Tripping the Light Fantastic

I hope you have read my overview for this blog. What I am doing here is showing the connection modern words have in their ancient Indo-European roots. It fascinates me and hopefully my readers from Sydney to San Francisco. Imagine you were one of those old-timey Indo-Europeans, likely residents of Mesopotamia about the time and place of the Bible’s Tower of Babel. What would be the first words you’d articulate. My guess is the words I’d speak would be about food, family, and common elements of the word around me. It turns out that some of the largest groups of words in language today do indeed flow out of those kinds of core ideas. A while back I blogged about the IE root aus – to shine. Today, I’m going to refer to a different root, bha1, which also means “to shine”. Apparently shiny, shining things were quite important in ancient times – as they are now.

Before I jump into the modern words, let me remind you that writing came along long after speech. “Bha” may look like it should be pronounced “bah” as in bah humbug? But turn that b upside down, you have p – pha, pronounced “fa”. Consonants often do gymnastics like that over time. All the words we're considering today have that f/ph sound.

Now, imagine you are in a dark or dimly lit room. All is quiet until suddenly there is something moving not too far away. You can’t make out the form, but there is light shifting, dappling such that you suppose another “thing” is there near you. After you stop quivering and hyperventilating, you call for help. “What is it?” “I don’t know. I don’t think it was a person, it was like a phantom.” That’s just what it means, a shining thing that lacks description otherwise. Closely related is the word fantasy – something visible (if only to the mind’s eye), but lacking substance. Isn’t it interesting that fantastic also comes from this root, but now is an adjective describing something in a very positive way?

One of my favorite words, epiphany, is also related. It means “to show” or to become visible and is used in reference to the discovery of Jesus by the magi. It can also mean something like coming to a new awareness - "a moment of epiphany". What do we say, “that’s when the light bulb came on.” A light shining – how apropos.

Bha1 also gives me another favorite word – diaphanous. Dia- means "through". Add that to light or shine and you basically have idea see-through and is often used to describe fabric. When a wife is hoping for her husband to give her some snuggly, warm flannel pajamas for Christmas to keep her warm in the winter, how surprised she is to discover a skimpy, diaphanous little sumpin-sumpin.  And so it goes when people come from two different planets.

In doing my research for this post, I discovered that Tiffany derives from this same root word. In the 1500s and 1600s, Tiffany was a term used to describe diaphanous fabric. Interestingly, in Medieval Europe, the given name Tiffany was often bestowed on girls born on Epiphany Day (usually about January 4, my birthday). This name is special to me because my first daughter-in-love is named Tiffany. Her beauty and sincerity definitely shine through in her character!

Theophany is yet another related word. It means something like “God-appearing” and is commonly used to note instances the Bible’s Old Testament where God (or better, the pre-incarnate Christ) appears to people (as in Genesis 18 or Daniel 3).

Next post we’ll look at several more modern words that come from this ancient root.

High Praise

I read through Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy a couple times in my late teens.  For the younger generation who has only seen the movies, you owe it to yourself to discover the incredible way Tolkein crafted his legendary legends.  Tolkein wove everyday words into fantastic adventures.  One of the most vivid images still fixed in my mind is the shrewish Gollum hovering over his ring murmuring, “My Precioussss”.  Eventually, dear little Gollum pays the ultimate price – his life – for the object of his praise.

Oops, I did it again, Precious, Price, Praise.  All related to the IE root per5 meaning to traffic in or to sell.  Today, all these ideas relate to assigning value to something.  When my beloved wife says she does not appreciate my sense of humor, she means she doesn’t find much value in it.  (What’s up with that?)  When you appraise an object, you establish its value or selling price.  Over time, most things lose value - they depreciate.  When you praise something, you are literally celebrating its value by devoting your energy to acknowledging that value.  Gollum sought to possess the precious ring even at the cost of his own life.  That’s about as high praise as you can give!

A related word is interesting.  Preciosity means extreme meticulousness or over-refinement.  Use it in a sentence?  The owner of the antique store had an air of preciosity to him; always fussing over the smallest detail in his collection.

Think about this family of words the next time you go about buying and selling.  Does the price truly reflect the object’s value?

The Pope's Dentures

Most people of prominence wind up having several titles (e.g. President, Commander in Chief, POTUS) so I didn’t worry too much about the Catholic Church’s Pope also being called the Pontiff.  That is not until I saw a dental term that seemed strangely similar – pontic.  Yes, the Pope often wears a hat that looks like a giant tooth, but that’s not usually the way words work.

First let’s take notice of the word Pope, itself.  Pope, comes simply from papa, daddy.  (In fact, in Italy, the Pope is called Il Papa.)  Many religious titles relate to father because of their leadership, mentoring role, including the Jewish rabbi.  So, is Pope related to Pontiff?  No chance.

Pontiff, the leader of a religious organization based in Rome, is related to another word you see all over Italy – ponte.  One of the most famous of these ponte is the Ponte Vecchio – the Old Bridge in Florence.  (Ponte means bridge, vecchio means old – they say their words backwards in most of the world.)  It’s a fascinating structure you should look into.  Pontiff means something to the effect of “bridge maker” or way-shower – a religious concept of helping people find a connection to God.  By the way, to pontificate (one of my favorite words) means to speak as one in authority - the way the pope would speak.

