WordWacky

Like many people in the US, I’ve long accepted the definition of Jihad as a Muslim holy war — actual military war sanctified by Allah because it serves Muslim goals.

It turns out that like the Bush Administration, I was wrong. (It may be the only way in which I am like the Bush Administration, but that’s another story.)

This morning on the way to work, I heard this story on my local NPR affiliate, KUOW:

After years of using the word “jihadist” to describe terrorists who carry out attacks against civilians and the U.S. military, the Bush administration has finally realized that doing so actually pays those groups a compliment in the eyes of some Muslims.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has relied on terms like “jihadist” and “Islamic extremists.” But jihad has very positive connotations in the Islamic world. It is akin to religious duty: when someone wants to better themselves, they embark on a jihad. Whether it’s to quit smoking, pray more, and in some cases, fight off anyone preventing them from practicing their religion.

Jihad is not, as I have believed, about militarism, but about duty to God. I guess, though I am not much for any of the capitalized deities, I can understand that, if only from the perspective of having the sincere drive to better myself however I can.

Like, for example, being a better blogger, one who posts on a regular basis instead of letting entire weeks pass between posts. I will try harder, I promise, though I am still pretty loathe to call it a blogging jihad.

Oh, wait. Apparently, they could. New research on Neanderthal skeletons proves it, according to Discovery News online:

The researchers analyzed bones from five such individuals that lived at Sima de los Huesos, a cave in Atapuerca, Spain. Using skull bones, they created very detailed three-dimensional computerized tomography (CT) reconstructions of the cave dwellers’ outer and middle ear. CT involves multiple X-ray-like images that serve as thin slices, which gradually build whole body parts or other structures.

The comprehensive model revealed that the Atapuerca human-ish residents had a heightened sensitivity to sounds falling between one and five kilohertz, a range linked to listening to speech that other primates seem to lack.

“Our results show that the audition of hominids of the Sima de los Huesos was equivalent to ours, and clearly different to that of the chimpanzees,” Mendizabal said.

He and his team recently presented the findings at the Acoustics ‘08 meeting in Paris.

The hearing range they detected indicates H. heidelbergensis spent around 90 percent of its time listening to sounds that fall within the bandwidth of speech. Their hearing was best suited to such noises, even though they could also listen to other sounds, just as we can today.

Looks like we were a talkative bunch, even back then. You don’t say.

Whether you’re queen of the parade or too cynical for rainbows, chances are that if you’re queer, you have an opinion on Pride. For some it’s a day of celebration, others mourning and reflection, and still others, a great reason to get out of the city while the tourists invade. I feel all of those ways, and every year one or other of my opinions is center stage.

This year I’m celebrating. Celebrating nearly two years of marriage, recognized or not, to my wife, whom I love more very day. Celebrating my friends and community. Celebrating the fact that every year we gain legitimacy, get closer to being fully recognized citizens of our own country. This year California. Next year, perhaps my own state will wise up.

But why the word pride to indicate our holiday? Isn’t Pride a sin, and one of the worst, at that?

(more…)

Word - “Ever since people have been able to communicate verbally with one another we’ve had to have had words, and what we call these little pieces of audible communication has had a common name for a very long time.”

Condom - [Editor's note: definitively NSFW, and comes with musical accompaniment, but quite a thorough history of the condom, if you're interested -- and if you can make it past the no minors warning.]

“A variety of Latin etymologies have been proposed, including condon (receptacle),[55] condamina (house), and cumdum (scabbard or case). It has also been speculated to be from the Italian word guantone, derived from guanto, meaning glove. William E. Kruck wrote an article in 1981 concluding that, ‘As for the word ‘condom’, I need state only that its origin remains completely unknown, and there ends this search for an etymology.’ Modern dictionaries may also list the etymology as ‘unknown’.”

Bee - “Old English beo (before 900, in Alfred’s translation of Bpethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae) earlier bio-wyrt, bee wort, a plant (about 700) and Beo-wulf a personal name (about 725, in Beowulf).”

Dagenham - “In this context dagenham is apparently to be taken as a synonym for ‘insane’, by a rather devious etymological route. Dagenham is a town in Essex, England. On the District Line of the London Underground, Dagenham is three stops beyond the town of Barking (after Barking are Upney, Becontree, Dagenham Heathway, and Dagenham East). To be barking mad is to be crazy; and being dagenham is therefore being three steps beyond barking.”

And finally, in honor of the summer, which has returned to Seattle like a deadbeat dad — everyone’s so happy to see him, we’ve forgotten how mad we were:

Swelter - “Latvian is somewhat close to the original etymology with gurt no swelmes (I took a linguistics class once in college where I learned that Latvian is probably the closest to the original tongue from which all the Indo-European family of languages evolved). However, perhaps the closest to the etymological source of swelter in the list above is the Norwegian smelte, (I think of smelting iron) and just one letter difference from svelte.”

