Word of the Day: Fugitive

The word 'fugitive' is an interesting one because of its origins; it is one of many words (yes, many!) that come from the Latin fugere — 'to run away, flee, move quickly away from and escape'.

The Latin phrase tempus fugit is thus translated 'time flies' by most people; that is, it eludes us, it escapes us by passing by too quickly for us to seize it. What I like about 'fugitive' is that it is not supposed to connote the sense of 'hiding from something' but that of 'escaping by being fast and elusive'.

That's why we learn about 'subterfuge', which means 'escaping by going underground' (fromsub- meaning 'below' and terr- meaning 'earth, ground') and 'centrifuge', which is about 'escaping (from) the centre'.

The meaning of such words, sadly, seems elusive. The fugitive sense of fugitive is what has drawn me to hunt down its etymology for my dear readers.

Word of the Day: Xanthinophile

A xanthophile (from Greek xanthë, 'blonde') is someone who loves the colour yellow. (This should not be confused with 'xanthophyll', from a Greek word meaning 'leaf-yellow' and referring to the pigment in yellowish leaves). However, my WotD is 'xanthinophile', someone who loves xanthine-containing preparations.

A xanthine is one of a small group of alkaloid molecules which are naturally formed in the body. However, the methylxanthines are stimulants that block sleep signals and thus keep you alert; they include theobromine (in chocolate, cacao, cocoa), theophylline (in dark chocolate, tea), and caffeine (in coffee, tea). They alleviate asthma and, as a huge number of modern scientific studies show, are boosters for almost all aspects of human health and well-being (the old word was 'wealth', but that's been corrupted).

Xanthinophiles are therefore people who love coffee, tea and/or chocolate and other preparations that are chemically related to these.

Word of the Day: Flibbertigibbet

Middle English onomatopoeia. Means a flighty, chatty, and rather unfocussed character. Often female, faerie or both. Sometimes a child, possibly male. Or a mooncalf. And all this without the influence of alcohol.

Now that Victorian and steampunk are in vogue, it's a word I see more often. I'm not sure where I first saw it, but I suspect it was either in the writings of Pamela Lyndon Travers (although that would've been post-Victorian) or Edith Nesbit Bland.

Word of the Day: Reck

Words have long histories, some rather convoluted. Sometimes, a word's partner goes missing, and we wonder where it went.

That's the case with 'reckless'. What is 'reck', and why does having less of it (or the loss of it) make things difficult? 'Reck' comes from the Germanic, its old English form being something like reccan. It carries the idea of 'to take care of', 'to heed' or 'to have a thought for'. If you do none of these things, then you are said to be 'reckless'.

Obviously, if you are doing all these things, you are said to 'reckon' — giving due consideration to the topic at hand. Eventually, there will be a 'reckoning' — an accounting of all the pluses and minuses of the outcome of an incident, event, or other process.

'Reck' has traditionally gone with 'rede', the Germanic word for counsel or advice. A person who is 'ill-read' is actually one who is badly advised; a person who is 'unready' may be badly-advised, or lack wisdom, or reject good advice. The implicit or explicit relationship is one of recking one's rede; to be reckless of one's rede might lead to disaster.

Word of the Day: Hawker

Today I heard that an old schoolmate had insisted that we should develop a new generation of hawkers. At which point, I reflected that I knew at least three definitions of 'hawker' in the sense of 'one who hawks'.

First: a hawker (from a Germanic root-word meaning 'to carry on one's back') is an itinerant vendor. The oddity of course is that street food, the stuff most often being hawked, tends now to be sold from immobile stalls (haha, 'stall' of course has another appropriate meaning here).

Second: a hawker is one who hunts with a hawk. In this sense, the word 'hawk' comes from another old word meaning to grasp or seize — very much as the word 'raptor' comes from the Latin for something very similar in concept.

Third: a hawker is one who expectorates violently. I think this one's onomatopoeic. Heh.

Word of the Day: Cæsura

I have come not to bury Cæsar; indeed, I have not come to blog about him at all. But it is inevitable that those who see the word cæsura are likely to think of the word cæsar (or caesar).

A cæsura or caesura is a lapse; a discontinuity or interruption in the natural fabric of things. For example, if you had a bunch of good rulers, and then a backstabbing liar with megalomania and some paranoid delusions, followed by another bunch of good rulers, then you'd have to call that unusual fellow a cæsura in the tapestry.

The word is equivalent what we'd now call 'a glitch', perhaps. In fact, it comes from the Latin caedere: to end, to cut down or cut off, to break down the continuity of something.

But back to Caesar, who must still be on your mind as a lapse of sorts.

