Pure Fun--Form and Shape Words and Other Words

As we continue on our quest to define every term of importance in the English language I start with a question. What is the body of foot-soldiers called? Ok, infantry. How about soldiers on the back of horses? Yep, calvary. But, until recently I didn't know that those who are mounted on elephants are called the elephantry. I wonder what the reaction would be to your resume if you claimed to have been in the elephantry in WWII or Korea or Viet Nam? I suppose if you were aback camels in the Gulf Wars (cameltry?) that could have had some relationship to reality. Actually, I just discovered that the word camelry means "troops mounted on camels." From 1885, "The Camelry is a new force in the British Army. It is neither, properly speaking, cavalry nor infantry..A special flag had, therefore, been invented representing a black camel rampant upon a white ground." Ah, heraldry and vexillology, but not yet....

One more word about elephant. Everyone knows what one is, but I was confused for a minute with the words elephantine and chryselephantine--words from ancient art. These words have to do with ivory (the Greek word elephantos means "ivory") and the latter means an ivory with a gold covering. What is the relationship of ivory to elephants? I have no idea, and apparently neither do the dictionaries.

More "Shape" or "Form-type" Words

Readers of my recent essays on this page know that I have done a lot of work on "ine" or "form" words. A few more that call for mention are: globuliform, sacciform, vitriform and sagittiform. Then, we also have glochidiate, sagittate and canaliculate. Let's begin with the last three. A glochis in ancient Greek was the point of an arrow; glochidion is the diminutive of glochis. Therefore, something glochidiate is "barbed at the tip." The Latin word sagitta means "arrow" (anyone who knows some astrology knows that Sagittarius is the archer); thus something sagittate means "shaped like an arrow-head." You wonder if there really is a sharp difference between sagittate and glochidiate. Then, you have mucronate, which means "terminating in a point; having a mucro [i.e., sharp terminal point or pointed process]. I look forward to the beginning of plant and garden season in Oregon for it allows me an opportunity to visit nurseries without number to try my new words out on unsuspecting workers and owners. Something canaliculate is channeled, furrowed or grooved. From 1864: "The linear or elongated and sagittate anthers, and petals with long canaliculate claws.

Now, to the "form" words. Sagittiform is, obviously, something in the shape of an arrow. Vitriform means "in the form of glass" or "having the appearance of glass." I think hyaline means the same thing: "glassy; resembling glass; crystalline; transparent." I wish I had known hyaline as a youth. Then, when upset adults asked me whether what they were saying was clear (I had the habit of making adults mad), I could have said, "Hyaline." Something globuliform is s small spherical body. Sacciform (pronounced SAX i form) is to be distinguished from all the "saxi-" type words that have to do with rocks. For example, something saxicolous grows on rocks. Saxifical, a rare word, means "that turns into a stone" or "is made stony." Ancient Greek mythology knew the saxifical glance of the Gorgon Medusa. If Christ was crucified on the rocks, would he have been a saxifical offering? If you saxify something, you turn it into stone. I have thought for a few weeks of making a t-shirt that said something like, "Hey, Dick (i.e., Cheney), waterboard me..." Now I think I would go into business with a second shirt which would say, "Saxify me!" Because Simon & Garfunkel already were a rock and island, there would have been no need to saxify them.

But what does sacciform mean? It has to do with something shaped like a little sack or purse. One can have a sacciform appendage hanging from one's shirt..

Another Classical Word

I hadn't run across the word sotadic/Sotadic before today. And, there is a huge story behind it, so let's begin. The word is an adjective, derived from the Hellenistic Greek poet Sotades, and it refers to the purported coarseness and scurrility of his writings. I say "purported" because he lived in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (ca. 285-246 BCE) and his verse only survives in a few fragments. The story goes that he attacked the Pharoah violently in his obscene poems, fled from the him, was eventually captured by Ptolemy's admiral and then was shut up in a leaden chest and thrown into the sea. But why would the word sotadic or sotadean have survived when so little was actually known about him? Perhaps it is the raciness of the subject matter. Therefore if someone today writes sotadic verses, the verses are obscene and coarse. Another classical synonym is fescennine.

Richard Francis Burton (1821-90), the great 19th century English explorer, primarily in the Arabic and African worlds, coined the term "Sotadic zone" to characterize a part of the world he believed was dominated by homosexuallity and pederasty. This absolutely wild idea was first broached in an appendix to his 1885 translation of the Arabian Nights. Even more wild was the swath of land supposed to be in this Sotadic zone. Here is an article on the "zone." In short, this zone is almost absent from Europe but was supposed to encompass fairly large areas of Asia and all of North and South America. I wonder if that is what American athletes mean when they say they are "in the zone."

Conclusion

There is so much more fun to be had, but let's close this essay off with clepsydra and another word I discovered while spending time with clepsydra. I think I love that word because of its sound and interesting spelling. It is nothing other than a water clock, but the derivation is interesting. It comes from two Greek words, meaning "steal" and "water" (a kleptomaniac can't help stealing; I wonder why clepsydra is spelled with an initial "c" and not "k"...). The original clepsydra's were so named because its earliest form had small holes at the bottom, through which the water escaped or "stole away." I was intrigued also, by the first attested use of the word in English, by Sir Thomas Browne in 1646: "They measured the hours not only by...water in glasses called Clepsydra, but also by sand in glasses called Clepsammia." Clepsammia?? I won't go any further on that one, but I will note that two other words for sandy or sand-like are sabulous and arenaceous. An "arena" is something that has a "sandy" floor. "This part of the island seems to have gained from the sea by these sabulous accumulations."

Let's have one more essay of pure fun.

3259