Aghast and Appalled.

I'm of fairly even temperament, so it is not common for me to be either Aghast or Appalled.  But I was wondering the other day, do these words have a common ancestor?  Or at least a common theme?

I guessed correctly that aghast had to do with ghosts.  It hearkens back to circa 1100.  It means "..terrified, suddenly filled with frightened amazement."  The "h" came along circa 1700, perhaps a bit of Dutch influence.  The original root word is very old, as indeed most basic and primal concept words are.  It comes from somewhere back in the origins of Germanic language and exists in various forms such as Geist in modern German.

You would probably gasp when you see a gast, but the words do not have a common ancestor.  Gasp and gape, well, that's another story.

A Pall is the cloth used to drape over a coffin.  So if you saw a figure covered in one you might reasonably assume it was a ghost and be aghast.  But pall has a gentler origin story.

It hearkens back to Latin.  Pallium was a cloak or covering.  Tertullian, an early Christian writer indicates that the faithful wore it as an alternative to the toga.  The word had various antecedents including pellis meaning "skin".  See also, one assumes, "pelt".  The creepier connotations to a pall did not turn up until the 15th century.

By the way, at the sight of a ghost you might run away. Perhaps so vigorously as to be "pelting".  Not related to the above, pelt in this form is one of those words of unknown origin that has come to mean hitting repeatedly as with feet pounding the ground in hasty retreat, or the rain that is scheduled to keep me indoors on the nice summer day....

AI is getting better by the way.  This is legitimately creepy.

Lolling About

It's summer time.  And my dog alternates manic energy and exhausted sloth.  In the latter state he is often "lolling around".  For some reason I've always associated this particular phrase with dogs.  And with dog's tongues.  Turns out I was mostly right...

Like many of the best descriptive words it has obscure origins.  Possible Middle Dutch in the form of "lollen" meaing to doze or mumble.  By the mid 1300's it had changed a bit and now meant to lounge idly or to hang loosely.  You can see how, by the early 1600's, it picked up the connotation of a tongue hanging out.  And a century later being a generic term for lazy inaction.

Lollypop turns up in the late 1700's.  Although they originally did not seem to have a stick, it was certainly something you would pop into your mouth.  Lollygag is a later word, well into the 19th century.  It implies a more deceptive inaction rather than just being worn out.  Lolly, as above, plus gag, meaning a joke.

Lounging about is by the way much different from lolling about.  At least by the complexity of its etymology it seems like much more work

Frisky Business

From time to time a word and its relatives dances across my consciousness for just long enough for me to jot down a note.  Then...gone.  Today's word "Frisky" is one such.  I can't remember what was on my mind.....

Frisk, is Middle English derived from the Old French frisque, meaning "lively, brisk", or alternatively "fresh, new, animated".  It comes from an earlier Germanic word that also gives us Fresh.

Brisk, although sounding much the same, is of Scottish origin, and means rude.  It is perhaps derived from "brusque", meaning "lively, fierce".  Brusque comes from French - and the French spent a lot of time helping the Scots mess with the British - but ultimately from Latin brucus, meaning "heather".  Hmm, I always thought heather was nice soft stuff?  It might also give us "brush".  I guess the sense of "Brushing someone off" is rather brusque, and could be done briskly. Bristle seems to be a pure Germanic word and unrelated. 

Some things done in a Frisky fashion are also Risky, but there does not seem to be any connection other than the sound.  Risk comes from the Italian riscare, meaning to "run into danger".  Unsurprisingly when this word migrated into French it took on the meaning of "expose to chance of injury or loss".

Say, it appears to be Friday the 13th.  Don't do anything too risky.

Pensive

When I write things move along pretty quickly.  I am after all approaching 3000 of these casual essays, so they clearly don't take all that much effort.  So I'm seldom if ever pensive when at the keyboard.

Pensive.  An interesting word.  It can mean "sad, sorrowful" or alternatively, "meditative, contemplative".  I guess there is some linkage, although I prefer to contemplate and to meditate on, happy thoughts.   

Over the years pensive meandered through various French words such as pensif, but ultimately it comes from the Latin.  Pensare, "to weigh or consider."  Or also "to hang or cause to hang".

This makes perfect sense archaologically.

A few years back I was excavating down in the layers of perfect preservation and came up with parts of a Roman weighing device.  

