Visit theallusionist.org/zaltzology to hear this episode
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, rescue language's kite from a tree.
Today’s episode is something a bit different. A few months ago, I was a guest on the podcast Ologies, a terrific show where the very funny and delightful and curious Alie Ward interviews an ologist of some kind - bisonologist, ologist of bisons, ludologist, video games, corvid thanatology - crow funerals!
Alie interviewed me as an etymologist, and I’m not a professional etymologist, just an amateur - etymology of amateur is lover, which is appropriate too. We cover etymologies of words including buxom, mediocre, coccyx, lacuna, and some broader stuff about my attitudes towards language.
There are a couple of swears in it.
On with Zaltzology. We start by talking about my last name.
Alie Ward: Do people put an extra L in there a lot?
Helen Zaltzman: No, actually that is not one of the regular spelling mistakes. But they see the Zs and they panic.
ALIE WARD: Do you say Z as in zed or zebra?
HZ: Well, I say zed when I'm in zed-saying countries. But I'm on your turf, so I've translated it.
ALIE WARD: Yeah, look at that! Do you say zebra?
HZ: I do say zebra. Is it zee-bra here?
ALIE WARD: Yeah.
HZ: Ah, yeah. So, okay, here's my rubric for when I'm in the States. If it's a different word like zed/zee or coriander/cilantro, I'll say the different word. But it is harder for me to use the correct American pronunciation if it's the same word. So it's hard for me to say tomato, because it sounds just wrong when I say it. I can't do it properly. My mouth won't form a proper American shape to do the word properly.
[“Tomato, [ph. toe-may-toe] tomato, [ph. toe-mah-toe] oh let’s call the whole thing off.” - Fred Astaire in Shall We Dance, 1937.]
ALIE WARD: Tom-ah-to sounds so much fancier.
HZ: I don't know, I think...
ALIE WARD: It does.
HZ: It's not even an English word! We got it from South America.
ALIE Aside: Quick aside, the word tomato comes from the Nahuatl, a language of what’s known historically as the Aztec Empire, for, ‘the swelling fruit.’ And thus, a tomato is what people called a hot girl in the 1920s. Language experts think this was due to plump, juicy connotations.
ALIE WARD: Now, how long have you been interested in language?
HZ: I remember first becoming interested in language when I was fairly small. I was, I think, seven. I went to a very old fashion school so I started learning French and Latin at a very young age. I was like, "Oh, that word seems similar to this word in English." And, it was a bit like when you see Homeland or something where someone's got a wall with lots of newspaper clippings joined together with string.
[clip from Homeland, season 1, episode 11, Carrie: "You understand...” Saul: “It's a timeline."]
So, it's like, "Ahhh, I wonder what these things have got in common." And also I grew up in quite a verbose household. I was the youngest. I was an accident. There's quite a bit of time between me and my elder brothers who are both very witty and good at talking. And I just thought, if I'm gonna say anything then I really have to bring my A-game. It was just a form of survival to be verbally deft from a young age.
ALIE WARD: Did you talk early?
HZ: I don't know, because I don't think anyone was paying attention. But apparently I was an early reader. My mum says I was an early reader, but I remember her teaching me to read. So, I think before that I was just looking at books with the appearance of reading.
ALIE WARD: They’re like, “Why's she wearing bifocals? She's two.”
HZ: I did have glasses from one and a half! How did you know??
ALIE WARD: DID YOU?? REALLY??
HZ: Yeah, not bifocals until I was fourteen. There are not many pictures of my childhood.
ALIE WARD: Reeeeeally?
HZ: Yeah, I had these pink plastic thick glasses. And then sometimes they'd put a Band-Aid over one lens to strengthen the other eye. But they used to put it over my eye, but then ripping it off is quite painful. It was a good time.
ALIE WARD: Babies in glasses are the cutest babies.
HZ: Sort of. I think glasses styles have improved.
ALIE WARD: No, babies in glasses are always cute.
HZ: Is it like babies that look like angry little old men, who look like old codgers, maybe?
ALIE WARD: Yes exactly!
HZ: That's a good fun.
ALIE WARD: They're a kinder-codger.
