Hi y’all. Please go here: The Muppets Name Etymology. Take a good look, then come back here, because I need to talk to you.
Did you look? Are you ready? Okay. Okay. Okay. deep breath.
What? Really? Is that his real name? For really real? Because I am 33 years old and have, for the entirety of my existence, known him as Snuffalupagus. With a [p] sound in there. Snuffalupagus.
What is going on? IS THIS REALITY?!
For the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to find something to inspire me back to lexpionage after my hiatus. But lately, I just haven’t been seeing very many new to me words. I got 400 pages into Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and thought about maybe doing a Scottish Weapons of the 18th Century post, but in the end was so bored by the book, I gave up, and forget to take my notes out of it before I returned it to the library.
Until yesterday– or technically the day before. Post-robbery, I found I couldn’t sleep and so got up at 1:00 a.m. to clean my kitchen and go through my reader. I’ve been enjoying and learning from Karen de Coster’s site for a few months now, but felt funny about her recent post on frozen yogurt bars as emblematic of fiat inflation and generally representative of the imbecility of most people. I kept reading, but when I saw it again later that morning, it still struck me wrong. My experience with frozen yogurt has not been at all juvenile, nor imbecilic, nor infantilizing. It’s really one of the only ways I can go out with friends for a treat, since most frozen yogurt bars offer one or two sugar-free flavors. Not to mention the ability to pump my own and accordingly give myself a comparatively small portion, certainly smaller than a “small” would be elsewhere.
So I decided to leave a comment, trying to be on the up and up, indicating a difference of experience, if a interest in the idea of fiat economy. I ended thusly:
…wow, not everyone who enjoys a froyo now and then is an infantalized, thoughtless automaton waiting to have the next trend hosed down his or her throat, low-fat or otherwise.
Karen still continues to disagree with me, quite vehemently, which, you know, rock on, you cultural critic you. More interesting than that, was a comment directed solely at my comment:
James F says:
August 11th, 2010 at 4:07 am
[.....not everyone who enjoys a froyo now and then.....]
I don’t know if it’s acceptable to comment on a comment, but I absolutely -must- say: please tell me the word “froyo” is one that you yourself made up just now and is not a word that actual adults use on a widespread basis.
I don’t seem to hang out with any adults that consume things like frozen yogurt, (they tough it out with some old-fashioned concoction called “ice cream”) so please excuse my ignorance in this matter.
I ask because, frankly, “froyo” is one of the lamest-sounding made-up words I’ve heard in a long time. Seeing as how this is America, that’s really saying something.
The word “lappy” was quite despair-inducing enough (what, people nowadays just can’t spare the mental bandwidth for the six letters of “laptop” vs. the five of “lappy?”). If “froyo” is, in fact, a widely-used word in the America of 2010, (is it?) I may have to start taking a closer look at the possibility of emigrating. No fooling: it’s -that- lame.
(To be clear: it’s the word I have problems with, not the person who wrote it, okay? Peace, love, and absolutely astonishing regularity to all!)
And it came to me! LEXPIONAGE! No, James, I didn’t invent the term froyo! But I can research it.
Froyo seems to be gaining traction as a word, with Wordnik citing most of its usage and lookup concentrated after 2008. But I first recall hearing it in 2002, in the Greg the Bunny episode “SK 2.0″ when Jimmy, played by Seth Green, says something like, “Let’s get one of P.A.s to go get us some froyos.” In the episode, which turns on Jimmy’s ability to transition from P.A. to Producer (he fails, natch), the use of the neologism “froyo” underscores the vast difference between he and his father, who is the current producer-director and under orders to revise the show for ever-younger viewers.
So froyo has been around for a while, but may only be gaining traction and visibility now, as these yogurt bars become trendy and begin to populate more areas. Etymologically, it’s a fairly straightforward portmanteau, though certain segments of the Urban Dictionary population disagree, citing frogurt as a better, more descriptive term. I dunno. I like the fluid rhyme of froyo.
So I, an adult, do use the term froyo when talking to other adults, especially in casual situations, like blog comments. But I don’t disagree with James. “Lappy” for laptop is just awful. I have never actually heard that, but if I did, I would really have to concentrate on not punching the person who said it. That’s a different linguistic process, though, and one I have great difficulty with, and I think I’m on record about it. Shortening a word as such is apocopation, and I often find it infuriating. “Hubby” for instance. Oof. Or “cardi” for cardigan. Like James says, if you’re gonna type out the first five letters, you can’t get the last three out? But in both cases, some of the urge to apocopate probably stems from a certain affection, dimunition, if you will, like a nickname.