This was your basic scale, where there would be pans on either chain.  You'd put a known weight on one side - I've found a couple of those over the years too - and the object to be weighed on the other.  These chain and pan gadgets hung down, or were "dependent".  In fact anything that hangs down could be called a pendent.  

The other meaning for Pensare has also made it to the modern world.  When something is left hanging it could be said to be pending.  To get back to the darker sense of pensive, something that is both hanging and unpleasant could be impending.  Something attached to something else is said to be appended.  Let's hope if you ever have a vague achy sensation in your lower abdomen it is not appendicitis!

Ah, hard to think anything but happy thoughts on a cold winter day....but with spring and warm sunshine in the trenches not too many weeks off.....

A Feasibility Study

Looking ahead to 2026 I have to consider what is feasible.  Oh, not in terms of actually getting things done, but in the etymology of the word.  It has some interesting and relevant connections.

Feasible derives from the Latin "facere" meaning to Make, Do, or Perform.  The same very utilitarian source gives us Factory and Manufacturing, the latter being to make something by hand "manum".  Nowadays of course the hand is mostly used to click a mouse and push some buttons on the cnc equipment.

Doing things could also be considered a Feat, deriving again, from the same source.

I actually went down this etymological rabbit hole wondering if Fealty and Feasible were related.  I mean, my dog Hank is stupefyingly loyal and would probably jump off a cliff if there was encouragement reinforced by an appropriate Dog Treat.

But no.  Fealty derives from "fidelitatus" which means Faithful and as its most appropriate side branch gives us Fido as the archetypal dog name.

Feat and Feet are unrelated.  Like most terms relating to very basic concepts the latter is a very old word and comes to us via shaggy Germanic barbarians rather than Romans with sandals on their "pedes".

Vademecum

Sometimes the Great Clean Up project has unexpected results.  As the family member best able to judge such things I was charged with dealing with my dad's library of medical books.  Yes, you remember books.  I'll have more on this in a bit, but basically only a handful were worth preserving.  Mostly well illustrated older texts and a few I kept because a small mystery is involved.

And there there are things like this:      

                                                                                                       

This one gave my memory a good old nudge.  Because I remember a concoction called "Vademecum".  I was a bit fuzzy on details, I just knew it came in a tube and was pink.  My brother recalled that it was a European tooth paste.  Hey, its still sold today albeit not by the company that started marketing it in Sweden in the late 1890's.

So what's the connection?  Vade Mecum is a Latin phrase that translates to "Go with me".  It has long been used for portable hand books, often of a medical nature.  The sort of thing that would contain tips to diagnoses and lots of make 'em yourself remedies for same.  The first such use is said to be from circa 1629.  And as modern medicine advanced and this sort of reference became less important, this early 20th century example would have been near the end of the long and distinguished line.  I assume the tooth paste was a marketing concept based on the notion that there were all sorts of great formulas to be found in the Vade Mecum.

A bit more on the etymology of Vade-Mecum, including its link to "vamoose" and "wade", with a tarty chambermaid thrown in for good measure.

Evil Smurfs

This started as me reading too quickly.  And without my glasses on.  Someone had written a piece about the lackluster summer movie season and among the listed films I saw The Smurfs 28 Years Later.  Of course there was a comma in there that I missed, but the idea of a Smurf Zombie movie intrigued me.  I mean, they already start out a sort of putrid blue color, and frankly zombies capable of biting you on the knee cap is a disquieting thought.

Because we live in times that defy satire I can report that the nasty little critter shown here is not a figment of my imagination.  No, there is a subgenre of Smurf lore in which some of them are not the cheerful little hypoxic Communards they usually try to pass for.

There actually was a Smurf episode called The Purple Smurf in which one of the standard blue Smurfs - Lazy Smurf as it happens - gets bitten by a weird insect and turns into effectively a zombie.

He becomes angry and hostile, hops around saying "Gnap, Gnap, Grnap!" and bites several other Smurfs who also transform.

Papa Smurf of course saves the day.  How?  Don't matter, most Zombie stories are short on logic and actual science.

The Purple Smurf episode aired in 1981, so just a few years after Dawn of the Dead.  The episode is considered by aficionados of Smurfdom to be a bit of a spoof.

But I ask you, is it fair that Smurfs be portrayed as villains?  Darn right, because that's basically what they are and always have been.