Now, maybe you are getting out ahead of me on the word pontic.  If you have one or two teeth missing with healthy teeth on either side, your fantastic dentist with solve the problem with what?  A bridge.  Technically speaking, the pontic is the artificial tooth fashioned into a dental bridge.

Our IE root is pent meaning to tread or go.  A bridge is a very important structure that helps us go farther.  Path derives from this root as does find (you have to go to find what you are looking for).  Another memorable word from the youth of Baby Boomers is also related – Sputnik, which means "fellow traveler".

Throw Another Blog On The Fire

Today’s word family comes from the IE root leg1.  (The 1 means there are other leg roots that are not related to this one.)  The root leg1 means to collect.  (The -lect of collect comes from this root). Now follow this – the root also leads to the meaning of “spoken”.  Think about it.  Hopefully, when we speak or write, we bring together the words that will effectively communicate our meaning.  First example: legal.  See, over thousands of years, the root leg is still intact.  Legal matters are based on law (a collection of spoken words). Related words include lecture, legislature, elect, neglect, and select.

Continuing with the idea of words, all those school subjects like biology, geology, psychology actually mean “words about _____”.  The Greeks had the word “logos” which just means words.  It strikes me as funny that today a company develops a symbol (like MacDonald’s golden arches) so they don’t have to use words to express their company identity. What’s that called? A logo.  (Ever heard "a picture is worth a thousand words"?)

Remember the era of discovery and captain's notes we find in the ship’s log?  That kind of log is like a diary where words are collected.  But what about that good old tree log?  Trees are cut down and gathered for firewood or for building purposes. Fire logs and captains’ logs come from the same root and meaning – to collect.  Right now, you are reading my word blog – a collection of words, in this case, about words.  Where do you think blog came from?  Blog is a contraction of "web log" (a log on the internet).  It will be interesting to see where blog goes from here.

Consider that log could mean either a piece of wood, a diary of sorts, or even to “log on” to software or website.  Today, a Google search of “log” get’s 751 million hits.  Pretty impressive and that represents the far-flung uses of the word.  “Blog” is a far more limited word, really pretty peculiar.  The word "blog" is only about 12 years old (first used in 1998).  How many hits do you think it will get through a Google search for “blog”? 2.7 billion!!!  Almost four times more hits for “blog” than “log”.  [By way of comparison, the word "love" get's 1.48 billion hits on a Google search.]  Why does blog get more hits than log?  A blog is something that exists on the internet.  If you use the internet to search for an internet-related term, you’re going to get a lot (A LOT) of hits.  But if you walk through a neighborhood, you won’t see many blogs, but you’ll probably see thousands of logs patiently waiting for the fireplace.  That’s a good example of the peculiarity of words and how meanings and uses change over time and circumstance. 

Other words related to this root include logic, lesson, legend, dialect, dialogue, and legitimate.  The word privilege is also related. What is a privilege?  A word or law spoken privately, to just one or a few people.

Of Marbles and Marriage

This time of year, folks up north are getting excited about warmer weather.  In central Alaska, the sporting kind are laying down wagers on the Nenana Ice Classic - when the ice pack on the Tanana River will break up and start flowing out to sea.  Back in the day, the Spring thaw also signaled a sport of another kind to school kids all across town.  When the snow turned to mush and the pussy willows started budding, young’uns dug through their dressers to find that old sock full of marbles that has lain dormant for ten months.

Puries, clearies, cat-eyes, steelies, and boulders get their game on in a seasonal celebration that is dearly memorable – if only a memory.  We played marbles one of two ways, “keeps” or “no keeps”.  “Keeps” meant the winner kept his marble and took mine.  “No keeps” meant we were just having fun. Yeah, some “fun”.  My God-fearing parents cautioned me sternly that playing for keeps was the same as gambling.  Hmmm.  One thing was clear, if you agreed to “play for keeps” at the start of the match, then no whining when you lose.  To renege on the terms at the end of the match, depending on outcome, meant well-deserved social ostracism.  The best way to get a bad rep on the playground was to go back on your pledge.

Across the Northern Hemisphere, springtime is a celebration of bunnies and flowers and abundant new life.  The word May itself is tied to an ancient goddess of fertility.  ‘Tis true.

Now Is the Month of Maying (lyrics by Sir Thomas Morley)

Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing!
Each with his bonny lass, a-dancing on the grass.
                 Fa la la la la!
The Spring, clad all in gladness, doth laugh at Winter's sadness!
And to the bagpipes’ sound, the nymphs tread out the ground!
                 Fa la la la la!
Fie! Then why sit we musing, youth’s sweet delight refusing?
Say, dainty nymphs and speak! Shall we play barley break?
                 Fa la la la la!

Sweet delight refusing?  Of course, all those merry lads, bonny lasses, and dainty nymphs lead to one thing… er, uh, true love and a desire to get married.  That’s the ticket.  Thus, June is the most popular month for weddings.  Now, as things go, two can live as cheaply as one, it just costs twice as much.  So, hubby and/or bride will be ensure they have an income with which to feather the nest.

