Sharp Words

Just because the comic strip below made me laugh and nod, plus the word cropped up the other day when I was reading The Eagle of the Ninth, today’s word is:

decimate transitive verb \ˈde-sə-ˌmāt\

Etymology: Latin decimatus, past participle of decimare, from decimus tenth, from decem ten

1: to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
2: to exact a tax of 10 percent from
3 a: to reduce drastically especially in number [cholera decimated the population]
b: to cause great destruction or harm to [firebombs decimated the city] [an industry decimated by recession]

Sadly, Dromiceiomimus is right – she’s in the minority in knowing what decimate originally meant. As shown above, one of the dictionary definitions these days (mine was taken from Merriam-Webster) means utter destruction. The true meaning is far more interesting though.

I love that trilemma is a real word (although I did have to look it up to make sure).

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The word of the day, thanks to Merriam-Webster:

feuilleton \fuh-yuh-TOHNG (the “ng” is not pronounced, but the preceding vowel is nasalized)\   noun
1 : a part of a European newspaper or magazine devoted to material designed to entertain the general reader
2 : a work of fiction printed in installments
3 : a short literary composition often having a familiar tone and reminiscent content

The feuilleton originated in French newspapers as a supplement sectioned out from the main news stories. Although found in the political section of the newspaper, the feuilleton typically included material on non-political subjects, such as art, literature, or fashion. Fiction was sometimes included as well. The word is a diminutive of the French “feuillet,” meaning “sheet of paper,” and ultimately derives from Latin “folium,” meaning “leaf.” From this source English acquired “folio” (which can refer to a page, or leaf, of a book or manuscript) and “foliage” (meaning “a mass of leaves”).

Sounds like the original feuilleton was the forerunner of the Sunday supplements!

I’m interested by its third definition; I’m not entirely sure I know what’s meant by it although I suppose something like a biographical travel story would fit. Even a quick search in the Oxford Reference Online only brought up the first definition. Anyone able to enlighten me further?

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The word of the day, thanks to Merriam-Webster:

euphuism YOO-fyuh-wiz-um noun
    1 : an elegant Elizabethan literary style marked by excessive use of balance, antithesis, and alliteration and by frequent use of similes drawn from mythology and nature
   2 : artificial elegance of language

Nowadays, someone who uses euphuism might be accused of linguistic excess and affectation, but “euphuism” hasn’t always had a negative connotation. When John Lyly employed this verbose form of rhetoric in his prose works Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and His England (1580), it was a style that appealed to many of his contemporaries. “Euphuism” comes from the name of the character Euphues, whom Lyly described as a “young gallante, of more wit then wealth, and yet of more wealth then wisdome.” The name was probably inspired by a Greek word meaning “witty.” The term “euphuism” came into being to refer to Lyly’s (and other writers’) style a dozen or so years after his works appeared.

Hmmmm. the second meaning reminds me of the kind of purple prose that I used to see on roleplaying games – the use of optics and orbs for eyes being the one that got most on my wick. 
The first meaning, on the other hand… well, I can see its relevance even to some of the poetry I’ve written in the past (I’m excessively fond of both balance and alliteration). 
But the artifical elegance of language? That makes me think of people posing their hands while speaking in an affected accent. No thanks.

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For once, I didn’t wait for a word to be emailed to me. I picked this word myself based on a minor incident this morning.

tautology noun
        a: needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word
        b: an instance of tautology

This word was used by the brainy annoying kid in last week’s Doctor Who (Series 4: The Sontaran Stratagem) in an attempt to take the Doctor down a peg or two (didn’t work of course).  I was reminded of it this morning at the library, when the librarian didn’t at first understand my request for a PIN for their website – she thought at first I asked for a PIN, and then I clarified with “So I can request and renew books”, she replied, “Oh, you want a PIN number!”

Cue internal groan from Catherine.

OK, I admit to being guilty of commiting the act of tautology fairly frequently without realising it. But I’m a bit more aware of it at the moment.  There are other forms of tautology, of course, aside from the common ‘PIN number’, ‘ATM machine’ and ‘GPS system’ constructions, but I can’t think of any brilliant examples at the moment – anyone help me out here?

[Also, on a completely unrelated note, today's 'amusement at weird wording' came when I visited the farmer's market and noticed that the organics stall was selling 'organically reared sausages'. I just had a fun image in my head of lots of sausages with little legs, roaming pesticide-free across the hills.]

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The word of the day, thanks to Merriam-Webster:

whodunit   hoo-DUN-it  noun
        : a detective story or mystery story

In 1930, Donald Gordon, a book reviewer for News of Books, needed to come up with something to say about a rather unremarkable mystery novel called Half-Mast Murder. “A satisfactory whodunit,” he wrote. The coinage played fast and loose with spelling and grammar, but “whodunit” caught on anyway. Other writers tried respelling it “who-done-it,” and one even insisted on using “whodidit,” but those sanitized versions lacked the punch of the original and have fallen by the wayside. “Whodunit” became so popular that by 1939 at least one language pundit had declared it “already heavily overworked” and predicted it would “soon be dumped into the taboo bin.” History has proven that prophecy false, and “whodunit” is still going strong.

It’s a bit odd, really; normally phrases that are so grammatically incorrect will grate on me – the use of ‘between you and I’ in the song ‘Hungry Eyes’ in Dirty Dancing, for example! But I happily accept whodunit, perhaps because it’s been in common usage for so long.
And these days, mystery novels have expanded to include whydunit and howdunit just as much; it’s not uncommon to find out the criminal’s identity at the beginning with the story then being of why and how.

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The word of the day, thanks to Merriam-Webster:

haplology   \hap-LAH-luh-jee\   noun
        : contraction of a word by omission of one or more similar sounds or syllables

Try to say “pierced-ear earrings” three times fast. That exercise will demonstrate why haplology happens: sometimes it’s just easier to drop a syllable and leave yourself with something that’s easier to say (such as “pierced earrings”). American philologist Maurice Bloomfield recognized the tendency to drop one of a pair of similar syllables a little over a hundred years ago. He has been credited with joining the combining form “hapl-” or “haplo-” (meaning “single”) with “-logy” (meaning “oral or written expression”) to create “haplology” as a name for the phenomenon. Haplology is quite common in English, and often the contracted forms it generates spread into the written language. In fact, haplology played a role in naming the nation that is the cradle of English: “England” was condensed via haplology from “Engla land.”

Can anyone think of any more examples of this? I’d never really considered the phenomenon before (or know it had a name) but it makes sense. The example given was that people sometimes say probly instead of probably – I suppose libry instead of library is another case.

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