More Rare Words--Fifth Essay

After leaving the mythological word of antaean in the last essay, I wanted to take a little bit of a dictionary tour with some words found "in the vicinity" of antaean and sisyphean, before continuing on my tour of rare words. First, I ran into the word sisyrinchium, a word I had seen when I was studying flowers last year. It is the genus name of about 70-150 species, in the Americas, of blue-eyed grasses. Here is the Wikipedia article. The family is the Iris family, Iridaceae. I am not so interested today in teaching you about the flower; I am more interested in the word. According to the OED, the word sisyrinchion was known to Theophrastus, the 3rd century BCE naturalist. The word is derived from two Greek words, syss, which means "pig" and rhychos, meaning "snout" or "nose." Apparently pigs were known for sticking their noses in these plants, to get nourishment, and thus the name--the "pig-snouted flower." Often flowers receive their names because of their shapes (angustifolia, etc.), but this one has to do with the creature that buried its nose into them. How much more fun can words be?!

A Few Rhetorical Terms

Then, when I did some rooting around near antaean, I found two ancient rhetorical terms, which I have spoken of in other places but need a "refresher" today: antanaclasis and antanagoge. The former means "bending back against" and has a meaning in both ancient rhetoric and grammar. The rhetorical meaning is of words that are identical in different parts of a sentence but carry far different meanings. The meanings "clash" or "bend back" against each other. The clearest examples are given here, and only one or two need to be repeated. Ben Franklin said, "Your argument is sound, nothing but sound." Or, as Vince Lombardi said, "If you aren't fired with enthusiam, you will be fired with enthusiasm." A very useful rhetorical device, with examples, to know. The ancient grammatical usage of antanaclasis is as a repetition, after a long parenthesis, of a word or words. Here is an example:

"Shall that heart (which has been thought to be the seat of emotion, and which is the center of the body's life,) shall that heart..."

I think, in fact, that once you learn the name of the device, you become more vigilant in trying to identify examples of it. You could become the master of antanaclasis in your neighborhood, for instance. I am sure that you will become the talk of the block party.

Antanagoge (an tan a GO jee) is a rhetorical figure in which a person replies to an adversary by recrimination. What that means is that when an allegation is made, rather than attempt to refute it, the accused party charges the accuser with the same or another crime. Ah, but here is where the fun begins. Though the definition I have just provided is consistent with Phillips' 1706 definition (which is reflected in the Century), an older definition by Puttenham in his 1589 work on English Poesie, reads differently. For Puttenham, antanagoge, which he calls the "Recompencer," seeks to "make amends" for something you have said in the first part of a thought or sentence. He gives the example:

"I must needs say my wife is a shrew,/ But such a housewife as I have known but a few."

It "recompenses" for the seemingly brutal or critical remark at the outset. Burton, in his online rhetoric, uses this Puttenham definition exclusively. He gives the example:

"Many are the paines and perils to be passed
But great is the gaine and glorie at the last."

So, antanagoge can either be a recrimination (counter accusation against someone) or a recompencer (to lessen the blow of the first statement).

Back To Rare Words

1.In the previous essay, I devoted a lot of time to derogatory words: lackwit, domnoddy, clodpoll, timber-head, hooplehead, blooter, etc. But I didn't mention gutterblood, a term originating with Sir Walter Scott (1818) and meaning "a base-born or low-bred person; one of the rabble." His quotation was: "The gutter-bloods! and deil a gentleman among them." Oh, by the way, "deil" is Scottish vernacular for "Devil."

2. The verb drumble is useful, even though I have never run into it. It means "to sound like a drum," or "to mumble." It could also mean "to be sluggish" or "to move sluggishly," as in this quotation from the Merry Wives of Windsor: "Take up these clothes here, quickly..Look how you drumble!" Or, Scott used the term in the 1820s: "Why, how she drumbles--I warrant she stops to take a sip on the road." Rather than a lecturer mumbling or droning on and on, why not say that he drumbled for hours? Perhaps if saliva or something else was dribbling from their mouth as they mumbled, this also would be drumbling.

3. The use of the word "out" as a first syllable intrigues me. The word audiacious goes back to the 16th century, and means "bold" or "daring." But then, perhaps because of the "O-like" pronunciation of the first syllable by many, the word outdacious appeared in the mid-18th century. This latter, regional, usage became adopted as "vernacular" speech in short stories; the Saturday Evening Post used the term in 1941: "Twenty dollars was outdacious high for three hours' work." The prefix "out" can mean a dizzying array of things, one of which is in "true compound verbs" to suggest something surpassing, exceeding or beating, as in "outdo, outlive, outbid, outnumber." The out in outdacious is not used in this way...

4. Let's conclude with a favorite new term I have learned: upbigged. Again, it is Scottish and it means "built up." So one could have the upbigging of the walls of Jerusalem. "Nehemiah, in returning to the community from exile, was instrumental in upbigging the walls of the holy city." There are so many interesting words beginning with "up," such as "upbear" (sustain aloft), "upbind" (bind up), "upblaze" (blaze up as a flame), "upblow" (inflate). But, unfortunately, the Century doesn't have my favorite: "upchuck" (vomit). Indeed, the OED, which has the term, says that it only originated in 1960; that is its first attestation. Yet, the 1960 attestation takes us back even futher: "Up-chuck, upchuck, v.i., v.t., to vomit. Since 1925...Considered a smart and sophisticated term c. 1935, esp. when applied to sickness that had been induced by over-drinking." So, do we see a headline, "Upchucking--since 1925.."? I don't think so. I do know, however, that my mother used the term all the time when I was a boy in CT (in the 1950s and early 1960s). She, then, was a part of the "pre-OED" oral tradition of upchucking. Maybe it was her attempt to vault to the high society of Darien, CT. If you can't do it with money, you might as well try to do it with vocabulary. Maybe that should be an autobiographical essay, "Upchucking and social mobility."

Well, this is enough on words for one day. See you again soon.

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