HZ: Yeah. Like a baby wearing a tiny bow tie.
ALIE WARD: Yes! I guess like an old man in a diaper with a pacifier isn't as cute, but when you reverse it, it's good. You know?
HZ: It's so unfair.
ALIE Aside: Okay, so some of the OED's added words this year, by the by, were, TGIF, Burkini, and haterade. Some interesting choices.
ALIE WARD: Do you keep up with the OED each year, with the new words added?
HZ: No, because I think that's usually a press release game, don't you? Because they just want to annoy people with that, often.
ALIE WARD: That's a good point. They're usually the most annoying words.
HZ: Yes, exactly. They know they're trolling people.
ALIE WARD: Oh god, that's so sinister and wonderful.
HZ: Yeah, I like the relish with which a lot of the dictionaries have taken to the social media age. A lot of them have very salty Twitter accounts.
ALIE WARD: Oh god, yes.
HZ: And you learn some good words, but also the print edition of dictionaries, there's a limit to the number of words they can put in there. So, some have to go. It's difficult for words to enter, but there's a lot of room on the Internet so they can track those words, and something that may only be briefly useful, like, “On fleek” that can enter the dictionary quickly, but it doesn't necessarily have to stay there if it was just a few years of on fleekness.
ALIE WARD: On fleek sounds so much better coming with a British accent.
HZ: I only ever say in quotation marks. I've never managed to say it in an actually descriptive way.
ALIE WARD: I don't think anyone other than the original vine poster.
[Peaches Monroe: “Eyebrows on fleek.]
HZ: Peaches Monroe.
ALIE WARD: Is that what her name is?!
HZ: Yeah.
ALIE WARD: Good job! How do you know that?!
HZ: Well, I have studied the etymology of “on fleek.”
ALIE WARD: That’s why you’re the best!
HZ: Oh Gosh. But yeah, I'm too old to say it without quotation marks.
ALIE WARD: Yeah, we all are. Now is there something about the elasticity of language? I feel like that's kind of what we all love about etymology, but is your interest rooted in human behavior and how we keep morphing things?
HZ: Yes, my interest is very much in human behavior. And I think that's what partly got me interested in etymology in the first place was just a lot of it is a little idiosyncratic and you can see these signs of how people would have behaved several hundred years ago. So, there's a lot of mistakes in how words have evolved. It's not necessarily logical. And I think that was appealing, that it's not these straight paths. Another thing I learned about doing the show was that I'm not a language prescriptivist. I was such a pedant when I was a child. Just a nightmare, particularly to my Mum. But it's unsustainable. When you know
anything about how language behaves, you can't keep it up because there's just so many things contradicting it. And there's a lot of cognitive dissonance if you want to keep up your pedantry. But also after a while I was like, "You're carrying around a lot of pointless anger. It's just not necessary." So that was a positive surprise, I think. It was just being amenable to how language is going to change and has always changed, particularly the English language. That has evolved much more rapidly than a lot of other languages that are deliberately kept the same. But if you know about English, you're like, "Okay, this is what happens." People use it the ways that they need it to be used. So if there is a gap, then people will fill it with either a word that they've decided to use in a different way or they will invent one.
[clip from Mean Girls: “Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen!”]
A lot of it is driven by that kind of necessity. You can't control it. And even if it doesn't necessarily make sense, it's never made sense. You might not like it, but you have to understand that this is a linguistic process.
ALIE WARD: Now, what is it about English that has made it evolve so rapidly? And also, having studied Latin, where do you see we grab the roots from? Latin? From Greek?
HZ: Oh yeah, English is such a mutt of a language, which is why it's so fascinating. It's a problem as well, which is more to do with its later history. So, English kind of came about originally from a bunch of invasions. There were native languages in the British Isles, but then there was the Roman invasion, which I think was 50 BC to about 400 AD. And then Germanic forces invaded around 500 AD. And then Vikings. And then in 1066, the Normans. So you've got a lot of French influence but also a lot of Latin through French. And so at that point you had the language of governance being Latin, but then the language of posh people being French. And then normal people still speaking Anglo- Saxon, a Germanic version of Anglo Saxon. And then that kind of coalesces into middle English that then becomes modern English.
