malarkey

Holy mackerel, what a lark! What, a lark? Sure, the lark in the morning sings a great song in any key, but don’t believe it. Ah, this is a fine word for blarney, blather, meretricious persiflage… and so Irish in the sound! Well, Mullarkey is an Irish family name. And other early versions of this word have also had an Irish sound to them, for instance Malachy (the form of our first known use). But we have no solid tie to the Irish with this one, as luck would have it. Oh, that doesn’t mean there’s no connection. But the word arose in the United States; its first known user (in other words, the first one to publish it somewhere we can find it) was a cartoonist in 1922. Our malarkeyology doesn’t dig deeper. But it was pretty popular by 1930. And why not? It just flips over the tongue like a flapjack, starting at the lips and then touching the tip with the liquid /l/, rolling through the retroflex /r/ and kicking the back with the /k/ before finally releasing to the /i/, for which the tongue is already bent. It has the same rhythm and general gestural trend as baloney, which is like unto blarney. And malarkey has that corny, fleering /r/, as in “har har.” It’s even kind of like the gobbledegook you get from some turkey – or tell to him to make him go away. But one way or another, whether you’re the monkey or the one on the make, the palaver this word stands for, the name’s nuances notwithstanding, is neither fish nor fowl.

dishevelled

Here’s an adjective for looking like something the cat dragged in, unravelled, half-shrivelled, perhaps shivering… The strongest echoes are of dish and shovel, but the dish would be dirty and a fortiori the shovel too. Negative notes abound in this word: the opening dis, part of dish but still there to see; the sh that could go both ways but is under bad influence here; and chiefly the vell, the same sound as in the ends of evil, shrivel, snivel – yes, as well as swivel, level, and gravel, but just as flashing lights can mean a disco or a cop car depending on context, the negative tone here draws in the bad side of the family all around. The various ascenders and especially the ll (lacking in the single-l American version) may bring wrinkles to mind… or disarrayed hair.

And it is the messy hair more than the messy clothes that gave form to this word: it may seem like it comes from déshabillé, but it is not undress but untress – Old French deschevelé (des+chevel), “de-haired,” which is to say, first of all, shaven! How dis-tressing (and perhaps distressing, but distress is unrelated to tresses or anything to do with hair, etymologically). But also, pretty much from the beginning, with the hair not on the floor but flung about in disorder – hat or scarf off and looking like something frightened as carved by Bernini. And fair enough – even today hair is among the most likely words to be seen with this word. Others include appearance, slightly, and looking. And perhaps, for blog followers, perfectly. Which suggests a sort of raffish redemption for this unsavory word.

soccer

The look of this word is great for its object: it’s like a ball being kicked between the s and the r. To my eyes, it looks like the r has kicked it, as the cce look like leftward motion of the ball we now see at the o. And clearly the r is like a foot upside-down, suggesting that the kick was one of those backflip-type kicks that Brazilians seem to like especially. The sound is good, too, with that quick-impact “sock” (how Andy Cappish) followed by the the echoing rebound “er.” It may sound similar to sucker and succour, but the broadness of the vowel here gives it a much more sportive tone. It has a sonic affinity to saw kerf, too, but only carpenters are likely to carry any flavour of that – or, probably, know what the heck it is. (Hint: saw blades have actual thickness that must be figured into your measurements.)

But this word has the added element of only being used, really, in the United States and Canada – to refer to a game that is much more popular practically everywhere else, and that is everywhere else called football (or fútbol or similar). We can’t call it football here because we have a game that, although it involves mostly hand contact with the ball, is called football. If we talk about it being played elsewhere, we may want, for accuracy, to say football, but then we have to add (soccer) to clarify.

So where did we get this word soccer? From the same blokes what gave us rugger (for rugby) and champers (for champagne) and preggers (need I explain) and those various other laddish -er nicknames. You see, the game thus named was – is – specifically Association Football. And association may be abbreviated assoc. And if you take the stressed syllable of that, drop off the upbeat schwa and add that er, you get soccer – not pronounced “so-sher” because it’s based on the printed form. It was only a nickname in Blighty, but in the colonies we needed a name otehr than football, and this one was suitably catchy… You could see it if it were coming over today: those lifestyle reporters starting their little segments with “It’s called ’soccer.’”*

And when I go to the Corpus of Contemporary American English to check what common collocations of soccer are, the top two play pals are the two kinds of people most often associated (socced?) with it, the one from England and the other from America, the one with their beer bottles and the other with their minivans: hooligans and moms.