The Smurfs were created by a Belgian cartoon artist named Pierre Culliford, aka Peyo.  They first appeared in 1958.  They were a spin off from an earlier (1947) series he did called Johan and Peewit, which was set in Medieval times.  In it the titular characters encountered a little guy with blue skin.

If this sounds a bit, well, derivative its because  it is.  Or if you are being charitable there are only so many sources of inspiration, and Sleeping Beauty dwarves, the Roman era adventures of Asterix, even the Hobbits of the Shire all have common themes.  Asterix btw is roughly contemporary with the Smurfs, while JRR and Uncle Walt's creations were earlier.

The pointy hats, well, those are what are called Phrygian caps.  These are very well known from Roman times, and are sometimes called Liberty Caps.  Here's a coin commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar....

Some Roman deities also went Smurfy style.  Notably Mithras and his attendants.  Oddly, the goddess Libertas usually did not.

As to the Smurfs being villains, well, sure.  But it was not as pejorative term as you might expect. The late Roman era and the early Medieval times had no sharp demarcation.  Rulers changed. Latin, which was probably not much spoken by the rustics anyway, moved over to the churches.  People mostly still lived in the same places as before, mostly did the same work.  Even Roman villas, the upgraded farmsteads where a gentleman could supervise his peasants then enjoy a hot bath and a bit of culture were not totally abandoned.  They just had new owners with a bit less class.

But the peasants who worked there?  Well for them it was pretty much Same Old.  By the Middle Ages, the period in which Peyo set his early work, the term Villain appeared.  Around 1300 if you want to be specific.  At that point villanus, meaning farm hand, had the connotation of "base, or low born rustic".  From there it was pretty much downhill, as in a few centuries it meant a man capable of any manner of gross wickedness".  Villainy if you prefer.

Well that's a long march from my mistaken - or actually was it? - concept of Smurfs as zombies.  One of the other people commenting on the initial discussion did run the basic idea through Chat GPT, asking for a synopsis for a movie script.  AI of course spat out predictable and unremarkable drivel.  I suspect that's all it will be capable of for many years to come.

America's Got Talent (probably with Flute-Girls)

My grandkids enjoy America's Got Talent.  I doubt they watch it, or in fact anything, on broadcast TV, but they sure like the YouTube videos of some of the acts.  Mostly my wife watches these with them.  I can enjoy them too, as there is considerable skill, energy and creativity on display.  But I have the sort of pesky analytical mind that wonders how many takes for each act, how scripted the apparently spontaneous banter with the judges really is, how many acts an audience is expected to sit through in a day.  That sort of thing.

And when my mind wanders thusly, etymology can never be far away.  So, what does Talent really mean?

It goes all the way back to Greek.  Specifically to Talantan which means "a balance, a pair of scales".  I've dug parts of these at Vindolanda.  Here's an example found at the "sister site" of Magna back in 2023.

You could weigh all sorts of things with these, but with the word at hand we need to concentrate on monetary matters.  A "Talent" in ancient times was a measure of silver.  Specifically, 6000 of a silver coin called drachma.  This is about 57.75 pounds of silver, assuming nobody has fiddled with the content, and would be more money than most people of that era would see in their lifetimes.  A drachma was roughly the equivalent of a Roman denarius, and each were about one day's wages.

Why, I've even found the occasional denarius

The Parable of the Talents.  Most of us remember it.  It appears in both Matthew and Luke, in versions that differ enough to suggest they did not come from the same primary source.  Essentially a Master has to take a long trip.  He gives three servants money.  One gets 10 talents, one gets 5, one gets a single talent.

As you recall, the first two servants invested the money and doubled it.  The more cautions third one buried it in a hole - about the equivalent of keeping it in a checking account - and was severely chastised for his caution.

In the middle ages the meaning of talent morphed from a big pile of money into "a gift given for one's use and improvement", then into the abilities - lets call them talents - that enable a person to make good on such an opportunity.  

I have questions.  Did this bit of metaphorical advice have anything to do with the antagonistic attitude of Christians towards Jews regards lending money for profit?  I mean, it seems like the Big Guy specifically endorses this business model.

I also wondered how much trouble a servant would have been if he hadn't even preserved the principle, but lost it all.  This happened pretty often even before cryptocurrencies came along.  One common avenue for investing was backing a trading expedition.  Ships sink.  Bandits gonna bandit.

