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Word of the Week*: Apricity

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A couple of months ago, a friend posted a list** of “Old English Words to Revive,” and I was charmed to see that the first word on the list was “apricity”.

I first came across the word apricity nearly ten years ago, in a book by dictionary collector Ammon Shea called Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. Shea sat down every day for a year (okay, he changed position occasionally) and read the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover (even the 451 pages of self-explanatory “un-” words), narrating as he went, with different chapters focusing on dictionaries, or libraries, or blinding headaches… At the end of each letter’s chapter he presented a list of words he found particularly noteworthy, and I began a practice of learning at least one from each chapter. Due partly to the primacy effect and partly to the fact that it instantly became and remained my favorite, my word from the first chapter is the one I have remembered longest. Here’s what he has to say about it:

Apricity (n.): the warmth of the sun in winter.
“A strange and lovely word. The OED does not give any citation for its use except for Henry Cockeram’s 1623 English Dictionarie. Not to be confused with apricate (to bask in the sun), although both come from the Latin apricus, meaning exposed to the sun.”

I have been most pleased to have this word at my disposal of late, since I’ve found that no matter how cold it has gotten in the past few months, and especially in the past few weeks, nor how well bundled up I am (which has been pretty well, in fact, for which I’m extremely grateful), there is something remarkable about stepping into the sunlight and feeling just the tiniest respite. And so I’ve been remarking upon it.

shadow of train bridge on snowy river

A view from the train last week.

There are some other interesting and illuminating references to the word “apricity” scattered about the Internet. Here’s one from young adult author Julie Glover (in a post from 2014 that starts off with a link to a BuzzFeed list of similarly obsolete words, illustrated entirely with owls):

“Apricity. Here’s a word you’ll especially appreciate this time of year. Apricity is the warmth of the sun on a cold day. Have you enjoyed a moment of apricity lately? The word hails from the Latin apricus, which means exposed to the sun. It’s the same stem from which we (eventually) got the word apricot. The word is first referenced in a dictionary from the 1620s, but it no longer makes the cut in current dictionaries.
Which is a shame, because I could really use a word for that sense of sunny warmth as soon as I walk out from the coffee shop I’m currently in and emerge into the frigid (well, frigid for Texas) weather. I plan to revel in the apricity anyway.”

Yum, apricot.***  And here’s another, from Merriam-Webster’s Words at Play feature:

About the Word
This word provides us with evidence that even if you come up with a really great word, and tell all of your friends that they should start using it, there is a very small chance that it will catch on. Apricity appears to have entered our language in 1623, when Henry Cockeram recorded (or possibly invented) it for his dictionary The English Dictionary; or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words. Despite the fact that it is a delightful word for a delightful thing it never quite caught on, and will not be found in any modern dictionary aside of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Example
“These humicubrations, the nocturnal irorations, and the dankishness of the atmosphere, generated by a want of apricity, were extremely febrifacient.” Lorenzo Altisonant (aka Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour), Letters to Squire Pedant, 1856****

Shea says, at one point in his book, referring to certain words that have gone out of favor:
“Even though I do not feel a need to remember these words, I do feel a need to know that someone has remembered them. It is comforting to me to know that they have not been wholly cast aside, and are still available to anyone who cares to visit the OED, whether it is some poet trying to find the right word to make verse properly obscure or a head-scratching child trying to make sense of some obscure poet she’s been assigned to read in school. The fact that the OED cares so much about words that almost everyone else happily ignores is one of its finest traits.”

So here’s one I feel the need to remember, and clearly, despite Merriam-Webster’s caution, it also wants to make a comeback. Let’s see whether we can bring this one to an higher level of consciousness and give it (at least) the moment in the sun that it truly deserves.

—–

* More alliterative than predictive, I think. Especially since my original idea for this post was back in November. The fall had been so unseasonably warm, and the transitions back and forth so abrupt, that even the chilly days near Thanksgiving seemed extra cold. Had no idea then that we’d soon be facing a nationwide cold snap quite like this one!

** Hat tip to Kathryn Perko.
Image apparently from Breathe Magazine via FB page of Watkins Books, an esoteric bookshop in London.
With a caveat that I’m posting it here because it’s pretty. “Old English” should be taken with a grain of salt,***** and I’m actually not on board with reviving all of these words.****** “Schoolman”? Not only is it fairly transparent (that is, someone could make it up independently), but also we’ve all been working rather hard to have *fewer* professional names that specify sex/gender. It does have an evocative feel to it, but I think it should stay happily archaic.

***My first taste of a fresh apricot, after many years of eating dried ones as childhood snacks, echoed my response to eating a real fig for the first time: “Oh! It’s…it’s like a Fig Newton, only more so!”

