cantle and cantal and caseation and canting and caoutchouccan

We continue with the "ca's" today. I will first run through a lot of words about which I will say little and then focus on a few words that have interesting stories or meanings.

The List

Cantal cheese is cheese from the region around Auvergne, France. Caoutchouc, pronounced ka CHUK, is a milky resinous juice of a certain South American tree, used in making rubber. A capercaillie is a large European grouse, though the OED and Century also know it under capercailye and caperkaillie, but the Collegiate only gives it as capercaillie, and so I will learn it in that form. Capoeira, unique to the Collegiate, is a Brazilian dance, and cappuccino, well, I am from the Pacific Northwest and don't have to be told what this means. A capybara is a South and Central American rodent, while a carcanet is an ornamental necklace.

Cardamom is not what you should have sent to your mother on Mother's Day but is an aromatic fruit, and a caret, to be distinguished from carrot and carat, is an insertion mark in a text. Be sure you learn which letters to double in carillonneur, the person who plays the chimes. A carmagnole is both a street dance and a garment worn by Revolutionaries after the French Revolution of 1789. A caroche is a luxurious horse-drawn carriage, the predecessor of the SUV. Carrageen, also spelled carragheen by one of the dissident dictionaries, is an Irish moss. A carrefour (also carfour) is a market square or plaza. Thomas Hardy could say, "The farmers...preferred the open carrefour for their transaction." A cascabel is a kind of knob at the back of a muzzle-loading cannon. Finally, cassis, pronounced ka SES, is a syrupy liquor which flavors vermouth and other spirits. There is such a thing as vermouth cassis, a drink which I will, no doubt, never try.

Fun with Some Words

Now to some fun. Where to start? Well, let me list some of the words that caught my fancy in these pages. There is cancellous and canorous and canting and caseous/caseation. From the OED are two words only that I will mention: capriform, meaning goat-shaped, and carpology, the study of fruit. Let's look at the others.

Cancel and cancellous have an interesting history. The OLD tells us that the verb cancello originally meant "to arrange in a criss-cross pattern" or "to enclose in a lattice." A secondary meaning was "to cancel (a document, orig. by crossing)." That is, the primary sense in which we use the word cancel today, meaning to blot out or strike out something, is the secondary meaning of the original term. A cancellus in Latin was a latticed barrier or grating in the law courts or theaters. I suppose the "cancel" notation in music also is derived from the original meaning of cancel as "lattice:" the "cancel sign looks like a latticed note. So, the verb to cancellate came into English meaning to separate by cancelli or lattices. In the Roman Catholic Church the cancelli was the latticework partition between the choir and the body of the church. The chancel is a regular part of church architectural vocabulary today, in Protestant and Catholic Churches.

Now we are ready for cancellous, which means to have a porous bone structure. In anatomy, the light spongy or porous texture of bone resulting from numerous thin osseus laminae with intervening spaces large enough to be readily seen by the human eye (Century definition) is said to be cancellate or cancellous. As Gray's Anatomy has it: "On examining a section of any bone, it is seen to be composed of two kinds of tissue, of of which is dense and compact in texture, like ivory; the other consisting of slender fibres and lamellae, which join to form a reticular structure; this, from its resemblance to lattice-work, is called cancellous." There you have it. Isn't that cool?

Others More Quickly

One other term with a religious signification is canting. Of course I know how to spell it, and you should too, but it has such an interesting history that I couldn't pass it up. The verb "to cant" means to speak in the whining or singsong tone used by beggers or to use the special phraseology of jargon of a particular class. Canting can be the secret langauge or jargon used by thieves or "professional beggars" (as the OED calls them), but it also can refer to unreal or hypocritically pious talk. This is the definition picked up by the Collegiate. [You can begin to see how the study of dictionaries shows not simply the evolution of language but the comparative poverty of our contemporary use of English]. But the pious or religious meaning has a more specific use. The OED tells us that in the 17th century it was applied in ridicule to the preaching of Presbyterians and Puritans. Hence the canting coat was a reference to the Geneva gown, coming out of the Calvininst Reformation in that Swiss City, when worn by a Puritan clergyman. The connection between canting as affected and pious speech and canting as begging is captured in this 1659 quotation lambasting the Presbyterians: "[The Presbyterians]...make an insipid, tedious, and immethodical prayer, in phrases and a tone so affected and mysterious that they give it the name of canting: a term by which they do usually express the gibberish of beggars and vagabonds." Neat how that works, isnt' it?

Conclusion

Well, I am out of space/time for now. Maybe I will begin the next page with the remaining words, canorous and caseation/caseous. Enjoy all your words.

[Next]