And that’s where I come down. I can be exceptionally articulate all the livelong day. But there are times when I just want to go get a treat with my pals, and for those times, there’s froyo.
Y’all, while I was suffering from depression, ennui, adult onset ADD (lazyness, easy distractability), greater and lesser degrees of drunkeness, and some truly stupendous degrees of drunkeness, and as such, not blogging, I spent a lot of time reading books.
Which is to say, when I wasn’t funneling prozac down my gullet with jeroboams of wine, I read. I am thinking of making a list of books here, but mostly you could go to my Goodreads page and friend me there, because I do tend to keep it updated.
Point is! Books! I read them. But! I didn’t take notes on new words. Occasionally I learned a new word and thought, “Oh, I should blog that.” Then I came over all sweaty and shaky and had to go get another drink.
Blogging anxiety or the DTs– they’re so similar.
Anyway, two words, or one word and a suffix, I am trying to use lately:
Do you all have vocabulary goals? Is it strange to have vocabulary goals?
* Or so I hear.
** That’s totes a lie. I came in 12th.
Last week, during what I started thinking of as The Week of Loveliness I was going to talk about all the reading I do lately to get the scoop on beautifying my mug. I started a post, got distracted, and wandered off. Just like I do all the time! So now I’m getting back to things. I haven’t updated my blogroll in quite a while and there’s quite a bit of stuff over there I don’t read and need to purge in favor of other things. But there are two beauty blogs there and not my at-home bookmarks, so we’ll start with those.
And then there are the blogs not in the sidebar blogroll, because I’m lazy and also there was a strange feeling of not wanting everybody to necessarily know how much time I spend contemplating eyeshadow. Which is silly, don’t you think? I do. So here goes.
I spend a whole lot of time contemplating eyeshadow. And even more on lipstick. And lately, a ton on nailpolish. I’m very serious about my silly!
We haven’t gotten up to much lexpionage around here lately, have we? As usual, there’s no particular reason for it. I’m just very lazy and easily distracted. So back at Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon? Yes.
Where we learn words like fleam:
It had been forged to order by the same maker of instruments who supplied the rabbi-physicians of Zelikman’s family with their scalpels and bloodletting fleams, in sly defiance of Frankish law, which forbade Jews to bear arms even in self-defense, even when an armed gang of ruffians dragged your mother and sister screaming from the kitchen and did rank violence to them in the street while you, a boy, were obliged to stand bladeless by.
A fleam is exactly what context says it is– a lancet for opening veins. Although this gives you the idea that you could shiv someone with one if they were raping your sister, and you probably could, it looks more like a little hammer than anything we’d think of as a slicing device. The word itself goes back to the Greek root phlebo- meaning “vein.”
Or contumelious, which is an awful lot like contumacious, but different enough to catch the eye:
He was nearly as gifted at languages as the contumelious myna.
Contumely is absue, scorn, or disdain. To be contumelious is to act in a way that shames and humiliates with insults. Quite a bit more powerful there than contumacious and good to know. And from the Latin contumax, meaning insolent.
And also, affiant:
All that remained of the temple, reared by Alexander during his failed conquest of Caucasia and affiant now to that failure and to the ruin of his gods, was a wind-worn pedestal and the candle stub of a fluted column, against which a would-be ruffian named Hanukkah sat propped with his right hand over the wound in his sizable belly, as he had sat for two long days and nights, waiting with mounting impatience for the angel of death.
This is a tricky one. Affiant essentially means witness. Or I guess it’s tricky, to me, because of Chabon’s way of packing about 18 different ideas into one sentence. An affiant is a person who makes an affadavit. It’s from Middle French afier, meaning “to confide,” “to trust,” or “to promise,” which is the same root that gives us “fiance.” Prior to that it’s straight Latin ad fidere, “to trust.”
And that’s where we’ll stop, because staring at fidere brings to mind “fid” which makes me think of Anathem, which is what I was sure I’d be writing for the Yuletide rare fandoms ficathon this year, but it turns out not. And I spent all weekend watching a certain set of DVDs for the fandom I am writing for and I’m finding it really hard to get going with a story in that fandom which also involves a love of Latin as in In Hoc Signo Vinces except I’m not writing about that part of it and the part I should be writing about really makes me wish I knew Russian. Anybody know Russian? I’ll be your best friend! Okay!
Okay, this:
Apollo tweeted it. Lady Glutter sent it to me special after she brought it up over coffee Monday morning and I got all turned around and weird about it.
First, that dude is AWESOME. You know he is. Don’t front.
But! Most importantly, what is the mayo code? If they offer you extra mayo, you have to take it. Is it money? Semen? Restless violent youth? Urban dictionary is no help.
Last, that dude is AWESOME!