****Indeed.

*****Or possibly less salt; it has been pointed out to me (thanks, Dan D.) that the list creators may have been trying to say “Old [English words]” rather than “[Old English] words”.  Which I suppose I can see…

******There are some I like a lot, though, and could imagine using: “As it happens, the alternative to bedward braiding is to awaken in the morning with total elflock.”

On Specificity

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rooibos

rooibos flowers (mightyleaf.com/organic-rooibos.html)

A new colleague of mine introduced me to rooibos tea a couple of weeks ago*. Since several people in the office were wondering how to pronounce it correctly, I took to the internet to find out more. And there I was on the Rooibos Wikipedia page**, where I checked the pronunciation:

“Rooibos (Anglicised pronunciation: /ˈrɔɪbɒs/ ROY-bos; Afrikaans pronunciation: [rɔːibɔs], meaning “red bush”; scientific name Aspalathus linearis) is a broom-like member of the Fabaceae family of plants growing in South Africa’s fynbos.”

And then it continued: “The generic name comes from the plant Calicotome villosa, aspalathos in Greek…” And I thought, ha ha, generic name: what’s next, the brand name? And then I thought, wait, this is the scientific naming system we’re talking about, which means that “generic name” is referring to … the genus. And so it immediately follows (as it does right there on that Wiki page) that the next thing should be the “specific name,” or, in fact, the species: “The specific name linearis comes from the plant’s linear growing structure and needle-like leaves.”

I have known the word pairs genus/species and general/specific for a long, long time, but how often have I thought about them together? And now it turns out they’re relatives. Click, click, and now these words will be forever linked in my head. Thank you, rooibos tea!  (Or, thank you, Wikipedia.)

This also brings to mind the time I was trying to create a word puzzle*** by coming up with two separate words that matched the irregular plural pattern -en (singular) and -ina (plural) but were not themselves related. Alas, I no longer remember the original words that demonstrated this plural pattern****. But I do remember how excited I was when I thought of the words “stamen” (part of a flower) and “stamina” (endurance) … which lasted for about five minutes, until I looked them up and discovered that “stamina” actually is the plural of “stamen”.

Well, phooey.

Except that now, whenever I hear the word “stamina,” I think of flowers.

——

*I quite like it.  Hat tip to Nick Mancuso.

**Which, by the way, is worth reading. The history and economics of the plant are fascinating.

***Long-ago hat tip to Susan Garrett for suggesting this puzzle type.

****I suspect, since I was working as a medical editor at the time, that they were something technical.

Incorrigible Language Lessons*

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cover, The Unseen Guest

Book 3, The Incorrigible Children series

I first read The Mysterious Howling, book 1 of the series The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood, as an advance reader copy, some months before its publication date (in 2010).  I was smitten and couldn’t wait to keep reading, but since the first book hadn’t even come out yet, the second was clearly far off in the misty future. And so my attention wavered, and by the time the second, and third, books appeared, I couldn’t recall the sense of urgency and let them go.

Until Now.

Last week I read book 2, The Hidden Gallery. I was then cautioned by a frustrated friend that book 6 had had its publication date delayed already multiple times throughout this year and was now scheduled for next year, so I thought, oh, I should take it slowly. And yet by the next day I was flying through book 3, The Unseen Guest. Which is where we are now. And because there were many many places where I felt compelled to stop and read excerpts out loud to those around me, I have decided to share some of them here as well. (I’m also taking this opportunity to go back and reread book 1.)

The general story is this: Young governess in Victorian England (she’s 15) is brought to a grand house to work with extremely untrained and fairly mysterious children. More mysteries ensue. My experience of the Incorrigible Children so far places the books as a hybrid cross between Joan Aiken’s Willoughby Chase novels (by temperament**) and Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events (by narrative style). The latter comparison, I hasten to clarify, is not so much due to unrelenting unfortunate events but instead to the narrator’s habit, rather like that of our heroic governess herself, of Teaching Us Things along the way.

Here are some examples, which should involve very few — and only minor — spoilers.

p. 64: ‘As Miss Lumley would later explain to the Incorrigibles, a rhetorical question is one that is asked, but that no one is expected to answer. “For what child does not like being treated kindly by an adult?” is a rhetorical question. So is “Why, it seems I’ve taken your saddle by mistake, Miss Pevington; how could I be such a dunce?” Not to mention the old standby, “Do bears live in the woods?”
‘There are countless such examples, but to catalog them all would take weeks, and who has time for that? (Note that “Who has time for that?” is also a rhetorical question. The curious among you may feel free to search for more instances within these pages, if you find that sort of treasure hunt enjoyable. And who doesn’t?)’