So, I think about 70% of English words have some Latin roots, but a lot of those Latin roots would've come from Greek or they didn't come directly from the Romans. And then you've got, what I call euphemistically, ‘Britain's enthusiastic foreign policy.’ So it was not only people coming in and invading the country, it's also us going to other parts of the world, a lot of other parts of the world and a sticking our dicks in them.
ALIE WARD: Pretty much!
HZ: Yeah, so English has happened in lots of different places, but also we found words in those places and brought them back. Or we brought back things we found like potatoes and thus the word with them. That happens a ton. You've got this very idiosyncratic thing. Whereas French, you've got an academy keeping French the same. They decide on whether you're allowed gender neutral pronouns or whatever. They don't like this. It's very gendered language. Whereas English doesn't have that kind of control and has resisted that kind of control. They've tried and it hasn't really taken off.
ALIE WARD: And when it comes to finding the root word of something, what's been one of the more surprising entries, or what are some of your favorite etymologies? Because there's a story behind all of them.
HZ: Yes, although frustrating. Often the story is “we don't know.” The pathway doesn't go very far. I really liked the etymology of the word ‘mediocre.’ And I don't know why it is, but it means ‘halfway up a jagged hill.’
ALIE WARD: Really?
HZ: Yeah. What an evocative thing.
ALIE WARD: My god! I never knew that one.
HZ: I would have thought to get halfway up a jagged hill you have to be really quite good.
ALIE WARD: Yeah.
HZ: That doesn't seem like an easy path, or the absence of any particular quality. It seems like a hard climb.
ALIE WARD: Yeah! How many jagged hills where these people climbing?
HZ: I don't know.
ALIE WARD: It must be quite a lot if ‘you could only get halfway up’ was a burn.
HZ: Yeah, “we just scampered right to the top before breakfast.” So I find that very fascinating and I don't understand why it is. It seems like quite the story.
ALIE WARD: Yeah, I didn't know that. Have you ever heard the etymology for ‘buxom’?
HZ: No, that sounds fun.
ALIE WARD: It's such a good one. This is one of my favorite etymologies. It comes from ‘pliable’, and then compliant, and then friendly, and then beautiful, and then sexy, and then boobs.
HZ: Wow. So it wasn't that the boobs were pliable.
ALIE WARD: No!
HZ: The person was pliable, and that's a sexy trait to some.
ALIE WARD: Evidently. Yeah. So, it’s one of those weird twists and turns, just thinking about it having to morph at every stage of the way.
HZ: Yeah.
ALIE WARD: When it comes to, like, a goal with etymology, do you feel like with language you can use your platform to have people see each other differently? Do you ever feel like you can fix some ills of the world with language?
HZ: Yeah. When I'm feeling evangelical. So, it is an entertainment show first and foremost, and it's supposed to distract people on a commute, or when they can't sleep, or when they're feeling anxious, or whatever. But then it's just when you get into language and you're thinking about all the different ways that can be used, I think a lot of it is about empathy because the more sensitive you become to all that, you become more aware of your own usage and how other people might interpret it and the various things they might mean with their usage.
So, it forces you to think about other people more in their communication and the endless variety thereof. And also if you get into your hangups you can often realize that a lot of them are about snobbery or a way of controlling people almost by telling them that they're saying something in a way you disagree with. And so, removing yourself from that, or encouraging other people just to not focus on that, I think that is quite important because it's just more compassionate.
ALIE: Aside: And the etymology of compassionate? It's late Latin for com plus patti, so to suffer together. And yes, the root of passion is to suffer. But compassion is ‘to feel the pain of others,’ which is terribly moving.
HZ: So I'd say that is the more serious thing.
HZ: Up next: Alie asks me questions posed by her listeners.
ALIE WARD: What was the last word that you learned? Do you remember?
HZ: Oh, there are words that I have to look up every time. Like ‘lacuna’. I just cannot remember what lacuna means.
ALIE WARD: It's a great, great word. You know how I learned that word? Did you ever see Eternal Sunshine?
