Hy "fives"..or Five Words Beginning with "Hy"

A few days ago I was up in Portland with an hour to spare, and I found a library with the OED. I began, as usual, to lose myself in it. I took two volumes of the huge work to my table but I barely needed to comb through five pages of one of the works to take up all my time in fascinating study. I decided to focus on the "hy" letters at the beginning of a word because of the rich number of words formed off various prefixes (hydor, hyetos, hygi, hygro, hylak, to mention a few). This essay will introduce some of the words I came across. Let's begin with two very "visual" words: hydrophobia and hyoid.

Hydrophobia and Hyoid

I have already written a lot about hydrophobia. It is the earliest-appearing "phobia" word in English. We now have hundreds of phobias, probably just as many as insurance companies (who reimburse people for psychological/medical conditions) can bear. The word goes back to 1547 and is defined as a symptom of rabies. People who have been bitten by rabid dogs have both an aversion to and difficulty in swallowing water or other liquids. They are hydrophobic.

I have run into the word hyoid many times since I began studying vertebrate anatomy. The hyoid bone is the "tongue-bone," which is situated between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. In humans it is a horsehoe-shaped bone embedded horizontally in the root of the tongue. So, I learned it as "hyoid" without reflecting on its Greek origins. Then, as I pored over the dictionary, it became clear. Hyoid is nothing other than the transliteration of hyoides, "in the form of an upsilon." Since the upsilon is "u-shaped," something hyoid is "u-shaped." How easy, and now, how unforgettable.

Other "Hy's"

We have a rather amusing word, lying almost invisible in the thicket of words beginning with "hymn." We all know hymn and hymnologist and hymnology and hymnic, but I am referring to hymnicide. It is defined as "the 'murdering' of a hymn, i.e., by alterations.'" There is only one (1862) attestation, so it probably didn't become a favorite of anyone, yet it has possibilities. Churches change words to familiar tunes quite shamelessly in order to bring the sentiments "up to date." Often the poetry that results is inferior, like the poetry of Jane Parker Huber in the Presbyterian Hymnal. Someone may grimthorpe a building by making inferior architectural changes. I hope they aren't in the same community with people who commit hymnicide.

The word hymettian is rarely seen in English, yet it ought to have more play. Derived from Mount Hymettus in Attica, famous in antiquity for its honey and marble, something hymettian is therefore honeyed and sweet. A synonym is hyblaean, pertaining to the town of Hybla (Sicily), where honey was produced in the hills. One could speak of hymettian oratory or hyblaean eloquence. A 1658 quotation brings us deeper into the world of Greek/Roman names for things: "He that will make a good mixture of wine and honey, must mingle with new Hymettian Honey, old Falernian Wine." Falernian wine is a renowned wine that comes from the ager Falernus in Campania. I wonder what would happen if you supped at one of those upscale establishments in any metropolitan area, whose haughty waiters seem to know everything about food and wine that there is to know, and you said gently to the waiter, "A glass of the old Falernian, please." Well, there are countless classical proper names that have bequeathed definitions to us today though, because we are classically illiterate, most of them have disappeared. Our society knows "platonic"; beyond that most of us don't go.

On Hymeneal and Hymenopteral Reality

A hymen is a membrane, pure and simple. The Collegiate further defines it as "a fold of mucous membrane partly closing the orifice of the vagina." The hymen breaks in first sexual intercourse or in some other vigorous activities. Macho guys who have sex with virginal women call themselves "Buster Hymens." You didn't know that? Well, since the hymen was supposed to be broken only in marriage, the goddess Hymen is the goddess of marriage. Something hymeneal pertains to marriage or, more specifically, is a marriage hymn. It, like hymattian, is mostly a poetic word: "Now doth a virgin approach, now soundeth a glad hymeneal." Or, from Paradise Lost: "Here..Eve deckt first her Nuptial Bed,/ And heav'nly Quires the Hymenaean sung." I don't see, however, why Simon and Garfunkel's "Wedding Song," one of the most popular tunes of the 1970s, can't be called a hymeneal in popular conversation...

The Hymenoptera are a large order of insects including the ants, wasps and bees. As the Smithsonian website says, Hymenoptera species number about 115,000. Of the 6,000-7,000 new species of insects described annually, a large number are Hymenoptera. If we take apart the word, we see "membrane" and "wing" in it. Hence the Hymenoptera are those insects with membranous wings. They are considered to be the most beneficial of all insects to humans, primarily because they pollinate plants and they eat other parasites that might cause damages to crops or plants. Growing up in New England, however, with all kinds of ants and wasps swarming around, I didn't at first see them as a natural ally in my struggle for existence.

Stopping on Hyle

The Greek word hyle (two syllables) may be translated as "matter" or "wood" or even "forest. Thus, we have the hyla, which is a tree-frog of the United States (Hyla pickeringi). Yet hyle in English is matter or, more precisely, the first matter of the universe. From the 18th century: "Jove produced the two first numbers, the mundane soul and hyle: he made hyle inert and stupid, but to the mundane soul he gave activity and understanding." I discovered that Hyle is the name of the International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry. You may wonderwhat such a journal could include, and so I clicked on the table of contents for Vol. 12 (2006). It was a "special issue" (aren't they all special?), and dealt with the "public image of chemistry." I didn't know that chemistry had much of a public image at all, but I guess it does. Some of the articles included therein are "Chemists and their Craft in Fiction Film" and "Chemistry and Power in Recent American Fiction." I am glad that someone wrote on "Bringing Chemistry to the Public," since I don't believe it has yet gotten to me. I yearn for that day..

We could spend a lot of time on hyle, as it related to ancient philosophical systems (in Aristotle; in Gnosticism), but I will conclude with a word on hylozoism. I first ran into this word when I read Gordon Clark's History of Philosophy while in seminary (or was it in Coppleston's huge work of the same title?). It was the theory, originating in Thales of Miletus (the earliest Greek Presocratic philosopher) that matter was endowed with life. I think one of the reasons I decided not to devote my life to Greek philosophy was that statements like the one I just made didn't make much sense to me. What, in fact, does it mean that matter is endowed with life? Since we only have a few fragments from Thales, scholars are forced to the situation of trying to extrapolate from those fragments, and from the work of subsequent philosophers, a "complete" system of hylozoism. Precision, however, is what is wanting...

Conclusion

Time fails me to take you into other words. I would especially have liked to introduce the hyeto words--relating to rain. But I close with a word known by no one--hylactic. It has nothing to do with matter or forests or rain or anything else you might imagine. It is derived from the Greek word hylaktikos, which means "given to barking." Thus the word can be used to describe lawyers: "Lawyers barking at each other in that peculiar style of hylactic delivery which is called forensic eloquence." Perhaps that is a good word to use when coming upon people who just are screaming at each other. "Cease this hylactic cacophony!" Maybe then they will both (or all) turn on you! Then, we have hylactism, which means barking. Another "ism" for our collection.

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