Mendaciloquent

If you ever want to call somebody a liar, but don't want them to know that you have made such an accusation, the word to use is mendaciloquent. Although, really it's more subtle than that. Mendaciloquent is a combination of mendacity and eloquence. So perhaps it's more like having the gift of the gab, except much, much grander.

Salient Salmon and Somersaults

The word salient originally meant leaping. It comes from the Latin word salire, which meant leap, and it is one of the many words that were invented by this blog's favourite essayist Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica:

Salient animalls, and such as move by leaping

But from these bestial beginnings, salient was then taken up by mathematicians, who decided to use it for a discontinuous leap in a graph. If the value of an equation changes suddenly then it leaps from one position on the graph to another. Thus is it salient.

From that you got the idea of anything that sticks out, and from there to today's meaning of important. However, many of salient's cousins are still jumping about. Salmon, for example, probably also derives from the Latin salire because salmon are always jumping out of the water. And so do the words assault (to jump at) insult (to jump in) and exult (to jump out). Moreover, there is a supersault, although we don't spell it that way anymore, because somewhere on the journey from Latin to English it got corrupted to sobersault and from there to somersault.

The Inky Fool inspecting his ceiling

Zugzwang, the devil, and Beowulf

Zugzwang is a chess term. When any move you can make will land you in more trouble, that's a zugzwang. It's from the German for move (zug) and compulsion (zwang). But try saying it aloud. It's glorious. It has a sort of back-and-forth motion to it.

Essentially, zugzwang is the same as being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, except that it implies more options. The misery and melancholy of the zugzwang can extend in every direction.

Incidentally, you may have been wondering why I didn't capitalise the devil in devil and the deep blue sea. The reason is that the phrase has nothing whatsoever to do with his satanic majesty. Like so many phrases it's nautical.

The devil of a ship is, according to Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book (1867),

The seam which margins the waterways on a ship's hull 

Which means that it's a strip on the outside of the ship, just above the waterline. Occasionally, sailors used to be sent down to caulk the devil, which was a very precarious job because you were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

That, in turn reminds me of one of the finest moments in Anglo-Saxon poetry, with which I shall leave you for today. It's from Beowulf and describes the lake where Grendel and his mother live. Here's Seamus Heaney's translation:

A few miles from here
A frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
Above a mere; the overhanging bank
Is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
The water burns. And the mere-bottom
Has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
The hart in flight from pursuing hounds
Will turn to face them with firm-set horns
And die in the wood rather than the dive
Beneath its surface. That is no good place.

Which is classic case of elaphine zugzwang.

Poor bit of a ship.

(Incidentally, I wrote about this song before. Link here.)

Gongoozler

A gongoozler is an idle fellow who stares at things. I am therefore, I confess, a gongoozler. But it's such a lovely word that I don't mind. I gongoozle with pride.

Gongoozler is only recorded from 1904 onwards; but it's probably a lot older. It is, or appears to be, a combination of two Northern dialect words for stare - gawn and gooze - which must somehow be related to gaze and gawp.

According to the OED, gongoozler was originally much more specific and meant "an idler who stares at length at activity on a canal". Luckily, I have just moved house and am now only ten minutes amble from the Regent's Canal. So I can gongoozle to my heart's content. In fact, I find it astonishing that the estate agents didn't mention anything about the gongoozling potential.

Venice - the gongoozler's paradise.

Egotheists and Interviews

One up from an egotist is an egomaniac. One up from an egomaniac is an egotheist, which the OED defines as the (mystical) identification of oneself with the Deity. One up from an egotheist is a blogger who posts a link to a magazine article about himself.

That's me.

Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.

You see, The Bookseller magazine did an interview with me because of the my book, The Etymologicon, which is coming out in November (but you can order it now). So if you're as obsessed with me as I am, click on this link. I do lots of explaining of funny words and the like and the interviewer was quite unnecessarily nice about me.

I should also mention that the OED says of the word interview:

In early times, esp. a formal or ceremonial meeting of princes or great persons

Me. Me. Me. Me. Me!

Buy me.

Buoyant Boys

I had never, until the other day noticed the obvious connection between a buoy, the thing that floats around in the sea, and buoyant. It may have been obvious to you, you clever thing, but it had whooshed straight over my head like the link between Capuchins and cappuccinos.

Buoy itself comes from the Old French word boie meaning chain, because buoys are chained in place. This means that a buoyant personality is technically a shackled one. What's odder is that if somebody was a prisoner they were emboie, or chained up. This meant that boy was a name given to prisoners, then servants, then peasants, and then young males in general. And that's where we get the word boy.

Vocal C[h]ords

According to The Guardian, an actress has...

...previously expressed her eagerness to flex her vocal chords on a guest spot on Glee, and for a spell was attached to a Judy Garland biopic.

Aha! I thought. There's a topic for a post. Because, you see, there are cords in your throat that vibrate to produce sound. Several people's vocal cords vibrating at the same time will produce a chord.

So I go to the OED. I look up cord. I get down to section 2.b and there it is.

Now applied generally to a nerve trunk, and spec. to certain structures, esp. the spermatic cord, spinal cord, and umbilical cord, the vocal cords; see these words.

Ok. I'll see those words. I turn to the entry for vocal and to my shock and flabbergasterment, I see this in section 6.a:

Operative or concerned in the production of voice. Freq. in vocal chord, vocal fold, vocal organs, vocal tract, etc.

So I can't really criticise The Guardian at all. Or if I did, I'd have to sneer at the OED too, which is blasphemous. I would have no lexicographical backing or supply chain. I would just be alone, muttering maledictions, straining my vocal kords, and shouting myself horse.

The Inky Fool was feeling a little horse that day.