disequilibrate and disequilbrize and blanacne and aristotle and nicomachean ethics and disembogue and discountenance and carlyle

I can see it happening again. I wanted to "breeze through" these words in order to "finish" page 370 today, but then I got hung up on a word. Let's see how far we get.

The List

Several words from these pages call for little comment, but should be noted. Dimeter is the same as dipody and means a poetic meter consisting of two feet. Dimity has nothing to do with intellectual bulb power--it refers to a sheer corded fabric of plain weave. Dioecious refers to male and female reproductive organs in different individuals, while diphyodont means marked by the succesive development of deciduous and permanent teeth. I confess that this was the first time I realized that teeth as well as leaves could be deciduous. Dirdum is the Scottish word for blame, while dirham, not Qaddafi, is the basic monetary unit of Libya. 1000 dirhams make one dinar. Dirigisme is economic planning by the state, while a diseuse is a skillful female reciter. A disme, pronounced DIME, was a 10 cent coin struck in 1792, while dissepiment is a dividing tissue or septum. Dissimilation, to be distinguished from dissimulation, is the phonological process which results in change or omission of one or two identical or closely related sounds in a word. Examples are the frequent dropping of the first 'r' sound in "surprise," "governor" or "prerogative" when the words are spoken.

I love the word distelfink, which is one of those birds designed by PA Dutch people. A ditany is a pink-flowered mint native to Crete (I am NOT making this stuff up...) and a divi-divi is a small tropical American tree. At least if I get the first four letters of this word correct I am home free. Something dizygotic is fraternal, as in the phrase dizygotic twins. It is just the parents of such twins that go dizzy. A dobby is a loom attachment for weaving small figures, while the dobra is equivalent to 100 centimes, at least if you are in Sao Tome and Principe. I really ought to be ready for my world tour after this competition. I could go from Iceland to The Gambia to Libya to Sao Tome flawlessly. Someone who is doctrinaire insisits on their view of things. I only list this word because you must note the single "n," unlike the word questionnaire. Finally, a dodgem is a bumper car in England, while a dolmen is a prehistoric monument. Oh, I don't think they will be quizzing us on another Collegiate entry, dildo, but for the sake of completeness, I mention it here.

Returning to Fun

Let's go through several words briefly.

1. Discountenance is not used very often in our speech, but it is a valuable word. The Collegiate has two meanings: (1) abash or disconcert [most people know neither word]; or (2) look with disfavor upon (i.e., "set the countenance against,") as in the phrase, "discountenance all bellicose statements." The OED has these two definitions, with several quotations of the first, a few of which are worth giving. "He was no more discountanced then, than if he had been at the head of his army." Or, from Carlyle, "He appeared much discountenanced at this last part of my narrative." But the OED also has a first definition, which it calls obsolete, which runs: "to put another countenance on, to mask." This still has a great possibility for fruitful use in a figurative sense, where someone's ambitions or plans might be discountenanced before the common people but known to the elites. And, I'll bet if you listen real closely you can hear the theologians gurgling in the background, "You may discountenance yourself before humans, but God, who sees the heart, will not be so fooled."

2. Disembogue is like debouch, and means to "flow or come forth from, discharge or empty itself." Streams disembogue from rivers. One quotation has the Danube dissemboguing by seven "mouths" into the Black Sea. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, "All the rivers disembogue into the sea, but the sea is not full." I think I like the word "rush" instead...

3. We know that the word disequilibrium means the destruction or absence of equilibrium, but the Collegiate has the verb, disequilibrate, which the OED does not have as a separate entry. Something that disequilibrates or disquilibrizes destroys the balance of something else. Keynes was famous for using the noun form in articulating his economic theories. Indeed, disequilibrium was certainly on the brain in the 1930s, as economists tried to figure out how to bring about economic recovery.

But I am not sure I like this word. It is not the sound of it, which actually rings very nicely in the ear. It is the notion of "balance" that is behind it. Ever since Aristotle talked about proportion or balance in ethicial terms the Nicomachean Ethics, we have been caught up with this image as a proper and helpful one for defining how we ought to spend our lives. We seek "balance." When things are not working well for us, we say we are "out of balance." It is as if life is being equated to riding a bicycle, and we feel in danger of falling off. I would contend that the image of "balance" is not a helpful one for understanding life. Certainly we all have multiple responsibilities, and certainly we have different things we want to do or feel we must do, but to say that what we seek is "balance" I think misses the point.

What we really seek is understanding in life, knowledge, a sense of "fitness" in the world or with friends or in our work, a sense of "connection" between us and others. I think the best picture of life for me is the plug and the wall socket. We are like plugs, full of all kinds of energy and insight and charge, but unless we are "plugged in" to a source of power, we remain useless. We spend our lives searching for the right "outlet" in which to plug ourselves. Thus, our search in life is NOT for balance; it is for the proper "wall outlet." Take that, you Aristotelians!

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