Potable: WotW

Potable is a French word that means “Drinkable”.  In the popular modern vernacular it’s usually used with medical connotations, that is, [medically] safe to drink, though its etymological ancestors had more to do with fluidity, in the same way as anti-freeze, hydrochloric acid, and other liquids which are technically drinkable, but not – in the modern sense – potable.

Like basically every other word in French, potable comes from Latin.  It likely began as potare (a verb), to drink; and later became potabilis, drinkable, before the final stage of its evolution in France.

Potable has no relation to pot (the cooking receptacle), which comes from the old English potte, and is likely derivative of the proto-germanic puttaz.

Thanks for reading
Mike

Legend: WotW

A legend is a story, tale, or narrative that relates an account of  events that occurred within the scope of human history.  Generally, legends are integral parts of a culture’s mythology, chronicling characters, events, themes, and values that have especial significance to the people that originated the story.  Examination of legends from history will generally reveal a curve; where older legends incorporate more supernatural or unbelievable aspects; key to the idea of the legend is verisimilitude, a modicum of believability in context – as history has progressed and people have become more enlightened, our legends have necessarily grown less fantastic.

Legend probably comes from the French legende, which came from medieval Latin’s legenda, both of which meant, literally, “story”, but it was most often used specifically in the context of church, or biblical studies; both of those came from the older Latin legendus, which meant “to read, gather, or select”.  Legend probably began to develop it’s current meaning after it’s legende/legenda phase, where it’s colloquial association with tales of Christian mythology, coupled with the wide distribution of Catholicism (and with it, Latin) throughout Europe caused the word to adopt its aspect of verisimilitude (as the Catholics of that period interpreted the bible as a literal, historical document).

P.S.  I took a bit of a hiatus there (I know, I know, it was a world-rocking event that totally shook the rhythm of your life out of time, truly a very big deal to you), part of my excuse is the dusk-’til-dawn cram sessions of Endless Legend I’ve played over the previous week, and part of it was me letting the ugly procrastination monster (whom I often like to imagine is a Kafkaesque, instectile monstrosity) bamboozle me into spending the time with him rather than producing (we play card-games).  I apologize, I’ve given a portion of my food to the Sin Eater down the street (coincidentally, I do know a Welsh person [well, ethnically at least]), and I’m sufficiently penitent, again, my apologies; bygones gone and what-not.
That said, I have not been idle, I’ve discovered a lovely cafe in town that’s been wonderful for the creative part of my brain, and I have been spending a great deal of time there after work that has resulted in a not-insignificant amount of lost sleep as well written material (including some original fiction) that has hit paper, but has yet to go digital.  Hopefully you’ll be seeing some of that in the near future

As always, thanks for reading
Mike

Draconian: WotW

Something that is draconian is unnecessarily severe or harsh – despite a modern, general usage, draconian is still most at home when referring to law, and rules in general.  Draconian comes from an archaic form of itself, ‘draconic’, which referred to the policies of the first true legislator of the Athenian city state in ancient Greece.

Draco, sometimes called the ‘lawgiver’, codified the oral and traditional laws of Athens so that they could be consistently and fairly enforced by courts – Draco’s legal system was the forerunner of virtually all modern ones.  Unfortunately, draconic law was so severe that it prescribed death as the punishment for even minor crimes such as petty theft and loitering; additionally, any debtor whose social status was lesser than his debt holder’s could be easily forced into indentured slavery.  Eventually, Draco’s laws were reformed and rewritten, but his name lived on as an adjective used to refer to any system of rules (and, eventually, basically anything) that was cruel, merciless, or iron-fisted.

So what about dragons?  If you’re anything like me,  draconian has a separate meaning (as does draconic) that’s got nothing to do with legislation.  In a great deal of literature, and the gaming community, draconian and draconic refer to dragons, or dragon-like things.  So what’s up with that?  Turns out, Draco’s name might have meant something like ‘sharp sighted’; if that’s the case, it’s possible that it came from the root ‘drak’, which meant ‘too see clearly’, which came from derk, ‘the one with the deadly glance’.  Drak is likely the direct source of ‘drakon’, which meant ‘huge sea serpent’; making Draco’s name inextricably linked with the eventual Latin word, Dragon.

