What's in a "Sill"?

One of the more humbling experiences for me in life is, after studying words for many years, to realize that I can take one prefix or syllable, look at a list of consecutive words beginning with this syllable in the OED, and discover that there are five or six consecutive words, each of which has a good and specific meaning, of which I know nothing. Well, in this case, I admit I knew a little about a few of the words, but see what you would do with the following list: sillibub (syllabub), silladar, sillapak, sillar, Sillery, sillikin, sillimanite, sillock, sillograph, sillometer, Sillonist. Not all the words deserve lots of attention, but the fact that they are derived from at least six different languages encourages us to take a closer look at some.

1. I would almost characterize Sillonist now as a "nonce word," i.e., a word only meaningful for a narrow slice of time (i.e., pre-WWI France). A Sillonist, the word is taken from the review Le Sillon, was a member of a French Catholic movement for social reform in the early 20th century led by Marc Sangnier. According to this web page, Sillonism is a movement that has had a revival today and is, in fact, the true religious and democratic movement for the future. It was a "liberal" or "Gallican" expression of Catholic faith, and it was condemned in August 1910 by Pope Pius X in the letter to the French bishops, Notre Charge Apostolique. I look forward to something being written on the movement in English, possibly to make the word Sillonist not simply a word from 100 years ago...

2. Sillimanite is a silicate of alumina, "occurring in slender rhombic prisms or in fibrous masses." I am not so interested in the material as the man after whom it was named. Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), a Yale chemist, was the one after whom it was named early in the 19th century. I first ran into him when I studied the history of Yale, and I recall his role, with President Timothy Dwight, in nurturing the 2nd Great Awakening at that New England college. Silliman, also, was perhaps the most significant person in Yale's history to expand the experimental and applied sciences. Perhaps some day in the future religion and scientific exploration will embrace each other with eagerness. Probably not.

3. If Sillonist is a French word, sillimanite an English-American term, sillograph is derived from the Greek. It is, in a word, a writer of satires or lampoons. I think it ought also to be the writing itself, even though the dictionary doesn't seem to support it. If you don't let me use sillograph inthat way, let's call it a sillos (not attested in any English dictionary). A sillos, in Greek, was a satirical poem. It was specially applied to Timon of Phlius in the mid-3rd cent. BCE. Yet, it reaches broader than Timon. From 1845: "Menippus indeed, in common with the Sillographers, seems to have introduced much more parody than even the earliest Roman Satirists." So, a sillograph, in my second definition, is a pasquinade, I suppose. I love the way that words originating in far different circumstances (pasquinade, for example, is derived from an Italian statue) are very similar. Here is the explanation of pasquinade:

"Pasquinade refers to an anonymous lampoon, whether in verse or in prose. Pasquin (Italian Pasquino) was the name ordinary Romans gave to a battered ancient statue dug up in the course of paving the Parione district and erected at the corner of Piazza di Pasquino and Palazzo Braschi, on the west side of Piazza Navona in 1501, by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who inadvertently gave the statue its first voice, by originating an annual ceremony, the first in 1501, for Saint Mark's Day, April 25. The marble torso was draped in a toga and epigrams in Latin were attached to it."

Ta-da. Massage history very deeply, and the world, and its words open up to you.

4. Syllabub, at first, is very confusing. You think it has something to do with syllabus, an epitome or summary. But in fact, the original spelling of the word is sillabub, and the word was derived from the French town Sillery, because the sillabub/syllabub is a drink/dish where Sillery wine is used as a base, along with milk, wine, cider and other ingredients.

5. A sillikin is a "simpleton," pure and simple. "Poor sillikin! he knows nothing of the secret clause in the treaty." We are all fools and sillikins in some instances; we just can't help ourselves.

6. A silladar, derived from the Urdu word silahdar (armor-bearer or squire), is "an irregular cavalryman who provides his own horse and arms." The term was first used in English in 1802: "The horse are 2000 good,..and 1500 [of these are] silladar." The word is still used in our day. From 1960: "The 21st Cavalry, like nearly all other Indian Cavalry regiments, was organized on what was known as the silladar system." The sillidar belonged to a kind of joint-stock company in which the trooper paid for his horse and equipment when he joined and sold them back when he left.

7. When we get to sillapak, however, we are really in the other side of the world. It is a white outer garment worn as camouflage by Eskimo hunters of Labrador. The word is Eskimo (silapak). I found this mission report from German Christians in Labrador in 1876: "The clothing, too has become more European. Only at the celebration of the Holy Communion the men all wear the white attichet (or smock), and the women the white sillapak (a garment like the smock, only with a tail-like appendage at the back).." What always interests me when a rare word like this is used is whether the other rare word (attichet) appears in any dictionary. Nope, it doesn't. Who knows why.

8. Let's conclude with sillar. It, like silliminite, is a mineral. More specifically, it is "an ignimbrite or volcanic tuff that has not become indurated by welding." Here is a sillar of Roman era stones. Note that the description of the picture said that it was made the base of a giralda. It is a weathercock or weather vane, though the word doesn't appear in the English dictionary... Well, back to sillar. From the original appearance in 1948:

"There has been a tendency to call such deposits 'welded tuffs'..For those in which induration is primarily the result of recrystallization, and for those in which the fragments have little cohesion, another term is desirable. The local term 'sillar'..., commonly used in the Arequipa region (in Peru), has been applied in the present paper."

Conclusion

Thus, even before we got to the end of the word list above, we have had Greek, Urdu, French, Italian, Spanish, and other terms that enrich not simply our language but also our lives. May this continue to inform, and even inspire us, as we greet the world each day.

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