marcescence and mourning of the chine and tabes and cachexis

The word tabes and its family took us on a significant journey in the previous essay, and I have a few more things to say about it before returning to some other difficult "t" words in these pages. Still to mention are a few things about marcescent, cachexis, desquamation and the mourning of the chine. Recall that tabes (TA beez) is a wasting away of the person because of the degeneration of the nervous system. One of the words in the previous essay we ran into was desquamation, a symptom of children who suffer from kwashiorkor. Desquamation is "a coming off in scales or scaly patches; esp. that of the epidermis, as a result of certain diseases; exfoliation, 'peeling.'" The Latin word desquamare means "to remove the scales from..."

Cachexis

We also learned in the previous essay that another synonym of marasmus or kwashiorkor is cachexis. Cachexis (pronunced ka KEK sis) is derived from two Greek words translated "bad habit," and at the time of the Century it could be used to describe "a morbid condition of the body, resulting either from general disease (as syphilitic cachexy) or from a local disease." The word cachexy or cachexis is not used in current medical discussion; I found this web site which lists a whole number of diseases on old death certificates, among which is cachexy (malnutrition). But the word cachexy also has a figurative meaning--a depraved habit of mind or feeling. As early as 1652 an author could say: "The Israelites desiring a King..out of a Cacexie and evill frame of spirit." And, my favorite use of the term cachexy comes from the late 19th century, quoted in the OED (1868): "Both poets [Clough and De Mussset] describe the maladie du siecle, the nondescript cachexy, in which aspiration mingles with disenchantment, satire and scepticism with a childlike desire for the tranquillity of reverence and belief." Might that not be a useful term for our day? Aren't we too in an era plagued by a nondescript cachexy, a sort of yearning and wistfulness and hopefulness but, at the same time, a worry and fear that we may be living on borrowed time?

In passing I will mention one more item with the word cachexy in it, not because I think there is anything in it, but because the phrase doesn't exist on the Internet and does appear in the Century. It defines a phenomenon called "Negro cachexy" as "a propensity for eating dirt, peculiar to the natives of the West Indies and Africa." What, indeed, could the editors have had in mind?

Marcescence

We left the last essay with a few words on marcid (pronounced MAR sid) and marcescence. Since they are both derived from the same Latin root, I will just focus on the latter and its relations. Something that is marcescent is growing weak and languid. All the references in the OED and Century, however, are to botanical/entemological realites. From 1829: "Marcescent, withering on the stalk, without dropping, as in the campanula, cucumber, gourd, and others.." But the word has a range of meanings, including "liable to decay; ephemeral; transient; fading; decaying," that simply invites a figurative use of the term. Why can't we speak of marcescent hopes or dreams, or even the marcescent rays of the late summer sun? I rather like the word immarcescible which seems to be no longer used but is a perfect one to capture the unfading glory of something. From the 17th century Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor we have: "They should feed the flock of God, and the great Bishop and Shepherd should give them an immarcessible crown."

Mourning of the Chine

I ran into this phrase, which is nearly unattested on the Internet, when I was reading the OED on tabes. From Willis' 1681 work on medical vocabulary we have: "Tabes dorsalis, the mourning of the chine; a wasting or consumption of the back." The word chine is an ancient word in English, and refers to "the spine, backbone, or vertebral column; more loosely 'the part of the back in which the spine is found.'" The OED goes on elsewhere to define the mourning of the chine as a disease of horses, which confused me because of the broader definition of it above. Shakespeare has similar words to the OED in the taming of the Shrew. "His horse..possest with the glanders, and like to mose in the chine." Behind the word "mourning" is, no doubt, the French word for death, and thus the mourning of the chine suggests some kind of death resulting from this disease. But I don't know the connection between a horse disease, the back, and apparently the running at the nose--which some references make to this disease. I think this now gives me the cue to clamber back to the words on my "t" list. Thank you for allowing the long digression.

Concluding with Three "T" Words

Let's finish this essay with few comments on the next three "t" words: tagliatelle, tahr, and talipes. The first comes from Italian cuisine and means egg noodles cut into ribbons. Various web sites have nice pictures of these noodles, along with loads of other Italian pastas, and they make me want to pour some spaghetti sauce on them and get to eating.

But I won't be eating a tahr, even though they are hunted in Asia, near the Himilayas, and New Zealand. The long brown hair of the tahr and its distinctive short triangular horns make it easy to differentiate from its companions, such as the chamois. Here is a nice web site describing the Himilayan tahr. I didn't know that they were only 26-40 inches at the shoulder, 4.5-5 feet long and weigh from 79 to 189 pounds. The horns grow to a maximum of 18 inches, though the female horns are shorter.

Finally, talipes is just a fancy word for "club-footed." Club-footedness is the most common bodily deformity in humans, occurring about once in every 1,000 to 2,000 births. This is not a medical web site, so I won't tell you what the medical folks say about the condition or how or when to remove it. I am a wordsmith, so I will just end by telling you that the word "talipes" means "talus (ankle) + foot" or "to walk on the ankle," which is what a club-footed person appears to do. Pictures of the phenomenon proliferate on the Net, as you can imagine, but you can also imagine the condition, so I will spare you the pictures.

Let this suffice for another day.

1914