And I was surprised to learn than an alternative version of the parable occurs in a fragmentary and apocryphal text called The Gospel of the Hebrews.  In it, one of the servants actually blows the entire sum on "prostitutes and flute-girls".  Now, I'm not sure quite what that second category actually is, but it sounds like something you'd find on America - or perhaps Judea's- got Talent!

Pointed and Pungent

This started with a crossword clue.  Wife and I do the NYT puzzles.  Maybe it keeps the ageing mind active, not sure.  But in this case the clue made me pull up a word from deep memory.  Poignard.   It's a sort of dagger, one of many sharp stabby things used indiscriminately in Medieval times.  But other than sounding vaguely French, where does the word come from?

Keep in mind that words relating to basic human activities; eating, drinking, stabbing, tend to be invented early and reused often.  

Poignard comes from 14th Century French, Poignant, a word meaning sharp or pointed.  We still use this word for emotional moments.  Think Hallmark specials where Christmas gets saved and the lady protagonist finds True Love.  It descends from the Latin Pungere, meaning to literally poke or prick, or figuratively to "vex, grieve or trouble".  Pungere is closely related to Pugnus, meaning fist.  Hence Pugnacious and Pugilist.

The French word Pointe dates to about 1200, and combines two versions of Pungere.  Essentially it means both the point of a sword or other stabby object, and the smallest dot that you could make - either on paper or an opponent's skin - with something sharp.  Now of course we refer to a data point, or to the point - often hard to identify - of a discussion.

Pungent survives today as a sharp odor.  Kind of what you'd have a few days after you stabbed somebody with a Poignard.  

Who knew that swordplay, bookkeeping and bad smells were all so closely related?

Janky, Janka and Jenga

After a quarter century of building robots and related things you might imagine I'd be getting good at it.  Not really.  I lack both the patience and the base skill set.  Plus, I see building things as more of an art form.  I prefer funky and creative over cold, efficient engineering.   As a result, many of the things my hands have touched have been described as "Janky".

If the term is unfamiliar to you, well, it means roughly "slapped together, temperamental, probably made of dubious parts".  I plead guilty as charged.

I see it as a term of mild affection.

It is also a very new word, originating sometime in the 1990's, and probably as a variation on "junky".

"Junky" as in, made of junk, dates to the 1870's, while the base word, Junk is older.  Mid 14th century in fact, and supposedly derived from "junc".  This nautical term meant rope or cable, stuff that when it got old was cut up and used for caulking hulls.   A worthy form of recycling in my opinion.

Recently my eye was caught by a word that is trying very hard to be related to Janky.  Specifically, "Janka".

The Janka Scale is a way to accurately measure the hardness of wood.  Quite handy if you want to build non-janky things.  It is equivalent to the Rockwell scale for metal, and measured in much the same way.

It would be great if Janka, Janky, Junk and various other words like junk (as a ship) or junket were all related somehow.  

But, alas.  Junket derives oddly from iuncus, a Late Latin word for basket.  Junk, in the sense of a Chinese ship, comes from a Malay word jong, meaning a large ship.  Nothing to do with caulking of hulls.

And Janka was the name of the Austrian born engineer who invented the Janka test.  His surname, and that of my old pal Kim Johnke, probably derive from a variation on the name "Johan".

Oh, and when you are thinking on hard wooden objects, what about Jenga?  Sorry, Swahili this time, kugenga, meaning to build.

Word origins can be convincing mimics.

Mentioned in part because another Project approaches......

  

Adders and the Addle Pated

Getting close to departure for England.  I'm at the point at where I am steering clear of runny nosed people, even adorable grand children.  It's no fun to be sick far from home.  Once I'm on the ground in rural Northumbria the Things to Worry About shift.  Bad weather of course.  Aches and pains, one assumes.  And adders.  

In our part of Wisconsin there are no venomous snakes.  And if I happen to stray south a bit I  know what a rattlesnake looks like.  I won't bother them, they won't bother me.  But adders, those lone venomous critters of the British Isles (sans Ireland, thanks Pat!), well I don't know what they look like or how they behave.  Here's a picture to help me with the identification:

Got it.  They look enough like rattlers to encourage a wide berth.

But one thing leads to another, and I got to wondering if there was a connection between the words Adder and Addled.  Seems pretty close.  But......nah.