Turns out that betting (either on the ice pool or marbles), getting married, and making a living have one IE root in common – wadh. This root has the core meaning of “pledge”.  Everything we’ve talked about revolves around the idea of making (and keeping) a pledge.  What is a synonym for betting?  Wagering.  When you bet, you pledge money (or marbles) against a certain outcome.  If you don’t get your outcome, you lose your money.  Wager… wages.  An employer pledges to pay wages for certain work.  It’s just a pledge until you do the work and get paid.  As for marriage, clearly it is a social arrangement based on a pledge, or vow.  I hope you can see that wed is close in sound to wage.  Like any other proposition (that’s a pun), marriage is a forward-looking pledge.  From my perspective; however, unlike not knowing when the ice is going to break up, marriage is a wonder-filled relationship, the outcome of which can be impacted by the earnestness of our pledge to our spouses and our daily decision to follow-through on that pledge.  Marriage is playing for keeps!  Fa la la la la!

Gee, My Shirt Smells Terrific!

Growing up, my parents thought I was anemic so they forced me to eat liver. It was (almost) enough to drive me to vegetarianism. My efforts to avoid eating the wretched meat were clever, but often ill-fated, the result of which was a confrontation where I was defiant and my folks were just plain livid. Oops, I did it again. Liver. Livid. Guess where I’m going with this?

Our IE root today is (s)leiә. (The ‘(s)’ means the s sound often gets lost in words downstream from the root.) It means blue or plum colored. The liver organ is strikingly plum colored or at least it was before I flushed it down the toilet. To be livid means that you are “yelling ‘til you’re blue in the face” or at least that’s how I remember the scolding* I got for flushing the liver down the toilet.

Want a word where the (s) hung aournd? Sloe gin is made from juniper berries which happen to be blue.

The last word to mention is lavender, a bluish or plum colored flower. Its name derives from its color, but there is an “association” with another word. When we want to wash our hands, we go to the lavatory (and use lava soap?). When we wash our clothes we go to the laundry. Laundry and lavatory derive from the IE root leu(ә), close to (s)leiә (blue), but very different meaning. Lavender often gets associated laundry because has long been popular to add the fragrant flower to the wash… which is why my t-shirt smells so good.

*We patched things up, I’m not anemic, and my mom is 95 and happily lives in my home today.

Corned Beef in My Cornucopia

At about age 14, I reported to our country doctor that I had an enflamed lymph node.  Dr. Grumpy looked back at me and said, “Why don’t you just say you have a swollen kernel?”  If I wasn’t such a mild, mannered, temperate, and thoughtful lad I would have shot back, “I don’t know Doc, why don’t we just call you a barber and pay you what you’re worth.”  Like I say, I would never have smarted off like that.  But every time I hear, "there’s a kernel of truth in every lie”, I get this funny feeling I need a haircut.

That said, I’m posting this in the shadow of St Patrick’s Day and I’ve got several pounds of corned beef out on the smoker.  I love me some corned beef.  A few years ago I even learned how to take a fresh brisket and make corned beef.  To my great surprise, the recipe calls for absolutely zero corn.  I wondered if country doc was responsible for this misnomer as well.

As most of us know, corn is actually called “maize” by the Central American natives who first cultivated it.  I don’t know nuthin about Aztec / Mayan etymologies so we’ll leave maize at maize.   As well as being an amateur physician, I was an inveterate etymologist early on.  I always thought Thanksgiving’s cornucopia was where the Native (North) Americans kept their veggies including that fabulous multi-colored corn.  Not so much.

So what’s up with “corn”? Let’s go back to my love of the savory Irish treat – corned beef. The recipe calls for a special variety of salt and pickling spices which is basically aromatic herbs and various kernels of… hey, did you notice that?  Kernels!  Corn derives from the IE root, gre-no which clearly refers to grain, specifically the business end of plant which consists of small seeds or kernels.  No maize is used in the preparation of corned beef, but I love the flavors those little spice kernels impart.

That clears up the corned beef controversy, but what about cornucopia and unicorns and let’s throw in my beloved trumpet (aka: cornet)?  If corn means kernel, what do all these other corns mean?  There is another IE root ker1 which means horn.  Does that make sense?  A cornucopia means “horn of plenty” (-copia as in copious, plenty).  A trumpet / cornet entered the orchestra as a humble horn.  Unicorn is a horse with… you get it.  By the way, rhinoceros and my beloved dinosaur, triceratops also feature horns on their head and in their names.

So, after Doc and I dealt with the swollen kernel, I asked him about this corn on my foot.

Epilogue:  Disappointed in my search for a great local deil with even greater corned beef sammiches, I am not left without options.  My motto is "cook what you like to eat" and I did!  For purists, a traditional corned beef is boiled, a pastrami is smoked.  However, traditional pastrami is cured with juniper berries (kernels of which I have none).  So, please allow me the privilege of introducing you to my hybrid exclusive Smoked Corned Beef Sammich on Perfect Panera Thick Sliced Rye.  Oh MY!!!!!

Italian, French, Mexican... Is There No Pirate Food Category?

Disclaimer: I am not a food paleontologist and by all observations I am an extremely amateur etymologist.  Here, in this post, I will prove my incompetency in both disciplines and likely muddy the waters altogether.

I love to travel and eat so I enjoy reading restaurant reviews.  When it suddenly dawned on me that I was not the only person in the world with these preferences, I began contributing my own reviews.  When the subject of barbeque arises there are always strong opinions voiced in all driections about what makes for the best bbq.  I have some experience on the subject, although again, I'm going to hide safely behind my claim of rock amateur, I mean rank amateur.

