Words that Look Obvious...

One of the difficulties you face in learning words is coming upon words that you think you know, because of the roots of the words or its sound, but you really don't know. This essay is devoted to a few of them in the new Free Rice words. Let's begin with agromania. The word doesn't appear in the OED, the Unabridged or the Century, which leads me to believe it was invented in the 1980s or 1990s when psychology was looking for ways to increase its earnings. Psychology did so by inventing two kinds of terms or, better said, terms with two different kinds of ending: "mania" and "phobia." I have written several essays on the development of phobia-language here. Then psychology decided that everyone had some kind of diagnosable condition that fit into one of these new categories. It is like the mental equivalent of developers who plat new subdivisions. Within a few years a barren or cultivated field now teems with $400,000 homes. So it is with psychology--inventing terms and maladies (or, possibly, "discovering" them), fixing them in the DSM-IV, getting insurance companies to pay for diagnosis and treatment, and then going to conferences to tell each other about the "progress" of the field.

Well, this doesn't give us much help in defining agromania, so let's turn to it. Derived from the Latin word for "field" (ager/agri), agromania seems like it ought to mean something like a manic desire to cultivate fields. But the online dictionaries define is as a manic desire to be alone--in one's own fields, I suppose. But when does something cross the line from a normal desire to cultivate oneself privately to a "mania?" Only your shrink knows.

While looking in vain for agromania in the Century, my eye stumbled upon a few words that I would be remiss in not mentioning. Everyone knows that agronomy means "the art of cultivating ground" or "agriculture," but do you know what agriology is? It is "the comparative study of the customs of man in his uncivilized state." You can tell, even before looking at the OED, that this word must have been invented in the 1840s or 1850s, when anthropology was in its infancy. In fact, the first attestation of the word, as the OED tells us, was in 1878.... So, I was wrong. But I also discovered the word "agrippa." I knew, of course, the prominent Roman family so-named from antiquity, but I didn't know that an "agrippa" was a breech birth, named after Marcus Agrippa (63-12 BCE), who was born this way. We know that a ceasarean section is so-called because this was the way that Julius Caesar was said to be born.

Amphibole/Amphiboly

Amphiboly carries with it lots of potential for confusion. It is derived from a piscatorial metaphor--that of fishermen casting nets on both sides of the boat. Amphi means "on both sides" and bolus, derived from ballo, means "throwing." Thus, an amphiboly has historically been seen as an ambiguity, a linguistic "throwing of the fishing nets on both sides." Though the original word in English was amphibology, the meaning of casting things both ways can easily be seen in this 1588 quotation: "Amphiboly, when the sentence may bee turned both the wayes, so that a man shall be uncertayne what waye to take."

But the word in the Free Rice web site was amphibole. The OED informs us that it can either be an ancient casting net or an ambiguity. But then it lists a "newer" meaning of amphibole, from 1833, which describes the mineral hornblende. The French geologist Rene Just Hauy (1743-1822) called this material amphibole because of its "protean" variety in composition and appearance. "Protean," as you know, refers to the Greek mythological sea-god Proteus, who was able to change his shape in many unpredictable ways. It was an "ambiguous" rock. Free Rice wanted us to pick the "rock" definition rather than the "ambiguous" definition.

Other "A's"

When you see the word abranchiate, you naturally think "without branches," somewhat like a tree that has been denuded. But you would be wrong in so thinking. It is derived from two words: the Greek alpha privative and branchia, which means "gills." Thus, it is used to describe fish without gills. How about adularia? Behind the word you might tend to see something like adulation, which we all know--"exaggerated and hypocritical praise to which the bestower consciously stoops," even though in current American English we tend to use "adulation" similarly to "praise," without the servile connotation. But adularia is a type of mineral, like amphibole. It is a "variety of Orthoclase," a potassium-rich alkali feldspar. But the Century kindly informs us that Adula is a mountain group in the Grisons Alps, where these specimens were found. It "often exhibits a delicate opalescent play of colors, and is then called 'moonstone.'" So, there you have it...

Let's close this essay with reference to apostil. We go wrong if we think it has something to do either with apostle or epistle. We only know apostil if we know that it is derived from postil, a French word originating in the 14th century to denote a gloss (or commentary) on Biblical texts. The Latin, postilla, means a "note" or "commentary." Thus, when postil came into English as a noun in the 14th century, we have this from Wyclif in the prologue to Isaiah, "This seith a postille on Jeroms prolog on Ysaie." By the end of the next century a postil was a set of such comments or a commentary. It then became an expository discourse or homily on a Gospel or Epistle, read or intended to be read in a church service. From 1566: "A new Postil Conteinyng mostly Godly and learned sermons upon all the Sunday Gospelles." The verb, originating in the 15th century, is the activity of commenting upon or annotating.

We don't have far to go until we meet the word apostil, first coined in the 16th century, which also means "a marginal note, comment, or annotation." From 1860: "he sat at his table, scrawling his apostilles." Nuts, the Unabridged lists it either as apostil or apostille. Now it can't use it for a spelling bee. Just think--learning all this good stuff for nothing.

I don't think I am quite finished on this topic, so let's turn to the next essay for ten more "obvious" words.

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