Abactor, abducent and other "A's" in Moderate Frequency

The words I want to examine briefly in this essay are acoluthic, abactor, abducent and abience. I now know these words so well that I know I will never be fooled in a spelling bee on these words. I can thus wrap myself with them as in a blanket as I curl up each night, happy that there are at least a handful of words that I have mastered.

But when we begin with acoluthic, we immediately run into a problem (see below). The Unabridged defines it as "following immediately upon a primary activity..." The Greek verb akoloutheo, to follow, stands behind it. Those following Jesus, in the New Testament, were denominated his akolouthentes. But let's dig a bit. The definition really didn't help me out much. That is, I understand the words but I don't have a sense of what the word means. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate is, as in most instances, worthless here, so I had to dig deeper. My first stop is the OED (because the Century didn't have it). As I suspected, it is a 20th century term, invented by philosophers who were trying to describe something about human cognition. The problem arises because the OED lists the word under akoluthic rather than acoluthic. Why? Because the German scholar, Semon, who invented the term in 1908 used the Greek spelling, thus retaining the "k." We mostly "soften" the Greek "k" in English into a "c" (ecclesiastical is our word, but the word is from the Greek ekklesia).

But we still have to get to meaning, don't we? Well, philosopher/political activist Bertrand Russell was the first to bring the word to us, in 1921: "At the beginning of a stimulus we have a sensation; then a gradual transition; and at the end an image. Sensations while they are fading are called 'akoluthic' sensations." Semon's work was then translated two years later, and here is his use of the term: "To describe these after-effects which are immediately connected with synchronous ones I have chosen the term 'acoulthic.'" In the 'acoluthic' phase of excitement the intensity begins to diminish though we still have sensations of the event. We might call it in English an "aftereffect" or "aftertaste," but acoluthic it was.

But things didn't end here. As with most things in life, Russell ended up denying that there were "akoluthic sensations." I really don't know what he meant by this, and frankly I don't care. When he denied that there was a God, Christians got up in arms and attacked him. When he denied there were akoluthic sensations, a philosopher or two wrote an article about it (the hot reading for 1985, I am sure, was "On Russell's Rejection of Akoluthic Sensations.." in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research). I don't think the concept of an acoluthic sensation is any more complex than our common word "aftereffect," but because a prominent philosopher focused on the term, others decided also to write about it. I am sure it doesn't cause a ripple now in the placid sea of the history of philosophy, but now you know what the word really means and how it came into English. Its only purpose now, it seems, is to see if it can trip up a speller. With this essay I hope that that never happens.

Other Words

I see I am not making much progress at all. So, let's move much quicker. An abactor is one who "drives away or steals cattle in herds, or great numbers at once, in distinction from those that steal only a sheep or two." Even though this is a legal term, the first appearance of the word in English (1659) came in a commentary on Scripture. An expositor of Ps. 144 (the precise verse says: "May our barns be filled, with produce of every kind;./ may our sheep increase by thousands,/ by tens of thousands in our fields,/ and may our cattle be heavy with young.." vv. 13-14) had this to say: "The safety of their herds, not only from straying, but in time of warr, from invaders and abactors, whose breaking in...is attended with the cattels passing through or going out.." I am sure his congregation was raptly focused on his every word. It was not until 1691 that Blount, in his law dictionary, decided to bring the word into the common law. Those who only "steal a sheep or two" are called "fures" (thieves) while those who steal a herd are the abactores.

Speaking of taking things away, let's now turn to abducent. The word opens up an entire world that includes abduction of people as well as abductor muscles. The verb abduce means to "lead away." At first it meant to carry someone away through means of persuasion, but it became quickly associated with illegal carrying off of property. Something abducent "draws away" parts of the body from the axial line of the trunk or the limb. Thus, an abductor muscle draws away a part of the body from its original position. This can most easily be illustrated by looking at the four abductor muscles in the buttocks. Some men seem to be unusually interested in abductor muscles. They are the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus and tensor fascia lata. We see a diagram of them here. The abductor muscles are so known because they allow you to separate your legs from the midpoint of your body. There are also abductor muscles in the hands, and a bunch of abductor nerves.

Let's conclude this essay with a word on abience. It is contrasted to adience, and means the "tendency to withdraw from a stimulus." If philosophers in the 20th century invented acoluthic, it was psychologists of the 20th century who gave us abience and adience. I will conclude this essay by showing how those little words crept into our dictionary. In 1931, in his book on Animal Drive & Learning Process, E.B. Holt had this to say:

"Since there is no satisfactory adjective already in use to characterize these responses which give the organism more of the stimulus, I shall adopt the very apt term adient, which has kindly been suggested by Prof. H. C. Warren. The immediate effect of an adient response...is to give the organism more of the stimulus that elicits the response; and of its opposite, the avoidence or abient response, the immediate effect is to give the organism less of the exciting stimulus."

As with most words suggesting some abstraction, I think that there already were enough good words in our vocabulary to capture what the good professors wanted to communicate (avoidance, for one), but I think they secretly wanted to torment future generations of spellers.

So, there you have it. Maybe now I can just get back to making my word list.

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