Sex sells. It sells breakfast cereal and sports cars. It sells diets and beer. It sells software. Games. Shoes. Pickles. The City. And now words.

Here’s the etymology of umbrella, from Hot for Words:

[Editor's note: While this is technically not unsafe for work, I wouldn't want to be watching it when my boss came by and looked over my shoulder.]

There’s a new breed of sexy — actually, it’s an old breed, but it’s finally been noticed by the mainstream. But I’m not sure that Marina Orlova, a YouTube champion and Wired’s Sexiest Geek of the Year 2007, qualifies as geek sexy. I’m sure there are many of her devotees out there who care not one whit for philology — or any other ology, for that matter, but will watch and learn as long as there’s enough cleavage involved.

So how about some sex with your Kierkegaard? Why should sex be banished from the intellectual world? There’s not a carbon-based intelligence on the planet that can’t trace its roots back to sex. Are we so taken in by the Judeo-Christian split of the exalted and the base that we shun such unholy minglings? Cheeseburgers are evil. Unhand that jerky, it’s Friday!

Frankly, Marina’s not my type, but the ongoing video etymology series is a great idea, and she’s found a way to get a whole lot of viewers — 70 million YouTube views!

It’s not a question of the ends justifying the means, but more of a marketing coup. Even if I’m not the target audience, I have to respect the results.

Here’s a graphic of the top 300 most common words in this blog, as of yesterday.

Make one of your own at Wordle. [via Bombast and Thunder]

Maverick - “Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick died 1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves.”

Barrow/borrow pits and the Mormon R - “Mormon settlers who came West from Missouri brought with them a dialect that pronounced the letter ‘o’ as ‘a’ if the letter were followed by an ‘r’…”

Linguists call the phenomenon ‘the Mormon R,’ and it used to be commonplace in rural areas of Utah and in eastern Idaho ..

So Fort Hall was pronounced Fart Hall … Orange was arange … And borrow became barrow…”

Israel: “Over the past three thousand years, the name ‘Israel’ has meant in common and religious usage both the Land of Israel and the entire Jewish nation. The name originated from a verse in the Bible (Genesis, 32:2 where Jacob is renamed Israel after successfully wrestling with an angel of God. Commentators differ on the meaning of the name. Some say the name comes from the verb śarar (’to rule, be strong, have authority over’), thereby making the name mean ‘God rules’ or ‘God judges’. Other possible meanings include ‘the prince of God’ (from the King James Version) or ‘El fights/struggles’.”

Immaculate: “The crowding of the cone cells at the back of the eye where the image forms has a consequence that when the eye doctor looks into your eye, the part where the cone cells are most dense looks a little more yellow.

About 150 years ago, or maybe a little longer, physicians gave this yellow spot a name.

They called it yellow spot;

But in the Latin they liked to use that came out as macula lutea.”

Budget: “A bougette was typically used for carrying coins around, so the term became linked with the money which you had available at any one time, hence ‘budget’.”

Hamartia: “Hamartia is an element of greek drama which stands for ‘missing the mark.’ In modern lit, hamartia refers to a character’s “fatal flaw” though some say this is an incorrect use of the term as intended by the Greeks.”

OK, so that last one doesn’t relate, but for those wondering, it’s a mild expletive of Norwegian origin, used quite a bit like one might use the terms, “Oy vey!” or “Jeez.”

The reason I’m grunting and groaning in my title is to represent the many ways one pronounces ough.

I started thinking about it because of this:

My wife and I have been looking for a place to transplant some bamboo, and we found this on Craigslist (sorry, no link — we may buy it yet). I got to thinking about the word trough, and its odd pronunciation of ough.

Depending on what brand of English you’re speaking, there are as many as fourteen different pronunciations for the morpheme, ough. Someone’s even made a sentence including them all, but all the sounds aren’t different in American English (we wouldn’t pronounce trough, “troth”):

Rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman John Gough strode through the streets of Loughborough; after falling into a slough on Coughlin road near the lough (dry due to drought), he coughed and hiccoughed, then checked his horse’s houghs and washed up in a trough.

Here are some other examples:

Uh - Poughkeepsie
Aw - Bought, brought, fought
Oh - Although, thorough
Off - Cough, trough
Uff - Enough, tough
Ooh - Through, slough
Ow - Bough, plough
Up - Hiccough

This quality of having so many possible pronunciations for one morpheme is notoriously frustrating for new English speakers, but can also be challenging for native speakers like me. In an English class my freshman year of college, I made some point that included the word, “antithesis,” which I pronounced as if my dear Greek Aunty, Thesis, were in town for a visit. Nobody but the professor appeared to notice. She smirked, which corrected me more loudly than if she’d spoken.

Although now, wrapped in my wrinkled crone cloak I say, “These things happen,” and slough off such embarrassments, in that classroom I became a heat source, a silent, spinning, radioactive lump of carbon, burning a hole through the seat of my chair.

