fomite and fomites and fomes and flyting and flocculent and flexuous

Of the remaining 11 words from these pages, I will dispatch of the following rather quickly. Finocchio does not indeed have a long nose, but is merely defined as "Florence Fennel." Then florilegium, which really is worth several words, at first meant a collection of flowers but then grew quickly into its present meaning as an "anthology" of the work of an author or authors. Something that is fluviatile is fluvial or living in a stream. One of the quotations from the OED differentiated between fluvial living things and diluvian things. "The mud..is evidently fluviatile and not diluvian." I think I would be very hard-pressed to tell the difference. Then one has fondant, which is a soft creamy preparation of sugar, water, and flavorings that is used as a basis for candies and icing. I don't really think I have time to go into foramen either, which is a small opening or orifice. Nor, I guess, will I have much to say about foison, a now-archaic word (according to the OED, but that is always debatable) derived from the Latin and medieval French of "pouring" and originally meaning "plenty, abundance, a plentiful supply." Later developments of the word suggest "inherent vigor or vitality" or "nourishing power," but I haven't heard it used anywhere. If you gave me some time, I could resurrect it, but, alas, I will move on.

Remaining Words

The words that remain for our consideration are: (1) flexuous; (2) flocculent; (3) flyting; (4) fomite/fomes and (5) fordo/foredo. Let's briefly consider each.

1. Flexuous is not flexible, though they both derive ultimately from the same Latin verb, flectare, meaning "to bend." While flexible stresses the pliant nature of something, flexuous emphasizes the serpentine, undulating or sinuous nature of a thing. Yet, since they both come from the same verb, they bear more than a family resemblance. The OED tells us, unfortunately, that flexuous is "now chiefly in scientific use, said of animal or vegetable structures," though the quotations it gives are beautiful 19th century humanistic uses of the term. For example, OW Holmes, Sr. could write, "Her lithe body undulating with flexuous grace," and Thomas Hardy, that master of English prose, could pen, "About equal proportions of gnarled and flexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women." Even Charles Darwin, the most "scientific" of all 19th century scientists, if bequeathing a dominant scientific theory is the measure of being a scientist, could use the term humanistically, "Man cannot express love..by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with..flexuous body, he meets his beloved master." I couldn't help reading that line without thinking of my deceased Golden Retriever, Murphy (1991-2001), who would daily greet me upon my arrival home with a deep flexuous bow and roll, eagerly welcoming me as if she had missed me for years. I would say that flexuous will only be/become a scientific term if we let scientists have it. Why relinquish such a beauty for free?

2. Even the sound of the word flocculent makes you think of "flocks" of cattle or goats or sheep. Indeed, the Century defines it as "resembling wool," or "consisting of loosely aggregated particles." Whenever you have a definition like the latter, you can see the heavy hand of science coming in to claim the word. Indeed, the Century specifies four usages of the word, from anatomy, entomology, chemistry and physics. Yet, if one stays close to the meaning of the Latin, and the first definition in the OED, you have "resembling flocks or tufts of wool; consisting of loose woolly masses." Even though the definitions don't stress this application, it seems like flocculent related to clouds is one of its most promising usages today. An online picture of clouds describes a "cirrocumulus floccus," or a flocculent tuft of clouds, "more ragged with light virga in front." Ah, virga? According to the Collegiate, virga are "wisps of precipitation evaporating before reaching the ground." So, we can refer to flocculent, tufted, woolly, clouds. I think it also is a useful word to describe some people's hair. Can we use it figuratively, possibly to describe someone's voice or manner? I don't know, but at least we don't have to give this word over to the scientists either.

3. The word flyting is a Scottish term for the ritual abuse that takes place between opposing sides either before a battle or in place of the battle. The OED is more specific when it says, "originally, a kind of contest practiced by the Scottish poets of the sixteenth century in which two persons assailed each other alternately with tirades of abusive verse." From 1508: "The flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie," or from as recently as 1948, "The fliting between Unferth and Beowulf." But, the way the word was spelled in 1948 doesn't give me great confidence that the Collegiate, by spelling it flyting, really has gotten it right. The OED has the entry as fliting/flyting. But it is fair game for us at the Bee, since the Collegiate only has flyting. Well, we better get used to the term, because I think it is a great word to describe how athletes try to demean each other before a contest or how rap singers ritually abuse people. Of course this kind of activity started long before the first Campbell married the first Fraser, but the term flyting is a fine way to describe it.

4. I think I will end with this term--fomite/fomes. The Collegiate only has the word fomite, which it describes as "an object that may be contaminated with infectious organisms," while the OED calles fomite an improper back-formation of fomites and says that the basic word to understand is fomes. A back-formation is "a word formed by subtraction of a real or supposed affix from an already existing word." So, the OED suggests that both words ought to collapse into fomes, a word which is absent from the Collegiate. Oh, well, there goes the "absolute" theory of language, upon which the philosophy of a spelling Bee is built, right? The OED gives us two definitions of fomes: "The morbific matter (of a disease)," which it says is obsolete, and "Any porous substance capable of absorging and retaining contagious effluvia." That is the definition that agrees with the Collegiate's. But the OED also gives us some nice examples in the following sentence from 1882, "The most important fomites are bed clothes, bedding, woollen garments, carpets, curtains, letters, & c." Letters? I guess if you sneeze on your correspondence you can be filling it with fomes. Or is it fomites? The OED definition says that the term is fomes but the quotations almost always use fomites. Is the latter the plural? But there is no indication that it is. Oh, well, I give up, but since the Collegiate has it as fomites, fomites it is. I don't want to foment trouble.

Oh, and I can't leave fomes without noting a wonderfully figurative theological use of the term by the great Puritan divine, John Owen. From his 1658 work on Temptation: "Naturall tempers..prove a great Fomes of sinne." We can just see sin gushing out all over the place, can't we? Let's get rid of our "Concupiscential Fomes," as one 18th century author encouraged us...

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