* If you hear that “It’s called…” introduction, don’t take it on faith that it actually is called that by much of anyone. Phenylpropanolamine was never listed as “PPA” on any drug labels, but that was all the reporters wanted to call it because they didn’t want to have to deal with phenylphophylphipplprapplhoosywhatshuh. “It’s called ‘PPA,’” they said, but it wasn’t.

zen

This is one of the most overused and persistently misused words in English marketing today. It is typically used to evoke some balanced or focused state of mind, or anyway something to do with enlightenment or bamboo or all that Asian stuff that’s, you know, so wise and calming and all that. The sound of one hand clapping, you know? Hm. How about the sound of one finger raising, specifically the middle one. Given that Zen Buddhism teaches you to eschew attachments, anyone who uses zen to sell anything has already earned a nice, fat fail.

But it is a calming word, isn’t it? That buzz at the start and the sonorous [n] at the end, and the [E] neither broad and brassy like an [a] nor high and tight and sharp like an [i], yet forthright and bright rather than withdrawn and hollow like an [o]. The lips need not move at all; the tongue is resting, with the tip doing all the work, caressing and touching the alveolar ridge. Hours of om could tire your lip muscles, but hours of zen would be no problem – and hours of zen would be even less so, as one does not recite a mantra out loud in zazen.

In what? Zazen is the sitting meditation of zen. In fact, that’s what zazen means: “sitting meditation.” Zen is “meditation,” Japanese, from the Chinese chan (written in Japanese kanji with the same character as used in Chinese), which is turn is taken from Sanskrit dhyana, “meditation.” Yes, this stereotypically mystical Eastern word is a loan from an Indo-European language, mutatis mutandis.

But of course zen is not generally used to refer to meditation specifically. In fact, it’s usually treated as a proper noun when it’s not being used to sell beauty treatments and sports equipment; Zen Buddhism is a sect of Buddhism that focuses on achieving enlightenment through meditation. There are several schools of Zen Buddhism, the two most important being Rinzai, which focuses on meditating on puzzles meant to push the mind towards a sudden attainment of enlightenment, and Soto, which focuses on simple breath meditation and gradual enlightenment.

But this is not a religious studies tasting note. This is a taste of a bit of verbal sushi – a neatly constructed little word that gives a delicate flavour. This set of letters shows up in words such as frozen and mizzen, but those words don’t start with z and they don’t give full value to the vowel – it’s reduced to a schwa. For them, the zen is a buzz, something less than pleasant, whereas when you start with the z you get something exotic, and the associations of this word keep it calming.

And then there’s the sight of it in all capitals: ZEN. Nothing but angles, so sharp. But there’s more: the ending letter, N, is the starting letter turned 90 degrees counterclockwise. Turn your paper 90 degrees clockwise and start the word again. Do this again, and then turn it one more time and you have just the E to make a square. And you have come back to where you started and realized the difference between end and beginning was just a matter of turning your head.

obnoxious

Just how this word communicates its sense is likely to rely to some extent on the accent of the speaker. The rounder vowels of Received Pronunciation give a starchier, rigid, turned-up-nose approach, like the objection to the object; the flat, farther-front sounds of a Northeastern US accent (say, Buffalo) practically epitomize the offensive object itself, like a motor scooter by your bedroom window at 3 AM or a nose full of vinegar.

Speaking of noses, doesn’t that bnox seem like a box on the nose (or, worse, a stop in the Bronx)? And o, o, o, look at the visual rhythm of the word: three o’s, each followed by two other letters; and the heart – with four letters before and four after – is that x, sign of proscription and, in cartoons, of queasiness or unconsciousness. This word is tightly constructed, but just to annoy you.

Like so many of our most expensive words (including many of those with x), this word comes from Latin: ob “towards, in front of, etc.” plus noxius “harmful” equals obnoxious “exposed to harm, liable to punishment.” Oh, wait, what? Yeah, originally to be obnoxious was to be exposed to harm. The sense shifted, though, and didn’t take all that long to do so, probably under the influence of the noxious part, and I’m sure the obstinate ob of obstacle, objection, and other things that get in your way played into that.

And what is most often obnoxious these days? Behaviour. And things that are obnoxious are often rude and/or loud. But, interestingly, they are often not actually harmful – just annoying. But deliberately so!