HZ: I did. And that was how I learned of the word but I still haven't...
ALIE WARD: The best!
ALIE Aside: A lacuna, are you ready for this? Is a bookbinding term meaning a chunk of the glued pages have detached from the spine and are missing. And in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was written by the genius Charlie Kaufman, the company that can wipe away specific memories is called Lacuna Incorporated.
[clip from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004: “But why remember a destructive love affair? Here at Lacuna, we have perfected a safe, effective technique for the focused erasure of troubling memories.”]
HZ: Just can’t... It just won't fix in my mind.
ALIE WARD: Well, there's a blank spot where lacuna should be.
HZ: Yeah.
ALIE WARD: There's a lacuna...
HZ: AHHHHHH!!!!!!
ALIE WARD: ... where there's a lacuna!
HZ: That's how I'm to remember it! Thank you!
ALIE WARD: Boom!
HZ: You really guided me through that.
ALIE WARD: Awesome. Bob White just says: This is an imperative, not even an inquisitive: “Explain queue.” Q. U. E. U. E.
HZ: Well, it's a way you stand in line with people. We got the word from French. In French ‘queue’ is pronounced ‘ke’ and means tail. So that's very cute, isn't it? Like a dog’s little queue.
ALIE WARD: Oh, that's adorable! I do love that, having context for all these words, it's like seeing someone's face and being like, okay. And then getting to know them as a person. You know?
HZ: Yeah.
ALIE WARD: Awww, I love it. Katie Cobb: “Why is the F-word so versatile?”
HZ: It's a great word, isn't it? A lot of the swears are very flexible, but particularly that one because it can be noun, verb, affectionate, sexual, insult. Yeah, it's very handy.
ALIE WARD: Yeah, what is the fucking etymology of that word?
HZ: Oh, that is a hard one to know because, it's old but it's also ‘cause it's kind of slangy. So when people make up an acronym for it, it's definitely not an acronym. It's hundreds of years older than that. But a lot of the etymologies of swears are just a bit unsatisfactory because they don't really know. But, it wasn't such a rude word as it is now. Like the C-bomb wasn't such a rude word as it is now. Like, religious swears were more rude in the 14th century when these swears were around; body parts, and sexual ones, not so much as the religious ones. But yeah, I think when people are down on swearing, you just think, well, what word can you use in as many varied ways as the F-bomb?
ALIE WARD: It is the Swiss Army Knife of cussing. There's nothing it can't do.
HZ: That is a wonderful way to describe it.
ALIE WARD: I still can't say the C word. That’s not a word that... I think that's more of a British word.
HZ: Yeah. I didn't realize - that's been very educational to me making this show about language. I knew that there were differences in American vocabularies versus English, but I was less aware of the nuances of usage, because I hadn't spent as much time in the States. There are certain things you don't realize it until they’re pointed out. So, I think the fourth episode of The Allusionist was about the C bomb. In Britain, it is a strong swear. It's one of the strongest, but you still get people who are kind of... it can be an affectionate one. "Ah, you old C bomb!" You know, in context. You wouldn't say that to someone you weren't very confident would understand the intent.
ALIE WARD: Of course. This almost dovetails but Danielle Rivera asks: “What is your biggest word-related pet peeve?”
HZ: Oh, I have a lot, but I'm always trying to confront my prejudices, and some of them I think will never leave, but I can just not give them more room. Others have really dissipated over the years. But at the moment I am really keeping an eye on the word “community.” I think that people using it should think, "Is there another word I can use?" Because I think it's being used thoughtlessly, and so when people say ‘the black community’ or ‘the gay community,’ that sounds like it's 40 people that meet in a village hall and they all have the same viewpoint.
I can understand why something might be quite specific, so you might have the gay community in a particular city; but when you're talking about millions of people, it's too small a word for that. And I heard someone say ‘the female community’ and thought, "That is half the world. That is not appropriate." So, if you're using ‘community’, I think there are different nouns you could use or different ways to reframe the adjective that you're using. Like science community, you could say ‘scientists.’ So part of it, to me, is an efficiency thing, but partly also there's a kind of condescension in it sometimes. And I'm always thinking, “Why is that there? What's it covering over?” But then it's like, what you're trying to say with such a big generalization? Should you break that down a bit more?
