fibranne and filiopietistic and filipendulous and hagiographic and fillip and fimbriated

1. Let's begin with filiopietistic and filipendulous. They coudn't be further apart in meaning, but they sound similar, and each creates a vivid picture. Something that is filiopietistic is, to use the OED's words, "marked by an excess of filial piety (contemptuous)." The word was coined in 1893 and is usually employed to describe a style of history writing--one which is deferential to a scholar, a region or a figure that is being studied. For example, for several centuries historians of the United States have been filiopietistically attached to the shaping importance of New England. Because many historians either were nurtured there or went to school there, the interest in showing the foundational importance of New England for all of Americn history arises out of filiopietistic interests. An earlier term that expresses a similar idea is a hagiographic. Referring in the first instance to the lives of the saints, a hagiographic account is one in which the rough edges of the human qualities of the saints are buffed away so that a "saintly" picture emerges. Filiopietistic interests often fuel hagiographic accounts.

2. Quite different is filipendulous. The root word is different--a filum is a thread (while a filius is a brother). Something filipendulous hangs by a thread. The object, a dropwort, that so hangs is referred to as a filipendula. However, there is no good reason in my judgment why we cannot take the word filipendulous and use it in a literal and good way to describe the precarious position of many people in life. Remember Jonathan Edwards's 1741 sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"? Clifton Fadiman and other Puritan-despisers of 50 years ago made sure that this sermon was placed in all school readers of the time, and the sermon stuck with me (Of course, I grew to appreciate Edwards very much when I began to get a more balanced view of him in later days). But in that sermon, delivered in Enfield, CT, Edwards likened the precariousness of human life to being dangled over the pit of hell and held in place only by a thin thread that threatened to break at any moment. We lived a filipendulous existence, according to Edwards. And, we can use the term in a non-theological way to discuss any kind of precarious situation in which a person finds him/herself. Many politicians live filipendulous existences. I like it much better than the hackneyed phrase "on the edge." On the edge of what? At least when we use filipendulous we can all imagine being dangled over a noxious pit of something.

3. But these two words made me want to consider staying in the "filis" for a moment longer. I was particularly taken by the meaning of the word fillip. I think I have been using it in my speech for decades in a proper way, to express the notion of a stimulus--"the early coffee acted as a fillip to his confidence and spirits"-- but the OED presents an interesting history of the term. The word goes back to the 1530s and is "apparently onomatopoeic." What does it sound like? Well, it is defined as "a movement made by bending the last joint of a finger against the thumb and suddenly releasing it (so as to propel some small object).." So, it originally was a "flick" of the finger. As a writer from 1619 said, "He gives the cup a phillip to make it cry Twango." Twango indeed. Since something that can be "twangoed" with the finger is rather small, a fillip gradually became "something of small importance; a trifle." "The rest is not worth a fillip with the finger." And, the word could also express a short space of time (perhaps the time it took to "flick" the finger). "The tortoise..in a fillip of the finger was down in the gardens of Riu Gu." Only in the 18th and 19th centuries did its current usage, as encouragement or stimulus, tend to dominate. Let's fill up its meaning, however, by recapturing the original "twango" of it. I can still hear it.

4. Then we have the words fimbriated and fimbrillated. I think they mean the same thing, but let's walk through each. Fimbriate, a verb, comes from the Latin word fimbriatus, which means a "border" or "fringe." Thus, something fimbriated is something that is "bordered." While the OED is almost silent on definitions and examples, the Century profuses, with an entry on fimbriate and fimbriated. Under the latter, it comes up with specific definitions for fimbriate in conchology (dealing with murices and whelks--delicious words which I don't have time to explain here), zoology, botany, ornithology and heraldry. For example, something fimbriated in heraldry is "bordered or edged with a narrow band on all sides." Thus, to walk through one heraldic phrase, if an escutcheon has a bend fimbriated or, it has a band that goes from the "dexter chief" (upper right) to the "sinister base" (lower left), and it also has a narrow gold edge running along the outline of the escutcheon as well as along the sides of the band. Now, doesn't that make you feel better? The Century defines fimbrillate as "bordered with fimbrillae or a small fringe," whereas the OED doesn't have the verb but does have fimbrilla, a minute fringe, and fimbrilliferous, bearing small fringes. Let's stick to fimbriate, then, to express something that is "fringed."

5. Speaking of heraldry, I wanted to introduce one more term, fess, before I finished this essay. I have to fess up that I didn't know what a fess was until today, but now that I know it, it is so trivially simple that I will never forget it. It is defined as a "broad bar drawn horizontally across the middle of a heraldic field." You see this all the time when you look at escutcheons, presuming that you have done that in life. But why did I even give the word? No one could misspell it. And, in addition, the Collegiate has two spellings of the word--fess and fesse, so I won't be asked it on 6/18. Oh, well, the wasted toil of our lives strikes again.

Conclusion

Let's just finish by mentioning one other "fi's." The Collegiate alone among the dictionaries has fibranne, pronounced FI bran, a fabric made of spun-rayon yarn. But they could be pulling our leg, for all I know. What I do know is that I did an internet search for fibranne and discovered that it was the winning word for the 1990 (kids) spelling bee, spelled correctly by Amy Marie Dimak on May 31, 1990. Well, I think that if we can spell a word that the kids can spell, we ought to take a break and pat ourselves on the back. Don't you agree?

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