Friday, June 19: Bandersnatches
FEELIN’ WORDY
by Steve Steinbock
I’m in the wordy spirit. In last week’s column I wrote about the meanings and etymologies of unkempt, nonplussed, and egg on. There was a lot of discussion in the comments about how nonplussed has flipped its egg, going sunny-side up when its intended meaning is over hard. That’s a funny thing about words. They don’t always say what they mean.
“I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles. –I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.
“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.
“Exactly so,” said Alice.
“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least – at least I mean what I say – that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”
“It is the same thing with you,” said the Hatter. . .
On Tuesday, my friend and abettor (not to be confused with abattoir) Rob Lopresti told us how a vocabulary explanation from a college professor led him to dub a street musician a “Shanty Drummer,” which in turn inspired the beautiful story in this month’s EQMM.
That same issue of EQMM contains a story by frequent Criminal Brief visitor, mystery maven, reviewer extraordinaire (and like Rob, an academic librarian), Jon Breen. In that story, the characters of Detectives Foley and Berwanger play with the word disgruntled.
“You look disgruntled,” Berwanger said.
“Yeah, I am,” the kid said.
“Well, we’ll do our best to gruntle you.”
“Shouldn’t that be regruntle him?” Detective Foley suggested.
Disgruntled is a pretty strange word, which doesn’t seem to have changed its colors, but doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about its etymology. The root is grunt. So a person who is gruntled would have a tendency to grunt. Wouldn’t you think that to be disgruntled would be a good thing?
I’ll tell you an adverb that has me disgruntled (in the sense that it makes me grunt): gingerly. What the hell does that mean, anyway? (he asked, gingerly). If ever there was an empty, useless word, gingerly is it. When I hear the word ginger, I imagine red-headed orphans, the movie star from “Gilligan’s Island,” and the pickled sushi accompaniment. Turns out the word comes from a Latin root meaning “well-born,” and is related to the modern adjective, gentle.
I’ll be back in a week with more words to dismember and disremember.
Steve, when you think of ginger only one thing should come to mind: Rogers.
Sometimes having a limited knowledge of a language can lead to great phrases. Not the kind approved by professors of English, but great. This morning on a messageboard where I make a daily fool of myself a man from Estonia wrote a good morning note. Here’s an excerpt: “I then took the park side of the city and went to the open air marked place where there were lot of folk of any sort.”
All wrong, perhaps, but it says so much.
I suppose I should be grateful I am not an abattoir. Does that remind anyone else of Monty Python’s architect sketch? The architect is demonstrating his design for a block of flats (apartment house to us Americans): “”The moving belt brings the residnets, in extreme comfort, to the rotating knives…”
I have a framed copy of that Tea Party illustration on the wall of my dining room.
Speaking of architecture, last night I watched the ITV (British) TV miniseries “Lost in Austen” (about a 21st century Jane Austen fan trapped in the world of Pride and Prejudice). At one point the heroine says to Mr. Darcy, “Mr. Collins says that Lady Catherine’s buttresses are the talk of the county.” The way she said it, and her subtexted intention made me fall of my buttresses.
I meant “fall OFF my buttresses,” but you probably got my point.
Thanks again, Steve. I love these language discussions. Disgruntled is one of those words, and there are a lot of them, that sound like they should have an antonym but don’t, at least not in common usage. Look at all the fun people have had with overwhelmed. Underwhelmed is good, but I prefer Mel Brooks’s simple whelmed, meaning (I guess) impressed but not excessively.
“The tythe-pig gruntles in the vicar’s ear.” —From “The Justification: A Poem”, anonymously printed in 1777 by William Combe (1741-1823), an early Romantic poet nicknamed “Dr. Syntax” because of his awkward style.
The “dis-” in “disgruntle” is an intensifier by way of the Latin, as the OED explains: “With verbs having already a sense of division, solution, separation, or undoing, the addition of dis- was naturally intensive, ‘away, out and out, utterly, exceedingly’, as in disperire to perish utterly, dispudere to be utterly ashamed, distædere to be utterly wearied or disgusted; hence it became an intensive in some other verbs, as dilaudere to praise exceedingly, discupere to desire vehemently, dissuaviri to kiss ardently. In the same way, English has several verbs in which dis- adds intensity to words having already a sense of undoing, as in disalter, disaltern, disannul.”
Hey, I use those words all the time.
Why don’t I doubt that?
I find myself gruntled, plussed, and whelmed by this whole discussion.
(Any word okayed by Mel Brooks is okay with me.)
I was losing my habit to search for the meaning of the words. Thanks for bring the challenge in a gentle meaning… Did i meant what I say. Yes and I say what I meant…
Great article!
I’m not sure whether Emma’s message above was created by software natural language generator, or if perhaps her native language is other than English—but it almost makes sense, so I approved it.
You go, Emma!
Gotta see “Lost In Austen.” If they do her up as well as the ribbing she got in “Blackadder The Third” it’ll be worth it!