antimacassar and aphaeresis and apheresis and apophthegm and appoggiatura aoudad and aparejo

These pages of the Collegiate, including words from the ano's to the app's, are fraught with hidden dangers, even if the number of words I wrote down to learn was quite small (fewer than 20). Let's get my anxiety right out there in the open. I have problems with how the dictionary handles the difference between aphaeresis and apheresis. I don't believe that many people have ever lost sleep over this, and it isn't my intention to cause national panic, but here is the difficulty. Aphaeresis is the familiar rhetorical term from antiquity, meaning the dropping of the initial sound of a word. (It is the same as aphesis). The OED also has an alternate spelling for this--apheresis, which should take the word off the table as far as the competition is concerned. But, the Collegiate has this definition for apheresis--"withdrawal of blood from a donor's body." Huh? And, as far as I can tell, the OED doesn't have this definition of apheresis. So, I am totally confused, but I guess I will have to swallow whatever I thought I knew and adopt a "fundamentalist" approach to the Collegiate. The sacred dictionary is inerrant. So, I guess now both words are in play. Right?

Well, if that didn't frost my cookie, the alleged difference between anthropophagous and anthropophagus, which I cannot limn, adds icing to the cake. And then, there is the apophthegm, apothegm, apothem love triangle. Well, the classical Greek word can be written in either of the first two ways, and refers to a maxim or pithy saying, but since both are listed, even though under different entries in the Collegiate, does this mean that both are up for grabs? And then apothem is defined as "the perpendicular from the center of a regular polygon to one of the sides." OK. I guess I will have to learn all three, but it kind of makes for a harder day than it should, in my judgment.

Moving Along

Ok. I resolve for the next several minutes just to rattle off words I need to learn. Anole is a genus of lizards, while anopheles, rather than being the son of a Greek playwright, is a kind of mosquito. An anorak is a pullover, and not a Tibetan beast of burden, and an anorexic is someone who could probably pull on an anorak easily because s/he has lost a lot of weight. An antepedium is something hanging in front of an altar (formed on the model of antediluvian), while an antirrhinum is a snapdragon. Almost anytime you have double "r's" followed by "h" in the middle of the word, you know it is from Greek and it means that something either looks like a nose or is flowing (e.g., hemorrhoids, which may, conme to think of it, both look like a nose and flow). An antivenin is an antiserum, an aoudad, which probably can't be pronounced correctly, is a NAfrican bovine, an antre is a cave (I love Othello's lines on "antres vast" in 1.3) and an aparejo is "a packsaddle of stuffed leather."

An aperient gently opens the bowels, so we won't be asked about that word. Remember the double letters in Appaloosa, and take care with your Italian spelling to know when to double up letters. An appoggiatura is an embellishing note in music. I also like acciaccatura, which I should have mentioned earlier, but appoggiatura brought it to mind. And appendectomy is the same thing as an appendicectomy, though I suppose that you don't mess around with spellings and pronunciation when you need one.

A Little Fun

But if spelling, for me, was just the mastery of lists of words, I think my zeal would soon flag. Thus, when I learned the history of antimacassar I was elated. It is defined as a "cover to protect the back and arms of furniture," but Michael Quinones has very helpfully gone into some of its history on his website. Macassar was a place in Indonesia where the Brits got an unguent in the 19th century used to treat men's and women's hair. Of course when you sat down in someone's overstuffed chair, your hair tended to rub against it, and so they put a little doily or cloth on the chair to keep you from mussing up the furniture. This cloth was called an "antimacassar." The word "tidy" was, at first, a noun, and was a synonym. Thus, the 2nd Edition of Webster's Unabridged (1950s) said that a synonym of antimacassar was "a TIDY." However, the 3rd Edition of that dictionary (1993) said that a synonym was "TIDY," dropping the "a."

Has the great Unabridged made a mistake? Has the word gone from being a noun to an adjective in the 40 years between the 2nd and 3rd editions? Only a word-nerd like myself would ask a question like this, since few people have heard the word and no one has ever studied the way it was used in successive versions of Webster's. But, something does seem to have happened. The usages of antimacassar I have discovered in the last few days have been adjectival usages. The most arresting one, which I think I will take into my speech (though I will have to use it sparingly or not at all, because people will feel I am being uppity) is "antimacassar Evangelicalism." Doesn't that capture it well? A faith that wants everything to be tidy, categories to be clean, God to be pure and holy and all political issues to be crystal clear. So, a sentence. "In addition to suffering from an ugly countenance, he had a sterile and antimacassar faith." Oh, well. What do you think?

Finishing Up

I could go on for some length about antiphrasis, a rhetorical device where words are used in their opposite sense, such as "His Midget League team was the Giants," or, in a more sinister vein, "Was it true that Ptolemy Philopator was convicted of parricide?" I just made up the latter; don't want a libel case against me from his heirs. Then there is apoptosis, apophasis, apologue and apiculate, all of which deserve as much space as antimacassar--but not here, and not from me.

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