Excoriate et al.

On Monday night just past, when I was competing in the weekly Portland Spelling Bee, one of the spellers whispered to me, when the word "hypocorism" was given to a contestant, "Are hypocorism and excoriate from the same root?" I immediately told him no and that they were derived from different languages, but I realized I didn't immediately have in mind the Greek/Latin words from which each was derived. Since knowing the classical origins of so many of our words provides vivid word pictures for us, I had to pursue them. Here are the results.

1. Hypocorism. The speller, a very fine speller, misspelled our word by making the understandable error of adding an "h" after the "c." But if you knew that this word, which means "nickname" or "pet-name," is derived from the Greek upo, meaning "under" or "below" or "slightly below" and kore, meaning a "child, boy, girl," you see the word opening up to you. It is a term "slightly below" that of a child; by using it you "play the child." Thus, it is a term of endearment; a kind of diminuating of someone (I just made up "diminuating"). I have used this word in my writing--when describing the nick-name of my great-grandmother ("Gaga"). I wondered whether that hypocorism resulted from the guys' going "gaga" over her in the 1880s or from her great-grandchildren not knowing how to say "great-grandmother" in the 1950s. I first heard the term (as hypocoristic) from Prof. Ernest Frerichs, my Old Testament prof. at Brown University, in my OT survey course in 1971. He loved multi-syllabic words.

2. But excoriate, as I whispered to my spelling colleague, comes from another word and language--ex ("from") and corium ("skin" or "hide"). Thus, to excoriate, originally (17th century), meant to "pull off the skin or hide from a man or beast; to flay." More recently it has been used figuratively to mean "upbraid scathingly, decry, revile." From 1985: "He may lament, scold and excoriate, but he urges towards the peace of conservation." We have the word corium in English; it is defined as "in anat., the innermost layer of the skin; the cutis vera or true skin, as distinguished from the epidermis; the enderon, as distinguished from the ecderon." I like the words that immediately follow in the Century. As you may know, the Century provides hundreds of woodcuts--or "cuts" to help us "see" the words just defined. So, for corium it says, "see cut under skin." Of course, they are telling us to look for the picture of the corium in the entry under "skin," but I instinctively looked to see if I was bleeding.

3. Speaking of excoriate and its meaning to "pull off the skin," my eye went down the page to discover excorticate. The Latin word cortex means "bark" or "shell," and thus to excorticate means "to pull or strip off the bark" (from a tree) or "the shell" (from a nut, seed). Again, this word came into English in the 17th century, when modern English was "taking shape." From 1664: "Moss is to be rubb'd and scrap'd off with some fit instrument of Wood, which may not excorticate the Tree."

4. Well, let's return to excoriate and what things can be done to our skin for a moment. Actually, there are several words derived from Greek and Latin that make vivid a kind of pain that we may be suffering. For example, sarcasm, which we all use at times, derives ultimately from the Greek word sarx ("flesh") but, more immediately, from the Greek verb sarkazein ("to tear flesh"). Actually, when I consulted the "big" Liddell-Scott (the unabridged dictionary for ancient Greek), I learned that sarkazein also meant to "nibble at the grass" (horses), or "to bite the lips in rage." For my purposes, however, let's keep the definition as "tearing flesh." Thus, a sarcastic comment "tears flesh." Ouch. But then we have the word caustic, which is also derived from the Greek but from a different linguistic world than sarcasm. Something caustic burns. The Greek word underlying it is kaustos, which means "burnt" or "burnable." So, if we excoriate someone, we are pulling off their skin; if we are sarcastic towards them we tear their flesh (though don't pull it off); if we are caustic in our criticism, we burn people. All kinds of ways to experience pain, right?

Well, let's keep tearing, plucking and scratching for a moment more. The word vellicate derives ultimately from the Latin vellere, which means "to pull, pluck, twitch." Vellicare, the frequentative of vellere, means the same. When it came into English in the early 17th century [someone should write a book about the invention of modern English in the 17th century--as playrights, doctors, preachers and others simply transferred the Latin language to English, in many ways, and "tried it out" to see if it would "work" in English] it meant "to act upon or affect so as to irritate, esp. to pluck, nip, pinch, tear (a part of the body) by means of small or sharp points." It was chiefly used at that time for the "action of medicaments," such as sharp or acrid substances, especially used on the tissues of the body. From 1669: "Those corrosive fretting, pontick, and acid juyces, which vellicate and prick the nerves." Or, from 1685: "The Fibres..of the Stomach, Bowels, and other Parts, being..Vellicated by the Plenty or Acrimony of the Peccant Matter."

Let's continue this discussion in the next essay.

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