Alright. I took a bit of a break from the literary vocabulary out of respect for Mervyn Peake and also because I was bored and worn-out of it. But now! I am still kind of bored and worn out. Nevertheless, there is lexpionage. Because that is what we do around here. Words for the next few weeks will be from Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. Y’all know I’m a huge Chabon fan. I hope you are, too, or are considering becoming one. Last year I did the Yiddish Policeman’s lexpionage, from his novel of similar title. Remember that? Zugzwang! This novel, though, doesn’t lend itself so easily to titling, punny or otherwise. So the title is the title of the first chapter of the book, from which we get the first three words. Which I should probably throw out there already. Ahem.
Ever heard of shatranj? Me neither, until now:
Engrossed in the study of a small ivory shatranj board with pieces of ebony and horn, and in the stew of chickpeas, carrots, dried lemons and mutton for which the carvansary was renowned, the African held the place nearest the fire, his broad back to the bird, with a view of the doors and the windows with its shutters thrown open to the blue dusk.
Shatranj is a the board game from which Chess developed.* The word itself is Arabic (from which English derives the word “Chess” via French) but can be traced back to the Sanskrit word chaturanga, and from there to Old Persian chatrang. The missing “u” is the result of syncope, the same phonetic process usually inflicted on unstressed vowels that has us say “gonna” when we mean “going to.” Interestingly enough, “chaturanga” survives intact in yoga. It breaks down into two words “four” and “arms,” as in Chaturanga Dandasana, the Four Limbed Staff Pose.
Nor had I heard of bambakion, which goes like so:
The precise origin of the African remained a mystery. In his quilted gray bambakion with its frayed hood, worn over a ragged white tunic, there was a hint of former service in the armies of Byzantium, while the brass eyelets on the straps of his buskins suggested a sojourn in the West.
Clothing word! Exciting! I never get tired of learning these. This one is a little difficult for me to picture. It’s definitely worn on the top half of the body. Wikipedia says that it’s a protective garmet for the Cataphract warrior (mounted cavalry), and is distinguished from infantry gear by composition (leather) and color (red). Leather to protect your sensitive rib cage and guts. Except The African’s is quilted, so maybe not so much leather.
So we’ll leave that to marinate and move on to mahout:
Neither the beardless stripling who was sitting just to the right of its victim, nor the one-eyed majout who was the stripling’s companion, would ever forget the dagger’s keening as it stung the air.
A mahout is the keeper or driver of an elephant. This is a major plot point. And one I should have seen just from the cover of the book, but didn’t, because I like to ignore all signs and symbols on the covers of books and just let literature flow over me. No, just kidding. I can be completely seduced or sickened by covers. The cover of this particular book did neither, though. The word is from the mid-17th century, which makes it a bit out of place for a story set in A.D. 950. Nevertheless, it’s forerunner, the Sanskrit mahamatta, would have been just that much harder to figure out.
So! Wow! No Latin in sight! How do you feel?
Way back when, I used to do weekly lexpionage. I had a big blotter calendar kitted out by month and would write down a new word on the day I first learnt it; then every Friday I’d round up the words and part. That blotter got used up and the one that replaced it has no calendar. So I started making columns of different types of words: new words, rediscovered words, fanfic words, and several others. And I found that, by making all these big lists, and being constantly on the lookout, and also making the same notes in books, I was actually getting less lexpionage done. I wasn’t being as discriminating. And I’d fill up a blotter page with other stuff– phone numbers and doodles and stuff, but the words would still be there, unposted. So I’d tear one sheet off and write the columns down again, copying what I already had. I’ve done this several times now. Maybe for the better part of a year.
So today I’m starting to clear out the New Words I Learned on the Internets column. I didn’t save URLs, only sources, so I can’t give context or remember it. But once upon a time these words were interesting. Or they still are. I think they still are.
I found enthymeme at The Evangelical Outpost way back when it was just a Joe Carter joint. Not that it’s not still good reading, but it is different. And enthymeme is a syllogism in which one part of the conclusion is not stated explicity, usually because it is assumed, either because it is obvious or because it is dubious.
Doxastic comes from Vox Populi and I think tripped me up to the point where I thought I’d just set it aside and mull it over until it made sense. Because frankly it cooks the nugget. Doxastic logic is logic concerned with belief. Go check out the wikipedia entry for doxastic logic. Shoot buddy. Y’all want to take some symbolic logic classes? I do.
