Carnival of Etymologies
[A regular Thursday feature of "Done With Mirrors"]
Today's list of words to be dissected was dragged, writhing and begging for mercy, from phrases that appeared in the top 50 searches on Lycos for the week ending Feb. 12.
Pseudo-punk band Green Day won a Grammy last week for its album called "American Idiot." Fueled by anti-Iraq War fervor, the bad boys (actually a trio of disturbed-looking 30-something fathers with homes in suburbia) penned a "disturbing portrait of Bush-era suburbia."
David Bauder, an Associated Press entertainment reporter, made a curious observation in his take-out piece on Green Day's performance at the Grammy awards, "Green Day Tests Grammy Censors." At the ceremony the band performed the album's title track, which contains the word "mindfuck." Bauder wrote:
Huh? What makes him think the censors would have "deleted" that if they could? What makes him think they longed to censor the political content of the song?
Because, you know, Bush=Hitler, right? And because a band that criticizes the president would never be given a major public award in this country, or a major national venue to perform. Just like in Nazi Germany.
Oh, the Dixie Chicks won an award, too.
Bauder's revelation lends some heft to another lyric from "American Idiot":
Idiot, "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning," goes back to the Middle Ages and comes to English via Old French, from Latin idiota. In Late Latin (post-classical) this meant "an uneducated or ignorant person," but before that it meant simply "ordinary person, layman," and that is its etymological sense.
The Romans got the word from Greek idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill" (but also used patronizingly for "ignorant person"). Its literal meaning is "private person," and it is a noun derivative of Greek idios "one's own."
Another Greek offshoot of this word is idioma "peculiarity, peculiar phraseology," which has given us idiom.
Linguists have traced Greek idios back to a prehistoric *swed-yo-, a suffixed form of the Proto-Indo-European base *s(w)e-, the pronoun of the third person. An "idiot" is, at heart, "his own man." Village idiot, in case you're wondering, has only been attested from 1907.
Other words in English that come from the same base include self, sibling (via Old English), ethos, ethnic (via Greek again), secret (via Latin), and swami (via Sanskrit).
We may all be American Idiots. but we're in good company, etymologically.
The Greek forms lost the initial "s" along the way, by a regular sound evolution (the ancient Greek equivalent of son, sweet, six, and sister are uhios, hedos, hex, and heor; Latin super equals Greek hyper, etc.). Evidently, for reasons lost in history, the Greeks liked to clip off the initial "s" sound from some words.
Grammy, the name of the statuette Green Day won, was coined (on the model of the theatrical Emmy award) from the gram- in gramophone. Congratulations to Green Day for releasing the gramophone recording of the year.
* * *
Moron is another insult that got some play this week, in reference to bloggers, courtesy of Steve Lovelady, who called the critics of CNN's Eason Jordan a pack of "salivating morons."
"Moron" is a much more recent addition to English than idiot. It was adopted in 1910 by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded with a technical definition of "adult with a mental age between 8 and 12." The organization reached back to ancient Greek moron, the neuter case form of the adjective moros "foolish, dull."
Presumably the group did this to avoid the purely insulting terms like idiot, but by 1922, moron itself was being lobbed freely as a taunt, and subsequently it was dropped from technical use.
So something about this whole Eason Jordan thing puzzles me: Why would a journalistic institution let itself be cowed like that? The last thing you want, as a media outlet, is an outside agency to believe it can influence your coverage assignments. I'm not thinking in terms of what's high-minded here. This is a simple survival skill, and a matter of turf protection.
I once was in charge of a pool of 30 or so correspondents covering a large county in Pennsylvania for a 40,000-circulation daily. Some were better than others, some were especially good at certain things, and one was a splendid "digger." She would have made a full-time reporter, but she already had a job and enjoyed this as a second career. I used to send Mary Ellen to assignments where I knew things were juicy, townships where shenanigans lurked.
I often got calls from local solons demanding or pleading that I take her off their beat. They usually had some list of things she'd gotten wrong, or failed to understand. Even when they were right on some minor matter, I never let them feel they had accomplished their purpose. Even if I had in mind to shift Mary Ellen somewhere else at the time, I'd keep her there another couple months after getting a call like that. You can't let anyone shop for reporters.
Sometimes you do have to cave into the pressure, especially when someone really has the goods on you -- as apparently was the case with "Jeff Gannon." Though I would reiterate that, while I think the exposure of his faux media credentials was valid, I'm repulsed by the way the left blogs first dragged his libido out of the closet, did a clog dance on his homosexuality, then belatedly changing the topic to his professional qualifications after they were worn out from that.
But an executive is not a journalist, even in a media organization, and Eason was an executive. The people who hire and fire him are not journalists, working amid the media mentality I had with my correspondents. That's why I think Roger L. Simon gets close to the truth of the matter here:
By the way, I remember "Steve Lovelady of the Columbia Journalism Review" when he was the writing guru at the Philly Inquirer. I worked for an ankle-biting suburban competitor paper at the time (late '80s-early '90s) and the story we heard was that he rewrote every Page One story at the Inky to make it a "people" story. You know, turn "City police said a car crashed into pool parlor last night" into "Ed Schmertz had his eye on the carom shot that was going to put the game away -- nine ball in the hip pocket -- and he leaned his ample gut over the green felt with victory in sight," et cetera.
I have no idea if what we thought was correct, but the Inquirer did acquire that tone in those years. Sometimes it even worked. But it became a figure of speech among us to say things like "(Dead person X) is buried deeper than the lede in an 'Inquirer' story."
* * *
Choosing a sweetheart on Valentine's Day originated in the 14th century as a custom in English and French court circles. The romantic association of the day is said to be from its being around the time when birds choose their mates.
More likely the date was the informal first day of spring in whatever French region invented the custom (many surviving medieval calendars reckon the start of spring on the 7th or 22nd of February). Things were warmer in the early Middle Ages, but on the other hand Valentine's Day this year Luke and I noticed for the first time crocus and daffodil shoots inching up and shouldering aside the dirt crumbs in our garden.
No evidence supports the 18th century theory that directly connects Valentine's Day with the Roman Lupercalia. The coincidence of this custom with the saint's feast day is the reason for the name; there is nothing authentic in the saint's story that would justify a romantic association.
Valentinus was the name of two early Italian saints. The proper name is from Latin valentia "strength, capacity;" the same root is behind valor and valid.
* * *
The calendar this year brought Valentine's Day a lot closer to Mardi Gras than it usually is allowed to get. The two holidays seem to represent two faces of human sexuality: commitment and license.
Mardi Gras is, of course, French for "fat Tuesday," the day of eating and merrymaking before the beginning of the fasting season of Lent.
The merrymaking itself is carnival, from carnevale, the Italian word for the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Folk etymology derives this from Medieval Latin carne vale, literally, "Flesh, farewell." But older Italian forms like Milanese carnelevale and Old Pisan carnelevare suggest that the compound really means "to remove meat" -- literally "raising flesh," from Latin caro "flesh" and levare "to lighten, raise."
The Louisiana French and the Italians and Brazilians have given us the words and images we use for this season, but there was an English version, once upon a time. Merry Monday was the 16th century term for "the Monday before Shrove Tuesday." I doubt the floats were as happening, though.
Mardi for "Tuesday" echoes the original Latin day name, Martis diem, "day of (the planet) Mars." When the ancient Germanic tribes began to use the Latin day-names, they took them as god-names, not astrological ones, and found an equivalent of the Roman god of war in Germanic Tiw.
Today's list of words to be dissected was dragged, writhing and begging for mercy, from phrases that appeared in the top 50 searches on Lycos for the week ending Feb. 12.
Pseudo-punk band Green Day won a Grammy last week for its album called "American Idiot." Fueled by anti-Iraq War fervor, the bad boys (actually a trio of disturbed-looking 30-something fathers with homes in suburbia) penned a "disturbing portrait of Bush-era suburbia."
David Bauder, an Associated Press entertainment reporter, made a curious observation in his take-out piece on Green Day's performance at the Grammy awards, "Green Day Tests Grammy Censors." At the ceremony the band performed the album's title track, which contains the word "mindfuck." Bauder wrote:
The song includes a prominent obscenity in one of the lyrics, but the censors were plainly prepared and neatly excised the word. They couldn't delete, however, singer Billie Joe Armstrong's pointed political reference to not wanting to be part of a redneck agenda.
Huh? What makes him think the censors would have "deleted" that if they could? What makes him think they longed to censor the political content of the song?
Because, you know, Bush=Hitler, right? And because a band that criticizes the president would never be given a major public award in this country, or a major national venue to perform. Just like in Nazi Germany.
Oh, the Dixie Chicks won an award, too.
Bauder's revelation lends some heft to another lyric from "American Idiot":
One nation controlled by the media.
Information nation of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.
Idiot, "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning," goes back to the Middle Ages and comes to English via Old French, from Latin idiota. In Late Latin (post-classical) this meant "an uneducated or ignorant person," but before that it meant simply "ordinary person, layman," and that is its etymological sense.
The Romans got the word from Greek idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill" (but also used patronizingly for "ignorant person"). Its literal meaning is "private person," and it is a noun derivative of Greek idios "one's own."
Another Greek offshoot of this word is idioma "peculiarity, peculiar phraseology," which has given us idiom.
Linguists have traced Greek idios back to a prehistoric *swed-yo-, a suffixed form of the Proto-Indo-European base *s(w)e-, the pronoun of the third person. An "idiot" is, at heart, "his own man." Village idiot, in case you're wondering, has only been attested from 1907.
Other words in English that come from the same base include self, sibling (via Old English), ethos, ethnic (via Greek again), secret (via Latin), and swami (via Sanskrit).
We may all be American Idiots. but we're in good company, etymologically.
The Greek forms lost the initial "s" along the way, by a regular sound evolution (the ancient Greek equivalent of son, sweet, six, and sister are uhios, hedos, hex, and heor; Latin super equals Greek hyper, etc.). Evidently, for reasons lost in history, the Greeks liked to clip off the initial "s" sound from some words.
Grammy, the name of the statuette Green Day won, was coined (on the model of the theatrical Emmy award) from the gram- in gramophone. Congratulations to Green Day for releasing the gramophone recording of the year.
* * *
Moron is another insult that got some play this week, in reference to bloggers, courtesy of Steve Lovelady, who called the critics of CNN's Eason Jordan a pack of "salivating morons."
"Moron" is a much more recent addition to English than idiot. It was adopted in 1910 by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded with a technical definition of "adult with a mental age between 8 and 12." The organization reached back to ancient Greek moron, the neuter case form of the adjective moros "foolish, dull."
Presumably the group did this to avoid the purely insulting terms like idiot, but by 1922, moron itself was being lobbed freely as a taunt, and subsequently it was dropped from technical use.
So something about this whole Eason Jordan thing puzzles me: Why would a journalistic institution let itself be cowed like that? The last thing you want, as a media outlet, is an outside agency to believe it can influence your coverage assignments. I'm not thinking in terms of what's high-minded here. This is a simple survival skill, and a matter of turf protection.
I once was in charge of a pool of 30 or so correspondents covering a large county in Pennsylvania for a 40,000-circulation daily. Some were better than others, some were especially good at certain things, and one was a splendid "digger." She would have made a full-time reporter, but she already had a job and enjoyed this as a second career. I used to send Mary Ellen to assignments where I knew things were juicy, townships where shenanigans lurked.
I often got calls from local solons demanding or pleading that I take her off their beat. They usually had some list of things she'd gotten wrong, or failed to understand. Even when they were right on some minor matter, I never let them feel they had accomplished their purpose. Even if I had in mind to shift Mary Ellen somewhere else at the time, I'd keep her there another couple months after getting a call like that. You can't let anyone shop for reporters.
Sometimes you do have to cave into the pressure, especially when someone really has the goods on you -- as apparently was the case with "Jeff Gannon." Though I would reiterate that, while I think the exposure of his faux media credentials was valid, I'm repulsed by the way the left blogs first dragged his libido out of the closet, did a clog dance on his homosexuality, then belatedly changing the topic to his professional qualifications after they were worn out from that.
But an executive is not a journalist, even in a media organization, and Eason was an executive. The people who hire and fire him are not journalists, working amid the media mentality I had with my correspondents. That's why I think Roger L. Simon gets close to the truth of the matter here:
No wonder Jordan was defenestrated so quickly by CNN. Loose lips of that nature are legally perilous for any corporation. I know nothing of Swiss law, obviously, but suppose someone connected with US military decided to launch a defamation suit against Jordan? And he said similar nonsense in Portugal.
By the way, I remember "Steve Lovelady of the Columbia Journalism Review" when he was the writing guru at the Philly Inquirer. I worked for an ankle-biting suburban competitor paper at the time (late '80s-early '90s) and the story we heard was that he rewrote every Page One story at the Inky to make it a "people" story. You know, turn "City police said a car crashed into pool parlor last night" into "Ed Schmertz had his eye on the carom shot that was going to put the game away -- nine ball in the hip pocket -- and he leaned his ample gut over the green felt with victory in sight," et cetera.
I have no idea if what we thought was correct, but the Inquirer did acquire that tone in those years. Sometimes it even worked. But it became a figure of speech among us to say things like "(Dead person X) is buried deeper than the lede in an 'Inquirer' story."
* * *
Choosing a sweetheart on Valentine's Day originated in the 14th century as a custom in English and French court circles. The romantic association of the day is said to be from its being around the time when birds choose their mates.
More likely the date was the informal first day of spring in whatever French region invented the custom (many surviving medieval calendars reckon the start of spring on the 7th or 22nd of February). Things were warmer in the early Middle Ages, but on the other hand Valentine's Day this year Luke and I noticed for the first time crocus and daffodil shoots inching up and shouldering aside the dirt crumbs in our garden.
No evidence supports the 18th century theory that directly connects Valentine's Day with the Roman Lupercalia. The coincidence of this custom with the saint's feast day is the reason for the name; there is nothing authentic in the saint's story that would justify a romantic association.
Valentinus was the name of two early Italian saints. The proper name is from Latin valentia "strength, capacity;" the same root is behind valor and valid.
* * *
The calendar this year brought Valentine's Day a lot closer to Mardi Gras than it usually is allowed to get. The two holidays seem to represent two faces of human sexuality: commitment and license.
Mardi Gras is, of course, French for "fat Tuesday," the day of eating and merrymaking before the beginning of the fasting season of Lent.
The merrymaking itself is carnival, from carnevale, the Italian word for the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Folk etymology derives this from Medieval Latin carne vale, literally, "Flesh, farewell." But older Italian forms like Milanese carnelevale and Old Pisan carnelevare suggest that the compound really means "to remove meat" -- literally "raising flesh," from Latin caro "flesh" and levare "to lighten, raise."
The Louisiana French and the Italians and Brazilians have given us the words and images we use for this season, but there was an English version, once upon a time. Merry Monday was the 16th century term for "the Monday before Shrove Tuesday." I doubt the floats were as happening, though.
Mardi for "Tuesday" echoes the original Latin day name, Martis diem, "day of (the planet) Mars." When the ancient Germanic tribes began to use the Latin day-names, they took them as god-names, not astrological ones, and found an equivalent of the Roman god of war in Germanic Tiw.
Labels: etymology