Uff, da!

Here are some etymology posts from the past week:

Gringo/folk etymology - “I’m pretty sure the dictionary is right about the word’s etymology. But I had learned a more colorful story: that Mexican-American vaqueros came into contact with Irish-American cowboys after the United States acquired first Texas, and then New Mexico and California. The Irish cowboys were constantly singing the song, “Green Grow the Lilacs.” The first two words of the song were slurred into gringo.”

Crunk - “Traditionally, crunk meant a hoarse, harsh cry. The term is often used as slang to mean intoxicated. Folk etymology suggests the modern usage of crunk originated as a portmanteau of the words ‘crazy’ and ‘drunk’ or having been ‘cranked up’ to a level of excitability at which one becomes ‘crunk’. Rapper Lil Jon defined crunk as a “state of heightened excitement.”

Good/Bad - “Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for good, which turns out to derive historically from ‘fitting, suitable’, not from ‘noble, aristocratic’…

The American Heritage Dictionary joins in relating good to IE ghedh- ‘to unite, join, fit’, also at the root of together and gather….

And here is the OED’s etymology for bad, which turns out to come not from “lower class” but from ‘homosexual’…”

Hocus - “The two-word phrase ‘hocus pocus’ seems to have entered the language a century or so before the word HOCUS as a stand alone. In medieval times, the Latin words spoken by priests in the Eucharist included ‘hoc est corpus meum,’ meaning ‘this is my body.’”

And more politics, for those so inclined:

Counterinsurgency - “The term counterinsurgency gained currency under President John Kennedy in the 1960’s, and referred initially to countering “communist inspired, supported, or directed insurgency, defined as subversive insurgency” by Soviet-aligned guerillas against western colonial nations. (When the US aided indigent forces in the overthrow of unfriendly governments it was called paramilitary operations.) As in the above quote the US involvement in Vietnam was called a counterinsurgency.”

Yesterday I wrote an e-mail to William Safire, the conservative writer and linguist who has contributed to a column in The New York Times Magazine, “On Language,” since forever. Reading up on him in Wikipedia, I am informed that he graduated from the same high school from which I dropped out. This strikes me as symbolic, though I don’t want to belabor that point too much.

I also found this piece of information:

After voting for Bill Clinton in 1992, Safire became one of the leading critics of Clinton’s administration. Hillary Clinton in particular was often the target of his ire. He caused a mild tempest when he called her a “congenital liar”; Hillary responded that she didn’t feel offended for herself, but for her mother’s sake. According to the president’s press secretary at the time, Mike McCurry, “the president, if he were not the president, would have delivered a more forceful response to that on the bridge of Mr. Safire’s nose.”

My letter was in response to the latter half of this Sunday’s “On Language,” subtitled “Misogynist.” In response to Hillary Clinton’s assertion that she had been subject to misogyny during her campaign, “It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by comments and reactions of people who are nothing but misogynists,” Safire wrote:

The word misogyny has since its earliest recording in 1656 meant “hate or contempt for women.” The etymology of misogyny is straightforward: In Greek, miso means “hatred,” and gune means “woman.” A misogynist is a woman-hater. I thought Clinton’s choice of the word was in error, and that the word she meant was sexist, meaning “one who discriminates based on sex” - that she had been treated unfairly because she was a woman. When I looked up the word she chose in the Oxford English Dictionary online, however, I noted that the meaning of misogynist had changed slightly but significantly. In 1989, the definition was “hatred of women”; in the 2002 revision, the definition was broadened to “hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”

Safire does not argue that there has not been “incredible vitriol,” yet he describes his immediate reaction to the word misogyny as incorrect, and only justifies her usage of the word as a synonym for prejudice. Thus, my letter, subject line: vitriol/misogyny.

Mr. Safire:

Relevant definitions of vitriol:

OED Online:
5. Virulence or acrimony of feeling or utterance.

Dictionary.com:
3. something highly caustic or severe in effect, as criticism.

American Heritage:
2. Bitterly abusive feeling or expression.

Worldnet:
2. abusive or venomous language used to express blame or censure or bitter deep-seated ill will

What about “incredible vitriol” does not imply hatred to you? Bitterly abusive? Venomous?

I heard many such press and non-press attacks. Dismiss me as one of Hillary’s feminists if you will, but your column is misguided in implying that vitriol does not suggest hatred, merely prejudice. I understand that you eventually accept the usage, but you imply that it’s politicized.

Perhaps it is your article that is using words to politick.

Having now read the Wikipedia entry on Safire, I would only alter my letter to remove the word “perhaps.”

Update: Here is my response from William Safire, dated June 22, 2008:

Dear Lexicographic Irregular,

You were good to respond to my invitation for comments and suggestions. A great many other readers have pitched in, too. Although I can’t answer mail individually, I read every letter and am most grateful for yours.

Sincerely,

William Safire

The boldface is his.