Word of the Day: Brunei

At this point, I must be getting quite a lot of quizzical looks as the identity of this Word of the Day appears on various Google Reader pages and suchlike. Most people (or at least those with geographical affinity or instinct) already know of Brunei, the little Sultanate on the island of Kalimantan (or more commonly, Borneo) which is one of the world's richest states.

But that country is not what I'm talking about here...

The word brunei is the plural of Latin bruneus, which means 'a brown thing'. Brunei therefore means 'brown things'. It's related to the (also) Latin name Bruno, which means 'Brown'. If you knew a Mr Brown, you could refer to him as Magister Bruno in Latin!

...and this is still not quite the point of this post.

I was caught in reflection over the Hierophant's recent post in which he quoted, "Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis." It seemed to me that I remembered this line from my old friend named after the saint of the golden mouth. In the days when that friend of mine was considering the priesthood and a life of scholarly contemplation, this line came up and I never forgot it.

It has always seemed to me that Latin has a tendency to produce remarkable statements, because its structure is (by and large) a rational one, unlike that of English. If you are to be creative in a logical language (like computer languages), the effect has to be more than the sum of the code.

I've said this, because Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis can best be translated as "The cross stays, while the world turns." It carries with it the connotation of stability against chaos, reliability against caprice, validity against variability, a firm anchor against the whims of the sea. It doesn't imply stasis, but rather a steady perspective from which to stand and respond to change.

But what has this got to do with the word brunei?

The quote is actually the motto of the Order of Carthusians. This is a monastic order of hermits, who think and read and publish their writings while maintaining minimal contact with the world. Their monasteries are set up so that monks don't have to see much of each other, with individual cells and gardens. The Order was founded by St Bruno, and it is not stretching the use of Latin to say that these monks can be referred to collectively as the Brunei.

This post is dedicated to my friends and colleagues in the world out there, buffeted by the dictates of society, government, culture, academic life and... well, dictators, I suppose. Remember that whatever your beliefs and whatever your faith, a true faith is always more stable than the systems of the world (apologies to Sir Isaac for that dig, haha) or of the secular masters of this world.

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Note:

Yes, I have many TOK students who read these posts and will ask, "Haha, what do you mean by 'true'?" Well, I like the anagrammatic quality of this question-and-response:

Q. Quid est veritas?
A. Est vir qui adest.

Dead Language?

I was introduced to the rigours of Latin by a fierce and exacting taskmistress. My grandfather's younger sister had the sharpest mind of anyone I've ever met, a tongue to go with it, and the will to restrain both – a potent combination. She once said she was the only one who could stand up to him, and I believe it. They were very affectionate siblings the rest of the time.

But what amazed me was the abundance of life in the so-called 'dead' languages. From both her and my grandfather, I picked up a love of the arcane, in the form of Latin, Greek and unusual Biblical translations; she taught me what brutal honesty was about and he taught me what loving generosity was. And yet both of them were capable of blistering wrath, rare and doubly potent when unleashed. I loved them both – grandfather close up and my grandaunt from afar.

And I will always remember them as I remember this:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dominus Deus Sabaoth;
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria Tua.
Hosanna in excelsis!

Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of Hosts;
The heavens and earth are filled with Your glory,
Hosanna in the highest!

Amen.

Big Words

There are some large words in our vocabulary: colossal, titanic, gigantic, tremendous, huge, enormous, vast, immense; the interesting thing, I realise, is that most people cannot differentiate between them. It would be an excellent test to see whether a candidate could create a sentence in which one word would work while another could not.

So what are the differences between these words?

Colossal: From Greek kolossos, first found in Herodotos and used to describe the large Egyptian statues found in temples and as statuary guardians. The Colossus of Rhodes was the 33-metre tall statue of Helios the sun-god which stood near the harbour from which Rhodes derived its income and which was its only defensive weakness. From the mid-18th century, colossal was used to denote something unimaginably vast (in terms of space and size) but not necessarily of human aspect, as had previously been the case.

Titanic: From Greek titan, 'one who strains mightily'; the male plural is titanes and the female plural titanides. They were the youngest (and thus most human-looking) of the children of Heaven (Ouranos) and Earth (Gaia). To call something titanic is to evoke the sense of godlike struggle and use of physical power and energy.

For those who want to know, their names were Ókeanos ('Ocean'), Téthys ('Divine Sea'), Hüperion ('Excellence'), Théia ('Divine Light'), Koios ('Intelligence'), Mnemosüné ('Memory'), Krios ('Horned One' - he seems to have been male lunar power), Phoibé ('Brightness'), Iapetus ('Spearcaster' or 'Piercing One'), Themis ('Natural Justice'), Kronos ('Time Passing'), and Rhea ('Fertile Ground').

Gigantic: From Greek gigas ('enormous one'), one of a member of the monstrous cousins of the gods, the Gigantes. The word carries with it the sense of abnormal size, deformed largeness and brute strength. Some of the Gigantes had multiple limbs and extraordinary senses; Argus was said to have a thousand eyes and the Hekatoncheires had a hundred hands and fifty heads each.

Tremendous: From Latin tremens; literally 'causing one to shake'. Originally had the sense of 'terrifying' or 'awesome'. Now, it just means 'very good, and I'm happy for you'.

Huge: From some distant Indo-European root (see, for example, Old French ahuge), meaning 'very large in scale or stature'. Describes physical size.

Enormous: From Latin e- + -normis; implies something that is beyond the ordinary and completely abnormal. The sense of 'outside nature' (perhaps outrageously so) can be seen in the related word 'enormity'.

Vast: From Latin vastus, 'wasteland'. The words 'vast' and 'waste' are originally the same. 'Vast' denotes an empty space, a void or other featureless expanse. 'Vast knowledge' would mean something like 'a lot of information, within which individual facts are of negligible importance', I suppose.

Immense: From Latin meaning 'not measurable' (cf. 'mensuration', 'commensurate'). The idea is that of something so big that it is beyond conventional measurement.

Some day when you have to describe something beyond normal experience, take a few moments. Think about the kind of excess you are experiencing. And pick the right word to describe it.

Why Latin?

Why learn to read Latin? I have many answers, given at many times in many places for many reasons. But one of them is that the Romans had a large segment of culture obsessively dedicated to debate and rhetoric, from which many persistent things have come. And some of them are timeless. Here is one such gem.

"On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains."

Cicero (45 BC), The Extremes of Good and Evil, 1.10.33; trans. H Rackham (1914)

Lingua Latina

It is here that you may seek solace in the vapours of a dying language while you ponder the defeat of Arsenal for the first time in fifty games; hardly a decimation, but certainly a quinquagesimation.

It is here that I learnt 'ora et labora' could mean 'coastline in decline', and that 'auspicium melioris aevi' could mean 'looking for signs of better times'.

It is here that I realised that only the long-dead Romans really knew what they were talking about, and they must be laughing at the scholars who diligently dig through Spanish, French, Italian, Rumanian and other allied languages to figure out what exactly they used to say.

This is the sort of morbid stuff that appears when your only consolation is that 'manu' in Latin can mean 'artificially'. And so it goes, one sips one's sherry and ponders the verb endings of a dead language while the nerve endings of the living recover.