Amanda's Word Journal

I am choosing to write about my two favorite words, 'discombobulated' and 'caddywhompus.'

Discombobulate (v) is to be upset, disturbed or disconcerted.
Forms of the word - Discombobulerate (another verb form), Discombobulation (n), Discombobulated (adj)
Etymology - The word itself is believed to have derived in the 1830s from a jocular alteration of either discomfort or discompose.

I learned this word when I was twelve years old and was playing a game of scrabble with my mother. I had put the word 'late' on the board and my mother in a jocular manner put down 'combobu' with all the letters she had.  With a great deal of skepticism I looked the word combobulate up in the dictionary and found nothing. However, my mother insisted that since discombobulate was a word that combobulate should be as well. I didn't even know what discombobulate meant at that time. I  look it up, just so I knew for certain she wasn't just making up words, and I found it. After that game, it became a commonly used word when we are describing a situation when we are very flustered or confused.

Caddywhompus (adj) to be uneven, off kilter
Context: Your hat is sitting a little caddywhompus on your head.
Etymology - ?

This is another word I learned when I was young and is often used by my mother and me. What I find fascinating about this word is it's not in the dictionary, but many people have heard it, know what it means, and use it. Another thing that I find interesting is that I have had several instances where people have told me discombobulate was not a word but agreed that caddywhompus was a word and they knew what it meant.

Three Words

FFirst word:     

 “Ghetto”   is defined as a noun, according to the oxford dictionary, a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups. As a verb, it is to put in or restricted to an isolated or segregated area or group.

The etymology of “ghetto” or “ghet” which means slag or waste in Venetian, and was used in this sense in a reference to a foundry where slag was stored located on the same island as the area of Jewish confinement (the Venetian Ghetto), and borghetto diminutive of borgo “borough”. Hebrew get, a divorce or separation document.

I started using this word four years ago when my sister first mentioned it. I think it all started because I was doing something that my sister thought was poorly done, and she called it “ghetto”. Now and days, I still use the word “ghetto” towards my roommates who then started using it to their friends and so on. One day we didn’t have any lighters in the house to burn candles for a birthday cake so we fold up a paper on top of a stove and waited for the paper to ignite with fire and then quickly transfer the fire onto a candle. Then we said, “That’s so ghetto”.

In Sean Kingston’s song “Take You There” he said, “I’m known in the ghetto, girl just stay by my side”, which interprets that the ghetto is not a redefined socially safe place for those who are unfamiliar. Akon also sang a song call “Ghetto”; “Gun shots every night in the (ghetto), every day is a fight in the (ghetto), selling coke and weed in the (ghetto).”

But my friends nor my sisters and I were not using this term in any way related to the actual ghetto. I think it was more about the thoughts of doing something poorly, but intelligently. 

Second word:

2.       “Whatever” is defined as a pronoun or use as a determiner. It is used to emphasize a lack of restriction in referring to anything or amount, no matter what. As a pronoun it is use for emphasis instead of “what” in question, typically expressing surprise or confusion.

The second word that I come by often is the word “Whatever”. This word is just unbelievable, but always carries throughout conversations as a way to say you could care less. My boyfriend always says this word even whenever we have arguments. He would say “whatever” and I was really irritated with the word. Actually in 2010, CBS reported that “whatever” was one of the top 5 most annoying words.

I dislike this word. Whenever I hear someone say that word, it gives me the impression that that person doesn’t care much about anything. There’s a saying that said, “one who doesn’t value oneself, doesn’t value anything else”. Is that true or not?

Third word:

3.       Fatty is deprived of the real word fatties and fattiness. It is an adjective defined as containing a large amount of fat, fatty tissue, and as a noun, a fat person (often as a nickname) according to the oxford dictionary. 

  I don’t remember how I come upon this word but it’s a nickname I give to my older sister. I have four older sisters, two who are very petite and two who are not. But I only call one of them fatty because I found her to be ultimately cute and filled with love and I idolize her to death. It’s a term I am familiar with because I found it to be common nicknames among family members. Maybe I caught this word by watching too much movies or seeing someone else do it first. But whatever it was, I got stuck on it.

I don’t think it’s a nickname meant to hurt ones feeling, instead I think of it as a bubbly cute nickname. It interests me that this word doesn’t offend people as often as I thought it would like back in high school. I hear my friends call their family members “fat” which is shorten from “fatty” all the time.

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.

Word Journal Week 3 (Dissing)

 For my vocabulary week, I would like to focus a bit on the origins and paths of words that have come into English.  These are for the most part regular words that we've all heard of but to me they are interesting due to the scope of their history.  Our text touched upon this subject by discussing Proto-Indo-European and showed a map outlining the general paths that PIE took to branch into different European language families.  By studying Russian, Lithuanian, Icelandic, and Welsh (none of which I'm proficient in) I noticed similarities in certain lexical items across these languages and had a vague notion of an east to west movement though I had no historical knowledge of languages.  With Lithuanian, I discovered that it shares cognates with Sanskrit and many other words that are quite similar to their Sanskrit counterparts, a testament to the notion that it probably holds some of the most ancient linguistic features of a surviving European language and that it likely still holds many of the features of PIE.  So, I found a few words and their historical information (which works well if you look at the map in the book that discusses PIE).  If anyone has any other interesting words or etymology regarding PIE/Sanskrit/Lithuanian I would love to hear it as I myself have only just begun exploring this topic. 