Then some plot happens.

p. 136: ‘But before we continue any further with the adventures of Miss Penelope Lumley and the three Incorrigible children as they venture into the forest in pursuit of a runaway ostrich, let us look away for a moment (for they will have to do quite a lot of hup, hup, hupping before they get far enough into the woods for things to become interesting) and consider some matters of linguistic significance, starting with three letters: namely, P, O, and E.
‘When the admiral first said POE, Miss Lumley thought he meant Poe, as in Edgar Allen Poe. This is because POE and Poe are homonyms, which means they are two different words that are pronounced the same way.
‘POE is also an acronym, which is a word made out of the first letters of other words. To the admiral it stood for Permanent Ostrich Enclosure, although POE could just as easily stand for something else: Pie Over Everything, for example, a tasty, if filling, notion. Or Ponder On Elks, which as you already know, is nearly impossible to avoid doing once you have been told (and told, and told yet again, in the strictest possible terms) not to ponder on elks.
‘Some acronyms prove so catchy that they become words in their own right. Marine explorers know that “scuba” is an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Those of you who enjoy shooting laser beams at your friends for sport can bamboozle your opponents by crying out, “Here comes my Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation!” just before you fire.
‘If you now think that you would rather confront a herd of Profoundly Outraged Elephants in a Perilously Oscillating Elevator than hear another word about homonyms, acronyms, or any other kind of nyms – well, think again. There is power in words used carelessly. Consider how disappointed you would feel if, after booking an expensive spa vacation, you found yourself on holiday with the Society of Professional Accountants instead.’***

Then most of the rest of the plot, but not all, intervenes before this next excerpt:

p. 278: ‘With no time to prepare a more complicated lesson, Penelope had left instructions for them to count how many pigeons landed in the branches of the elm tree outside the nursery window while she was out and to record the figures in what she unthinkingly called a PIE chart, by which she meant simply Pigeons In Elm. That the acronym for Pigeons In Elm was the same as that for Permanent Incorrigible Enclosure had not even occurred to the distracted governess, who had been in a tizzy deciding which dress to put on****, among other concerns. But the children knew nothing of the admiral’s plans and had simply understood their assignment to mean that the chart should be in the shape of a pie, complete with slices.
‘As it turned out, the pie-shaped chart worked wonderfully well. In fact, the “pie chart” remains in use to this very day, although the Incorrigible children themselves are rarely, if ever, given credit for its invention. (Why pie charts have stayed so popular while pudding charts, cupcake charts, and even tart charts have sunk into obscurity is a mathematical mystery, but perhaps it ought not to be, for who does not like pie?)’

Who, indeed?

—————————

*Not that I believe these lessons particularly need correction.

**Temperament of the humans and the story, not the temperament of the attendant wolves, which varies greatly between the series.

***Okay, I just keep feeling the need to add a note here saying that I see this panders to common stereotypes of accountants, which doesn’t seem strictly necessary.  If someone is expecting a spa vacation, then they may be disappointed by any alternative, regardless of company, whether those number accountants or acrobats or aardvarks.

****I would like to mention that this is not a standard distraction for our stalwart Miss Penelope Lumley.

A Response to a Question: Miners and the CPB.

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Because I can’t bring myself to deal directly* with the horror that is the director of the Environmental Protection Agency working to eliminate more environmental protections** in order to increase coal production***, I will take this opportunity to refer to another, earlier, federal statement on coal miners. Back in March, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney defended his department’s slashing of funding for diplomatic, social, and educational programs with the following:

“When you start looking at the places that will reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was ‘Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs?’ And the answer was no,” Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a Thursday morning interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.”

I note that the answer was “no” because they asked only people who were determined to craft a budget from the president’s campaign promises.  Here’s what happens if they ask me:

So … leaving aside why we can in clear conscience ask such people to pay more of their taxes for defense than they already do … and leaving even more aside why we are acting as though individuals can choose where their taxes are going and should “pay for” only those things that might affect them personally****…

…Why would slashing funds for public broadcasting affect these people?

We shouldn’t even have to answer that one for “single moms,” but okay: because many, many parents, especially overworked ones, want to have educational programming they can trust, without commercials (okay, sorry, that’s no longer accurate, but they’re still much tamer and calmer than the other networks’), available for their kids, or themselves, to watch.

But coal miners? Why do coal miners need public television?

Two reasons:

1) The obvious reason: So coal miners and their families can watch public television. I mean, come on. People are people, and it can’t actually be true that no one with the job of coal mining, in a culture of coal mining families, could be interested in, or passionate about, the kinds of programming that publicly-funded television can provide.

And, less obviously, 2) So the rest of us can watch public television and learn about coal miners, past and present.

Here are some example shows and clips from a quick PBS programming search:

————–

*Except, apparently, in footnotes.

