my word for the day (if I can limit myself)

LACONIC

Read its etymology recently?  Originally it refered to people from Lakonia, an area around Sparta, whose inhabitants were famously terse.  Better than terse.

The story goes that when Philip of Macedon threatened them, “If I enter Lakonia, I will raze Sparta to the ground,” the Spartans retorted simply: “If.”

I need to work on my laconic delivery.  Excuse me while I go practice.

Abandon, the First Word

My heart breaks somehow.

How late it was that the first English dictionary was published.  1604.  Can you fathom how late that is?  We’re talking well after Chaucer, and even after Shakespeare began.  The microscope already had been invented.  The MICROSCOPE, people.

Oh, words really flew back then.  Spellings shifted like weather.  Men signed their names in so many different ways.  And books, wow, books…  In the Middle Ages, books were so valuable that libraries chained books.  Readers could pull the chain taut long enough to sit down nearby and read, but those valuable tomes never walked out into the dusty streets.

Your library is your portrait.

~ Holbrook Jackson

Our first English dictionary was called A Table Alphabeticall.  With two Ls, that’s no error on my part.

The first word in the dictionary was abandon.  Abandon.  What a sad, sad, sad word to start such a vital book, the sum of all our words.

Then again, it wasn’t ever really envisioned as a compendium of all of our words.  Its 2,543 words were selected for a very specific purpose.  It was intended for ”ladies, gentlewomen, or any other vnskilfull persons,” so that they could “more easilie and better vnderstand many hard English wordes, vvhich they shall heare or read in scriptures, sermons, or elswhere, and also be made able to vse the same aptly themselues.“

Generous, hm?

The author, Robert Cawdrey, had been a rector before being forced out of his rectory for his Puritanical leanings, which emerged not least, as you can imagine, in his sermons.  His youngest son would grow up to become a Puritan minister known for religious intolerance. Apparently he believed religious toleration to be “the last and most desperate sign of the Antichrist.”

There’s only one surviving copy of the original Table Alphabeticall.  It’s in Oxford.  I’d love to see it.  To see it, touch it, and turn its pages.  If only it could survive the treatment.

Think of it.  It not only contains words we may not use today, it also includes meanings that we’ve forgotten.

Geometry, for example, is listed as “the art of measuring the earth.”  How magical is that.

First Words, First Page, First English Dictionary

A Bum Rap: Medieval Magic, Ancient Curses, Renaissance Paper and Peace Corps :)

Somebody please tell me Wikipedia loves me back.  Because I have fallen and cannot get up.

There was a time when chemistry, with its roots in observable chemical reactions, didn’t exist as an organized, procedure-bound field.  Instead, there was alchemy.  Some mixed it with magic.  Okay.

Well, that got me reading about what exactly those Medieval magical books, called grimoires, covered.  I won’t even MENTION–she said falsely–that the word “grammar” is linked to this word.  Because why set you on your own Wiki Free-Fall?  No reason at all.

So, these poor folk hiding their grimoires under floorboards and beds, in fear of the Church finding them and meting out punishment–what were they risking life and limb for?  Directions on spell-casting, recipes for medicinal powders and potions, instructions on making personal talismans, and (yikes) lists of angels and demons, as well as information on how to summon them to gain magical powers.   For this they died or were tortured.  Useful information, all.

But there’s more, if you’re willing to trawl history.  (And who isn’t, when such gems await?)

Turns out in days of yore, in this case Greco-Roman days, folks would hire others, consultants if you will, to inscribe “curse tablets” for them.  So, for instance, if my neighbor got away with stealing one of my chickens, I would have a curse tablet written with their name inscribed.

Business must have been good.  These consultants would apparently inscribe a bunch of tablets and have them lying around, waiting for someone to come buy and ask for a specific name to be added in the empty space.  Mass-produced curse tablets.

What will they think of next, our ancestors?

Well, I’m glad you asked.  Our democratic brethren the Greeks had another interesting system in place.  Back in the day before the reams of papers which throttle even our electronic period, they used broken pieces of earthenware pottery as voting ballots.  These were called ostraca.

Wait for it–

If they were voting to banish or exile someone, they would scratch the person’s name on the ostraca, leading to the term– “ostracism.”

MAGIC…..