                Not all these words have a clear connection to their Lithuanian/Sanskrit counterparts.  The last two terms especially are interesting when considering that although the words zen and meditation come from the same root word perhaps we now  use two different variations to refer to two different regional practices.  

    

dad (n.) 

recorded from c.1500, but probably much older, from child's speech, nearly universal and probably prehistoric (cf. Welsh tad, Irish daid, Czech, Latin, Greek tata, Lithuanian tete, Sanskrit tatah, all of the same meaning).

roar (v.) 

Old English rarian "roar, wail, lament, bellow, cry," probably of imitative origin (cf. Middle Dutch reeren, German röhren "to roar;" Sanskrit ragati "barks;" Lithuanian reju "to scold;" Old Church Slavonic revo "I roar;" Latin raucus "hoarse").

smack (v.2) 

"to slap with the hand," 1835, from noun in this sense (c.1746), perhaps influenced by Low German smacken "to strike, throw," which is likely of imitative origin (cf. Swedish smak "slap," Middle Low German smacken, Frisian smakke, Dutch smakken "to fling down," Lithuanian smagiu "to strike, knock down, whip").

gesundheit 

1914, from German Gesundheit, literally "health!" Also in toast auf ihre Gesundheit "to your health" (see sound (adj.)). Lithuanian aciu, echoic of the sound of a sneeze, has come to mean "good luck, God bless you." See also God.

wax (n.) ***shows general map according to the book

"substance made by bees," Old English weax, from Proto-Germanic *wakhsan (cf. Old Saxon, Old High German wahs, Old Norse vax, Dutch was, German Wachs); cognate with Old Church Slavonic vasku, Lithuanian vaškas, Polish wosk, Russian vosk "wax" (but these may be from Germanic). Waxworks "exhibition of wax figures representing famous or notorious persons" first recorded 1796.

virile (adj.) 

late 15c., from Old French viril, from Latin virilis "of a man, manly," from vir "a man, a hero," from PIE *uiHro "freeman" (cf. Sanskrit virah, Avestan vira-, Lithuanian vyras, Lithuanian vyras, Old Irish fer, Welsh gwr, Gothic wair, Old English wer "man"). Virile member for "penis" is recorded from 1540s.

vomit (n.) 

late 14c., "act of expelling contents of the stomach through the mouth," from Latin vomitare "to vomit often," frequentative of vomere "spew forth, discharge," from PIE root*wem- "to spit, vomit" (cf. Greek emein "to vomit," emetikos "provoking sickness;" Sanskrit vamati "he vomits;" Avestan vam- "to spit;" Lithuanian vemiu "to vomit," Old Norse væma "seasickness"). In reference to the matter so ejected, it is attested from late 14c.

table (n.) 

late 12c., "board, slab, plate," from Old French table "board, plank, writing table, picture" (11c.), and late Old English tabele, from West Germanic *tabal (cf. Old High Germanzabel, German Tafel), both the French and Germanic words from Latin tabula "a board, plank, table," originally "small flat slab or piece" usually for inscriptions or for games, of uncertain origin, related to Umbrian tafle "on the board."

The sense of "piece of furniture with the flat top and legs" first recorded c.1300 (the usual Latin word for this was mensa (see mensa); Old English writers used bord (see board(n.1)). The meaning "arrangement of numbers or other figures for convenience" is recorded from late 14c. (e.g. table of contents, mid-15c.). 
Figurative phrase turn the tables (1630s) is from backgammon (in Old and Middle English the game was called tables). Table talk is attested from 1560s, translating Latincolloquia mensalis. To table-hop is first recorded 1956. The adjectival phrase under-the-table "hidden from view" is recorded from 1949; under the table "passed out from excess drinking" is recorded from 1921. Table tennis is recorded from 1887.

Shaman

                Lithuanian: šamanas

                through Russian шама́н from Tungus shaman, perhaps from Chinese 薩滿 Sà mǎn,                   via Prakrit समन finally from Sanskrit श्रमण sramana-s "a Buddhist monk".

Zen 

through Japanese 禅 and Chinese 禪 Chán ultimately from Pali झन jhāna and Sanskrit ध्यान dhyana, which means "a meditation". *Lithuanian: Dėmesio

Eng338: Word Journal

Word 1: conniption

Definition: a fit of rage or hysterics

Context: My friend recently told me that one of our friends broke her boyfriend's television and it "looked like he was going to have a conniption".

History: It appears that there is no agreed-upon origin of the word conniption, however, it was first used in the 1830s and is believed to be related to the word 'corruption'. Corruption previously referred to anger, or the informal English word 'canapshus' which literally means 'ill-tempered'.