Since this is a blog about words and not food, I'm going to try and break down the origins of the word barbeque for us.  There is general agreement that "barbeque" is a term indigenous  to Central America (primarily Mexico) and the Caribbean Islands. Generally speaking, historic barbeque is most similar to the way whole hogs are prepared at a Hawaiian luau. Pit + Fire + Meat is the general formula.  Variations in amount of moisture, spices, time, heat, and meat types add to the diverse character of the genre.  Remember, we’re talking about aboriginal food preparation not the technical method for making crème brûlèe.  Barbeque methods evolved over time based on local preferences and local resources so it is really not plausible to say there is only one way to prepare barbeque.

The word “barbeque” derives from barbacoa – a word which is related to barber (a person who cuts hair and shaves beards). French, Spanish, and Italian all have words which refer to the beard with words beginning barb-.  How do we get from beards to burnt ends?  Unless you are grilling, you want to keep the meat and the heat source at a reasonable distance from each other, typically by suspending the meat at some distance above the (rising) heat source.  I think it would be fair to define the origin of barbacoa as specifically referring to cooking meat slowly over an indirect heat source.  In the native home of the barbacoa, the preferred wood for separating the meat from the fire is the ficus barbata – commonly known as the Bearded Fig.  This wood is dense and somewhat heat resistant – great for standing strong between meat and fire.  The Spanish word for this tree is Los Barbadoes – from which Barbados* (an island in the Caribbean) gets its name.  Is this all coming together?  Barbeque is a 800-1000 year old word from south of the border that means throw some meat on a rack over a fire.

I spent my teen years in the Lone Star State and now feather my nest in the land of Sunflowers and Oz.  As for my personal eating and cooking style, I prefer a hybrid of Kansas City style BBQ spice and Texas BBQ sweet.  Texas is the northern apex of the Barbacoa Triangle.  In 1800s Texas, in the Hill Country to be specific, four worlds collided and brought us the delectable savor that we all argue about today.  Cutting the history lesson as short as possible, let’s weave these four strands together.  First, Texas turns out to be a great place to raise cattle (before they were unceremoniously herded north on the Chisolm trail).  Second, proximal to Mexico, Texas received significant food influences from its southwestern cousins (hence: Tex-Mex), although that whole Alamo thing didn’t help relationships. Third, proximal to the Gulf and Caribbean, Texas was the point of entry for many thousands of slaves who often laid-over in the Caribbean Islands (before being herded unceremoniously to the Continent) and they brought those food influences with them.  Fourth and not to be overlooked, Texas strangely became a popular destination for large numbers of Germans who just happened to know a thing or two about meat preparation (and beer to go along with the bbq). Throw all these influences together and you have a “manifest destiny” that changed the culinary landscape of America. You could say, and some have said, that barbeque was born in Elgin, Luling, and Lockhart.

Now about that Pirate Food category… Barbacoa is the term deriving from the type of tree used to separate the meat from the heat. But there is another word that refers specifically to the rack of the barbado wood that the meat was placed on. That rack of wood was called a buccan and it lent its name to those festive young men who enjoyed a hearty, smoky meal followed by a wee bit o’ pillaging and piracy. Our beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Pittsburg Pirates (nicknamed the Bucs - short for buccaneer) are first and foremost BBQ enthusiasts and despicable humans second.  It's all true.

* The ficus barbata is featured on the Coat of Arms of Barbados. The ficus family is notable for the manner in which the trees drop "aerial roots" which look like beards. You see these beards dangling below the bottom limbs on the tree in the coat of arms. You also see a dolphin.

A Transient Feeling of Wounded Vanity

Until I decide otherwise, the title of this post is the best dictionary definition I've ever read. 

If you google "in a fit of pique" you'll find an odd assortment of rash things people did, wrote, or said at a moment of, well, "wounded vanity".  If you search "piqué" at clothing merchant Land's End, you'll find some lovely polo shirts made of an oh-so-soft fabric.  So w here do we go with this?  Does pique mean upset or soft?

You guessed it (you know me so well), it means neither.  To completely clarify matters, let's add in another variant: picante as in picante sauce - America's favorite condiment.  Did that help?  No?  Then let's add in another Mexican restaurant staple: pico de gallo.  Yes, that should clarify everything.

Let's get to work here.  Picante sauce and pico de gallo are made of similar ingredients (tomato, onion, peppers, yada yada yada).  Pico is chunkier than picante and is served as a topping or side to some dishes whereas picante sauce (aka: salsa) is a chip dip or condiment.  As far as I can tell, the main difference between the two is the size of component ingredients.  Remember the peppers?  What category do they fall into - spices.  And that's our first real clue.  Spice and picante and pico share a common core - pic.  I'll deal with the s- part of the story in another post.  And you're probably running out ahead of me, yes, pick and spike are also related words.

