WordsWordsWords

Thought of the day, from the A Word A Day (AWAD) email. AWAD is also available on Droid as an app titled Mensa Word of the Day. Opening the app gives you the full etymology and usage portions from the email, or choose the widget, which places just the word and brief definition on your screen. iPhone has a Word of the Day app, but I was unable to determine whether it draws from the same source.

Today’s quote:
There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.
-Pierre Bayle, philosopher and writer (1647-1706)

Deciding whether a thought is applied rightly, and deciding who decides whether a thought is applied rightly, is the tricky part.

Today marks one month since I wrote my first post on WordsWordsWords. I sure am having a good time with it!

Statistical software isn’t flawless, but it tells me that in that time, there’ve been about 420 page views, from 12 different states. Most are from Washington, with New York and Florida tied for second. It makes me really happy that others are reading and enjoying what I’m writing.

One thing that I’ve discovered is that a daily post is probably too much. A lot of the posts are in the 400-600 word range, and putting together an essay like that every day takes more time than I have without something else getting short shrift. I’m never at a loss for ideas, but I want to make sure I have the oomph to keep up the blog. Going to 3-5 posts per week, which is what I’m going to do, makes that more realistic.

I’ve said “Happy Mensiversary” because “anniversary” comes from the Latin root annus, meaning year. Mensis means month, and we see it in words like menstruate. If you’re an etymologist, the phrase “one month anniversary” strikes a dissonant chord in your ear for that reason. Google “mensiversary,” and you’ll see that there’s a world of folks out there concerned with this topic. There’s even a Facebook group called “Make ‘mensiversary’ a word.” I’m not sure how they think a word is made. If I’ve just written the sentence “Make ‘mensiversary’ a word,” it’s a word already. See it there? Right on the page about two inches from the beginning of this sentence.

As for me, I don’t mind if someone congratulates me on my one-month blog anniversary. It would be rude to rebuff such graciousness with a grammar lesson.

Intrepid Reader Mike of Charlotte, NC, recently expressed criticism of my writing style, terming it “blathering” and “self-aggrandizement.” He’s kinda got a point, as I do have a tendency to run on. I probably would have expressed it differently, though, perhaps calling it something akin to “expansive musing.” Mike also referred to me as a “beeatch,” which leads me to today’s topic. Don’t worry that WordsWordsWords might be feeling beaten about the head and shoulders by Mike’s verbal harshness. It was all in good fun, and it prompted some interesting conversation. When the dust had settled, we each had a new friend.

After our little exchange, I began to think about the word he spelled as “beeatch.” Had I been the one to write that word, I would have used the spelling “beeotch,” both because I believe I’ve seen it written that way before, and because that’s how I’ve heard this fanciful expansion of “bitch” pronounced—i.e., rhyming with botch, not batch.

To check out this question, I turned to googlefight.com, a website that I heard about from my professor in a translation class. It’s a great tool for quick and dirty research on terms.

The concept is very simple. There are two search boxes on the page, calling for Keyword #1 and Keyword #2. Put in your two terms, and the site runs parallel Google searches, yielding a graph that compares the approximate number of results for the two. This is the page’s sole function; there are no actual results or anything else—just a comparison of number of results for the two searches. If you feel you need to do more research on how a term is being used or what types of sources it’s appearing in, you have to go elsewhere. Results take a few seconds; you’re treated to a graphic of two stick men duking it out during the wait.

I use googlefight to compare the prevalence of two different terms, or to check spelling. In this case, I popped in “beeatch” and “beeotch.” I found out that my preferred spelling was indeed a bit more prevalent than Mike’s (6290 v. 5430 results), but neither had as many hits as I’d expected. I would have thought a term that’s gained such prevalence in informal English would be at least well into the five figures.

I did a bit more guessing at possible spellings, consulting the Urban Dictionary. With the help of several more googlefight searches, I discovered that “biatch” turned out to be the spelling with the largest number of hits (168,0000). There are a dozen or so variants, with every combination of the following factors–ee or i in the first syllable, a or o in the second syllable, hyphenated or not hyphenated, and a y present or absent between the two syllables (bee-atch, beeyotch, and so forth).

Googlefight can also be used just for fun—I assume this was the goofy reason it was invented. Links on the site lead you to classic fights—like pen vs. sword, Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader, or god vs. Satan. The funny fights category includes hot dog vs. hamburger.

You get the idea. Use this convenient yet silly tool for fun or for linguistic pursuits. (In my case, they’re the same thing.) While I was there, I had to check out one burning question: prescriptive grammar—2690; descriptive grammar—13,300. Woohoo!

Sometimes I come upon etymologies in the most unexpected places.

I attend a book group at my local public library. This is good for me because I read books that I never would have picked for myself. This month’s selection (on which I better get crackin’ and finish by Thursday) is Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister, by Gregory Maguire, best known as the author of Wicked. What Wicked does for The Wizard of Oz, Confessions does to the Cinderella story. The tale is retold from the point of view of another character, giving the reader the sense that she definitely hasn’t gotten the whole story before. I never would never have considered this book without the group, but that’s because it hadn’t occurred to me that these books are classic examples of one type of intertextuality, where one author borrows (some say steals) and reshapes another author’s text to create a new work. I had a semester-long seminar on this in grad school. First, I want to say that I find the study of literary theory positively stultifying. It’s the most effective way I’ve ever experienced of totally depriving one of any joy in actually reading a book. However, in this case I found the concept very interesting, and I loved the books. Shredding them through the intertextuality chipper in the name of academic pursuit, not so much. But the books themselves were really fascinating.