On a related note – an interesting bit of Greek folklore has Draco’s cause death listed as asphyxiation from being buried under the hats and coats of the adoring masses.  It seems that ancient Greece is the birth-place of the practice of throwing one’s clothing onto the stage as a show of adulation after a performance.  Allegedly, after giving a speech in his home town, the crowd was so enthusiastic about throwing their head garments and over-clothes at the states-man that he was buried to the point of being unable to breath, and died.

As always, thanks for reading
Mike

There’s an MP3 of me reading this post in my kind of hoarse voice, but I haven’t worked out the details on how to get it available yet – I’m thinking about posting it (and future audio files) on Archive.org.  More on that later, hopefully.

“Cold Enough To Freeze The Balls Off Of A Brass Monkey”: WotW

Okay, “Cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey” isn’t a “word”, in the strictest sense of the word, but it is composed of words, and is one of my favorite expression to boot.  One says “whoo, it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey” when it is, in fact, very cold.

This phrase is one of the reasons I like Winter (and there are so very few); I get to drop this delightful idiom and draw shocked or beleaguered glances from my customers at the Kwik Stop – and when they are curious enough to ask, I am more than happy to give them a moderately well rehearsed explanation of this curious nautical phrase.  That explanation goes something like this.

Back in the days when people still used old sailing ships and naval battles were commonplace, the ship-to-ship weapon of choice was the black powder cannon.  Traditional cannons need a couple of things to fire, not the least of which are black powder and cannon balls.  On most vessels, both were kept in the appropriately named “powder room”.
For what ought to be obvious reasons, it wouldn’t have done to have the sods firing the cannons running up and down to the powder room for a new cask of powder or the next ball in the middle of a tilted confrontation; most ships employed young adolescent men to do the job for the gun-men.  These boys often got covered in the sooty residue of the powder they carried, and would turn black from head to foot before a day was through; they came to be known as powder monkeys through virtue of their stature and their filthiness.
Powder monkeys were also responsible for bringing cannon balls on deck.  Since carrying just one ball at a time was inefficient, the monkeys used metal trays made of brass, which was the metal of choice because it was both light and strong.
Now, as you may or may not know, Brass contracts when exposed to cold temperatures; as you may or may not also know, winter on the high seas gets really fucking cold.  Once water is hot or cold, it tends to want to stay that way, making general plummets in overall regional temperature slow-going, but intense and long-lasting.  Add that to the fact that winds on the open water are typically severe and unimpeded by any sort of breaks, and you have the recipe for a frozen-ass sailor in a winter storm.  After awhile, enough such sailors observed the phenomena of equally frozen powder monkeys with cannonballs spilling off of their shrinking brass trays – which were called Brass Monkeys by association with those that carried them –  that the phrase “it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey” was born and quickly disseminated into the body of common nautical vernacular.

As always, thanks for reading
Mike

Catharsis: WotW

Catharsis is actually one of my favorite words, it’s got three syllables (and that’s the magic number), has a terse but fluid mouthfeel (which is technically a food word, but I’m using it for language right now), and an evocative meaning with personal significance to myself.

Catharsis is the expelling or release of stress, or negative emotion, from a person – in the modern context, catharsis can be quite general; and though it is usually a vicarious thing, it is sometimes referenced as an insular event.  In the more archaic sense, catharsis is almost always the result of viewing art, and is thus also exclusively a product of vicarious experience; this has to do with the words etymology.  In the original Greek, katharsis meant only cleansing, or purging; and came from kathairo ‘I cleanse’; from katharos, pure, or clean – it acquired its connection to emotion, and art, when Aristotle used it in his work Poetics while trying to describe the effect of art on its consumer.  It is unclear how catharsis moved from Greek to English, but it’s possible that it was simply transplanted directly with translations of Poetics; in any case, Aristotle’s coined definition has become the prevailing one, though a general usage (which actually cleaves closer to the original word) is becoming commoner.

A note:  Catharsis is singular, catharses is plural.  Also catharsis refers to an experience had by a person.  I explicitly clarify this because catharsis is often used improperly in the context of its adjective form, cathartic.  Something which is cathartic induces catharsis in a person – it is not catharsis itself.

