WordsWordsWords

Indagatrix.

Say hello to Washington State’s most recently licensed private investigator.

Several of my friends and family have asked how they should refer to me. Gumshoe and dick seem to be the early favorites, thought my podiatrist would probably find flatfoot most appropriate. I decided that for today’s celebratory post, I would investigate (privately, of course) synonyms of detective to see if I could come up with anything fun.

I turned first to current sources, primarily thesaurus.com. I discovered P. I., Sherlock Holmes, agent, bird dog, bloodhound, dick, eavesdropper, eye, flatfoot, gumshoe, peeper, private eye, roper, scout, shadow, shamus, sleuth, snoop, spy, tail, and tec. None of these really resonate with me. For example, I don’t particularly care for Sherlock. Where I grew up, this word most often follows the phrase “no shit” and is not meant as a compliment.

If I were forced to choose from the list, I believe shamus would be my preference. It’s obscure and kind of catchy. Opinions are split regarding its origin. One plausible source is shamas, a Yiddish/Hebrew derived word meaning a beadle or sexton in a synagogue. Another possible origin is the Irish proper name Seamus. The word emerged in the U.S. in the mid-1920s, and the first OED-listed instance is from Flynn’s Magazine, a weekly detective fiction rag. It was published in New York City. Flynn is an Irish surname, and there were by then many thousands of Irish immigrants living in New York. Of course, there were a lot of Jews, too. So who knows.

After examining the current alternatives, I turned to the OED’s historical thesaurus. That’s where I hit pay dirt. I found intracer, one who searches into anything (1475); inseer, one who sees or looks into something, an investigator, inspector, examiner (1532); tracer, one who follows the footprints or track of anything; one who tracks, investigates, or searches out; specifically one whose business is the tracing of missing persons, property, parcels, letters, etc. (1552); and expiscator, an investigator, literally one who “fishes out” (1882).

But my favorite by far is INDAGATRIX, a female searcher or investigator (1653). (Male form, indagator, 1620.) There is an obsolete verb in English, indagate, of whose existence I was totally unaware. However, I use its Spanish cognate, indagar, almost every day. Both are from the Latin indagare, meaning to trace out, search into, or investigate. This is the verb I use every time an attorney tells her client that she will look into, check on, or find out about something. The OED lists various related forms—e.g., indagatory, indagative, indagation, indagacious—none of which got enough of a foothold to survive in today’s English.

Still, even if I don’t put it on my business cards, you can call me…
The Indagatrix.

congé—permission to leave; a formal bow on departure; a farewell (con-ZHAY)
congee—a rice porridge typical in some Asian diets (CON-jee)

court marshal—officer who performs duties in the courthouse and/or courtroom
court martial—military trial
court Marcia—trial for a Brady

I’m safe and sound back from Ethiopia. Before I left, I was inoculated to the tune of well over $500 at the King County Public Health Department Travel Clinic. I’m assuming the shots worked; I think I’d know by now if I had typhoid. But you really don’t have a choice. What can you say? “I’m gonna save a hundred bucks and take my chances on the yellow fever.” Not likely.

Sometimes I look at a word I’ve seen dozens of times in my life and suddenly see a connection that’s never before occurred to me. It can happen because of the criss-cross of Spanish and English in my thoughts, and that’s what occurred today. I’ve mentioned previously in the blog that I get the etymologically focused Palabra del Día email, as well as an English Word of the Day message. Today’s Spanish word was inocular (to inoculate). When I looked at it, my mind first saw an English word and read it to rhyme with “binocular,” rather than hearing in my head the Spanish pronunciation. The Latin root oculus (eye, Sp. ojo) is obvious in “binocular”—two eyes. But what does an eye have to do with getting shots?

A little reading revealed that the word is related to the figurative sense of eye—bull’s-eye, eye of a needle. Eye can also be a bud, in the botanical sense, and inoculate is used to mean “to engraft” in that context. If you picture an arrow going into the center of a target, a thread going into a needle, or a stem being grafted into a hole that’s been made in a tree, you can see the metaphorical similarity to a hypodermic needle (or in my case, 5 or 6 needles) being stuck into your arm.

I’m always amazed at the journeys words take me on. In this case, from “eyeball” to “injection” in one quick jump.

From the Lonely Planet Ethiopian Amharic Phrasebook:

“Colonial powers were shameless in their efforts to conquer Ethiopia, even resorting to a tactic of mistranslating state documents.

In 1889, Ethiopia’s Emperor Menelik II signed the Treaty of Wechale with the Italian government. The treaty allowed for an Italian protectorate to be established over Ethiopia. At least, that’s what the Italian version said–the Amharic version mentioned no such thing! Menelik only discovered the deception when Britain and Germany refused invitations to his coronation on the grounds that he was meant to communicate with them ‘via the Italian government’. Menelik stopped the Italian expansion into the country by famously defeating them at the Battle of Adwa (northern Ethiopia) in 1896.”

I always like to watch TV while I’m in other countries. It interests me to see what kind of shows are played and in what languages. On one Eastern European trip, I got to watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire in German, Slovak and Bulgarian as I traveled around. The latter version was crucial in me getting a grasp on the Cyrillic alphabet. And that show especially, is great for language learning. They read both the question and the answers out loud while you read along. That gives you pronunciation help. And if you can get any sense at all of what the question or group of answers refers to, you have context to figure out what some of the words mean.

Naturally, with this interest, I had to turn on the TV not long after checking into my hotel room in Addis Ababa. My nephew Michael tells me that TV here is off a Middle Eastern satellite, which jives with what I saw. Most of the channels were either dubbed in Arabic, or broadcasted in English with Arabic subtitles.

Here’s the report of what I saw:
One Amharic station playing what looked like a local news program
Arabic network stations:
Fox–something with Cameron Diaz, dubbed
MBC Max–Out of Africa, with subtitles (Meryl Streep awesome in any language)
A–American movie, subtitled
Al Jazeera in English
Al Jazeera and the similar PressTV in Arabic
National Geographic Abu Dhabi–a show about the cobra, dubbed

High school and university here are given in English, and you can’t start high school unless you pass an English proficiency test. Folks who have enough money to pay for satellite TV also speak English.

Surreal moment of the day came later, when I returned to my room after spending time with my family. There, on Fox, was an episode of Glee. Rachel and Puck, the two very out Jewish characters on the show, were having a conversation, subtitled in Arabic.

*cue chorus of It’s a “Small World After All”*