Adder has a long and distinguished history.  It seems most medieval cultures had a similar word for serpent.  I figure the whole Garden of Eden case got them disproportionate attention.  In Gothic the word was nadrs.  In German it was, and still is, natter.  The various dialects of Old English being derived from Germanic sources the word was similar.  At some point a typo occurred, and "a nadder" became "an adder".

The most famous modern use of the word comes from the British classic "Blackadder", in which the scheming titular character always had a side kick named Baldrick, who could charitably be described as "addle pated".

"Pate" refers to one's head.  It derives from the Latin "patina" which means dish and also gives us the word pan.

My initial assumption that addle had a connection with a low crawling reptile, well, I was wrong.  It's considerably worse than that, and I don't feel obliged to recount it.  Lets let it be with the observation that it was not too far removed from the noxious insult that was unearthed at Vindolanda a couple of seasons back.  I think Secundinus and Baldrick had qualities in common.....

Oxymoron

Put this in the category of words that surprise me.  Oxymoron is a term somewhat in decline.  It is in some ways a more polite age.  Referring to someone as a moron is considered bad manners.  Except in heated political discussions of course.

But it got me wondering.  What does oxygen have to do with morons?  No, not like this....

The term refers to a seeming contradiction.  Pick your own examples but the one that got me pondering this was "political science".  Politics has plenty of emotion and conniving.  Science?  Not so much.

So here's the story.

Oxymoron is a surprisingly old word (1650's) and is an example of itself!  It comes to us by the combination of two Greek words, oxys and moros.  Moros of course means "stupid".  It has survived intact from ancient times with the occasional flourish such as Bugs Bunny's Bronxian euphemism "What a Maroon".  

Oxys means sharp.  So combining Sharp and Dull in one word creates the implicit contradiction that defines an oxymoron.

So where does oxygen come into all this?

It actually wandered in late.  Once chemistry emerged from the mystical alchemy days there was quite the effort to define and explain things.  A couple of chemists discovered oxygen at about the same time in the late 1770's, with a Joseph Priestly referring to it as "dephlogisticated air".  Phlogiston was a hypothetical fire-like substance felt to be present in matter.  It all dates back to the Ancient Greeks who had this notion of the universe being made of earth, wind, fire....and water.   Priestly and company had not quite shaken off the Alchemist era I guess.

A Frenchman named Antoine Levasseur proposed the alternate name Oxygen.  He believed that this new stuff was essential in the formation of all acidic compounds.  Oxys as it happens had alternate meanings to the Greeks.  Sharp, sour, acidic all in one word.  One must assume they had a few amphorae of wine go bad on them.

The people who had started using oxymoron over a century earlier had no concept of oxygen at all.

So go ahead, use oxymoron any way you like.  It can mean Sharp/Stupid or Sour/Stupid.  The latter is more common in all ages of history but the former a more useful rhetorical device.

By the way, Priestly's biography is pretty wild stuff.  Invented carbonated water and helped found Unitarianism.  Supported French and American Revolutions.  A mob burned down his house house in England and he had to flee to America.  

Oafs of Middle Earth

J.R.R. Tolkien probably does not follow my writings.  He did after all die in 1973, about when I discovered his work for the first time.  But you never know.  As a devout Christian who did much to promote the faith I'd give him decent odds of being in Heaven where he could probably pick and chose.  Or, eternal justice being a bit opaque, maybe he went to Hell and he's being forced to read this.  You just never know.

So I'll ask, not exactly expecting a reply, J.R.R., why did you decide that the oldest, wisest, most far seeing race in Middle Earth should be called The Oafs?

Well actually, The Elves, but it is the same word.  And Tolkien being a master of etymology would darn well know this.

You have to think of early Germanic cultures as a fairly consistent grouping, whether they were found in Scandinavia, northern England or back home in Germany.  And in such places there were some odd pre-Christian beliefs.  If a child was not turning out as expected it was sometimes assumed that it was a Changeling, a creature left by malicious non human beings who swiped the real baby and swapped in....something else.  It's not a nice concept.  Who knows what was really going on.  Did a previously peaceful child develop severe colic and keep the parents up for months at night?  Did the little bald head sprout red hair?  You could certainly see why both his black haired parents might use this as a go-to answer, although the mother and Sven the red headed guy who lived in the next hut might very well know better.

The beings that pulled off this hoax were variously called yrf, alf, alp, or of course, elf.

