Obvious Words in Free Rice's New Word List III

The words I would like to explore in this essay are: (1) frater; (2) schmelz(e); (3) aposteme; (4) fumet; (5) antimere; (6) oreide; and (7) smoothbore. Since I din't mention frater in an earlier essay, let's begin with it.

Frater

At first glance you might think that there is no word that could be easier in the Free Rice new words. After all, you don't have to have been brought up Catholic to know that it means "brother" or "friar." But that's not all it means. But frater can also be derived from the Old French fraitor, short for refreitor, and can't you see something about refreshment there? It is, in fact, the eating or refreshment room of a monastery; a refectory. The first time I encountered the word "refectory," as I recall, was as an 18 year-old freshman at Brown University in Providence, RI. We ate meals at the "Sharpe Refectory," which everyone called "The Ratty" at the time. That was before the gourmet food movement on college campuses. From 1483: "There cam two yong men of y same habite and forme whiche entrid in to ye refectory or fraitour." A fraterer is not a stuttering refectory; it is the monk in charge of the refectory.

Smoothbore

I, to my shame, know little enough about rifles and firearms. Thus, when I saw the word "smoothbore," I thought immediately of a rifle. When I learned that the correct definition was "unrifled," I was nonplussed. Then, I realized I didn't know what "rifle" really meant. So, I had to take this little journey. I was interested to see that the OED defined a "smoothbore" as "a cannon or gun of which the barrel is made with a smooth or unrifled bore." There is my answer, but what does "unrifled" mean? The OED outdoes itself by going through a number of languages, from the Flemish, to Danish, to Swedish, to find the origin for our English word "rifle." It suggests that the Danish verb rifle and the Swedish reffla, meaing "to groove, chamfer,etc.." stand behind our word "rifle." [A chamfer is a small groover, channel, gutter or furrow]. Now we can understand the meaning of the noun "rifle": one of a set of spiral grooves cut on the interior surface of a gun-barrel with the object of giving to the projectile a rotatory movement on its own axis." Something "unrifled," then, means something without spiral grooves on the barrel or, smoothbore.

Oreide

This word is easily confused with oread, a sort of Greek demi-god of the mountains. As Milton said:

"she...like a wood-nymph light,
Oread or Dryad, or of Delia's train,
Betook her to the groves," P.L. ix.387.

Behind oread stands oreias/oreiad, the mountain nymph, and oros, a mountain. But the OED tells us that oreide comes from the French word of the same spelling and means "any of various decorative golden-yellow alloys of copper with zinc and other constituents." Thus, the origin is from the French "or," or "gold." The Latin word for gold is aurum, and there are several English words dervied from auri/auro that are "gold-related." A few are: aurivorous (gold-eating; Horace Walpole called humanity "an aurivorous animal,") aurous, "of or containing gold," and aurulent, "gold-covered." There are, however, many confusing "ore"-type words. For example oremus, Latin for "let us pray," is a prayer in the old Latin liturgy of the RC Church. Oreille is taken from a special use of the French word oreiller, pillow, and is a representation of a pillow or cushion in heraldry. Finally, oreillet, taken from a French word "ear" (oreille) is a part of an ornamental headdress covering the ears. Oreide and oroide seem synonymous to me. An ora is an edge or border, in heraldry. And then, there is orology, and we are back to studying mountains again...

Fumet, Antimere

Alas, fumet is another word they can't use in a bee, because the Unabridged spells it both fumet and fumette. Yet, there is a second meaning of fumet (FYU met) which only has the one spelling, but its meaning will be avoided by bee officials because, in essence, they are prudish. The fumet that only can be spelled one way is derived from the Latin fumare, and is translated "dung." Thus, fumet is the excrement of a deer. From George Turberville's late 16th century work on "The noble art of hunting or venery," we have: "There is a difference betweene the fewmet of the morning and that of the evening." Glad he noticed, aren't you? Or, from 1774, "The stag's tail is called the single; his excrement the fumet." But once we turn to fumet/fumette (the word actually in Free Rice), we have the following: "game flavor" or "a concentrated fish stock used for flavoring." From 1753: "A roasted leveret very strong of the fumet." A leveret is a young hare, strictly one in its first year. As Jonathan Swift wrote:

"A haunch of ven'son made her sweat,
Unless it had the right fumette."

Let's hasten on to antimere. I don't know what I thought it was when I first saw it; perhaps something to do with antagonism. But, in fact, antimere means "opposite halves or divisions." The clearest use of the term I have seen is this: "The whole body (of a person) separates into two similar and symmetrical parts, the right and left halves...called counterparts, or antimera." While on antimere, let's move down one more word (though it isn't in the OED) to antimeria. A term from ancient rhetoric, it is defined as "a form of enallage in which one part of speech is substituted for another." Enallage is a rhetorical figure consisting of the substitution of one form, inflection (antiptosis) or part of speech (antimeria) for another. Many ancient rhetorical devices aren't easy to illustrate in English, since they sometimes were built on the specific case and tense structure of Greek and Latin. In any case, two examples from Shakespeare of antimeria are: "I'll unhair they head," or "The thunder would not peace at my bidding." More recent examples are: "I've been Republicaned all I care to be this election year." Or, "Strike up some music and have a good sing." In all cases, nouns are used for verbs or vice versa.

Schmelze and aposteme must await the next essay, along with a few other words...

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