary.
Phlegmatic
Phlegm, or “flem”. Gives me the shivers cos I immediately see a dodering old fool showering me with spittle as they ed-jew-mi-kate me on some arcane social grace that I’ve never heard of, growing ever more angry until they work themselves into a coughing or whooping fit. But it doesn’t mean that at all! It means someone unemotional, calm, unrilable. Someone you can’t work up into a passion. Someone who just sits there coolly in the heat of an argument, unbothered, apathetic, even.
Root: Greek, phlegmatikos, meaning inflammation, which is from phegein, meaning to burn.
Definition: A calm or apathetic temperament/calmness of temperament.
Examples:
- His phlegmatic temperament enabled him to endure many a cold, lonely, difficult night.
- The noise of the siren would rile even the most phlegmatic of characters.
twj says:
To truly understand phlegmatic, you have to look at the medical science of the middle ages, wherein they would diagnose the health of the patient in terms of the four cardinal humours: the blood (sanguine), the phlegm (phlegmatic), the yellow bile (choler, or anger), and the black bile (melancholy). These terms are still in heavy use today as a way of describing our humour/humor, which has as it’s root the meaning fluid.
Although it is regarded as barbaric and hopelessly out-of-date for medical science, the subject of the four humours, or temperaments, is fascinating and merges with the cardinal elements of the astrological science. (Yes, I just said “astrological science” to see how phlegmatic my rational readers are). Read more on the Wiki:
Anyway, I have to imprint the meaning of Phegmatic, and I’m going to do it by thinking of someone who’s got a cold, is all phlegmed up, and has no real enthusiasm for anything. Hope it works for you as well.
Inexorable
Root: Latin, in-exorabilis, meaning not and entreat.
Definition: Impossible to stop or prevent.
Examples:
- After the death of his wife and child in such tragic circumstances, his already fragile state of mind inexorably deteriorated.
- The ever-curious nature of the human spirit leads inexorably to new discovery and technological advances.
- The lawyer was inexorable, there was nothing that could be done to prevent the lawsuit.
twj says:
I always associate the word inexorable with a sense of inevitable creeping. It has a fatalistic and irrevocable tone to it, and can’t be used lightly. You can use it to describe a person’s state—if they can’t be persuaded or influenced, but it’s one of those words that you really have to mean.
It also reminds me of a nightmare I had where I was paralysed and lying in the path of a runaway steamroller. I woke up from ennui waiting for the inexorably creeping steamroller.
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