More Rare Words--Focusing on Singerie..

Let's begin with a few rare words ending in "iency" (we have already studied fritiniency--'twittering'--here): esuriency, tacturiency, visuriency. They all have to do with desiring something. Esuriency is a desire or fondness for eating; tacturiency is a desire for touching; visuriency is a desire for seeing. "The endless esuriency of the American tourist meant that eveyone on the trip gained at least five pounds before going home." A sentence from 1652, which you have to go word by word in order to understand, puts the other two side by side. "The visuriency of either, by ushering the tacturiency of both, made the attrectation of both consequent to the inspection of either." I think that just means that they touched each other after feasting their eyes on each other.. But we could go back to the Garden of Eden and look at Eve's desire to touch the forbidden fruit as her tacturiency for fruit. "Visuriency characterizes this generation; they have grown up with multiple images of everything all around them..."

Before leaving this trio, we should pause for a moment on attrectation, the final word italicized above. It means "a touching" or "a handling." I like the quotation from 1663, appearing in the OED: "Which like..the apples of Sodom, vanished and perished in the Attrectation." One might also say that papers hundreds of years old disintegrate in the attrectation.

A Few French Words

Our language is shaped so fully by French that it almost is unnecessary to list a few other special French words, but noceur and singerie call for mention. A noceur is "a reveller; a rake, a libertine; a person who stays up late at night." One might have thought that noceur and nocent (something harmful) were derived from the same word, but the latter comes from the Latin nocens/tis, which means injurious or guilty, while the former is from the verb nocer, which means to celebrate or carouse. Noceur didn't enter English until 1908: "The French noceur is only too pleased to show himself in the company of some well-known 'horizontale.'" Oh, if you didn't know, a grand horizontale in French is a "great horizontal" or, in a word, a "prostitute." I suppose the name is derived from the position assumed when performing work. You see, on the way to learning noceur, we also run across horizontale. Maybe not literally, we hope.

I wanted to pause on singerie because of the rich way in which a word meaning "apish behavior or trick" or "a collection of monkeys" came into the language to designate a piece of porcelain or a painting in which monkeys are represented in anthropomorphic (and often quasi-Chinese) attitude. Here is a picture of such a monkey sewn into the fabric on the back of a chair. The style is similar to but not identical to chinoserie which, since the 17th century, tried to imitate Chinese artistic syles through use of fanciful imagery of an imaginary China. You wonder if even visitors to Beijing in the Olympic Games of 2008, going on now, see a 'fanciful' or a 'real' China... Nevertheless, singerie (sangh REE) was the word used to capture the "monkey" style beginning in the 18th century in France. In 2003 the NY Times ran a piece (August 8) in the Magazine about the renewal or rediscovery of singerie thorugh the work of Rui Paes in the historic house Munkebakken outside of Oslo, Norway.

But before getting to the current revival in singerie, it might be useful to make a historical comment. As the Times article says, if you saw a monkey in a western representation during the Middle Ages, that animal would have symbolized sin or the fallenness of humans. We were, in our fallen condition, like the "dumb beasts." However, in the late 17th century the French artist Jean Berain promoted the lowly monkey to a higher status. Instead of being symbolic of human lack, he only represented himself and was portrayed as a playful creature bedecked in elegant clothes with a talent for music, juggling and dancing. Perhaps as a harbinger of the Enlightenment, the late 17th century use of images of monkeys to "enliven" a bourdoir or the panels in a drawing room indicated the beginnings of a basic reassessment of the inherited categories of good and evil. Thus, rather than simply looking at the Enlightenment as an "intellectual movement" beginning when Diderot published the first volume of the Encyclopedie in the mid-18th century, we should possibly see it also as an artistic movement commencing 3/4 century earlier. In this interpretation, then, concepts captured in the Encyclopedie were adumbrated in the work of the practical, visual arts.

In any case, Paes' commission was to construct an entire singerie room for Munkebakken. Sixteen panels were commissioned, resulting in monkeys walking tightropes, clad in ruffs and frills; monkeys playing musical instruments; monkeys balancing parasols and doing handstands. The singerie craze hasn't yet made it to America; maybe it never will but I won't be disappointed if it does...

Conclusion

Let's close with two religious or legal terms: Judas hole and abannition. The former is nothing more than a 'peephole.' You see them all the time into (and out of) hotel rooms and other places. I suppose it is so called because of the disciple Judas, who practiced deception after having "spied out" the lay of the land with Jesus and the other disciples. Finally, abannition is, in "old law" (as the Century has it. But how old? And, whose law? And, what evidence for it?), a banishment for a year, as a penalty for manslaughter. In addition to the questions already raised, one should ask whether it was a punishment dished out by the crown or the Church, and what the precise procedure was leading to an abannition. All of these are just historical ruminations or questions, but you see how a new word opens these questions, and new worlds result from these questions.

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