Classical Roots II
Bill Long 4/4/07
On Relational Terms; Assorted Professions; Other Words
As I was studying the Kids' Bee words for 1996-1999, I noted that they used two terms of relationship: agnatic and enatic. The former means to be related on the father's side and the latter, as expected, on the mother's side, but the story is a bit more complex than this. The mighty OED doesn't even have the word enatic or any word that would suggest that the "enate" root relates to descent on the mother's side. Rather, it has enate meaning something that has grown out. Outgrowths from organs, usually the anterior face, are called enations. But the Unabridged seems to give equal time to women by using enatic in two ways: as an outgrowth from the surface of an organ and descent from the mother's side. The old term for descent from the mother is cognate, as is apparent from this 1868 Chambers Encyclopedia quotation: "Agnates, in the law both of England and Scotland, are persons related through the father, as cognates are persons related through the mother.." Then there are other words built off agnate, such as "agnatic, agnatical, agnatically." Make sure you don't confuse agnatic with agnathous. The latter is related to the Greek word for "jaw" (gnathos) and agnathous means "without a jaw." Gnathic is a good English word for spelling bees and, since it has a silent "g," it usually trips people up. There is even a word gnathonic, but it has nothing to do with jaws. Gnatho was a sycophantic comic character in Terence's (Roman dramatist) Eunuchus. Thus gnathonic means sycophantic or toadying.
Two other relational terms come to mind: novercal and morganatic. Morganatic usually appears in the phrase "morganatic marriage" or "morganatic gift." It is a term not found in English law, but it appears in continental law, and it refers to a marriage where the wife and children, born of this marriage, are entitled to no share of the husband's possessions beyond the "morning gift"--the property given by the husband to his wife on the morning after the marriage. I suppose it is something like this. The husband in such a marriage (he is of higher social class than she) says, "Gute Morgen meine Frau," and then dumps a gift on her. That's all she gest. It is her "morning" gift, though don't spell it "Morgenatic" or you will be packing for home early. The word isn't derived from the German, but from the Latin.
Novercal is the classical Latin term for stepmother. We have taken it into English as novercal, defining it as "relating to or characteristic of a stepmother." Often the term is used synonymously with cruel, malicious or hostile. I suppose that tales of wicked step-mothers might also be referred to as stories of novercal bitches. From 1868 we have: "Guido's old lady-mother Beatrice..Was recognized of true novercal type, Dragon and devil." I even tracked down a fear that people claim exists: novercaphobia. The OED also has novercant--having characteristics attributed to a stepmother. There is even a term for step-father, vitricus, but since it is in no English dictionary, I wonder if it ever really entered into our language...
Literary Terms
I wrote about Biblical acrostic Psalms a few days ago, and figured that I ought also to say a few things here about telestichs and chronograms. First, an acrostic is a short poem or other composition where the initial letters of the lines spell a word or, in Biblical poetry, march consecutively through the letters of the alphabet. Greek gives us the word akrostichis, where akro means "head" or "first" and stichos is a row, order or line of verse. By knowing how acrostic (the etymological spelling would be acrostich) is formed, we know immediately what telestich means: the final letters of successive lines of text form a word, or march through the letters of the alphabet. Then, there is the chronogram, which I didn't know of until yesterday. A chronogram is a "time-writing," in which certain letters of a phrase or sentence, distinguished usually by size, express by their numerical values a date or epoch. The classic example, given in the OED is:
"Thus, in 1666, when a day of national humiliation was appointed in the expectation of an engagement between the English and Dutch navies, a pamphlet issued in reference to the fast-day, instead of bearing the imprint of the year after the usual fashion, had this seasonable sentence at the bottom of the title page: 'LorD haVe MerCIe Vpon Vs.' The total sum of the figures represented by the numeral letters printed in caps is 1666."
Not too useful, but pretty clever, isn't it?
Finishing with Three Professions/Activities
Three words appearing in one of the Kids' Bees that refer to interesting human activities are cruciverbalist, aquarellist and fuguist. I wrote down the last one because it could really be a headache for spellers if you just listen to its pronunciation (FYU gist) and then spell it "fugist." But, in fact, one who composes or performs fugues is called a fuguist. I don't know if you lead with this line on your CV, however...
A cruciverbalist is one who solves or compiles crossword puzzles. The word only originated in 1975--just when the crossword puzzle craze hit America. I think the first crossword puzzle was published in the New York World in December 1913, and it has evolved considerably since that time. Crossword puzzles can be real knowledge-creators, but I think the form of it often forces you into knowledge that isn't particularly useful or helpful.
Let's conclude this essay with aquarellist. Today the term denotes a painter in watercolor, but I don't think the word originally had such a general usage. According to the OED, the word goes back to 1882, and it is defined as "an artist in aquarelle." That word was first used in 1869 to denote a kind of painting or illuminating with Chinese ink, and very thin, transparent water-colors. I think, however, that no one will quibble today if a water-colorist wants to call him/herself an aquarellist. But I sure tripped on the word the first time around...
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