Now, at this point of the story, I usually bring in some obscure old word that some people, somewhere, thousands of years ago used and I demand that all the words are related because of that one word.  (We're really getting to know each other aren't we?)  Well, that's just what I'm going to do.  The IE root is (s)peik.  (Remember we'll deal with the mysterious s- later.)  Let's break down pico de gallo to understand this.  Do you remember any Spanish?  What does "gallo" mean?  Right, rooster.  What do you think pico refers to?  Pico is the beak (s/peik) of the rooster.  A beak is sharp, like a spike, like spicy foods.  Salsa picante or "piquant sauce" has a sharp, spikey taste thanks to those spices.  Just like a bird pecks at the ground with its sharp beak to find food, the spice in piquant foods pecks at your taste buds - hopefully in a pleasing way.

What about those polo shirts?  It has nothing to do with the oh-so-soft material the shirt is made from, but rather the process by which it is made.  Ever watch your mother knit or crochet?  What did she use to weave that oh-so-soft yarn together - hard, sharp spikes, needles.  The fabric is thus called piqué (pee-kay) in reference to the process.

Now, where the heck was I, oh yes, "a fit of pique" (pronounced: peek).  Let's say you're on a first date, you're trying to get to know the other person, but you don't have a lot invested in the relationship.  The date hasn't been going well anyway and then the other person hauls off and says something utterly rude / stupid / suggestive.  That's it.  Grab the water glass, drench the fool, and storm out "in a fit of pique".  Pique is a transient feeling of wounded vanity.  Your pride (vanity) feels like it got pecked by a rooster, jabbed with a knitting needle, yada yada yada.

It's all true.  I wouldn't make it up.

Orthodox Rocks - Part III

Before your very eyes, I am building a post in three installments dealing with the roots and meaning of "orthodox".  This is Part III - the fin de siècle, whatever that means.

The Blog In Review, parts 1 and 2: Dox refers to things that are acceptable.  Ortho means straight or upright.

I can remember being a young lad and deliberately working through "orthodox" in my mind, breaking it down and testing meanings against other words.  We used to sing "The Doxology" in church.  It was a statement, of sorts, of things that we believed in (things that are "acceptable" from the IE root deks).  I thought of orthodontists and orthopedics - doctors who made things straight (from the IE root eredh).  I eventually arrived at the notion that orthodox must mean something like "straight beliefs".  In retrospect, I wasn't far off.

I am somewhat amused that orthodox is either a misnomer or a contradiction in terms.  There are as many "orthodox" beliefs as there are people who believe them.  In terms of churches, the Orthodox flag is flown by the Greeks, Russians, Serbians, and many more - and since they all differ somewhat in their beliefs, it can only be observed that each group thinks their beliefs are straighter than the others.  And so it goes. 

That is my story of noodling around with words based on word roots.  If you haven't read it, I hope you'll take the time to read the "Foreword" to this blog and get the big picture of what the blog is about.  I've also added a very few resources on the right.  Stop by these sites every once in a while and see if you don't find something that piques your interest - like how "pique" relates to "America's most popular condiment".

Orthodox Rocks - Part II

Before your very eyes, I am building a post in three installments dealing with the roots and meaning of "orthodox".  Here now is Part II.

Johnson County, Kansas is proud home to the first family of orthodonture - The Frys.  My youngest son (not pictured here) is only months away from flashing a dazzling smile thanks to Dr Jeremy (remember "doctor" from my last post?).  A few lazy teeth have been set on the straight and narrow.  Orthodontics, Orthepedics, Orthoepics* and the like all share this common IE root, eredh, which means high.  But clearly we were not going after "high teeth" when we went to the orthodontist.  That vampire look is really getting old.

Imagine a row of people; let's pretend they are new military recruits.  They're all the same height, all standing, but some are slouching over, some are leaning over on their buddy, some are standing upright.  The slouchers and leaners would clearly appear shorter than those standing upright.  In walks the drill sergeant and shouts "Ten Hut, Stand up straight you lousy maggots!"  (Drill sergeants are surly like that.)  Now, everyone is the same height - all "high", none shorter thanks to the drill sergeant's verbal orthodonture, so to speak.  That's what an orthodontist does, only without all the yelling insults and with more wire and rubber bands.  Ortho has morphed from meaning "high" to indicating that a thing is "straight or upright".

Another word related to ortho is arduous.  Imagine that mean drill sergeant ordering those maggots, I mean recruits, on a double-time "harch" up a high, steep mountainside.  I think there would be unanimous agreement, among the survivors, that such a exercise would be arduous.  And so it should be.

* Some years ago, the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee had to skip a word that none of the judges could confidently pronounce.  The word?  Orthoepy.  The meaning of the word?  Orthoepy is the correct (straight) pronunciation of words.  It's all true.

Orthodox Rocks - Part I

Before your very eyes, I'm going to build a post in three installments dealing with the roots and meaning of "orthodox".  This is Part I, of course.

At the same time we moved into our current home a new Greek Orthodox church was being built nearby.  While the rest of the family was looking forward to the baklava at the annual Greek food fest, I had my eye on more substantive fare.  Being a devout believer in the supremacy of Kansas City Barbeque, I devoted myself to building a mammoth backyard smoker.  I habitually scouted for construction areas where large flat slabs of Kansas limestone were exposed.  The good Greeks had unearthed a truckload for me a half mile from my house.  A hernia and a knee replacement later, I have myself a killer smoker in which I can smoke a drawn and quartered pig or 120 racks of ribs, more or less.