Sadly the extension of this concept to children who were not just inconvenient to Frida and Sven, but defective in various ways caused them to be called auf or opf.  Dating to the 1600s it meant 

 "A changeling; a foolish or otherwise defective child left by the fairies in place of another carried off." 

Tolkien's elves were not perfect.  They tended to be a bit smug for instance.  But you could not see them pulling off nasty pranks like this.  A good reminder that while it would be great to live in Middle Earth, living in the Germanic world that inspired it would not be very nice at all.

Dog Names in Chilly Times

It's January.  So of course it has been darned cold lately.  It's even been moderately unpleasant in the UK, which has prompted at least one of my friends to jaunt off to the warmth of the Canary Islands.  

Oddly, while there are canaries on the Canary Islands, the bird is named after the location, not the other way around.  While the islands are named after dogs.  Maybe.

The islands have been known, if not known well, from far into antiquity.  It would be hard to miss them, as the ones nearest to the African coast are visible from same on clear days.  Exactly who came and went - Greeks, Phoenicians, etc. - is somewhat obscure, but the Romans for sure were there for a while at least to do a bit of trading with the locals and collect material for making dye.  They were called the "The Fortunate Isles" in Classical Texts, although it is the Latin Canarie Insulae, or Island of the Dogs, that has stuck.

Was it a reference to actual dogs?  Maybe, they do get around.  Or as some speculate to monk seals, aka "sea dogs", which laze around on the beach in a fashion not without parallel in modern British tourists.

And to be clear to my wide traveling friend Anthea, not trying to draw any direct comparison.

It got me thinking about how the Latin word for dog has not survived much into our modern world.  Maybe that which is right at our elbow becomes familiar and naturally picks up new names in every culture.

"Dog" is suggested to come from "docga" a middle English word that is somewhat suspiciously described as "rare".  It nudged out the Germanic word "hund", still current in that language and which survives as "hound".

When conversing about our dog Hank I try to use words other than dog, as he knows that one.  Some of the other terms and their origins:

"Cur" from the Low German "korren".  The name is said to be echoic, which means it imitates the growling of a dog.

"Mutt", seems to be a shortened version of "mutton head", a term less used with changing diets, but designating a dummy with either two or four legs.

"Mongrel" sounds a little unkind, but other than the Latin is perhaps the oldest word of the lot.  It comes from Proto-German "managjan", which meant to mix together.  Eventually this went through Old English "gemong" and gave us both "among" and "mingling.  The Modern German word "mischling" to mean a mixture of various dog genetics preserves this long and distinguished concept.

Anyway. It's cold.  The dog wants to go out anyway, and I wish I were on a tropical island off the coast of Africa looking at these cute little birds.  I'd try to not annoy my fellow beach lollers with etymology lectures.  It's not what they are there for.

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Morbid Puns in Neilsville Wisconsin?

I had some time to kill the other day.  Hey, this happens when you hunt from sunrise to 10 am, then again from 3 to sunset.  So I drove over to Neilsville, Wisconsin.  There were a few things I wanted to look into.  A couple of former brewery sites, and, while I was in town, a big cemetery.  Seems like the place you'd find a bit crop of Tree Shaped Tombstones.

But actually, no.  The few specimens represented were of one of the boring subtypes, basically just a log with a name on it.  But wait a minute.  That name.  Manes.*

You'd have to be a fan of both tombstones and Roman stuff to make this connection.

Roman tombstones often have the notation DM.  It is short hand for Dis Manibis.  Or in translation "To the Manes".  

The Manes were the spirits of the dead.  Or more correctly, one sort of spirits.  Lares were the good spirits.  They were assumed to already be on your side.  Lemures ** were the evil spirits.  You did not invoke them.  Manes were the the sort of generic spirits of the dead and definitely worth trying to appease.  So, a dedication to the Manes was customary.

Did this 19th century citizen of Neilsville know this fact?  Did he recognize the irony?  I'm thinking yes.  People paid much more attention to the classics in the pre-Tik Tok age.

But perhaps this was a coincidence, a one off. Surely there could not be another tombstone six rows over with a bit of  pun in the inscription?

Or maybe there could be.  Stone representing Wood.

---------------------------------------

*As a surname Manes probably has nothing to do with Latin at all.  If English or Scottish, it is probably a variant of Mains.

** Lemurs got their generic name - and from Linneaus himself no less - because they are nocturnal, creepy looking and make weird noises in the dark.  I think they've earned their association with evil spirits of the dead....

