Sept 4, 2024–My latest favorite throne tome is Words on Words, a 1980 book by John Bremner that explores words and explains their usage in an irreverent manner.
What I like about it is that it presents common words that we think we know, but that we don’t really know, that we might use correctly, accidentally, but that we use mindlessly.
Tawdry
What a great word. It deserves more use as a descriptive of cheap knickknacks and questionable behavior, especially when you learn it is a shortening of “St. Audrey,” who apparently had an affinity for gaudy costume jewelry. Gaudy and tawdry, our new ideals.
Saunter
When you “travel by foot for pleasure,” you are emulating the lolling gait of pilgrims to the Holy Land, or “Saint Terre.” You are also ambling, strolling, and, my favorite, sashaying with historical intent.
Cater-Cornered
We grew up saying a “catty-cornered” or “kitty-cornered” when referring to a McDonald’s located on the opposite corner of an intersection from a Wendy’s. Never knew it came from the French word “quatre” for “four,” as in “four-cornered.” No cats involved, in either the word or the cuisine.
Vaccinate
This word, much in the news lately, comes from the barnyard. It is from the Latin “vacca,” for cow, whose virus the cowpox was first used in a vaccine’s preparation.
Epidemic/Endemic
Speaking of medical terms, some confuse the difference between “epidemic” and “endemic.” All becomes clear when you realize “demos” is Latin for “the people.” So endemic means anything “from the people,” and epidemic describes a virus unleashed “among the people.” A “pandemic” has gone viral, literally and virtually.
Ignoramus
We ignoramuses have been using this wrong. In Latin, it means “we do not know.” So when you start throwing around the word “ignoramus,” you are really declaring you (we) do not know anything.
Bromide
This is one of my favorites, about which I once wrote a whole column. It was coined by humorist and thinker Gelett Burgess (who also coined “blurb”), and was meant to describe people or ideas that were boring. Or, as Burgess so un-boringly put it: “one who does his thinking by syndicate.” Think of “stating the obvious,” as in “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” To experience bromides in their natural habitat, attend any cocktail party.
Ecdysiast
Do any of my readers know what this word means?
If you do, you might want to keep it a secret.
For an ecdysiast is a “practitioner of the fine art of striptease,” according to its coiner. Word nerd H.L. Mencken was asked to come up with a plausible alternate word for a stripper, and he chose ecdysiast from the Greek word “ekdysis,” for molting. It beat his second choice: “moltician.”
Hors d’oeuvre
This is my personal nemesis. I have never in my life successfully spelled “hors d’oeuvre” on my first stab. There are just too many vowels, which seemed to be randomly arranged like a Boggle throw. Add in two separate words and an apostrophe, and it becomes the purple-headed stepchild of our adopted vocabulary.
But beyond the spelling challenge, does anyone really know what they are about to put in their mouth when they palm an hors d’oeuvre?
Do you know the literal translation, Frenchies?
It means “outside of work.”
Hence, by the tortured logic of linguists and the hoi polloi, hors d’oeuvre refers to “food beyond the ordinary meal.” That is a revelation. It means it does not have to be a fancy canape on a cracker, but could be that cold slice of pizza sneaked at midnight or the popcorn with your soda pop at the movies.
Mencken described typical hors d’oeuvres as “embalmed fish and taxidermized eggs.” Yum. Maury Maverick went so far as to recommend an alternative word: “dingle-doo.”
Erm… you probably need to rethink that one, Mr. Maverick. I can see at least two ways that could be twisted into something unappetizing.
Hoi Polloi
Speaking of hoi polloi, this is an example of a term that has come to be mean the exact opposite of its original meaning. Just like modern slang “sick” or “fine” or “goat.”
In Greek, “hoi polloi” refers to “the many.” In other words, the masses, the rabble, the common citizenry. Yet in modern usage, we refer to the “hoi polloi” as the privileged
While I love words, I ignore the silly screeds over the Oxford comma, there-their-they’re, loose-lose, and other often-confused terms. Those are “grammar gotchas,” often used by the the degreed to demonstrate their superiority over the hoi polloi.
Both kinds.
Phil Houseal is a reader and owner of Full House PR. Contact him at phil@fullhouseproductions.net, www.FullHousePR.com.