I’m finding the same is true of Confessions. We all know the story well. As I read, I feel myself rotating the pieces of the story around in my head, trying to make them match up with the familiar elements. Sometimes they match, sometimes they’re close, and sometimes they’re nowhere near the same. A great study in the subjective nature of truth.

But to the etymology. The town where this skewed take on the Cinderella story takes place is the Dutch city of Haarlem, which looks an awfully lot like the name of a historically black neighborhood in New York City. Sure enough, on the New Netherland Institute website (“Exploring America’s Dutch Heritage”), I found information about the connection Since I knew that New York was originally called New Amsterdam, this toponym (place name) isn’t surprising, even though I had never heard its origin before.

I am thinking about this on Martin Luther King Day, and I look to see if anything of significance happened with Dr. King in Harlem, given that most of his work was in the south. Unfortunately, I discover that the connection that Harlem is best known for having with him is a sad one. In 1958, a mentally-unstable woman stabbed Dr. King in a Harlem department store. He was only 29 at the time. During emergency surgery at Harlem Hospital, doctors successfully removed the steel letter opener from his chest and saved his life.

After surviving this attempt, Dr. King lived another decade, leading voter registration drives, demonstrations, and protests in the fight for civil rights for African Americans. He was arrested more than 20 times, and he became a Nobel laureate. On August 28, 1963, less than five years before he would die by an assassin’s bullet, he gave the speech for which he is best remembered.

I’m very excited to have purchased a couple of days ago a ticket to Ethiopia, leaving two months from today. I’ll be traveling with my sister and visiting my nephew and his family, who live in Addis Ababa. Naturally, I’ve already been to the bookstore to buy a basic Ethiopian Amharic grammar and phrasebook. I’ll be posting about my halting efforts with that language in future posts, no doubt.

Another stop in trip planning was the CDC travel information site, which lists what vaccinations are recommended for visitors to a given area. Fortunately, my doctor is pretty good at keeping me up to date on routine vaccines by checking her files at my annual exam to see what’s needed, so I won’t have to get shots for everything on this list. One of the entries, influenza (or flu), I have discussed in a recent post, so I’ve omitted it here. I thought it would be interesting to find out the etymologies of these other disease words that we are all familiar with, and with which I’ll soon be inoculated. This is what I found.

Measles
Early 14^th century. Middle English masel, probably from Dutch masel “blemish.” Probably influenced by Old French mesel “leprous,” from Latin misellus “wretched, unfortunate,” diminutive form of miser “wretched.”
Related English words: misery, miserable

Mumps
Its name is probably an allusion to swelling of face during the disease and/or to painful difficulty swallowing. Early 17^th century, plural of mump “a grimace” (1590s), originally a verb, “to whine like a beggar” (1580s), from Dutch mompen “to cheat, mumble, whine.”
Related: mumpish (sullen, sulky)

Rubella
1883. Modern Latin, literally “rash,” from Latin, rubellus “reddish,” dim. of ruber “red”
Related: ruby, rubescent, rubicund, rubidium (an element so named because its spectral lines are red)

Polio
This shortened form of poliomyelitis first observed in 1931. Previously known as infantile paralysis, the name poliomyelitis was created in 1878. Comes from Greek polios “grey” + myelos “marrow” + -itis “inflammation.” Paralysis is caused by inflammation of the gray matter in the spinal cord.
Related: medical words like myelin, myeloma, myelopathy

Chicken pox
1730. So called because of its mildness in relation to smallpox. Pox comes from a word meaning “pustule.” After about 1500, it was especially used to refer to syphilis.
The medical term for chicken pox is varicella. It is a diminutive form of variola, a medical Latin word meaning smallpox. Variola is itself a diminutive of varius, meaning changing or various (in the sense of speckled).
Related: vary, various

Diphtheria
Adopted from the French word diphthérie, coined in 1857 from Greek diphthera “prepared hide, leather,” of unknown origin; the disease name refers to the tough membrane that forms in the throat.

Pertussis
This word for whooping cough is documented from 1799. Modern Latin per– “thoroughly” + tussis “cough.”
Related: tussive, medical term for “relating to cough.” Spanish word for cough is la tos (noun) or toser (verb).

Tetanus
Late 14^th century, Latin tetanus, from Greek tetanos “muscular spasm,” literally “a stretching, tension,” from teinein “to stretch.” The disease takes its name from the characteristic muscle spasms and stiffness it causes.
Related: tension, tenet, tendon

Hepatitis
Coined 1727. Taken from Greek hepatos, from hepar “liver,” + -itis “inflammation.”
Related: various other medical words related to the liver begin hepat-, e.g. hepatotoxic, hepatoma

Typhoid
1800. Short form of typhoid fever, so named because it resembled typhus, a different disease. Typhus is an acute infectious fever that was named in 1785, from Modern Latin, from Greek typhos “stupor caused by fever,” literally. “smoke,” from typhein “to smoke,” related to typhos “blind,” typhon “whirlwind.”
Related: Other medical words that have something to do with typhoid or typhus.

Yellow Fever
Named around 1730-40. It causes liver damage, a a yellowing of the skin and fever—name taken from symptoms.
Related: yellow submarine, boogie fever

Meningococcal meningitis
Late 19^th century. Meninges is Greek plural of meninx, membrane. Coccus is a spherial bacterium, from Greek grain, seed, berry.
Related: A long list of medical words that pertain to membranes or the meninges—such as meningioma—or similar bacteria, such as staphylococcal.

Malaria (not present in Addis Ababa so no prophylactic treatment needed, but an interesting etymology)
1730s. Literally, Italian for “bad air.” The disease was thought to be borne by foul air blowing in from marshlands. It was the mosquito flying on the air, not the air itself, but they had the right idea.
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Sources consulted: Online Etymology Dictionary; Dictionary.com Unabridged; Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology