Category Archives: words

words

Words: Marriage Settlement

Last evening I came across some words I’d not encountered before. This is not surprising as they are all anthropological in usage, and I’m not an anthropologist. Neither is our society one to which, in general, they apply. So a little investigation was needed for me to bring you four new words …
Uxorilocal
Applied to or denoting residence after marriage in the area of the wife’s home, community, tribe or family.
Derived from the Latin ūxor, wife. the recorded first usage is in 1936.
This is very similar to …
Matrilocal
1. Designating or relating to a custom of marriage by which the married couple settles in the wife’s home or community.
2. (In zoology) Of or relating to the tendency of males to leave their natal group and reside in or mate with females of a different group.
The first recorded usage is in 1906.


And contrast with …
Virilocal
Pertaining to or designating a woman’s residence after marriage with the husband’s family or tribe.
Derived from the Latin virī-lis, virile. First usage in 1948.
Which again is effectively cognate with …
Patrilocal
Designating or relating to a custom of marriage by which the married couple settles in the husband’s home or community.
First usage again in 1906.

books, ramblings, words

Written Rules

If you think that good, clear, written English is irrelevant, pedantic or elitist you really need to think again and read this from the Guardian …

Don’t press send … The new rules for good writing in the 21st century


Regardless of style (which needs to vary with context) good, clear, factually correct writing which is correct in grammar and spelling, helps engage the reader. And after all, that is what you want, isn’t it!?
And yes, NHS and HMRC, I’m looking especially at you!

words

Word: Cunctation

Cunctation
Procrastination; delay; tardy action.


The word is derived from the Latin cunctārī, to delay, and according to the OED was first used in English in 1585.

words

Word: Panjandrum

Panjandrum
1. (A mock title for) a mysterious (frequently imaginary) personage of great power or authority.
2. A pompous or pretentious official; a self-important person in authority.
According to the OED, the word is supposed to have been coined in 1754 or 1755 as part of a a piece of nonsense written by actor and dramatist Samuel Foote (1720–77) to test the memory of his fellow actor Charles Macklin, who had asserted that he could repeat anything after hearing it once. In the first published version (in 1825) the relevant passage (attributed to Foote) is:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! No soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

(It’s not up to Lewis Carroll’s standard, but never mind, eh!)


Panjandrum was also a (failed) experimental World War II device (above), invented by Nevil Shute, for delivering high explosive to enemy targets. There’s a good description of this on Wikipedia.
The word’s original derivation is unknown.

words

Word: Cruft

Cruft
1. Trash, debris, or other unwanted matter that accumulates over time.
2. Unnecessary digital information that accumulates over time, such as unneeded files or obsolete lines of code in software.
The OED describes the word as “computing slang” originating in the late 1950s but with an unknown origin. However I’ve always known the word for the first of the two meanings – as in the detritus which accumulates on a fan grille or dust bunnies.

natural history, words

Word: Caterpillar

Oh, go on then, let’s have another word. In writing about frass, I was minded to wonder about the origin of caterpillar, so …
Caterpillar
1. The larva of a butterfly or moth; sometimes extended to those of other insects, especially those of saw-flies, which are also hairy.
2. A type of tractor which travels upon two endless steel bands, one on each side of the machine, to facilitate travel over very rough ground. (And by extension to other such vehicles.)
3. To move like a caterpillar or on caterpillar tracks.
The first uses, in sense 1, recorded by the OED is from c.1440 in Promptorium Parvulorum 63: Catyrpel, wyrm among frute, erugo.
I’m going to reproduce the etymology from the OED essentially in full:
Etymology: Catyrpel, in Promptorium Parvulorum, may be merely an error of the scribe for catyrpelour (or -er); [later sources have] the full form. Generally compared with the synonymous Old French chatepelose, literally ‘hairy or downy cat’ (compare the Scots name hairy woubit, ‘woolly bear’), of which the Old Northern French would be catepelose. This is a possible source, though no connection is historically established: the final sibilant might be treated in English as a plural formative, and the supposed singular catepelo would be readily associated with the well-known word piller, pilour, pillager, plunderer, spoiler. This is illustrated by the fact that in the figurative sense, piller and caterpiller are used synonymously in a large number of parallel passages. The regular earlier spelling was with -er; the corruption caterpillar (?after pillar), occasional in the 17th century, was adopted by Johnson, and has since prevailed.
(Some think the word a direct compound of piller. The giving to hairy caterpillars a name derived from the cat, is seen not only in the French word cited, but also in Lombard gatta, gattola (cat, kitten), Swiss teufelskatz (devil’s cat); compare also French chenille (from canicula, little dog), Milanese can, cagnon (dog, pup). Compare also catkin, French chaton, applied to things resembling hairy caterpillars.)
In other words, we don’t know!

natural history, words

Word: Frass

1 Comment

Frass
The fine powdery refuse or fragile perforated wood produced by the activity of boring insects.
The excrement of insect larvae.
(Or to put it in the vernacular: caterpillar shit.)
First used in an academic paper in 1854, the word is derived from the German frasz, fressen, to devour.

words

Word: Inosculation

Inosculation
To unite (as of blood vessels, nerve fibres, or ducts) by small openings.
The opening of two vessels of an animal body, or of a vegetable, into each other.
To unite so as to be continuous; blend.
It is applied anatomically especially to blood vessels and in botany to the growing together of the trunks/branches of separate trees (as shown).
Needless to say the word is derived from In plus the Latin ōsculāre (having a mouth). The first usage is recorded by the OED as being from 1673.

words

Word: Quidnunc

Quidnunc
A person who constantly asks ‘What now?’.
An inquisitive or nosy person.
A gossipmonger.
As one might expect the word is derived from the Latin quid nunc, what now (quid = what, nunc = now).
The OED gives the first English usage in 1709.

books, history, links, science, sexuality, words

Your Monthly Links

They’re off! … On the quest for this month’s links to items you really didn’t want to miss the first time.
Science & Medicine
Many statistics are lies compounded by misleading graphics. Here’s a quick guide to spotting lies in visuals.


Queueing is quite complex, both psychologically and mathematically, so no wonder there are old wives tales about how to queue. But many are wrong, and the right answers are non-intuitive. The Guardian gives us some clues.
We don’t normally think of Winston Churchill as a scientist, but he certainly had a passionate interest in, and knowledge of, the science of his day, even down to writing with great foresight about astrobiology and extra-terrestrial life.
Black chickens. Not just black feathers, but black all the way through: meat, bones and organs. No wonder they’re a special, and expensive, breed. It just seems wrong that so many are bred purely for divination.
Social Sciences & Business
In 1944 the CIA wrote a manual on how dissidents can surreptitiously sabotage an organisation’s productivity and gradually undermine it. Now it has been declassified and released.
Language
So who was Gordon Bennett? The BBC looks at a few of the people behind famous phrases.
Writers, improve your text. Here are a number of filler words and phrases which are superfluous and serve only to bulk out your word count.
Polari is a British slang dating back to at least the 19th century. Used by a number of tightly knit cultures it is perhaps best known for its use by sex workers and the gay subculture. As you might guess the Bible in Polari is quite a hoot; here’s my blog post about it.
Art & Literature
Book blogger Karen Langley has rediscovered Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. Here’s her blog post about it.
History
Construction of London’s Crossrail has unearthed a vast amount of archaeology. Here are two very different reports on the same Clerkenwell site which includes a completely lost river and a curious pair of plague victims: the first report is from IanVisits and the second from the Guardian.
London
Apart from the above item on Crossrail archaeology there is only one snippet on London this month …
Canals are well known for carrying water not electricity, but IanVisits, again, brings the story of how the Regent’s Canal ended up safely carrying both.
Lifestyle
Life is stressful. Things are continually conspiring against us. We all know that if we get too stressed we get sick. So it’s useful to have a list of major life stressors, with their relative values, so you can work out your likelihood of a stress-related illness.
Unsurprisingly the second most highly-rated stress is divorce. Here are four behaviours which appear to be the most reliable predictors of divorce.
Finally in this section is our favourite zen master talking about immigration and tribalism. It’s a perspective worth reading.
Food & Drink

And finally, finally … Garlic. Whether you love it or hate it trying to supress the resulting odour is far from obvious.
Be good until next month!