Now that I have established this scintillating prologue to my blog trilogy, I should prolly get to work.  Orthodox, ortho + dox.  Let's focus on the dox part today.  Our IE root is dek1 with the meaning of "to take or accept".  A direct descendant is decent - something that is acceptable.  How do we learn what is decent or acceptable?  Well, experience is a great teacher, but history is full of the value of teachers who instruct what is acceptable across the wide range of human endeavor.  The Latin word docere means to show or instruct (to teach) and it is the headwater of all our doc- words like doctor, orginally a religious term meaning scholarly teacher.  Over time, doctor became applied to anyone having earned the highest college degree.  A doctor then teaches doctrines or dogma and points out paradoxes to his disciples (those who are learning what is acceptable through discipline).  (The use of the term doctor to refer to a medical profession is really just the tip of the iceberg.)

As noble a word as doctor is, isn't it interesting that when you alter or change something with an attempt to deceive, it is said that you "doctor" it.  That's not acceptable at all!

Next post: we'll tackle the ortho side of the equation.

While not quite a googlewhack, "orthodox rocks" only gets 160 hits on a Google search.

The Dolphin Brothers

In the late '80s I was busy building a family, watching Thirty Something, and figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I totally missed the musical phenomenon known as The Dolphin Brothers who are described as having the sound of a "Fashion-era David Bowie" featuring the "classic simplicity of a nice piece of plodding liquorice and some good old plain sherbet."  [I wish I could write like that.]

But enough about me, this is a blog about word roots and relationships.  One of the first words that I learned was decodable was Philadelphia - the city of what?  That's right "brotherly love" (phila = love + brother = delphia).  Isn't it odd that a city famous for booing Santa Claus is called Brotherly Love.  I wonder if they like dolphins there?  They could rename the town to Philadolphia.

That actually wouldn't be much of a change.  The Greek word for brother, delphos, is interesting.  The IE Root, gwelbh, actually means womb.  Somewhere along its travels the g morphed to a d and picked up the delph sound.  Since brothers are from the same mother, they can be said to be womb-mates.  Get it?  Womb-mates, like roommates... oh never mind.

Okay, brothers are from the same womb.  But what about those cute dolphins?  Believe it or not, someone decided that a dolphin was shaped like a womb - an area of expertise that exceeds my knowledge base.

So here's to you, The Dolphin Brothers.  You named yourself after basically the same thing - a womb.   That's why I miss the '80s.

A State of Inactivity or Insensibility

Today we'll look at a family of words built around the IE root ster1. which comes to us with the meaning of stiff.  Before we're done, we'll see this word relates to barbeque and weapons of war.

How do you describe someone who is stiff and sour - stern comes to mind.  Of course, people like that tend to stare a lot - also from ster1.  Until recently I didn't know how to make great mashed potatoes.  I used to add cold milk which made the mash stiff and it more or less froze the starch in the potatoes.  (The key is to use warm milk!)

Start and startle both derive from ster1.  How "start" relates to "stiff" was pretty difficult to me until I remembered how I start the day - rather stiff, my joints wake up about 30 minutes after I get out of bed.  If some loud noise awakens me in the middle of the night, I bolt upright in bed, stiff as a board. 

Oddly, the word stereo relates stiff. I thought it simply meant "two" - you know, the opposite of mono as all you audiophiles know so well. Stereo is a Greek work meaning "solid". Who knew? Perhaps more oddly the stork bird gets its name from ster1 apparently because of its stiff posture and jerky movements. I'm no authority on the subject so I guess I'll have to go with tradition.

Kansas City's third worst BBQ joint features a dude struttin' with some barbeque in his up-to-date finest outfit.  I have no idea why they use this motif, but that dude a'struttin' sure looks stiff.  Of course, I guess if times are stark and you're about to starve any kind of vittles is better than nothing, even stiff potatoes.  These words describe conditions that clould lead to you being very stiff and very room temperature. A seldom used word, torpor - a state of mental or physical inactivity or insensibility, describes lifeforms in a stiff state.  I initially thought it was the definition of teenagers when Saturday chores have to be done.  Guess I was wrong.  (Notice how after all those st- words, the s suddenly disappeared.  This is the kind of thing I was trying to explain in my prior post, Sliding Sideways.)

Now, all this brings us to our last word as illustrated to the right.  I have recently become word buddies with a real creative New Yawker who has a fine gift of illustrating words.  This is his interpretation of a torpedo - stiff as can be, piercing through something that looks like my mashed potatoes made with cold barbeque sauce.  (Be sure to check out his blog every Monday when he posts a new image.)

Sliding Sideways

Sometimes, when I write my little posts about words, I imagine you, my reader, kicking the slats out of your bed and screaming, "What?  Those aren't even close to the same ________ (words, letters, sounds, whatever)."  So this post is for all of you with broken beds and sore throats.

Are too!

Let's see if I can school ya a little bit on this one.  Did you read my post on "Our Father..."?  Let's look at the words for father in several different languages.
              Ancient Indo-European root: p'ter
              Latin: pater (pronounced pot-air)
              Old Irish: athir (pronounced AH her)
              Old English: faeder (pronounced fy-der)
              German: fadar (pronounced faw-der)
Clearly these are all related in terms of sound qualities, but there are also quantitative differences that create distinct languages.  Notice the difference in pronunciation between Old Irish and Old English.  That's quite a difference.  In English, we grabbed the Old Irish th, but we actually pronounce it.

