Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a village in Wales. However, the name was only invented in 1860 as a publicity stunt to attract tourists. In Welsh it means St Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave. Locals often just call it Llanfairpwll.

If you want to know how to pronounce it I have (with much technical wizardry) embedded an MP3 of a rather beautiful song by a chap I was at university with called Nick Kelley. At about the 1:45 mark he manages to not only sing the word, but also make it rhyme twice. The relevant lyrics are:

I'd take the low road to keep you
From the monsters of the loch.
Would you follow me if I got in trouble
all the way to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-
llantysilliogogogoch?




However, if you want a less artificial place name, you should pay a visit to Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill in Australia, which apparently means, Place where the Devil Urinates.

The Infernal Urinal

Floccinaucinihilipilification

The second in our week of long words is floccinaucinihilipilification, which is the act of believing something to be worthless. Unlike yesterday's Hottentottenpotentatentantenattentat, floccinaucinihilipilification is actually rather useful. You can say: "I was very offended by his floccinaucinihilipilification of my poetry."

In fact, I once managed to work floccinaucinihilipilification into an essay at university - the context was something along the lines of "Goneril and Regan's floccinaucinihilipilification of kingship". Bill Clinton's press secretary managed it too. Whilst talking about the economy in 1995 he said:

They happen to produce huge billion dollar differences over seven years in the federal budget, which is why they become fairly incendiary as the debate goes along. But if you—as a practical matter of estimating the economy, the difference is not great. There's a little bit of floccinaucinihilipilification going on here.

The etymology is quite simple: it's four Latin words that all meant worthless: flocci means a tuft of wool (as in floccilation which I wrote about here), nauci means trifle, nihil means nothing and pili means a hair. These were all synonyms to the Romans, and were listed together in a standard Latin textbook of the eighteenth century. Hence the word.

There's a related verb, floccipend, which means to regard as insignificant. And even more lovely, if you are lady habitually given to floccinaucinihilipilification, you are a floccinaucinihilipilificatrix.

An act of floccinaucinihilipilification

Long Words and Unfortunate Aunts

We're going to have a week of posts on long, jormungandrian words. And we shall start with the dead relative of a Khoekhoe king.

The Khoekhoe are a people of Southern Africa. Like their their neighbours, the San, they use a peculiar clicking sound in their language that sounds utterly alien to European ears. This is probably the reason that Dutch explorers called them stutterers or Hottentots. If you want to read some other theories about the etymology follow this link.

The word Hottentot spread among European languages, probably just because it's such a lovely word to say aloud, and thus it got into German. The German language is remarkably open to the formation of compound words, and making up long silly ones is something of a parlour game beyond the Rhine. So, though the word was only invented as a tongue twister, Hottentottenpotentatentantenattentat is a perfectly viable German word. It means the assassination of the aunt of a Hottentot pontentate. Tante is aunt and attentat is assassination.

It's 36 letters long, but only uses 7 letters to get there. Incidentally, the adjective of Hottentot is, or can be, Hottentotic.

And here is a useful video on how to do the clicky sounds.

Kingly Corduroy

I have discovered that my trousers are kingly.

That's not to say that they appear regal to the nude eye, but etymologically they should sit upon a throne because they are made of corduroy.

The OED has two alternative etymologies for corduroy: either it is corde du roi, which is French for the king's cord, or it's named after the English surname Corderoy. However, that means it's kingly either way because the family name Corderoy comes from the French coeur de roi meaning heart of a king.

Oddly, the French don't call it corduroy or corde du roi, instead they called them king's cords, meaning that they had borrowed the English French term and translated it to make a French English one.

Corduroy was an English invention and was manufactured in Manchester, which is why the Germans used to call it Manchesterstoff, which sounds a lot less regal.

Eh?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm something of a word-chap. I've read Ulysses three times, and enjoyed it, which is more than can be said for James Joyce's wife who only made it to page 26.

However, I am currently involved in the attempted purchase of a piece of property. This means that I have to read over a million billion documents written in legalese. For example, this sentence, which I have not made up:

There are excepted from the effect of registration all estates, rights, interests, powers and remedies arising upon, or by reason of, any dealing made in breach of the prohibition or restriction against dealings therewith inter vivos contained in the Lease.

If any reader can tell me what that means, or even hazard a guess, I would be greatly grateful.

(Inter vivos means not in a will)

Me

Ante-Jentacular

Ante-jentacular means before breakfast. It's therefore an immensely useful word for describing coffees, showers and the occasional bloody mary.

August August

Welcome, dear reader, to August, the most august month of the year. The month is stressed on the first syllable and the adjective, meaning grand, is stressed on the second. But they both derive from exactly the same place.

Gaius Octavius Thurinus was posthumously adopted by Gaius Julius Caesar and changed his name to that of his new dead dad. Then, in 27 BC, the Roman Senate awarded him the honorific name Augustus, meaning venerable - something akin to your majesty. That's the word from which we get the word august, meaning grand.

So Gaius Octavius Thurinus ended up being called Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus. Then in 8 B.C. the Roman decided to rename the month Sextilis in his honour. And that's where we get the month of August.

For some reason the month is a trochee - August - and the adjective is an iamb - august. Another word from the same root is augment which is also stressed on the second syllable.

The point about all these stressed syllables is that you can arrange them in patterns, for example stressed and soft syllables alternating. So, in iambic pentameters:

Augustus's augustness was augmented
The day the month of August was invented.

I am monarch of when I survey

My right there is none to dispute

To September's first day from July

You will find that my name is the root.