I remember once using the time-honoured phrase, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's." That, of course, is taken from the 22nd chapter of St Matthew's gospel, and compares secular authority to the Divine.

A modern would-be Stalin I know took grave offence at this. He thought that when I said it, I meant him. I laughed when I said, "No sir, you are not Caesar."

Five years later, he tried to prove me wrong. He set up crude imitations of the abomination of desolation in the courts of the righteous, the emblems of Zeus — one black, one white — according to the ancient rites.

As any student of the classics should know, the eagle is the symbol of a rapacious Zeus, the divine abuser of authority who struck at Ganymede. Neither of the eagles in the courts of the Citadel is a soaring eagle; rather, one stoops to strike and the other sits in self-satisfaction, its rump too heavy to fly.

The time in which these abominations was set up is indeed a caesura in the history of the faithful. May it end soon, and may the symbols of a malicious power be removed as soon as possible.

Word of the Day: Ideolatry

We're all familiar with the horribly elided term 'idolatry', from Greek eidolon (often translated 'graven image') and latreia (often translated 'worship' or 'service'). The original Greek was eidololatria, but I guess it had one 'lol' too many for the English, who chopped the word short.

However, the lesser-known word 'ideolatry' actually comes from a more basic concept — it comes from the Greek idea, or 'form', or (almost literally) 'imagining'. The Greek idea carries with it the sense of constructing a visual image in the mind's eye. To indulge in 'ideolatry' is to worship an idea, something that exists in the internal workings of one's mind as a virtual image.

In what way is ideolatry different from ideology, which is more familiar to most of us?

Ideology in general is the science of putting ideas into a rational system. An ideology is a construct of ideas, a conceptual framework or system incorporating ideas which may or may not have a rational basis. A consistent ideology (which is what ideologies are supposed to be but sometimes are not) is one in which all the incorporated ideas are linked by a consistent internal logic within the ideological system. Whether it is a rational ideology is a different matter.

In what way is ideolatry different from idolatry, which is more obvious to most of us?

Ideolatry is more subtle. Instead of worshipping Mammon, we worship a concept of finance, or the idea of money. Instead of sacrificing children to Moloch, we worship a concept of education, or the idea of drill-and-practice. Instead of venerating Ishtar, we worship a concept of fashion, or the idea of beauty contests. Instead of giving things up to Belial, we worship a concept of modernity, or the idea of reductionism. We give service to ideas, and they become our reasonable worship.

Sometimes, it takes the analysis of a less-used word to bring out ideas that we forget to think about. Sometimes, it is good to think about whether a set of ideas has become an ideology, and whether ideology has become ideolatry.

Word of the Day: Wake

Sometimes, contrary to popular belief, I indulge in the etymology not of very odd words, or invented words, but of simple words whose roots have been lost. Today's word is one such. What is it to 'wake' something, or to attend a 'wake', or to be a 'wake', or to leave a 'wake'?

The original root of the word seems to be the Sanskrit vaja, which has the sense later transmitted to the Latin vigor—that is, the quality of being vigorous, lively, driven. To wake somebody is to make him come alive, to invigorate or to drive him onwards (hence a 'wake-up call' is a peremptory summons to 'look alive').

At the same time, the essence of the word's meaning mutated with time, from 'lively', to 'alert', to 'watchful'. And so, we got 'vigil' and 'vigilant', in which the protagonist had to be awake and alive to be watching out. To nobody's surprise, it was the Irish who converted the sense of 'wake'='on watch' to 'an occasion of keeping watch over dead bodies to make sure they don't come back to life.' Nowadays, of course, we use it in the sense of watching over the dead to remember them when they were alive.

On the other hand, the great Anglo-Danish hero, Hereward, was also called 'the Wake'. In that sense, he was a watcher, a watchful one, a watchman over the evils of this world. I have some sort of historical kinship with him; the man's base was on the Isle of Ely, whose name is on my birth certificate.

The last sense of wake is the trail left by something moving through a fluid. In this sense, the word comes from the same root as Latin vacuum, 'a void'. The Old Norse vaka means 'a hole in the ice', and it was probably from this that the word entered the English language to mean the hollow space left astern as a seagoing vessel goes forward. When we say that we are 'left behind in the wake' or are 'trailing in the wake' of someone, we imply that this person moves so quickly and massively that people behind are sucked into the vacuum of movement.

I'd just like to end by noting the fact that 'vacuum' has three syllables. It is pronounced 'vac-u-um' and not 'vac-ium' as I've heard before. The latter irritates me, unreasonably I suppose, but a lot nevertheless.

