Friday, September 29, 2023

Bursar

In a week or two we'll have a guest from overseas.  One of my archaeology friends.  She's retired but formerly was a bursar.  If the term is unfamiliar to you, it refers to somebody who handles monetary matters for a University.  It being a long walk with an impractical, salty swim, she'll be arriving by air.  And the lead cabin crew attendant will be called....a purser.  Surely there is a connections.

Why yes.  

The base word here is appropriately Latin.  Bursa, meaning a leather purse such as you'd use for holding coins.  Actually the Romans swiped it, and a lot of more material stuff, from the Greeks whose word Byrsa means leather or hide.

Various words of a monetary nature ensue.  Bourse, which is a stock exchange in French speaking nations.  Disburse, to dispense money.  And of course, purse.

Purser used to refer to a petty official whose duties involved provisioning ships in the age of sail.  Somebody has to order the weevily biscuits and sketchy salt pork at exorbitant prices.  It has since become a more generalized term for somebody in charge of logistics on any travel conveyance.  Airline food does involve fewer weevils and one supposes the cabin crew lead deserves credit there.

Oddly disperse is not specifically about spending money.  Note the e instead of the u in purse.  The second half of the word actually references "sparse" in the sense of being infrequent, or scattered.  So to disperse something is to scatter it about.  Not recommended for the contents of your purse.

To return to the original point we do have an active itinerary planned.  Hopefully both the weather and our age related decrepitude pose no limits.  It would for instance be unfortunate to be laid up by "bursitis", inflammation of the structures overlying joints.  So named because they anatomically really are nothing more than small leathery pouches!

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Etymology extra credit.  Decrepit comes from a Latin word that means making a crackling noise.  A fair description some morning before stretching out and limbering up.  How limber derives from tree limbs which don't move very well at all is uncertain.

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