Superior Words: bucentaur, bel esprit, bellibone and others

Let's continue with the list from the previous essay, only moving more quickly. A bel-esprit (plural is beaux-esprits) is a clever genius or a brilliant wit. A bel-esprit is therefore a person of culture and talent. From 1721: "The finest geniuses and beaux esprits of the university..." A bel-esprit is very conscious of what is infra dig. Bowler writes the word "belesprit" but it has very few appearances in Google under that spelling; it is either bel-esprit or bel esprit, and such it shall remain.

Bellibone takes us into the same world as bel esprit, and it means a woman excelling in both beauty and goodness. We see the French behind it--belle bonne or belle et bonne, meaning "fair and good." But the person who introduced the term in 1579, Edmund Spenser, may have been playing with language himself, for he says, "A bellibone, or a Bonibell, homely spoken for a fair mayde, or Bonilasse." Thus, we have plays with words which actually can be useful to us. The OED lists bonibell as bonnibel, though I suppose there are about five ways you could spell it.

Biggin

With biggin we enter the world of coffee. At least, that is as far as Bowler wanted us to go with the term. A biggin is a "silver coffee pot with a separate container which holds the coffee as it is heated." This isn't the best definition, and we have to dig a bit deeper to discover that there was a certain man named George Biggin (1755-1808) from Cosgrove, near Oxford, who devised a coffee filter system which was the forerunner to the percolator. A web site with picture of his contraption is here. The thing that he did was to insert a filter, shaped like a tea cozy, into the coffee pot, thus enabling the water to be flavored with the coffee taste without being filled with grounds. Such an invention wasn't perfect; sometimes the filter would burst or the grounds would seep through the sieve-like filter. Until a metal coffee filter was invented in France in 1802, however, the biggin was useful. Just as I think it is interesting and helpful to know the history of costumes (differences between doublet and houppelande, for example, should be known), so the development of inventions is fascinating, both for the way we see human technology improving as well as the words which "freeze" the process along the way.

But then, not satisfied fully with Bowler's treatment of biggin, I decided to check out the word further, and discovered it was a world from the world of historical costumes and meant "a cap or hood for the head; a night cap." The OED suggests that the origin of the term goes back to Beguine, an order of lay sisters from the medieval Low Countries. Named after a certain "man of religion" named Lambert le Begue (a stammerer), the Beguines were women and girls who bound themselves with strict vows of chastity and dedicated themselves to the religious life. The cap beguin derived from the movement. Well, the word beguin is also very complex, so I will leave it there and quickly retreat to biggin. Hence, the biggin is a night cap. Here is a picture of a person wearing such a cap.

But while on caps, I discovered a word I didn't know--attifet. In this web site entitled "Elizabethan accessories," we not only have French hoods and Supportasses (to suport a standing ruff), but we have Cauls and Attifets. An attifet (not in the OED, Century, Unabridged or Collegiate) is a hat which is "oval or round with tapered sides and no brim. The cap sits on the back of the head and may be made in Velvet, Satin or Brocade to match or contrast your gown." Here is a picture of it, with directions on how to secure it to your head. Just think, you can pick one up for $75.

So, after that satisfying detour, let's return with resh determination to the other "Superior" words.

On Bucentaur

Even though we see the word "centaur" (a mythological beast half man and half ox) in the word, the OED says that the Italian word from which it is derived, bucentoro, is of uncertain origin. Yet the Wikipedia article seems confident of its origin. According to the latter, bucintoro (not bucentoro) is derived from the Venetian "buzino d'oro" or "golden barque," which was Latinized in the Middle Ages as bucentaurus on the analogy to the classical Greek centaur. The article goes on further to say that in the chronicle of Doge Andrea Dandolo (died 1354, apparently the quotation came from 1311), the word Bucentaurus is first used to describe a large Venetian galley. This is the galley that would sail out to celebrate the (annual?) "Marriage of the Sea." What is that?

Well, beginning around 1000 on Ascencion Day the "marriage of the sea" (Spozalizio del Mare) took place, a ceremony intended to assure the continued maritime supremacy of Venice. At first prayers offered at the ceremony were for a calm sea for travelers and workers. But this placatory ceremony changed after 1177 to a sacramental ceremony, when Pope Alexander III gave a ring to the Doge, who then threw it into the Adriatic (after appropriate prayers had been made). This symbolized the "marriage" of Venice with the sea. Since Venice was the "male" and the sea the "female," the latter was to submit to the will of its master, Venice. After 1311 (the first reference to the word Bucentaurus), the Venetian Doge would go out to sea on this ship.

The Wikipedia account is entertaining and helpful, though it glides over lots of important issues (the language of Venice, the names of boats before 1311, the role of Popes after Alexander III, whether the ceremony changed, how long it persisted, etc.). But it is enough at least to take us one step further on our journey of understanding.

That's it for today. I still have several words to go....

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