ALIE WARD: So, indicative of, perhaps, what you're saying doesn't reflect the thoughts of everyone.
HZ: Right. Just be careful of the generalizations. Yeah.
ALIE WARD: That's a great note. Danielle Rivera also wants to know: “How many people assume that you study insects or that you have a podcast about bugs?”
HZ: Quite a lot! And confusingly, right behind your head are some beautiful insects.
ALIE Aside: I have a big, gross dead bug collection on one wall of my apartment and I’m just realizing how creepy that must be for visitors. But Helen is very wonderful and she's compassionate. But yes, etymology and entomology.
HZ: But I can understand why people would mix them up because they're not exactly words you need in your everyday vocabulary. I wouldn't necessarily remember if I didn't particularly care about either.
ALIE WARD: Oh, sure. Yeah, they don't roll off the tongue often.
HZ: So when people get it wrong, I think, “at least they tried.”
ALIE WARD: They're so close.
HZ: They busted out a tricky word.
ALIE WARD: So, so close. That'd be like if someone bought you a shoe and it was a 7.5 and not an 8. You'd be like, pfffflookathowcloseitis! Ivey Crutchfield wants to know: “Can you ask her the origin of ‘coccyx’?”
HZ: Oh, this is good, actually. It's from the Greek word ‘kokkux’ supposedly called by the ancient Greek physician Galen - who was very influential in the history of medicine - because the bone in humans supposedly resembles or Cuckoo's beak. Wow!
ALIE WARD: Your butt bone is a bird beak!
HZ: Isn't that nice and alliterative!
ALIE WARD: Boom!
HZ: There you go.
ALIE WARD: I'm so glad they asked! Thanks, Ivey!
HZ: Lovely question.
ALIE WARD: Mads Clement wants to know: “What's the best way to take down linguistic prescriptivists? Every time someone's like, ‘That's a made up word,’ I want to do murder.”
HZ: Yeah. Well, all the words are made up, ultimately.
ALIE WARD: There you go.
HZ: Yeah. Language evolves and you can't stop it. But you can be swept away by the tide if you just stand there not moving.
ALIE WARD: I like that idea. Em Meurer wants to know: “What is your opinion on starting essays with, ‘Webster's Dictionary defines X as...’?“
HZ: HA! That is desperate! Yeah. Don't do it. And also don't start anything with, "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." in a Pride and Prejudice riff because I see a lot of journalists starting articles with that and I'm like, "You're out of ideas." What happens in the next paragraph, if you're trying to do that beginning? What happens next? And then you could work back to opening with something more relevant.
ALIE WARD: So that's tired, played out, done.
HZ: It's rather tired and played out. But also, what is it you're trying to say by citing that? It feels like... that's your training wheels and you're not ready to take them off your bike.
ALIE WARD: Anna Thompson mentioned the unnecessary Us and someone else answered that about back in the day when you took out an ad in a paper and they charged by the letter...
HZ: Oh, unfortunately that is made up, but it's a really wonderful story that I appreciate. It is just that American English is somewhat more streamlined than British English, which I appreciate. So, British English might have the U cause it's like, oh a lot of those words came from French. And in American English, you're like, "Why do we need it?" ‘Cause you can't hear it. It doesn't add anything. Get rid of it. Or like theater. You know, ‘er’ rather than we have, it's still ‘re’. And it doesn't make sense that we still have that, but I think we're, in England, still attached to the past and have resisted attempts to make the language more logical. Whereas in the States you have less fettered by that history.
ALIE WARD: Oh! I didn't know that. I totally bought the thing that it was...
HZ: It's a great story. A lot of the really attractive stories, unfortunately, are false ‘cause it's easier to make up a great story than to actually have one in life.
ALIE WARD: Well then, you've just debunked some flimflam.
HZ: Oh, shit. Puncturing dreams. That's me.
ALIE WARD: No, I loved it. Carrie Studard wants to know: “Are there any synonyms for the most hated word, ‘moist’?”
