Lessons from Life--A Few Words

Words I want to investigate in this and the next essay include: superfix, kabaragoya, prisage, butlerage, and argus, among the "non-Russian words," and then prisiadka, kazachoc, tarantass and kibitka among Russian-derived words. What I really want to illustrate in this first essay, however, is how words teach you lessons about learning.

1. Let me illustrate that last statement through the word superfix. You might think by just looking at the word that it means something like a "really bad situation," like "After I was dumped by my girlfriend, I was in a superfix." But that would be wrong. I will get to the definition in a second, but the real reason I bring superfix to your attention is that the definition will make no sense to you (in all likelihood), but if I massage it for just a minute, it becomes crystal clear. Let's try it. The OED has: "A sequence of stress or other suprasegmental phonemes which is treated as part of the grammatical structure of words and phrases." Clear as mud? The word was first used in 1951 in a sentence that is considerably more complex than the definition I just provided.

But we need to learn what this means. Here is a website that tells us very precisely and clearly what a superfix is. I will illustrate it through two American words, and it will be superclear. The word "record" may be pronounced REK erd (n) or ree CORD (v). The word "contest" may be pronounced KON test (n) or kon TEST (v). The superfix is the written or unwritten stress, above the letter, that tips you off whether it is the noun or verb. Many languages have actual accents written above the letter (the "suprasegmental" stress) to make this clear. Often you have four kinds of stress: a rising, falling, rising/falling, or level. The superfix, then, is the kind of stress or accent that tells you how to pronounce the word. It is take from the Latin supra (above) and fix, imitating suffix, prefix, etc. My point, then, is that even knowing the definition of words doesn't solve your problems. You often have to go deeper to discover what really is meant. But you ought to be emboldened to go deeper when you are confused, since in almost all cases what you find at the end of the investigation is a concept of blinding clarity--even if the word might not be the most useful one you ever ran across. And this blinding clarity is often achieved with just a little more effort. Clarity and confusion, I have discovered, are very near neighbors in life. Keep at words, and the world will open to you like a spring flower.

2. The word kabaragoya illustrates another lesson about life that words teach us. First, I suppose, we should know what one is. A kabaragoya is "the watermonitor, Varanus salvator, a large lizard found in south-eastern Asia." No one, or at least the OED, knows the etymology. From Cumming's 1892 Two Happy Years in Ceylon (probably not a best seller then or now), we have: "A gigantic lizard, or rather iguana, of a greenish-grey colour, with yellow stripes and spots, called by the natives kabragoya, awoke from its midday sleep.... The kabragoya is amphibious." Well, this page describes the Varanidae family of lizards native to Sri Lanka (the modern Ceylon). I didn't know that Varanids, of which the Varanus salvator is one, are the "largest lizards/saurians found in the country and in the world." The water monitor is one of the most widespread lizards in Sri Lanka and is the second lizard in size, to the Komodo dragon, in the world. An utterly fascinating series of pictures is on this web site. If you just want one picture of these huge creatures (can weigh up to 150 pounds!!), here you have it. After looking at the kabaragoya for a while, you wonder if all the dinosaurs really are extinct. I hope I don't have any bad dreams tonight..

The point I want to make with kabaragoya, however, is that words that are uncommon to us, because of the rather narrow scope of our interests or geographical limitations, are completely familiar to children, as well as adults, in other parts of the world. Such a realization should lead to two attitudes--(1) a great humility as we face the world; and (2) the realization that every concept in the world is simple and accessible to someone. My approach to learning is that if it is simple to someone, it can be easy for me. Thus, the only thing holding me back from knowing about the idea is myself. With this in mind, we go out with eagerness and boldness to explore the world. But we also do so with humility, for often when you seriously focus on learning you realize that others have been working on issues/ideas all their lives that you only are learning about today. Learn how to ask questions of people that know things, questions that both encourage them to teach you but also show your indebtedness to them. You can't have too many "knowledge friends" in the world.

Conclusion--One Other Lesson of Life Through Words

The other lesson of life I want to stress here that words teach us is that they lead us to their neighbors in the dictionary, and those neighbors can take us down hitherto unexplored but engaging paths. For example, when checking out the kabaragoya, I decided to learn a little more about its Linnaean name--Varanus salvator. Only varanus interested me today. So, I discovered in the Century that varanus is derived from a new Latin word for lizard (makes sense..), but then my eye fell on three words that resided nearby. Like neighbors that have a Cape Cod house in a "ranch-style" neighborhood, these words made me stop and want to look at them, too. Three that grabbed my attention were vapulation, vareuse and vargueno.

A vargueno (tilde over the 'n') is a "a kind of cabinet made in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, with numerous small compartments and drawers behind a fall front which opens out to form a writing surface." The word is taken from the word Bargas, a village near Toledo, Spain, which was an early place of manufacture. The word only came into English for the first time in 1911: "Prominent amid the Hispano-Moresque decorative woodwork probably made by these Moorish craftsmen is the vargueno: a box with a door in front, evolved from the chest or hucha, and mounted on a stand." Images abound online. Here is one, with a "lyre-legged table."

I will mention the other two "v's" in the next essay, as I try to get to the words listed above. Hope you internalize the "learning lessons" of words...

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