crapulous and crappy and crenellations and machicolations and merlons and crepiness

The only problem with stopping to look at words closely is that I may never continue on my hike, or at least not at the pace that I originally thought I would pursue. Fortunately, I am making lists of words far beyond where I am writing about words, or else I would never "get through" the dictionary by the Spelling Bee. But the "cr's" are just too good to pass over briefly.

Two Dictionaries

I am also going to include references here to Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1993), the standard unabridged used in law today. Let's begin with cranreuch, pronounced cran RUK, defined as "hoarfrost" or "rime." I wasn't quite sure exactly what "rime" was, so I looked it up: "an accumulation of granular ice tufts on the windward sides of exposed objects that is formed from supercooled fog or cloud..." Ok, sort of like icicles or frost formations in the winter. The word has been around since 1682, and is said to be Scottish. I have already pointed out the pro-Scottish bias of the Collegiate. I need say no more.

And then, there is crapulous, a wonderfully suggestive word. Crapula, in Latin, is "intoxication," and so crapulous is defined as "marked by intemperance" or "sick from excessive indulgence in liquor." This word goes back to 1536 and may have stimulated the invention of "crappy" in 1846 to mean "lousy" or "markedly inferior in quality." However, the OED posits that "crappy" derives its meaning from definition 7b of "crap," to mean "rubbish" or "nonsense," though the first attestation of "crap" to mean that isn't until 1898. Hm. How can that be? I think I am on firmer footing to posit "crappy" coming from crapulous. Probably someone in the 18th century looked at his drinking buddy after the buddy had downed a few too many and said, "Hey, guy, you look crappy."

But, alas, the OED (a product of the 19th century) wasn't there to record it and since the guy didn't have the courtesy to write it down and sent it into the Times, we had to wait until the 19th century for the word which, in my reading of history, had probably accreted other meanings by then. And then, you have crapola appearing first in 1941. I thought it might have been developed by a granola-eating individual but I learned that the word "granola" goes back to 1886, when the Kellogg company got a patent for it, though the next OED attestation of the word isn't until 1970. Surely granola was eaten in mass quantity well before there were yuppies. If you disagree, that is just a bunch of crapola. Enough of this history. Well, to quote a friend of mine from way back, "Crap is crap, but the history of crap is scholarship." How true.

"Crep"

Let's go on to "crep," even though there are several words between "crap" and "crep" that deserve mention. For example, I simply am going to have to skip crenellations, because that will get us into battlements and merlons and machicolations and corbels and the social world of medieval castles, and I don't want to go down that road now. No time also for credent, a pleasant word meaning "credible" or "giving credence," and used by Shakespeare in Act One of Hamlet, "if with too credent ear you list his songs..." Oops. Found a few more Shakespeare quotations, so I have to give them. From MfM, "My Authority beares of a credent [having credit or repute] bulke." And, from Winter's Tale, "Then 'tis very credent, Thou mayest co-ioyne with something." [I am NOT getting into co-ioyne now]. I think that all you have to have is the word "credent," knowing that it comes from the Latin "believe" and you can invent all kinds of pleasant usages for it. Shakespeare was just smarter than most people, and he massaged the word well.

Well, this page is getting away from me, so let's look at these "creps": crepitate/crepitant; crepuscule/crepuscular; and crepiness. I want to start with crepiness. It appears neither in the OED nor the Collegiate. You would think that it therefore doesn't exist, but you would be wrong in so thinking. Actually, there are more than 1000 web pages that have the word, and they are not pages that make up nonsense words. The unabridged has the word, defining crepiness as follows: "the quality or state of being crepey" and then "crepey" is defined as "crinkly." Ah, now we see how the word originated. It came out of "crepe," as in that crinkly crepe paper you were brought up on in 3rd grade art. Standing behind the word "crepe," according to the OED, is the Latin crispe, which mutated into crespe, which the French then picked up as crepe and began making nuptial garments in white crepe. Ok, we can see the word "crisp" behind the Latin. A "crisp" bill is one that can easily become "crinkled." I wonder if a new name for Santa Claus could be "crisp crinkled." Maybe for Scrooge.

But I still haven't told you why there are dozens and dozens of web pages featuring crepiness. Well, it seems to be the standard term among skin care providers for wrinkles in the skin. I suppose it suggests more than just the wrinkles, but the whole "culture" of wrinkledness, from dry skin to brittle skin to flaky skin to wrinkles and all those undesirable things that can happen to faces and other bodily parts to make them lose their elasticity. For example, one doctor provides a service that claims to "improve skin crepiness. He deals with "sagging skin" and "seborrheic keratoses" and "skin crepiness: and "spider veins" and "stretch marks" and "sebaceous hyperplasia" among other things. I have to confess that I took a detour to that site and became lost in the words, not necessarily the phenomena to which the words pointed. For example, "seborrheic keratoses" is the presence of wart-like growths on the surface of the skin. They secrete "sebum" and they are "horny" (the Greek root leading to keratosis). I don't wish the condition on anyone, but I am glad I know what it means.

I am incorrigible, so I have to conclude this essay, but I can't do so without pointing out another skin condition that the good doctor (Kovak) pointed out--poikiloderma of Civatte. I wanted to focus on this, because I recall from reading the Josephy Story (Gen.37-50) from the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) that Joseph's "coat of many colors" was his "poikilon" coat--or something like that. The word "poikilos," however, means "variegated." So, I like that word. What is poikiloderma of Civatte? Well, it is a condition around the neck where the skin becomes mottled or red. If it isn't as colorful as Joseph's coat of many colors, at least it is at least two colors. And Civatte? He was a French dermatologist who first described this "common weathering change."

Let's continue on the "crep's" before I get too much further afield.

[Next]

1012