A friend of mine does a little doodling under the banner of Pez Martillo.  Ah, Pez.  I know Pez - that little candy thingy, right?  Not unless it is fish-flavored candy!
               Ancient Indo-European root: peisk
               Latin: pisces (like the zodiac sign)
               Old English: fisc
               Spanish: pez
Fish < > Pez.  On their face, there is little similarity between the English and Spanish variations.  But when you look at the whole group together, you see a lot of similarity.  That's how linguists go about figuring out the connections and conjecturing what the Indo-European root was.  By the way, Pez Martillo is the Spanish name of the... hey, you look it up, I had to.
 
And by the way, I didn't pick the image above just for the perky spokesmodel.  Look at what she is sitting on.  No, not her bum, the package.  Notice the flavor.  In German, that would be spelled pfefferminz.  How is that for changing the letters around?  Hey, wait a minute, pfefferminz. PfeffErminZ. 

I wonder...

Armadillo World Headquarters

Once upon a wonderful time, I frequented a place perfectly named Armadillo World Headquarters.  It was sort of a cross between Woodstock and your neighborhood block party.  If you scan the list of artists (and if you're old enough) you'll see that some of the greatest names of the Rock'nRoll era also frequented the place.  This army of musicians created harmonies that still waft around in my head today.  AWHQ only lasted a decade, but what a decade it was! 

But this is a blog about words, right?  Alrighty then, let's go back to that first paragraph and find a family of words to work with.  How about these: armadillo, army, artist, harmony.  To that list we could add arthritis and aristocracy.  Pretty diverse family, eh? 

What do these words all have in common?  Let's start with our mascot, the armadillo.  I've caught a couple of these suckers in the wild.  Trust me, it isn't easy and holding onto them is almost as tough as catching them.  Armadilloes have a shell-like armature (hmmm) that fully protects them when they roll up into a defensive ball.  I would imagine that getting the design just right took a lot of work.  If any piece of the shell doesn't fit perfectly, it could be pretty uncomfortable in there.  And that's the key: fit.

Our IE root today is ar - to fit.  Armadilloes have an armature that fits.  If you are in the army, you'd better have good fitting armor which you pick up at the armory*.  An artist fits sounds or colors or shapes together in some sort of harmonious way.  Our joints are where our body parts fit together and where arthritis can develop.  Aristocracy?  Oh I don't know, I guess they think they are the only ones who fit in!

I'd like to list a few more words, but right now I'm going back to the AWHQ artist list and continue my walk down memory lane.  Maybe I'll find additions to my greatest songs list.

* When I started this post, I had no idea that AWHQ found its residence in a former armory.  Note this from the wiki article on AWHQ: The name for Armadillo World Headquarters was inspired by the use of armadillos by a local poster artist and from the building itself. In choosing the mascot for the new venture, the founder and his partners wanted an "armored" animal since the building was an old armory. The nine-banded armadillo was chosen because of its hard shell that looks like armor.

Matters of Heart and Home

This one is sweet and simple... well sort of. 

A building is called an edifice.  When you build someone up, you edify them.  So you, a rational person, would suppose that the ancient root leading to edifice / edify has something to do with building or structure, right?  No chance.

In this case, our IE root is ai and I'm telling you the truth, it means "to burn".  (Ember and Sicily's Mt Etna volcano are also related.)  Edifice and edify get their e- sound from the ai root.  But that still doesn't explain how we get from burn to build.

Maybe this will help.  I confess that I grew up watching Little House On The Praire.  (I had a crush on Melissa Gilbert).  I remember Pa Ingalls getting up from the dinner table, grabbing his pipe, and lighting it with an ember (hey, remember ember!) from the fire.  Then, standing there at the hearth, he would talk to his wife and children in ways that edified them.  And that's it. (Notice what is behind the girls in the picture.)

Well, let me unpack this for you.  For millennia, the most important part of the home was the fireplace where the home is heated and food is cooked.  Nowadays, there is some demon-possessed machine in the basement that does the heating job and our fireplaces are primarily decorative - but those are only recent "improvements".  The house (edifice) was literally built up around the fireplace or hearth.  And Pa Ingalls vividly demonstrated that family is built up (edified) there at the core of the home - the fireplace or hearth.

Ready for this?  The Latin word for hearth is eides - clearly growing up from our ancient root ai.  There where the burning happens, the core of the edifice is formed and family members are edified.  It's all true.

Grist for the Mill

Did you ever wonder if “Christ” was the last name of Jesus - as if Joseph and Mary Christ had a baby named Jesus?  Or why is *He* sometimes referred to as Jesus and sometimes as Christ.  It really is understandable that there would be some confusion abouth this conspicuous person and name. 

There is an important word in the Bible in both the Old and New Testament: Anointed.  Think "ointment" - you put it on your body.  To be anointed is to have olive oil (the ointment) placed on you, typically on the forehead.  Tradition holds that prophets, priests, and kings were anointed as a way of marking that they were set apart for their special role.  Most Christians believe that Jesus was all three: prophet, priest, and king, but that's another subject altogether. 

The Old Testament (Hebrew) word for "the anointed one" is Messiah.  The New Testament (Greek) word for "the anointed one" is Christ.  Okay, so the Messiah or the Christ is anointed with olive oil.  How is that oil obtained? By pressing or grinding the olive until the the oil runs out.