Conurbation should have been self-evident, but it wasn’t. Those guys at Counting Cats in Zanzibar are always dazzling me with their wit and badinage. I should remember they’ve got a woman on staff lately, but somehow Nick hovers frontmost in the mind. Conurbation is the technical term for suburban sprawl, where several developed areas come together to form one large urban area that nevertheless maintains the idea of the small towns or cities that came together to make it. I like this word because it’s easily and obviously understood, yet still manages to give the idea that it means something entirely else, like maybe it’s a fancy, secret word for being very annoyed.
These words actually aren’t copied anymore. I stopped copying. I just clipped the corner out of one blotter sheet and taped it down on the new one. Enthymeme and Conurbation are bent and manged from my keyboard. Three words down, six to go.
And now, with terrific, maybe even delicious, fanfare, let’s conclude the new word lexpionage of Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. I’m a little over it. And more than a little annoyed with myself for letting it go on so very long, instead of sticking to a nice, once-a-week schedule. These really are the last three words. No fooling.
Antepenultimately: chine
Let them rear their ugly hands, and by the Doom, we’ll crack ‘em chine-ways.
The first definition is a ravine formed by running water, but the second definition is more contextual: the backbone or spine, especially of an animal, especially cut for cooking. It can be used a verb, meaning to butcher through the spine.
Do not fuck with Countess Groan. She’ll eat your spine. Observe the penultimate: shrive
‘God shrive my soul, for it’ll need it!’ she boomed, as the wings fluttered about her and the little claws shifted for balance. ‘God shrive it when I find the evil thing! For absolution, or no absolution – there’ll be satisfaction found.’
Shrive twists and turns back through Germanic languages to Latin scribere meaning “to write.” Which you probably figured out. While the definitions of this word are all very similar, transitive and intransitive verb states add more or less nuance, respectively. Here, as a transitive verb, the Countess wants to be granted absolution, having just broken some peeps chine-ways. She’s done wrong, and she knows it. Then, in her second statement, she heads for the first definition, the imposition of penance. She doesn’t care whether or not she gets absolution, but she gone fuck some people up and if God wanted to get in on that, so much the better.
Gertrude Groan is the Jules Winfield of British literature.
Finally, ultimately, ending on the only possible note the Gormenghastocabulary could end on, triturated:
They cast no reflection in the water at their feet – it was too triturated by the pricking of the rain.
To triturate is to pulverize: to rub, crush, or grind into a powder. It’s an interesting word given that here it’s referring to water, something which could never be powdered at all. It’s late Latin, from the earliest root terere (past participle tritus), meaning “to thresh.”
So there we go. What do you think? Ready to move on to Michael Chabon? Or do I just need to go to right to the next book in the series, Gormenghast. Please say Chabon. Please.
I was going to start out by talking about how this is the penultimate edition of the Gormenghastocabulary, but then I realized it’s not. There are two more books in the Gormenghast series, and I own both and I plan on reading them both. So this is the penultimate set of words from Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. And some exciting words they are.
First, there’s madder:
Her big head was coloured to a dim and dreadful madder.
“Her” is Countess Groan and dreadful is right. Poor Flay! This is one of those situations where Peake manages to just stuff a sentence full of meaning. Countess Groan has strangely colored red hair, yes, so that gets the first, truest definition of madder: red dye attained from the roots of Rubia tinctorum. It’s where Stephen King got his title Rose Madder and part of the chorus of the song, “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” (Alizarin crimson).* But then you’ve got secondary and tertiary meanings of “mad” going on: crazy and enraged, and the Countess is both.
Peake, as a writer, can craft a sentence, right? Sometimes he spools them out, drowning you in words. Sometimes, like here, he just seizes you around the throat and asks, “Got all that?!”
Then, dace:
Swelter is shifting the soft, dace-like areas of his feet backwards and forwards, a deliberate and stroking motion, as of something succulent wiping itself on a mat.
A dace is an oogy little fish. This is twice now Peake’s gotten me with animal words. Swelter is awful to begin with (he hates Flay so I hate him) but this really amps up the grody.
Finally, arras:
‘Good-bye,’ said the voice. ‘It is all one. Why break the heart that never beat from love? We do not know, sweet girl; the arras hangs: it is so far; so far away, dark daughter. Ah no – not that long shelf – not that long shelf: it is his lifework that the fires are eating. All’s one. Good-bye…good-bye.’
An arras is a tapestry and the word comes from a town in France, where tapestries are made. Contextually, that’s Lord Groan. He’s in a bad, bad way. He’s got all kinds of colons and semi-colons and the fires are eating his life’s work. Which is extra sad, considering the best of his life’s works, Fuchsia and Titus, are not being consumed by fire. Oh dear.
Last of the Titus Groan words next week, y’all. After that? Well, Michael Chabon and Neal Stephenson, of course!
*My favorite version is Sarah McLachlan’s. Solace was a really good album.