Word of the Day: Performativity

This term was introduced to me by he who oversees my work in this mortal plane. He described it almost as if it were some loathsome, noxious potion best identified by the stench of 'accountability' and 'competition'. The word is derived from 13th-century Anglo-French performir, meaning 'accomplish' or 'fully provide'. However, from Latin it could mean something like 'for appearances' sake'.

The first point about 'performativity' is that it allows for simplistic and selective ranking. You create (or obtain) a rubric or a checklist or some other simple method of evaluation. This allows you to carry out ranked value judgements, assign numeric or quantitative value, and/or plot trend lines so that you can compare the performance of one institution with that of another.

The second point about 'performativity' is that it is all about performance. Nobody cares what is done, how it is done, or why it is done, as long as the rubrics, checklists, and methods of evaluation allow the institution to come up with values indicating success. These values, despite the selective and subjective nature of their origin, are touted as objective indicators of quality.

The third point about 'performativity' is that it allows for performers to act in such a way that they can be seen to be successful without actually thinking very hard. Think about the following example:

In Atlantis, elite students regularly win international awards for performance in English Literature. This is seen as a sign that Atlantean education is performing well in that domain. However, no mention is made of the fact that many Atlanteans schools don't offer the subject or offer it only to select individuals — it is considered difficult to teach and difficult to learn and thus not very good for a school's performance statistics. In some schools, it isn't even given that name, but styled as something else: 'Language Arts', perhaps.

The performers in this case are institutions who cultivate elite classes of students by streaming, and then, after weeding out the undesirables, proclaim the wonders of those who are 'left on the island' (so to speak). Similarly, you can have institutions who take in the top 10% of the population, eliminate 40% of those, and then use test-retest methods to ensure that the students have done enough work to do well.

Students who have not done so may be prevented from registering for examinations, thus ensuring that good results are always obtained. Thus, no matter how good or bad the quality of the teaching, administrative fiat can compensate for it — the authorities merely have to control who takes the exams better than who prepares the students for exams, and ensure that no matter how they are taught, they work hard on their own. Some of them, of course, find private tutors to enhance their performativity, so that they don't have to go to special study camps where they are taught to concentrate (supposedly).

Oh yes, to my Atlantean colleagues, have a very happy Teachers' Day! And may your performance statistics always appease the savage powers of your citadels of learning.

Word of the Day: Sphinx

The Sphinx of legend was the womanly devourer of men who asked riddles and consumed those who gave the wrong answer. Think of a very large centaur-like monster with the upper half of Angelina Jolie (up to about the navel) and the body of a lion below that (from the upper chest downwards). Some authorities say the Sphinx was winged.

But it's interesting to know that the word 'Sphinx' comes from the Greek sphingein — 'to squeeze, choke or strangle'. The Sphinx was not a render and tearer; without the head of a lion, that would have been quite difficult. Instead, she was a strangler, someone whose inhumanly strong 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider' grip could easily throttle a grown warrior.

The etymology also implies that the proper plural of 'sphinx' is not 'sphinxes', but 'sphinges' — just as the proper plural of 'syrinx' is 'syringes'. The word 'syringe' is actually an improper singular back-formation from 'syringes'.

Incidentally, 'sphinx' is also related to 'sphincter' — that is, a muscle that contracts to choke off or squeeze something. This is a far more dynamic term than the Latin anus, which means a static ring (diminutive annulus, a small ring).

Word of the Day: Anosognosia

An interesting world opened (or perhaps I should say 'reopened') up for me after reading this illuminating series of five pieces in the New York Times. This world was the curious world of anosognosia.

The word, according to Part 2, was first coined by Joseph Babinski (1857-1932), a French-Polish (oh dear, that sounds like furniture treatment) neurologist of some note. It is derived from the Greek nosos, or 'disease', and gnosis, or 'knowledge'. It seems to be intended to mean 'knowledge of not having disease', but really means the state of being diseased but acting as if you know you're not.

This kind of self-reflective blindness is common. The only cure for it is for people to tell you something is wrong with you and for you to trust that they are right. Unfortunately, you don't think you need a cure, and you don't believe it when they tell you something is wrong.

It seems to be a conundrum common to the human race. It is like having a huge blind spot; in fact it is as if all humans walk around with cognitive blind spots of different shapes and sizes. Some are odd, like the one about the bank robber who thought lemon juice made him invisible and who claimed to have tested it by taking photos of himself which didn't turn out.

I know a lot of leaders who have serious anosognosia. But I have come to realise that when you see others with the syndrome, you are most likely a victim yourself.

Word of the Day: Censorship

Somebody from Canada spends time every night looking for the word 'censorship' in this blog. I have no idea why. This post is for you, whoever you are.