Historically, we process wheat similarly – by grinding it between heavy stones in a mill.  The term “grist for the mill” refers to the grain which is poured into the mill and ground. I think you can see that grist is directly, and obviously, related to Christ.  In fact, the ancient IE root is ghrendh - not a lot of distance between ghrendh and grind, is there?  The word Christ, as noble a name as Christians believe that it is, simply refers to the process by which the anointing oil is obtained.

It is noteworthy that Jesus' most difficult moment was in a place called Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion.  There He felt like He was being figuratively ground between the stone of God's will His own human inclination to avoid suffering.  (In Luke 22:42 we hear Jesus expressing His conflict, "Not my will, but Thine be done.")  Did you ever look up what Gethsemane means?  Olive press.  It is your host's opinion that in every way, Jesus lived up to the title Christ.

Both Sides Now

I'm writing this entry during the 2010 Winter Olympics.  The opening ceremony on Feb 12 featured a song that takes me back forty years - more or less.  I can't find video from the Olympics, so please check out this wonderful performance by the song's writer and first voice - Joni Mitchell.  Joni says she has come to see both sides now of love and a good many other things.  An important perspective.

The idea of considering both (or all) sides is deeply rooted in language.  The IE root is ambhi meaning "from both sides" or often meaning "around".   What do you call an animal, say a frog, that can live in both water and on land?  Amphibios (both + biomes / habitats).  What do you call an offical that represents one side to the other?  Ambassador.  (An interesting cousin of ambassador is "ombudsman" - a person who represents the interests of one side to the other.  Colleges, newpapers, etc have ombudsmen to make sure that the little people are not getting steamrolled by the institution.)

Sometimes words wind up with almost the opposite of their original meaning.  Some day I'll talk about "apologize" - a great example of words taking a permanent Opposite Day.  Today, let's focus on ambivalent.  Usually, if you like to use big words, you would say you were ambivalent if you didn't have a preference between two options.  It almost means apathetic.  But, at its heart, ambivalent means to be "valiant" (strong) for both sides.  If you are ambivalent, you could fight for either side with equal vigor.

One word in this family that you'll probably never hear (and definitely never use) is perambulate (per = through + amb = both + ulate = walk).  It means simply to walk around on all sides.  Although you may never use the word, if you were British you'd use a contraction of it all the time.  When you're ready to take the baby for a walk all around the park, you'd get out the pram (serious contraction!).

Now, I've got one more for you and it's a doozy.  Take a couple deep breaths, splash your face with cold water, maybe get a jolt of joe, and let's do this.  Hmmmm, let's see how shall we do this?  Okay, if you get real sick or need an operation, you go to the... hospital.  That's a cool word related to host and hospitality; you see that.  If you can't make it to the hospital what do you do?  You ask the hospital to come to you.  Nowadays, we have fantastic motorized hospitals with tandem rear wheels and flashing red lights.  But before Karl Benz invented the automobile (and named it after his daughter, Mercedes), the hospital came walking to you.  The French call it the hôspital ambulant - the walking hospital.  Now isn't that the way words work?  Hospital is the key part of the phrase hôspital ambulant, otherwise it would just be a pram.  But when we shorten phrases, especially foreign terms we don't understand, we often drop the important part and keep the details.  The next time you get passed by an ambulance going 70 miles per hour, stick your head out the window and laugh haughtily, "Ha, you should be walking."  On second thought, don't.

Fables of Famous Fairies and Blasphemous Bandits

To start this post, I'm going to try and teach just a moment about how one ancient sound (root) can wind up going so many different (and apparently unrelated) directions.  Take the root: bha(2).  Before we discuss its meaning, let's consider what this root could wind up sounding like.  Drop the h and you have the ba sound.  Keep the h and turn the b upside down to p (happens all the time) and you have pha / fa.  Of course, the vowel sounds are always complete wild cards.  Regional accents usually mess with the vowels.  For example, In Texas, if you want your iced tea all the way to the top of the glass, you say "feel it up", but you mean "fill".  So keep an eye on the consonant sounds and just let the vowels come and go as they please.  Our IE root today, bha, will clearly demonstrate this kind of sonic ADD.

At it's heart, bha is a real big talker - it means "to speak".  We speak to tell a fable and sometimes our fables speak of the antics of fairies (characters in spoken fables).  Fables often tell lessons through the fates of the actors (fate meaning a spoken outcome).  A baby just learning to speak is an infant, a guy who talks a lot is called affable, and some people (especially among the elderly) suffer aphasia - the inability to speak.  I think you can see that famous (spoken of far and wide) and fabulous (spoken highly of) fandangoes (no clue!) are also downstream cousins of ancient bha.

When we speak of our beliefs we confess what we believe.  If we speak against what others believe they say we blaspheme.

If we don't like something and want to run it out of town, we ban it and bannish it (see, we dropped the h).  Even though it got banned, some people still seek contraband with reckless abandon.  If those naughty boys call (speak) a bunch of their kind together, we call them bandits.

If we hold onto the ph/f sound and listen for the o sound, we'll discover the very core of spoken word sounds - phonics and phonetics.  Of course, to speak at a distance we need a telephone (far + sound).  If musical instrument sounds all come together just right we enjoy the symphony (together + sound).