Overwrought about overweight

Overweight, known to most of us as an adjective, also has a medical use as a noun to refer to the condition of having a body mass index of at least 25 (above normal) but below 30 (obese). I don’t altogether enjoy that usage, aesthetically, but I recognize why it’s used.

A fellow editor mentioned needing to stifle a scream whenever seeing overweight as a noun and having to let it stand. Stifle a scream?

plenipotentiary

Now, this is a mighty impressive word for a mighty, impressive person. Look at it: in the middle is potent – the word of power and prowess – and it’s flanked by torchbearers (i i); surrounding is a plenary session (conference terminology for “everyone attend!”). Three ascenders plus two dots and three descenders: it cuts a profile, and with six syllables and fifteen letters, it has two of many things: two dactyls, metrically; two p’s, two e’s, two n’s, two i’s, two t’s. And a residue of l o ary. It bursts off the start with the plosive p spreading its aspiration onto the l, pops again at the second p and taps up the tension with ten. It’s like a drum flourish before a fanfare. But lest the one who is full of power get too full of himself, let it be remembered that this word contains within itself, awaiting the loss of but three letters (representing three phonemes), a nadir to match the zenith: penitentiary.

acorn

This word has that food-receiving mouthfeel that comes from corn, plus the bit of acuity that comes from the a. Its object presents images of that squirrel favourite, the tree-seed shaped like the head of a medieval yokel with a pageboy bob (or perhaps Dorothy Hamill). Nothing in the shape of the word readily suggests that, though; the closest is the co, a bit like an acorn on its side. (Scramble it and you get caron, a diacritical mark that looks just a little like an acorn cap turned upside down.) It’s just an unassuming little word, really, but one about which many assumptions have been made. It ought not to have the corn at all, etymologically; it appears to stem from the Gothic aker “field,” originally “open country” – source of acre – by way of the derivative akran, which would have signified “fruit of the open country or forest.” Others trace it to óg, an Indo-European root for “fruit, berry.” Wherever it came from, the sense over time narrowed to refer to the oak’s seed specifically. This led to versions such as oke-corn and oke-horn. Most recently, the misconjecture eggcorn has become a word to refer to such folk-etymological misconjectures generally. When we see acorn out on a date, its Betty and Veronica are squash and woodpecker (an acorn squash is a squash that resembles a huge acorn, and an acorn woodpecker is a type of woodpecker that hoards acorns).

starboard

I remember one of my elementary school teachers telling us that on ships, the left side was called port because it was the side towards the port – ships docked on that side – and the right side was called starboard because, as it was away from the port, you could see the stars. In my adult years I have come to realize that many teachers, like many other adults, will often make things up that seem reasonable to them and assert them as fact when explaining things to children. This is one such instance. Actually, the star in this word comes from the word that, on its own, came to be steer in modern English. Old Germanic ships were steered by a steersman who stood on the right side of the vessel with a paddle. (This did force the ship to dock on the left side, so port is port because that’s the side of the ship that had the port – opening – in it for loading and unloading; that side was originally called the larboard.)

But no one thinks of steer now when seeing this word. Steering is not done from the right side and hasn’t been for a long time. And star, well, star is star! It has that éclat that lends fulgurance even to such a baleful thing as a star-chamber. In this word, it is joined to board, which has that rigidity with the hint or threat of splinter, and so you can get a taste of a wooden ship at night, stars above and boards below. Try to ignore the rats running off the left side… the ship is broad and you’re on the right. No mixed-up road brats – or bastard – will steer you wrong. Hard a-starboard!

P.S. There’s a huge amount of etymological rubbish focused on things nautical and naval. Quite a few terms and phrases have baseless – and sometimes breathtakingly inane – stories about nautical origins circulating. Among the most senseless is the assertion that “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” was a reference to cannon balls being stacked on brass plates on a ship’s deck. Whoever made this up knows not enough about a) ships in general, b) naval battles in specific, c) physics, and d) metal. Actually, it came from a host of phrases referring to brass monkeys, the first recorded one being “hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey.” (See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bra1.htm for more details.) Another common fase etymology is for posh, which has for decades been said to stand for “port outward, starboard home.” This is baseless. The term most likely comes from London street slang for “money.” See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pos1.htm for more details.

back in a couple of weeks

I’m taking a little vacation, back around July 5. So don’t fret when you don’t see a word tasting note from me for a couple of weeks!