Third Essay on the BBC Words

The words remaining to us are fug, erythrismal, estivate, maieutic, dyspathy, goving, hansardize, philodoxical, happify, natiform, tripudiate and pejorist. I also happened upon some other words while researching these which I am sure will take us to yet another essay.

10. Let's begin easily, with estivate. Derived from the Latin aestivare, meaning "to pass the summer," estivate means to pass the summer in a given place or manner. It also can mean the opposite of hibernate or, rather, it can point to some creatures which sleep or are dormant in the summer, like some mollusks (and people?). A typical usage would be: "When the summer heat was upon them, they estivated in the Berkshires, where the rich deciduous oaks and chestnuts took the edge off the Boston swelter."

Ah, just when I was ready to go onto fug, my eye ran across a few other "es"-words that deserve mention. Estinto is an Italian musical term, meaning "extinguished" or "noting the extreme of softness in piano-music." I think of it as a sound that gradually fades away--becomes "extinct," though I am not sure if that is how the word is used. But it ought to be used this way...

Then there is an estoc, a "variation of the longsword focused on fighting against mail or plate armor." Picture is here. The Century tells us that it was a sword used for thrusting, especially a second sword carried by knights in the middle ages. Back to the BBC list!

11. The two words fug and fuggy take us into the same world--that of close, stuffy atmospheres that have little or no ventilation. It first was used in 1888: "Seating himself in the most comfortable chair, as a consolation for the prevailing fug." While fug is the noun, fuggy is an adjective meaning "close, stuffy, smelly from want of ventilation." One also can have a fuggy person, who is addicted to living in such an atmosphere. "Daily he retreated to the fuggy comfort of his office--with dirty ashtrays, used plastic coffee cups, and papers strewn all over the floor and desk." Two other common English words with lots of derivatives at this part of the dictionary are fugue and fugacious. The latter is really the fruitful mother of children, as it has spawned many words suggestive of the idea of fleeing (the most familiar is fugitive). Actually, I have a new favorite word: fugly, which was invented only in 1970 and means a very ugly person, especially applied to a woman. It originated in a military context and is a portmanteau word, though I don't think I need to tell you which two words it combines. Its military origin is reflected in this 1993 quotation: "Seeing your fugly tonight, Bill?" But then, Cosmo wanted to right the record by having it apply to men, as is evident in this 2005 quotation: "33 1/3% of women have dated someone as 'ugly as sin' because he made them laugh. Here's to all the fuglies!" The gender wars just won't go away, will they?

12. If fugly is a word which women are gradually trying to take over and pin on men, then maieutic is a word of feminine meaning that has gradually dropped out of our language to be replaced by a more "masculine" term. The feminists ought to bring it back and, failing that, I will. Let me illustrate. The Greek word maieutikos means "obstetric" and the verb maieusthai is to "act as a midwife." Indeed the name and word Maia is the Greek word for "midwife." Thus, originally, a maieutic process or method is one that helps bring things to birth. The earliest use of it in English had to do with the nature of Socratic discourse; that is, the first way we tried to describe the "Socratic method" in English was through the word maieutic. From 1655: "Of Platonick Discourse there are two kinds, Hyphegetick and Exegetick [of which a sub-division is called] Majeutick." Hyphegetic was first applied to Plato's expository dialogues and meant "of a guiding or directing nature," while Exegetic means "explanatory." Though this 1655 distinction doesn't appear crystal clear to me, it does introduce "Majeuetick" or maieutic, "giving birth" or "explaining" something.

Thus, our first approach to Socrates' dialogues and method was shaped by the image of mid-wifery. Socrates played the "midwife" in the early dialogues such as the Lysis or the Meno, especially in the latter where he "brought to birth" in the slave boy his knowledge of mathematics. Some later maieutic dialogues are the Theatetus and Sophist. Learning is "giving birth" to ideas, and the teacher is a "midwife." What a great image that ought to be recaptured...

But then there are more "masculine" terms to describe the nature of Socrates' method in other dialouges. For example, from this 1759 quotation we have a contrast: "the Maieutic Dialogues..were supposed to resemble Giving the Rudiments of the Art; as the Peirastic were, to represent a Skirmish or Trial of Proficiency." The word peirastic is derived from the Greek word for "trying, tentative, especially with reference to dialectic." So, the Socratic method of interrogation to reach the "truth," speculative and inconclusive as it often was, could be called a peirastic or dialectic method. Then, there is another word to describe this more "masculine" approach: elenchus. Derived from the Greek word elegchos, meaning "cross-examination," Socratic elenchus is Socrates' method of eliciting truth by means of short question and answer.

When law school professors talk about pursuing the "Socratic method" in their classrooms, they refer to this second method, though in my experience Socrates was a bit more skillful at it than most professors. Yet, why should we just let these professors (of which I was one for four years) take over the term "Socratic method" and apply it exclusively to short question and answer or to vigorous elenchic/elenctic process? Had I really been a clever law student, when a professor told me that s/he was going to pursue the Socratic method in class, I should have said, "hm..maieutic or elenchic"? No professor, especially law professors, like to be exposed for what they don't know, but this would have been an entirely reasonable question.

But rather than using the metaphor of speculation (peirastic) or cross-examination (elenchic) to describe the essence of our educational system, why not recover maieutic and say quite boldly and unequivocally that we are interested in a maieutic task as educators? We can only aid in the birth. When we look at education in this way, we are much more conscious of the sacredness of learning and the way that all of us, teacher and student, are "awe-struck" at the "birthing process." Our task as teachers is primarily maieutic, and only secondarily elenchic. Why don't the women educators among us bring this out? I guess it falls to me to do so... Nobel Prize winning-nobelist Coetzee used the word in 1980: "I am like an incompetent schoolmaster, fishing about with my maieutic forceps."

Oops. Didn't make much "progress" this essay, if progress is measured by the number of words examined. But images and good things galore are here. Can you hear them?

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