HZ: Moist. Do you hate the word ‘moist’?
ALIE WARD: At this point, it's an underdog. You know what I mean? Like, can moist live? Can it just do its business? I don't hate it.
HZ: It's fine.
ALIE WARD: I don't hate it. I tend to think of dew or grass more than I think of...
HZ: Well, that's a lovely form of moisture. I suppose the people who hate it are maybe thinking of bodily crevices. And that's their prejudice showing.
ALIE WARD: Yes, it is.
HZ: Yeah. Because other words like ‘damp’ - I mean, if you're moist from the rain, like a raincoat. Damp. Is that better? Is that worse? A bodily crevice could also be damp.
ALIE WARD: Sure. I feel like moist has a certain heat to it that damp lacks.
HZ: A steaminess rather than chilliness. It's good that we're figuring these things out.
ALIE WARD: Anyone who hates that word, hopefully you hate it more now. Tyler Q says: Why are a lot of science-based words like species names said in Latin?
HZ: Yeah, that's a really good question. Partly, I think because it's kind of an international language. So, scientists might not all speak English, or French, or German, or whoever discovered a thing, but they might have all tapped into Latin. I think the other thing is that Latin still has a lot of status even though the Roman Empire collapsed, what was it, 1600ish years ago. So, people associate it with study and intelligence. It was propagated by religion, by Christianity being performed in Latin, and by kind of high- level politics, and stuff like that. That has helped propagate Latin for hundreds of years after the Roman Empire fell apart. But it still has this reputation of things being classier and more intelligent. And that is a really good con to pull.
ALIE WARD: That's a long con.
HZ: It's a long con! And it's still happening! People are still coining new Latin words. There's a radio station in Finland I made an episode about, that has done a news broadcast in Latin every week since 1989. Obviously, words like ‘airplane’ have no Latin equivalent, so they have to make those up, and ‘computer’. But I interviewed a guy who coins words for that and he was someone that's no different really to how computer didn't exist in English and then it had to be invented when people started having computers or internet. So actually, it's fine. Showed me.
ALIE WARD: I mean, I remember learning Latin, we just learned so many words for kill.
HZ: DID YOU??
ALIE WARD: You could kill by bludgeoning. Yeah, there were so many. But of course...
HZ: It was useful.
ALIE WARD: Yeah, I mean in those times.
HZ: Yeah, it's really indicative of what they were interested in.
ALIE WARD: Yes.
HZ: Yeah, we didn't learn anything that interesting. How disappointing.
ALIE WARD: I just remember being like, "This is quite gory! Another word for kill?” Slightly different ways.
HZ: So many inventive ways to destroy a person.
HZ: Hmmm... Do I. Do I? Favourite thing? I like when someone has a rigid idea about how things should be and there's just so many examples in history of why they're not like that. That's useful to me.
ALIE WARD: Disproving people.
HZ: See, if I can just transform society through the medium of light entertainment that's about words.
ALIE WARD: I would say that you already are. And, thank you for doing that.
HZ: No, you are so welcome.
ALIE WARD: Thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing so many words with me.
HZ: It is so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
ALIE WARD: Yay etymology!
HZ: Yay etymology and entomology.
ALIE WARD: And entomology, yes. Thanks for not being bugged by it.
HZ: Aye!!!!!!
ALIE WARD: I know you hate puns, I’m sorry.
The Allusionist is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the finest independent podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is:
rantipole, archaic noun: a foolish, reckless person.
Try using it in an email today.
Ologies is hosted and begat by Alie Ward, subscribe to it in the podcast emporiums. You can hear the full length version of this conversation, twice as long, on there, as well as many other kinds of ologists. There are so many ologies I did not even know existed! I think if you like the Allusionist, Ologies is very much your kind of show, so go check it out.
Sorry to report that since Alie and I recorded together, the Finnish radio news bulletin in Latin, Nuntii Latini, ended production, after nearly thirty years. You can hear about it in the Latin Lives episode of the Allusionist.
You can find the Allusionist on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the handle is allusionistshow. And hear every episode, read transcripts, find out more information about episode topics, see the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, at theallusionist.org.