Word 2: palliate

Definition: to make (an offense or crime) seem less serious; to make (a disease or its symptoms) less severe or intense

Context: In my psychology homework, reading about stereotypes and prejudice, I came across the statement that "individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, [prejudice]".

History: The word palliate originated in the 15th century, coming from the middle English/Latin word 'palliatus' or 'palliare' which means to cloak or conceal. Palliative care refers to an area of health care that focuses on relieving and preventing the symptoms and suffering of patients.

Word 3: invalid

Definition: one who is incapacitated by a chronic illness or disability

Context: I was always aware of the word invalid (referring to the definition 'not legally or factually valid'), but the first time I saw invalid in a different context was in our linguistics homework [Ch. 2, Exercise 2.6] as in, "The insurance was invalid for the invalid".

History: The definition of invalid that I speak of comes from the Latin word 'invalidus' meaning 'not strong, infirm, weak, feeble', or from in- (not) + validus (strong). The word was first used in the 1630s-1640s specifically meaning 'infirm from sickness, disease, or injury'. 

EN 338 Word Journal Week 2:

Evan Bradtke

1. balky-Adjective-Def: Given to balking (as a horse); reluctant to proceed; contrary, perverse.

Context- Description of old, arthritic joints (of a human character closely tied to the land) in Willa Cather's novel O Pioneers!

History: According to OED quotes, Until the late 1800's this word referred primarily to horses. Therefore, this word marks Ivar, whose joints it describes, as more animal-like than the other characters in this context. More recently it has come to be applied to more general contexts as a synonym for stubborn, including a citation from The Economist in 1957 describing states' reluctance to cooperate in federal programs. The spelling

2. spar-Noun-Def:  A general term for a number of crystalline minerals more or less lustrous in appearance and admitting of easy cleavage.

Context: Discussion of sights to see on holiday in Pride and Prejudice.

History: The first OED citation of this word is in 1581 and the most recent is in 1873, so it appears this is an archaic word. I didn't see any changes in meaning over that time period. It is regularly mentioned in association with mine sites, regularly found with veins of coal or led.

Hypothesis: The word became archaic because, as a result of the industrial revolution in Britain, the coal or other minerals which appear with spars became more valuable or notable than the spar itself. The significance of spar then evaporated with the exhaustion of these mine sites.

3. querulous-Adjective-Def:1. full of complaints; complaining. 2. characterized by or uttered in complaint; peevish.

Context: Description of Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.

History: According to OED quotes, the definition and use of querulous has been stable over time, with effectively identical uses to describe the character of a person or group of people from 1493 through their most recent quote in 2006.

Words from class, week 1

Rubicon, crossing the Rubicon

As in: "The Rubicon between our species and others does not fall on the symbolic, but rather on the syntactic" (claim by Calvin/Bickerton).

What this means: C/B claim that what sets human language apart from the communication systems of other species is not the ability to coin words (some combination of sounds or movements used to express meaning) but rather grammar, the ability to combine a limited number of words to express an infinite number of complex propositions.

Where the word comes from: "Rubicon" is the ancient name of a river in Northern Italy. When Caesar's army crossed the Rubicon, it was clear that there would be an attack on Rome. "Crossing the Rubicon" means taking a decisive step towards a risky and potentially harmful course of action. (Would this expression be a word? A phonological word? A listeme? Not a word?) Earliest documentation in English (according to the OED): He hath passed his commission (as Caesar did,) and is waded vp to the chinne through the bloudie Rubicon [1613]. 

The word also has a second meaning, related to playing cards ("A target score which increases the penalty of a losing player who fails to reach it."). In this meaning, the word can also be used as a verb, i.e. one can get rubiconed. 

Gamut, running the gamut

As in: "The answers ran the gamut from the brilliant to the insane."

What this means: Answers ranged from the brilliant to the insane.

Where the word comes from: "gamma" and "ut" are Latin symbols for musical notes (According to the OED, the word was orginally spelled "gamma-ut" in English). In the 16th century, the "gamut" was the lowest note in the medieval scale. The meaning of the word then broadened to encompass the whole range of notes in the medieval scale and later the full range of notes an instrument could produce. Today, the word is used mostly figuratively, often in the expressions "running the gamut" or "the whole gamut." Running the gamut can also still mean performing all of the notes on a scale. (Would you say that "running the gamut" is a word? A phonological word? A listeme? Not a word?)

Maven, language maven

As in: "Who's your favorite language maven?"

What it means: a public authority on language, not necessarily a linguist

Where the word comes from: The compound "language maven" was popularized by political journalist and speech writer William Safire, who for many years wrote the popular column "On Language" for The New York Times. He called himself a "language maven" and published books with titles like "Quoth the Maven" (an allusion to Poe's poem "The Raven") and "The Language Maven Strikes Again." The origin of the word is meyvn, the Yiddish word for "expert," related to the Hebrew word for teacher. In Yiddish, the plural of the word is mevinim. (I'm mentioning this because recently there was quite a kerfuffle -- one of my favorite words! -- over the spelling of the word Knaidel/Kneydel, also of Yiddish origin, in English, which was the winning word in this year's National Spelling Bee.)