Modern ideas about censorship are pretty odd. For a start, the word has been prostituted for so long that it now admits to any kind of activity. What you don't do is a form of tacit censorship; what you don't say is some sort of self-censorship; there is nothing you can do that isn't not-something-else, and so you are always a censor.

But if you are always a censor, then what's the point of the word?

A Roman censor was an official who was in charge of conducting a census. He would obtain, tabulate and announce the results. In later times, this took on the sense of 'pronouncing judgement'. 'Censorship', therefore, ought to mean nothing more that 'having the state of being a censor, or of holding that office.'

A careful look will see that a censor is defined by what he does, and not by what he doesn't do. We've known for a long time that proving a negative is difficult, if not impossible. To say that acts of decision which are not specifically acts of public judgement (that is, you choose without attempting to impose your choice on others in public or in the public sphere) are also acts of censorship is a bit silly. To include random acts, on the principle that they aren't other acts, is worse.

If I make a random blog post, it isn't a form of censorship just because it means I didn't post something else. You'd have to say what exactly I was actively suppressing, and show that it would have had import in the public sphere. That act of suppressing a specific thing which would have had import (impact, or significance) in the public sphere is true censorship — not that wimpy vague postmodern idea of it.

Word of the Day: Ooft

'Ooft' is something like the past perfect tense of 'oof'. It can be used as an adjective describing a state of slight deflation, the sensation of being unable to quite wake up and get going after a New Year's Eve dinner. You get up in the morning, slightly disoriented, realising that you are stiff in the muscles and need to loosen up, but somehow lacking the power to do this loosening.

Young people are seldom ooft. But when you hit 40 and beyond, ooftiness is more frequent.

Word of the Day: Adjutant

I recently came across this somewhat old-fashioned term (first used c. 1600) in the course of my research. I had thought this word (at least in the former colonies) to have disappeared along with the British Empire, but it seems to have been resurrected. In fact, my first experience of the word was when exposed to Kipling at a relatively young age.

The word 'adjutant' is possibly an adjective as well as a noun. It comes from Latin adiuvare, which literally means 'to add youthful vigour' (cf. 'rejuvenation', which means 'to restore youthful vigour'; see also Juventus FC). What's interesting is the context in which it was adopted into the English language. In English, it is almost only ever used in a military context.

What is that context? The Romans used the word adiutor for the officer who was the principle field admin support to the Commanding Officer. In the British army, this man is given a rank equivalent to that of captain and essentially was the battlefield controller of operations. As such, he is superior to all the other captains in a battalion's order of precedence.

Off the battlefield, the adjutant is the chief staff officer to a colonel or regimental commander. As such, in conjunction with the Regimental Sergeant Major, he handles awards, evaluations, ceremonies, and the other minutiae of a regiment's yearly routine. He stalks around, looking serious, and even may be called upon to handle discipline matters. Occasionally, this may lead to awkwardness, since he is technically outranked by majors, and yet closer to the Commanding Officer than they are.

Word of the Day: Valentine

It's a word with many strong associations for me. I used to write St Valentine's Day letters to a very few young ladies (all of who are now not so young, but as wonderful as ever). If I could digress a bit, I would remember them here and now in this blog; sadly, I suspect most of them would be less than thrilled.

But the word 'valentine' literally means 'an adherent of valentia' — and valentia is the Latin word that means 'the constant capacity for showing strength and power in an appropriate fashion'. You can sense the aura of this word in hymns such as the one that begins: "He who would valiant be 'gainst all disaster / Let him in constancy follow his Master."

A valentine is therefore one who is valiant, who shows valour, who has the property known as 'valency'. Aha, now you know why an alchemist would be so interested in this word. We now use 'valency' to mean 'the maximal or typical combining power of a chemical entity'.

We could just as easily have used another form of the word. Yes, indeed — if not for the occasional banality of scientific terminology, we would be saying things like, "The carbon atom is quadruply valentine."

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.

=====

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.

Word of the Day: Inauguration

An inauguration is an interesting event. I have just watched the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama. I'm glad he has a name like that, and I am even happier that unlike many men of power I've heard, he actually knows how to write and deliver a speech.

Traditionally and etymologically, an inauguration is an august occasion on which something or someone is consecrated and installed while the omens of a flight of birds are read and analysed. Most of the time, this is a good thing. But one must be careful with meanings and rituals.

The word 'augur' is related to the root aug-, as in 'augment'. It descended from some ancient Indo-Aryan root, via the Greek aux- (as in 'auxillary'). It means something like 'the priest whose divinations increase our prosperity'. An inauguration is therefore an event aimed at the increase of prosperity of the state.

