baldachin and ciborium and chrisom child and chrisom and churrigueresque

Well, I have finally made my decision. I will go here at the pace that "fits" me, with ample articles on specific words. I won't be "ready" for the Bee, if that means I will not have surveyed the entire Collegiate. I am reviewing and making lists of words at a pace, however, that should get me nearly through the dictionary by June 18. So, let's get right to some words.

Chrisom Child

All the Collegiate has for this is a child who dies in its first month of birth. This may or may not be so, according to the OED. Here is the story. A chrisom is a white robe, put on a child at baptism. It is a token of innocence. In case the child died within a month from baptism, the cloth also became a shroud. But its original signification just seems to be a child in such a garment or a child before it reached the end of its first month. The 17th century theologican Jeremy Taylor can say, "Undiscerned, as are the Phantasms that make a Chrisome-child to smile." As medical practice improved and fewer and fewer children died within a month of baptism, the chrisom cloth could become a very expensive garment in which the chrisom child was baptized. So, an 1852 quotation has it, "The babe in a chrysom robe costing 554 Pounds was baptized by Bishop Waynflete."

So, the chrisom child is the child who wears the garment during the first month of its life. A chrisom child is an innocent, and John Bunyan, in his story the Life of Mr. Badman could write that "Mr. Badman died like a lamb; or as they call it, like a chrisom-child, quietly and without fear." A dictionary from 1854 tells us that "by an abuse of words [which we now know is a catechresis, right?] the term is now used..to denote children who die before they are baptized." Thus, the term is broader than the Collegiate suggests, though a child dying within a month of birth/baptism is surely within the field of meaning of the term.

Chronotherapy

Whereas the term chrisom child has fallen into desuetude, chronotherapy is just heating up. Its first attestation is from 1973, does not appear in the OED, but is defined as "treatment of a sleep disorder (as insomnia) by changing sleeping and waking times in an attempt to reset the patient's biological clock." Sounds like the basic definition of living in a college dorm. But in recent years a lot of research has been done on how the rhythm of our bodies (ultradian, circadian, infradian and seasonal) not only affects our health but ought to be taken into consideration in medical treatments.*

[*Ultradian is defined as something that recurs within 24 hours, while something infradian happens less than once every day. Doesn't it seem that these terms are reversed? I would have thought that something "infradian" happens within the 24-hour day, but apparently I am mistaken.]

So, the current use of the term develops the Collegiate definition by stressing the importance of coordinating bodily rhythm and medical treatment. For example, some studies claim to show that the optimal time for breast cancer surgery in premenopausal women is in the middle of her menstrual cycle. Expect to hear a lot more about this in the future, as we become aware that the rhythms of our lives, the various clocks within, tick at different rates. Possibly in the future the new book will not be, "What Makes Billy Learn?" but "What Makes Billy Tick?"

A Few Words on the List

So, we have chukar, a grayish European partridge, and chyle, which is milky lymph from emulsified fat. A cicatrix, derived from the identical Latin word, is a scar. A cicatricula is a small scar, though it can also describe a circular white spot on an egg. Various adjectives can be formed from the term. A cichlid is a kind of fish, and a cist is a burial chamber. The Scottish word clachan means a hamlet or village, and something clathrate is latticed. Claudication is limping and a claudicant is one who limps. I suppose Elijah could have excoriated the prophets of Baal for claudicating between two opinions, but he didn't use the word. Something that is clavate is club-shaped or, more technically, something that is "thickened at the distal end." However, the Latin underlying the word, clavus, suggests a nail or a rivet. The nail might be hammered into the wall of a temple to control a plague by sympathetic magic. The nail is also a symbol of fixity and therefore suggests the idea of necessity. The OED's definition says that the meaning "studded with nails or knobs," which fits the Latin meaning, is obsolete. The non-obsolete use of the term, "club-shaped," is one not attested in Latin. A nice irony--that the part of the definition suggesting fixity has now been replaced.

More Pleasant Terms

I ran across churrigueresque, which you certainly don't know how to spell unless you know it is a baroque Spanish architectural style developed by Jose Churriguera (1650-1723). Churrigueresque is a style "which was characterized by animation of surface, play of light and shade effects, and an exaggeration and sumptuousness of ornament. Examples of Churrigueresque architecture include the Transparente in Toledo cathedral and the sacristy of the Cartuja (Granada)." The style was also imported into America. Isn't life so wonderfully diverse?

Then there is the ciborium which should be so easy to define, derived as it is from the Greek word "kiborion," meaning "a drinking cup, apparently shaped like the flower of the Egyptian bean." It is also, from the 5th century A.D. a "permanent canopy erected over a high altar; a baldachin." There is an utterly cool series of photos of Bernini's Baldacchino or the "Baldacchino (canopy) of the Basilica di San Pietro" here. But, before leaving this term, I must ask, what is the connection between a goblet or drinking cup and a canopy? An interesting 1787 quotation, from the OED, says, "The Ciborium was the shell containing the seeds of the Colocasia or Egyptian bean..it was used as a drinking cup, and resembled our chalices or goblets. This inverted and suspended by its footstalk was similar to the canopy that covered those shrines; and in the beginning of the 5th century, as appears from Chrysostom, was thus understood..." Just reading the dictionaries will really turn your world upside down!

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