A burst of Words

When I was a teacher at the college and graduate student levels, students often asked me around examination time, "Dr. Long, what do I need to know for the exam?" While I normally would give them a list of code sections, cases or important events to know about, I also would bristle at the question. Why? Because my approach to knowledge is that you never really know "what you need to know" to get through a situation. Mine is an idealistic position of course, because there is a good probability that I could get through life just fine without being fluent in Icelandic, for example. And, a case can be made that if you have a certain basic knowledge of a field you can make a good living in that field. But I still hold out for the proposition that asking the question, "What do I need to know to do X" tends to get you in the wrong frame of mind about life. You would be suprised how many relationships, how much additional knowledge, how much sheer enjoyment and insight into people and the world comes from certain morsels of apparently "worthless" or "unnecessary" knowlege.

Words are my way of prying open the world; of convincing me that the question "What do I need to know?" is basically the wrong question to ask about life and learning. In preparation for this essay I found myself amazed once again at discovering words that were new for me but were quite commonplace to people who are familiar with the world where it lives. For example, I didn't know that rouille was a "Mayonnaise flavored with pimento or the like," but here is a person who has tried to make rouille over and over, so obviously it has entranced her for quite some time. I am humbled, but not deterred. In fact, I am encouraged to keep at it. So, this essay introduces a bunch of new words, with long explanations of none...

Here We Go

Four words from the card game ombre which we should know (should we also know ombre?) are spadille (the ace of spades), basto (the ace of clubs), manille (the lowest card in trump suit) and codille (a term used when a player gets fewer tricks than his/her opponent and loses double). Poe used the term codille in the "Rape of the Lock."

Let's go random. I love the word degringolade, from the French word for "descend rapidy," which means "a change from bad to worse; a deterioration." George Bernard Shaw wrote: "Miss Lottie Collins..will soon find her popularity degringolading from the summit on which the Tarara craze exalted it." I think this term might be useful to describe someone's psychological downward spiral as well as a social decline, financial turmoil or any kind of "collapse."

Degu is a South American genus of porcupine-like rodents. The "big word" for porcupine is Hystrix. Something hystricomorphic is "porcupine-like" or "shaped." Here you can see a YouTube about a clever degu. I don't think you can learn too much about degus..

Then we can go from pastille to troche to fourche. How? Well, a pastille, derived from the Latin pastillus, a little loaf or roll or bread or a medicated lozenge, was a "small, flat and usually round sweet, often coated with sugar and sometimes medicated; a lozenge." Another word for such a lozenge is a troche. But one other definition of troche is a cluster of three or more tines at the summit of a deer's horn. It is to be distinguished from a fourche, which is a "fork" of two tines. Well, if we return to troche for second, we can pause on the word trochus, which is a "genus of gastropod molluscs, having a top-shaped or conical shell." Well, we do better if we see it. Here is a picture of these common shells. It looks like you could put it on as a hat, put your heels together three times and fly away. By the way, the word trochiform means "shaped in the form of a trochus." Duh, but nice to know anyway. So, we have learned hystricine and trochiform in this essay--really without trying to hard.

But we aren't done yet. We have the words jete and pointe from ballet. The former is a "splits jump," i.e., where the dancer leaps and stretches out to the splits. Here you see a dancer performing a few jetes at 18-21 seconds of the tape. A pointe is simply the action of rising to the tips of the toes.

A barrique is a Bordeaux barrel for wine which holds 59 gallons. Would last most people quite some time. You would never know it was an English word by looking at the OED. A few other French words now in English are boudin and andouille--words that mean about the same thing, a sausage recipe popular not just in France but also in Louisiana. There are lots of web sites on various popular sausage products, including andouille and, another new one for me, tasso. Tasso is 95% lean pork roast, sliced and then seasoned....

Conclusion

The French fun continues. A vigneron is a wine-grower, mignonette is a a "type of fine French bobbin lace made in narrow strips and having the consistency of tuille." However, mignon is an adjective meaning "delicate, prettily small." From 1942: "The chandeliers are neat..But their mignon, marblish glare!" Then, "frenchifying" it yet further: "This woman was always standing waiting for us on the quay, extremely, fantastically mignonne in tiny shorts." A montagnard was 220 years ago, a "member of the 'Mountain,' an extreme democratic party of the French Revolution." However, in more modern days, a montagnard is "a member of any of various hill-dwelling peoples of South-East Asia; esp. those inhabiting the highlands of Vietnam." Thus, a "mountain dweller." Bourguignonne is simply "Burgundy," or something made from that region. And I am ready to quit, with the sense that I am only scratching the surface of life, but with these words you can come into others' presence and they will take you deeper, while you coast along for the ride.

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