But what about the flight of birds? Well, that comes from the Latin auspex, literally 'one who watches birds'. If the auspices (i.e. the way in which the birds behave) were good, then the inauguration would be a success. We can relate this to the motto of the English adventurer Raffles, Auspicium Melioris Aevi, which when taken in a completely literal sense would mean, "Watching the birds to see if good times are coming," or more simply, "Looking for a good time."

Word of the Day: Gnomon

The other day I was having lunch with the Gnome (the younger one, not the old and now unfortunately gaga one) when I realised that the origins of the name would make good material for a WotD post. Indeed, the Greek word gnomon has its roots in the much more familiar gnosis.

What is gnosis? It is the Greek word for 'knowledge'. It's found in modern English words such as 'diagnosis' ('knowledge across the area'), 'prognosis' ('forward knowledge'), and 'agnostic' ('without knowledge'). Gnomon therefore means 'the thing that knows', or 'the thing that points towards knowledge'.

In a technical sense, gnomon normally refers to the pointer on a sundial, which indicates the time. This pointer can be a wedge-shaped, rod-shaped, or fin-shaped object; the only requirement is that it casts a shadow. I hear that NASA has a more sophisticated version; the thing hangs from a surveyor's tripod and has a colour scale, a size scale and a reflectance scale. This version can be set up on any other body in space and used to determine (by remote viewing) the colour, reflectance and size of its surroundings.

The word gnomon comes to us also as 'gnome'. This simply means 'one who knows', or perhaps 'one who leads to or shows knowledge'. A 'gnomic utterance' is something like an oracle, a saying of the wise. I have been listening a lot to various gnomes these days; they dig around and come up with the most amazing facts and ideas. Traditionally and mythologically, gnomes have always been small earth-dwelling beings; in that sense, they are chthonian, and thus (you might say) very down-to-earth.

Word of the Day: Ephemeris

This is another word related to time. The Greek hemera means 'day'; if you go to Greece you will hear people greeting each other with "Kalémera!" which comes from kalli- meaning 'good, beautiful' and hemera — that is, 'Good day!'

So what does 'ephemeris' mean?

The forms 'ephemera' and 'ephemeral' are probably more common. They come from the Greek preposition ep(i)- which means 'on' or 'on the surface of', and hemera. 'Ephemeral' therefore means '(only) on the day' and 'ephemera' literally means 'things that are (only) on the day'. Figuratively, they refer to things that are transient, that pass quickly and are gone, that touch us lightly and thus have less value in terms of durability and impact.

An ephemeris, however, is a book of days. Technically, it's an astronomer's guidebook which lists data related to known celestial bodies for a given day, and gives calculations and calculated information based on that data.

It's a lovely word, isn't it? You could call your diary an ephemeris if you were so minded. Until the next time, Kalémera!

Word of the Day: Crepuscular

It's been a long time since we had a Word of the Day. Today's word is appropriate for our times; it is in fact a word describing a particular period of time.

'Crepuscular' means 'of, or pertaining to, that period between daylight and night'. The word has an interesting origin: Latin crepurus means 'uncertain', or 'of unknown purity' — 'crepuscular' therefore has a slightly negative connotation and could be taken to describe 'a time about which we are not quite certain, and which is tainted by something we are not sure about'.

Technically, a crepuscular animal is one most active between daylight and nightfall. This period of time is itself multifaceted: we hear it described as dusk, evening, twilight, and (most archaic, I think) 'gloaming'.

Perhaps our sense of crepuscular might be enhanced by looking at those four words.

'Dusk' means 'misty-ish' in northern languages; it connotes a lacking in light quality and thus probably refers to the time at which the sun only indirectly lights up the land – after sunset, perhaps.

'Evening' is surprisingly pretty exact. The original sense of 'eve' or 'evening' was 'the period just before something'; in this case, the period before 6 pm. Sometimes there is sun, sometimes not. It is a chronological thing in the original sense, and perhaps best described as halfway between midday and midnight.

'Twilight' is an interesting one. It's almost directly related to the German zwielicht, or 'two-lights'. That's because there is a morning twilight as well as an evening twilight; it corresponds to the balance-point (occurring twice a day) between full light and darkness. It can mean the time just before light overtakes darkness; its more sinister sense denotes the time just after darkness has overtaken light.

'Gloaming' means 'the glowing' and denotes the period during which light can still be seen; either the afterglow of evening twilight or the pre-glow before morning twilight.

Crepuscularity is therefore a complex thing; it is a thing of light and darkness, shadows and greys and half-tones. What I like about the word is its onomatopoeic quality: it is something that creeps elegantly toward you.