Second Essay on Unusual Words--useful at that

Among the words that fascinate me in this essay are girouette, jentacular, gigmania, genethliacon, flavescent frustraneous, fremescence, dephlogisticate, glowpen, dompt, dactylion, conciliabule, causeuse, bromidrosis, and cataglottism. Those are, indeed, a mouthful, but even a big mouthful, if carefully chewed, can yield a rich-tasting meal.

Beginning with Some "G's"

Let's begin with a word derived from one I have already written on: gigmania. In this article I showed how the word gig meant a badge of middle-class respectability. Gigmania, therefore, is obsession with achieving this kind of respectability. It is a superior word to "keeping up with the Jones'," don't you think? While on "g's," let's look in on girouette and girouettism. The French word girouette, obscurely connected with "girer" and the Latin gyrare (to revolve), is, simply, a weather-cock. Here is a picture. But girouettism is, in its figurative sense, what politicians are most notable for doing--changing their opinions or principles. They are like the weather-vane. Thus, we might speak of someone as a girouette, or denounce the girouettism of one of the Presidential candidates. I wonder if some political candidate should run a series of ads debunking his opponent not in words but simply by showing a weather vane twisting in the wind. And, it would be great if such a commercial used the word girouette. We would all learn a word, even as we learned to laugh at the politician.

Let's conclude this little journey into the "g's" with a word on genethliacon (jen eth LIE a con). It is such an enjoyable word to pronounce; when you have it right, it simply drips from your tongue. The Greek standing behind it emphasizes a "birth" dimension (genesis), and indeed a genethliacon is a birthday ode. Puttenham first used the word in 1589. The Century gives us several other related words that call for mention, if not comment: genethliac, genethlialogy, and, rarer (you probably thought all of these were rare!), genethliatic. Genethlialogy is a synonymn for astrology or the "casting of nativities." Genethliac relates to one's birthday.

On To A Few "F's"

When we turn to flavescent, we have opened up the world of color. The Latin noun flavus means yellow; flavidus means yellowish or tawny. Thus, flavescent simply means "yellowish." Why can't we say "yellowish" if that is what we mean? Precisely because flavescent gives us another arrow, with different fletching, in the same quiver. Why have only one arrow if you can have two, one of which might have helical fletching, another with split feathers? So,if we play with flavus/flavidus for a moment, we have flavicomous, an adjective meaning "yellow-haired." Arthur Conan Doyle could write a short story about the "red-headed" league; why not write one about the flavicomous league?

But now that we have flavus/flavidus clearly in our mind, other terms open for us. For example, from 1871 we have this rather useless sentence, with lots of fruitful ideas. "Lichen-flora 31, Ach. flavido-cinerascent. Alectoria cana, Ach. pallido-canescent or pale flavido-rufescent." Well, in addition to flavus (yellowish), we now have three other words we have to make clear. Something rufescent is reddish or rufous. An object that is canescent is greyish or dull whilte, like the down or hairs on the leaves of plants. The Latin verb canescere means to "grow hoary." Finally, the word cinerascent is misspelled in the quotation; the better spelling for it today is cinerescent. Derived from the Latin cinerescere, "to turn to ashes," something cinerescent is "inclining to ash-color; grayish." So, we now have colors fading into each other, like the colors of the rainbow. We go from whitish to ashen to gray to tawny to yellow to reddish to red. But now we have an array of new words to use, to sharpen our minds and perhaps even our perception. When we have words for thoughts or feelings, we are then free not just to feel but also to express those thoughts and feelings.

All of these words, just because we wanted to follow flavescent down the rabbit hole. When we enter into the world of fremescence, we first must stop for a moment at fremitus, and realize the Latin behind it (fremere) means "to roar." A fremitus is thus either a dull roaring noise or, in pathology, a palpable vibration, e.g., of the walls of the chest. Something frement is "roaring"; fremescent means "growing noisy" and fremescence is the noun form of the word, meaning an uproar or incipient roaring. From Carlyle, in 1837: "Confused tremor and fremescence; waxing into thunderpeals, of Fury stirred on by Fear."

Finally, there is frustraneous, which means "in vain, useless, ineffectual, unprofitable." I like to think of it as a portmanteau word (which it really isn't...), consisting of "instantaneous frustration." Frustra in Latin means "in vain," and so the word comes directly to us from that language. One has, from 1653, "frustaneous (sic) and vain desires" or, from 1780, "It were frustraneous to insist upon a portrait of that here." Since I have Milton "on the brain" in many ways now, let's conclude with this quotation from his Eikonoklastes:

"Where the Kings judgement may dissent to the destruction, as it may happ'n, both of himself and the Kingdom, there advice, and no furder, is a most insufficient and frustraneous means to be provide by Law, in cases of so high concernment."

I see I have not gotten nearly as far as I proposed. Rather than my effort being frustraneous, however, I will press on in the next essay with the remainder of the words from above.

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