Words from class, week 2

Ague:

How it is pronunced:  /ˈeɪˌɡju/

What it means: An acute or high fever; disease, or a disease, characterized by such fever.

Where it comes from: This word is related to the Latin word "acuta," 'acute fever.'

This word came up in class when we read "The Chaos," a "mammoth catalogue of about 800 of the most notorious irregularities of traditional English orthography, skilfully versified" (Simplified Spelling Society)

Now I surely will not plague you.
With such words as vague and ague.
But be careful how you speak.
Say gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak. 

'Ague' is used a number of times in Shakespeare's plays. In class, I couldn't come up with the exact name of the character in Twelfth Night whose name is Ague. It's Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, a dimwit who thinks rather highly of himself. He (unsuccessfully) courts the lovely Lady Olivia, who, in turn, is more interested in a young man called Cesario, who is actually a girl named Viola, who is in love with Duke Orsino, who wants to marry Lady Olivia (got it?).

Sir Andrew Aguecheeck

Another memorable character from that comedy is Malvolio (from the Italian for "ill will"), who at one point in the play is duped into thinking that Lady Olivia be attracted to him if only he would wear yellow tights with garters.

"Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs"

Coda (rhymes with "soda")

What it means: In phonology, the coda is the group of consonants in a syllable that follows the nucleus (usually a vowel). For example, in "strength," the coda is /ŋθ/. (Interestingly, this meaning is not listed in the OED!) In music, the coda of a piece is "a passage of more or less independent character introduced after the completion of the essential parts of a movement" (OED). In ballet, it is the final dance of a pas de deux (or pas the trois/quatre).

Here's a famous coda from Swan Lake (the famous part begins at 0:30):

Eggcorn

This is a word that did not actually come up in class, but it is related to "Mondegreen," and I think you should know it. The word is a neologism made popular on the linguistic blog "Language Log," beginning in 2003.  In 2010, it was included in the updates for the Oxford English Dictionary. Examples are "cold slaw" for "cole slaw" or "Old Timers' Disease" for "Alzheimer's Disease" -- somebody miconstrues an unfamiliar word as a different, more familiar word, which seems to make perfect sense to the person.  (What is "cole" in "cole slaw," anyway? Well, the word comes from Dutch  "koolsla," a reduced form of "kool salad," so it DOES refer to cold salad. The OED even lists the spelling "cold slaw" as a variation.)

 From Language Log:

Chris Potts has told me about a case in which a woman wrote "egg corns" for "acorns." This might be taken to be a folk etymology, like "Jerusalem" for "girasole"[a sunflower or a fire opal] in "Jerusalem artichoke" (a kind of sunflower). But it might also be treated as something like a mondegreen ..., the kind of "slip of the ear" that is especially common in learning songs and poems. Finally, it's also something like a malapropism, where a word is mistakenly substituted for one of similar sound shape. Although the example is somewhat like each of these three named categories of errors, it's not exactly any of them. ...

• It's not a folk etymology, because this is the usage of one person rather than an entire speech community.

• It's not a malapropism, because "egg corn" and "acorn" are really homonyms (at least in casual pronunciation), while pairs like "allegory" for "alligator," "oracular" for "vernacular" and "fortuitous" for "fortunate" are merely similar in sound (and may also share some aspects of spelling and morphemic content).

• It's not a mondegreen because the mis-construal is not part of a song or poem or similar performance 

There's even an eggcorn database.