As always, thanks for reading
Mike

Technical Problems, DCC, and Catharsis

Due to brief, but now resolved technical problems with my writing computer, I was unable to post the WotW for this week, catharsis, on Monday.  That said, my brief hiatus coincided well with the arrival of my new copy of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG on Tuesday.

Expect a write-up of my initial thoughts on DCC sometime soon.  Also on the docket is a design page for something I’ve had in written form for some time that I’m calling Crawl.

Thank you for your patience,
Mike

Facetious: WotW

To be facetious is to be witty or humorous.  In the beginning, being facetious was considered a positive thing; now the word most often has connotations of poor timing or bad taste.

Facetious came to English from French, back when that sort of thing was still common, adopting the modern spelling in place of facetieux, which was a development on the 15th century facetie, ‘a joke’.  The French got it from the Romans, who said facetiae ( [a] jest, or witticism), which in turn came from faectus, meaning witty, elegant, fine, or courteous.

There is some evidence to suggest that facetious might even trace its roots all the way back to fascis, an early Latin word referring specifically to an axe with rods bundled about the haft.  In Rome, fasces (plural) symbolized power and rulership – a tradition that can be traced to the Mediterranean isle of Crete. Fasces might come from faski, which is from a pre-Latin language and meant ‘bundle’, which might in turn come from the proto-Indo-European bhasko, meaning the same.  If that is the case, facetious is a distant cousin of the modern word faggot – which has taken on an unsavory colloquial definition recently, but really refers to a simple bundle of sticks, true to its roots.

Thanks for reading
Mike

Procrastinate: WotW

For reasons which I choose not to elucidate now, this week’s word is procrastinate.  Procrastinate, like so many of my favorite words, comes straight from the balmy Mediterranean shores of old Rome and the Latin tongue.  Pro and crastinus (forward and ‘belonging to tomorrow’, respectively) combined to create procrastinationem, ‘[the act of] putting off until tomorrow’.  The latin ’em suffix got dropped in France, giving us the noun form of the word we have now.

To procrastinate is to delay, true to the etymology, to put off ’til another day.  Procrastination is more than laziness actualized, though; procrastinators – good ones – are masters of self-distraction that have a curiously conscious, sub-conscious control of their own attention; it is both intentional and habitual.

Procrastionation has been the subject of many a great aphorism and platitude, such as procrastination is the thief of time, or Mark Twain’s never put off ’til tomorrow what may be done the day after just as well.

Pulpit: WotW

A pulpit is typically understood by modern English speakers to be the high reading desk from which many preachers deliver a sermon.  It’s also used interchangeably in some [specific] cases to refer to the act of preaching or a specific instance of it, or to preachers as a collective group.

Pulpit is most commonly used in reference to Christian assemblies and churches, which makes sense considering it comes from the Latin pulpitum – originally pulpitum meant something like stage, and was used in reference to actors.  After Italy Christianized, the meaning changed to the modern one.

A German word, pult, also comes from pulpitum, and means desk.

Pulpit has a nautical meaning, in the context of boats and sailing it refers to the railing at the bow (front) of the ship.

As always, thanks for reading
Mike

Grimoire: WotW

A grimoire is a sort of text-book, or reference guide, on occult matters such as magic, alchemy, or demons.  Notable grimoires include the Book of Enoch found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Angle-Saxon leechbooks, or the French Petit Albert.

Grimoire is a French word; it might come from grima, which means mask, and is likely old Frankish or derivative of a similar word from Germanic and Norse.  It might also be from the Latin rimario, which meant something like ‘book of rhymes’.  Either way, one of those roots mingled with the old French grammaire, which meant something like ‘classical learning’ – which was from the Latin grammatica, from the Greek word grammatike, ‘skilled in writing’ – to give us grimoire.

Interestingly, because of its Greek root, grimoire is sibling words with both grammar and glamor (glamour).

As always, thanks for reading
Mike

PS.  This week’s WOTW was late due to a technical difficulty with the WordPress servers, it was a transient thing, and should not be an issue in the future, much.  Thanks again.