Capricious Thoughts

Sometimes I enjoy questions without answers.  They make you think.

Consider the word Caprice.  It means a sudden change of mind without apparent motive.  It turns up in French in the 16th century, apparently arising from an earlier Italian word, cappricio.  But where did that come from?

Some say it references goats (capro) and their tendency to frisk about in random fashion.  Or, perhaps it combines the words for head (capo) with riccio, a complicated word meaning curled or frizzled hair.  Having one's hair stand on end does not quite seem like caprice, but it is the sort of experience that might change your mind.

Homesteading Home Stretch

The Homesteaders have had marvelous weather here in the home stretch.  The project was delayed a bit by the rains of June, but to have weather like this in the second half of October is a blessing.  

Fall colors with off grid power, solar panels and neatly stacked fire wood.

Or if you prefer, fall colors and ongoing work...

Much of the current work does not photograph well.  Drywall finishing for instance.  But my assignment was not inside.  It was necessary to add a layer of insulation under the floor.  The house sits off the ground - but not very darn far - so one person could crawl under while the other fed rolls of insulation in to be secured.  Hot, tedious work while lying on uneven, hard ground.

It's always fun to work hard alongside your children.  Unexpected conversation topics are frequent.  Such as...why are rolls of insulation called bats?  Well, it is a delightfully obsolete word that refers vaguely to rolls of cotton that had been pounded with bats, or batons if you prefer.  The name just stuck around for rolls of insulation.

OK, then what about brickbats?  A brickbat is a partial brick.  Here a little "Stonehenge" of brick leftovers has been set up on the picnic table.

Brickbat means a partial brick.  It comes from a middle English word meaning a lump or piece.  Perhaps related to the sense of things being hit or knocked with a stick.  In more recent years it has acquired another meaning.  Severe criticism, as in things like theatrical reviews.  Evidently brickbats were popular things to throw during riots and protests.  In more recent times they have turned up in the imaginative comic strip Krazy Kat, a personal favorite of mine.

I must admit feeling a greater kinship with Ignatz than with Krazy.

Wastrels and Scoundrels and Doggerel

I don't know if the world in general thinks much about words, their origins and their meanings.  I do, but must admit that it is a dangerous pursuit.  In our puzzling times - both knowledge and ignorance increasing apace - a word can mean radically different things to different people.  That alone makes the pursuit of etymology more than a minor hobby.  

There are a bunch of words that end with "-rel".  Most of them seem to have negative connotations.

A wastrel wastes things (I suppose typing on a keyboard for the internet counts as wasting time).

A scoundrel is not to be trusted.

Doggerel is bad poetry.

Scoundrel is a word of uncertain origins, possible from the Vulgar Latin (my favorite variant of same) "excondere" meaning to "hide, put away, store".  I'm seeing my ongoing workshop clean up project in a new light now.

Wastrel is easier, combining Waste with what is referred to as the "pejorative suffix" -rel.   Now we are getting somewhere.

Doggerel is simply poetry bad enough that only dogs would appreciate it, or alternatively of a quality suggesting it was written by clumsy puppies.  It would have been a serious zero stars review for a wandering bard when it was first recorded in the 1630's.  Oddly it seems to have been a surname prior to that.  No doubt a good story there, lost to history.

And while we are on matters loyal and furry.....Mongrel.  It comes from the Proto Germanic word "mangjan" meaning to mix things together.  The suffix was tacked on like the tail of a dubious mutt sometime in the 1500's.

I had expected to encounter more words with this suffix.  But about the only other one that seems to still be in circulation is Pickerel.  It had the implication of a small fish in earlier times, but now it designates two delightful piscenes related to the Northern Pike.  I'd like to catch a Chain or American Pickerel someday.  Additions to my Life Species Caught list are getting harder.

Perhaps in a time when we speak negatively about so many things the sting of a "-rel" designation is fading.  We all appreciate a proper scoundrel, so long as we are not the victims of his or her behaviour.  Wastrelry is in the eye of the beholder.  I devote time, energy and pocket change to my grandchildren in ways that are frankly a bit ridiculous.

And regards mongrels....big fan.  I don't specifically read poetry to mine but I talk to him on a regular basis and he's a great audience.

He has been known to express impatience/disapproval, usually with a shake of his head and a loud sneeze.  But I'm thinking any poetry I recite that contains the words "Walk, Food, and Out" would be well received indeed.

