inarcious and inaquation and inaquate and invination and impanation

On another occasion I wrote on the Latin root "asper," which means rough, harsh, coarse or unrefined. But we also have in English inasperate and exasperate, identical except for the prefix, and both meaning approximately the same thing. Both words emerged in the late 16th century, though I wonder if it was unclear at the beginning whether exasperate would win the usage contest and inasperate would fall by the way. The OED defines inasperate as "to provoke to cruelty or bitterness; to exasperate, embitter," while exasperate has the same range of meanings and more--"to embitter, intensify ill feeling, irritate or provoke to anger, aggravate, make harsh or rugged, or, in law, to make a law more severe." Thus, while there are only a few attestations of inasperate (1599--"Their doubt of farther inasperating the Turke in his Cruelty" and 1639--"To sweeten the humours of that Family, not a little inasperated by the Death of Alfonso"), there are many more of exasperate, though the basic meaning of making something harsh or rough, is preserved. An example of its special usage in law, from 1651, is: "So great hath been the bloody wickednesse of these times, that this Law hath been somewhat more exasperated."

Wandering over to Aspirate

But there is a curious connection between two near neighbors, asperate and aspirate, that should be mentioned. Though inasperate stresses more the bitterness of the person or reaction, asperate only means "to make rough or uneven in surface, rugged or harsh in sound," such as in the 1858 quotation: "No opposition [could] asperate his voice. The Latin phrase "spiritus asper" means "rough breathing" and is meant to describe a feature of classical Greek where an "h" sound is added to a word beginning with a vowel if there is a "rough breathing" sign over it. Yet, the word so designated begins with an aspirate. The OED defines aspirate as "a consonantal sound in which the action or the breath is prominently marked, on which is followed or blended with the sound of 'h'." As the OED says, this additional "h" is often "improperly inserted by the uneducated in England." George Eliot has a memorable description in which she says: "A Middlemarch mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates." The OED goes on to say that because of the seemingly close connection with the Latin spiritus asper, some have altered aspirate to asperate, though the OED calls this "an ingenious but unfounded conceit."

Well, let's take a minute more in trying to understand aspirate and its briefer cousin aspire. Derived from the Latin meaning to "breath to or into," aspire's first attestation in this meaning is only from 1532, where Thomas More says, "Though god..aspired them his grace therein" and 1533: "To spreade his beames upon us, and aspire his breath unto us." However, even earlier it was used to mean "to breath desire towards" or "Have a fixed longing or ambition for something at present above one." John Knox earned rather eternal obliquy in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women when he said: "Women ought to be repressed..if she aspire to any dominion." But the notion of breathing toward and "rough breathing" became the link between aspiration and asperation. They ought now, once and for all, to be separated.

Inaquate

While inasperate/aspirate threw us into the world of grammar, rough edges, and embitterment, inaquate takes us to theology. We can see the words "into water" behind this word, and the term in fact emerged in controversial literature of the 16th century in connection with the doctrine of the sacraments. In an earlier essay I introduced impanation and invination, the "becoming bread" and "becoming wine" of the body and blood of Christ. Inaquation is the "becoming water" of the Holy Spirit in baptism. The early Protestant theologian Thomas Cranmer could write: "Ther foloweth no Impanation thereof, no more than the holy ghost is Inaquate, that is to say, made water, being sacramentally joyned to the water in baptisme." Or, in language of today one might say: "Though the doctrine of impanation might be biblically derived from Jesus' words 'This is my body,' there is no corresponding place in Scripture where he says, 'This water is the Holy Spirit,' which would support the doctrine of inaquation."

I think that inaquation ought to be separated, however, from its connection with theology and take up the meaning of "melt," so that one could say, "The poor girl inaquated when the rock star looked her in the eye and said he loved her."

Concluding with Inarcious

We conclude with a word that opens up a whole array of terms (artificial, artifice, inartificial) which we will meet in the next essay. Suffice it to say here that inarcious means "not technically or professionally skilled." From the 16th century: "I advertise all inarcyous phisitions to beware." Or, if we wanted to use the term today, we might say, "His enthusiastic demeanor could not hide the fact that he was just an inarcious young person with little training and no desire to learn a trade."

Let this suffice for today.

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