**I don’t know why this feels any more appalling than the simultaneous multi-pronged attacks on reproductive rights and women’s health and freedom – maybe it’s just on my mind because among this set I heard of this one last. I think all of them happening together takes me back to the barrage of executive orders from January that made it clear the main tactic of the new administration would be swamping the country with so many disparate changes we couldn’t hope to address them all in turn.

***Having never had to live it, I’m pretty disturbed by the idea of recreating these photos of the smog and pollution of American cities before the Clean Air Act.

****Not to mention the idea that we should pick specific people and decide that if something doesn’t affect them, then it isn’t important for anyone in the country. (Or, as I suspect in this case, to say well, my friends and I don’t want to pay for these things, so because it would sound wrong to say the budget should be based on what affects or doesn’t affect me, I’ll suggest some random other people who sound more worthy, and pretend for spurious stereotypical reasons that this is what affects or doesn’t affect them.)  Since I’m not mentioning these things here, perhaps they will need another post of their own at some point.

About About: An Introduction

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Welcome to Word Matters!

end-tufted brush, in packageIn my medicine cabinet, alongside my regular toothbrush, I keep a special “end-tufted brush,” good for focusing gently on my gumline and the backs of my front teeth. I recently found myself looking at the packaging and finding that the name in French is “brosse à bout touffu”. Which is to say, “brush, at the end, tofu” – or…well, something like that.

Anyway, while looking at the French name of my special toothbrush*, I noticed the phrase “à bout” and how similar it was to the word “about”. I found myself wondering whether it might be cognate or share history with the English word. In a sort of “what is this story really about, in the end?” way.

So I looked up the etymology of “about” and learned the following:

from Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (NI3):
Middle English abuten, aboute, going back to Old English abūtan, abūton, from a- + būtan “outside, without” –More at but

from Online Etymology Dictionary
Middle English aboute, from Old English abutan, earlier onbutan “on the outside of; around the  circumference of, enveloping; in the vicinity of, near; hither and thither, from place to place,” also “with a rotating or spinning motion,” in late Old English “near in time, number, degree, etc., approximately;” a compound or contraction of on + be “by” + utan “outside.”
By c. 1300 it had developed senses of “around, in a circular course, round and round; on every side, so as to surround; in every direction;” also “engaged in” (Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?), and gradually it forced out Old English ymbe, ymbutan (see ambi-) in the sense “round about, in the neighborhood of.”

In other words, “about” descends from words and roots that mean around, or outside of a center. Physically, I can picture this: a room, for example, with chairs scattered about.

Meanwhile, my searches online and in my little French-English dictionary tell me that “à bout” is “at the end” or “to the limit”. And “bout” itself translates to “end, tip, butt, stub”.

So, as it turns out, I’m wrong about about**. I was thinking that the focus of a story, what it’s about, might be something you’d end up with. Instead, the story centers around, or about, that focus.  But I learned some things. And I have a new picture in my head, of a story gathering, or maybe dancing, around its focus. And I love that moment of wonder, when I sense a connection between or among words, and new worlds of possibility and imagery open up in my view.  That moment, with the exploration that follows, is one of the foci of this blog.

About this blog

I am
(nouns): parent, writer, editor, singer, songwriter, lesbian, reader, feminist, linguist
(adjectives): female, Jewish, secular, white, left-handed, cisgender, Ashkenazi, American

I love
cats, music, chocolate, language, the woods, the city, puns, working toward peace and justice***

I write about
word origins and history. False cognates, true cognates. Language development and parenting. National politics and identity politics. Framing of arguments. Books and songs. Punctuation and pragmatics. The occasional grammar guide. Truth in advertising. The power of words to separate, or denigrate, or accord new respect. Dialect differences and language change.

*which I highly recommend, by the way, if you tend to get tartar in specific places. Hat tip to Terry, my dental hygienist!

** with the following two notes:
1) It’s kind of funny that “about” means encircled and close by, while “à bout” means to the farthest limit.
2) It’s also funny that “about” is related to “but,” while “à bout” is related to “butt”. False cognates indeed!

***Plus some other stuff. Here’s what I said I love when I was 13 and introducing myself to my diary: “reading, writing, singing, cats, unicorns, mythology, science-fiction, all animals that aren’t cats or unicorns, life, puns and other jokes, Doctor Who, other British humor, talking, chocolate, other food, being extremely weird, gymnastics, swimming, most of school, traveling, the idea of World Peace, nature, enjoying myself, and getting along with other people.” I’ve clearly changed some since then, in that … I don’t so much do gymnastics anymore.  (Also, I have taken the liberty of adding a comma between “cats” and “unicorns,” as I’m fairly certain I meant to have one there.)