Feckless and to No Effect

I try to be apolitical in what I write.  Most Screeds on the internet serve no purpose and are penned by folks who are simply looking to validate things they already believe.  Their time would be better spent studying how their beliefs actually work in the real world.

But I will say that the ability of our political leaders to actually get things done seems to have dropped precipitously in recent decades.  I'm old enough to remember when goals like "get to the moon in the next ten years" were taken seriously.  And accomplished.

No, what we have at present are feckless leaders.

Feckless is an odd, little used word.  I'm sure that is in part because it is to the careless ear a bit too much like a profanity that is so freely employed by the vocabulary challenged.  

Like so many of our guttural yet pithy words "feck" is of Scottish origin.  It dates back to the 15th century and means "value or vigor" being as it is a Caledonian shortening of "effect".  

And like so many of our refined and elegant words "Effect" goes back to Latin by way of French.  "Effectus" meaning "Accomplishment or Performance".  Feckless is simply a haggis flavored variation on ineffectual. 

So much goes back to the Romans.  We still have populism versus elitism, still have corruption and nepotism.  

To show how little new there is under the sun I put forward the term nepotism.  It comes from the Italian for "nephew" (originally of course the Latin "nepote") and reflects the practice of steering lucrative jobs to family members.  The subtext being that it was often the Pope's "nephew" , and that this was a universally acknowledged term for an unacknowledged child of said Pope!

Sigh.  Sweetheart deals going to sons, uncles and brothers.  Unacknowledged children.  How little things have changed.

Con Men (and women) 2024

There are a few downsides to the advent of spring.  It's an election year and the political nonsense has commenced.  The latest are various online and in the mail "news letters" that combine happy sounding stories - nuns installing solar panels! - with political pitches.

It is of course a con.  And that got me thinking of all the ways the prefix "con" fits our current political environment.  I mean this of course in a bipartisan sense.  I'll listen to anyone's sincerely held, reasoned out political philosophy.  Might not agree with it but will respect it.  OK, let's go:

Conspiracy - the etymology of this one is interesting.  It means to "breathe together".  The implication is of connivers whispering to each other at such close range they are breathing each other's air.  In the age of AI assistance there might be no breathing involved at all....

Connive - This one is curious.  Like everything on this list it comes from Latin, in this case conivere, meaning to wink at in a sort of knowing way.  Somehow the word derives from nicitare, to wink.  This word seems to exist in English only in the sense of nictitating membrane, an extra eyelid seen in a few mammals, but more often birds.....and a lot of reptiles.  Lizard people.  I knew it.

Condescend - A bit obvious when you look at it.  It started out as meaning that a ruler might out of consideration deign to "step down" to the level of his subjects in some small matter.  You know, maybe allow the hunting of squirrels on Royal Lands for one day of Lent or something.  Human nature being what it is - and always has been - it soon acquired the sense of patronizing that it carries today.

Considerate - A derivation of consider, from considerare, "to look closely at, to observe".  This one is rather fun, it literally means star gazing.  Sidereal being a surviving but seldom used word to refer to distant stars.  I don't think there are many astronomers working in political campaigns these days.  But of course astronomy and astrology were once the same thing and there are still plenty of hacks and pollsters trying to read tea leaves and entrails.

Confuse and Confound - two words with similar meanings and etymology.  The basic concept is to take different things, mix them together and fuse them into one mass that makes it impossible to tell what went into it in the first place.  Nuns, solar panels and a Senator's re-election campaign just have not been stirred very well.  Sorta like simplistic recipe concocted by unskilled cooks.

Concocted - I had not known until starting this chain of "cons" that this is from concoctare, meaning to cook.  The sense of it being a process lacking transparency and probably honesty survives in the sense of "cooking the books".

This list could go on and on.  Doing things together - "con" - is a basic human function and thus incorporated into all languages.  One does wonder if the more cynical spin on many of these words is a modern thing or if ever has it been thus.  I can't say with Confidence.  That word of course means "to have a common faith", Fides being the Latin for same.  Such faith has so often been abused by those looking to directly make a buck or to slither into office to do so.  Confidence men.  And Women, this being the 21st century.  Shortened to Con Men because so few remember the Latin substructure of our language as it has become increasingly Contorted to mean any darn thing that is Convenient.