phalanstery and petechia and petechiae and petronal and petrosal and perron and perse

Some day I will have to write a digressive essay on various words built off the preposition "peri" as well as the word "gigman," which I came across while looking up "gigot" (when I was studying the history of sleeves) and "gimcrack," which I mentioned in the previous essay, but for now it is nose to the grindstone. Let's move on to perron, perse, pessary, petronel, petrosal, petechia and phalanstery.

1. Perron. The Century has a great cut showing what a perron is. In short it is an external stairway by which access is given to the entrance-door of a building when the entrance is above the ground level. In the 18th - 20th centuries this was seen as an architectural adornment, but with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, we don't have long staircases to enter buildings anymore. Old Church architecture required several steps to the sanctuary because, as the Scriptures say, you go "up" to the house of the Lord. No longer. Who is the winner?

2. Perse. Don't confuse perse with per se. The latter couldn't appear in the Bee because it is a double word. The former means "of a dark grayish blue resembling indigo." Longfellow's translation of Canto VII of the Inferno has: "The water was more sombre far than perse" (pronounced purs).

3. Pessary. Even though this would certainly trip up someone, the Wyoming folks will avoid it because of its intimate gynecological significance. It means "a vaginal suppository or a device worn in the vagina to support the uterus, remedy a malposition, or prevent conception." The word is dervied from the Greek pessos, which is an oval pebble used in playing a game like draughts. As a modern medical web page says: "The pessary is most often used for "prolapse" of the uterus. Prolapse means that your uterus droops or tends to "fall out" because it loses support after you give birth or have pelvic surgery. This problem is usually fixed with surgery, but you can also use a pessary to help keep the uterus in place." Enough for now on this.

4. Petronel. A petronel is a "portable firearm resembling a carbine of large caliber." The Century gives us fuller historical data. A petronel is a "hand-firearm introduced in the sixteenth century, shorter than the ordinary harquebus, but longer than the pistol; a sort of large horse-pistol. I only found two images of one online. Interestingly enough, the Collegiate also has the word harquebus (HAR kwi bus), defined as "a matchlock gun invented in the 15th century which was portable but heavey and was usually fired from a support." This, then, takes us into the history of firearms, which because of problems of lack of standardization (as we also see with the spelling of words!) means that there was quite a variety of guns with various firing mechanisms at various times.

5. Petrosal. Pronounced pe TRO sal, it means "of, relating to, or situated in the region of the petrous portion of the temporal bone or capsule of the inner ear." Don't you just love the dictionary? At one moment you are thinking about vaginal suppositories (well, not thinking too much about them), then you are thinking about the history of firearms, and now we are thinking about the inner ear. I can't think of any activity quite so pleasurable (well, check that, I guess I can imagine one or two) than investigating the dictionary because of its ability to bring us into realms of reality which we barely even imagined. Back to petrosal. We note that in the definition is the word petrous, which means "of, relating to, or constituting the exceptionally hard and dense portion of the human temporal bone that contains the internal auditory organs." Jesus might have said to Peter, "You are Peter, and on this rock (petra), I will build my church," but an anatomist could say, "You, temporal pone, are petrous, and upon this petrous I will set the pentrosal nerve." No time for pictures. Get your own copy of Gray's Anatomy.

6. Petechia. OOps, this is out of order, but it still must be learned. As might have been expected, the Century only has it in the plural, petechiae, and defines it (word is derived from the Italian) as "purple spots on the skin, not disappearing on pressure, caused by hemorrhage into the cutaneous tissues." The OED splits the difference by giving the word in the singular, but then saying, in the definition, "usually in plural." Ah, the British. Always the via media. One can have a petechial fever and the face or part of the body having these spots can be called petechiate. You can find pictures of petechiae online but, as you might suspect, they are just red and purple splotches on arms and faces. I will spare you these.

7. Phalanstery. A phalanstery is a cooperative community "based on egalitarian principles of French socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and having shared property, possessions." The term first appeared in English in 1839, but two quotations from the 20th century show its usage. From 1905: "The theories of Fourier were not communistic, although his social reforms were to be made through the establishment of colonies, or phalansteries." Then, from the New York Times Magazine in 1991, we have: "Fourier gazed at capitalism's satanic factories and his strange, fantastic imagination turned the mills into palaces, utopian communities, called phalansteries." Just as I think it would be a good idea for all children to determine whether they are, primarily, auditory, haptic or visual learners, it might also be a good idea to study the ideas of imaginative people from the past. Americans, in general, however are too overburdened with political ideology for us easily to study another form of government without critizicizing it or becoming very upset. It is almost as if our form of government is more sacred than any religious doctrine could be...

Enough for one day. Hope yours goes well.

1861