And now, just because I’ve kept this inside for a whole day already, and truly that’s too long for my mortal coil, here’s an extra tidbit, which I’m going to toss at you as being at least peripherally related to the lack of paper in earlier days.

It’s related to my post yesterday on Cheapside.  I told you was looking up astronomical awareness and magic in the 1500s.  What I didn’t tell you, is that I bumped into Cheapside by means of stumbling over the links in Wiki’s chapbook page.  Chapbooks were pamphlet-like booklets printed during this period (and beyond.)  They were not bound, and not considered high literature, per say.  And today, remaining copies are very expensive and rare.

As Wiki puts it:

“Because of their flimsy nature such ephemera rarely survive as individual items. They were aimed at buyers without formal libraries, and, in an era when paper was expensive, were used for wrapping or baking. Paper has also always had hygienic uses and there are contemporary references to the use of chapbooks as bum fodder (i.e. toilet paper).”

Bum fodder….  What a term.  And believe it or not, I do have a story to relate.  I know, you’re mildly shocked I’m continuing past these gems and into territory so questionable.  I understand completely.  So only follow me if you’re ready.

Ready?

This is the briefest of anecdotes from my Peace Corps days.  I’ve alluded to the varied maladies that strike one in Peace Corps.  One of these, which almost everyone got, was amoebic dysentery.  And when one has dysentery, one doesn’t really have time to run about town looking for soft and luxuriant brands of bum fodder.  Anyway, one’s town or village probably doesn’t carry anything softer than crunched up newspaper.

So, to be brief, it does happen that one simply grabs whatever’s near one, and runs to the outhouse.  One might, for instance, grab one’s language book and run out.  And then one might very, very, very rapidly try to study those words while squatting, realizing that whatever page gets torn out, ain’t no-one ever gonna study those words again later.

Yes, I really did say that.  And yes, that really is Peace Corps.  Welcome, if you’re here perusing for tips on what to do with your spare two years and three months of altruistic feelings.  ;)

I think my photo should feature something completely different, so you can return to your day sprightly and clean.  As always when you leave my blog.  *cough*

Hot Air Ballooning in Cappadocia, Turkey

Need a Point of Reference? The Tattoo Parlor Tale

And then I had another one of my brilliant ideas.

We were in the woods, at a friend’s house, a whole group of us.  Playing made-up games like our version of Scrabble, in which players are forbidden from using real words, and must justify their made-up word by using it in a sentence.  If it passes muster, it passes and enters not only the game, but our group lexicon.  Such are the origins, future etymologists, of the words soon to sweep America:  scunt (v), figscunt (n), Haneod (exclamation), and others.

I don’t really think we were looking for something new to entertain us.  Our group never has to look.  Entertainment cleaves unto us.  But when the idea popped up, I couldn’t keep it to myself, so unfathomably genius was it.

“Hey guys!  Let’s each write down a word, either ‘tattoo’ or ‘piercing’ and put our secret words into a bowl, and then everyone has to pick a piece of paper and do whatever it is!”

Yes, that was my genius party idea.

“Oooh,” said Shawn, appreciatively, I like to think.  But then a look passed over his face.  ”Wait, that kind of sucks for the tattoo people.  It’s a much greater commitment.”

“Pshaw,” I answered convincingly.

His look of concern didn’t ease, though, so I softened my approach.

“Look, the tattoo doesn’t have to be big.  It could be small.  Like, a dot.”

He frowned.  ”A dot?  But tattoos should be of something.”  He had a point.  No matter, I had one too.

“Dude, don’t you see?  It could be a point of reference.”  My voice lowered in glee and delight.  Genius is in the details, folks.

“That way, if you ever state anything, and someone asks what your point of reference is, you can just lower your collar or raise your sleeve or lower your jeans and point!”  I was almost breathless in ecstatic anticipation.

This time he perked up too, and not only that, the whole group jumped in.  The only thing is, compared to having your own personal point of reference tattooed on you, a piercing seemed sort of characterless and wishy-washy.

The bowl and the entire concept of chance was abandoned.  We piled into the car, all eight of us, with Brooke and Phil singing their new song that we’re now hoping they’ll make into a book for kids, and drove to the tattoo parlor.  Another brilliant idea by yours truly.  ;-)  Thank god I have the kinds of friends who’ll tumble into a car on any crazy whim!!!

my crazy friends (or an advertisement for Where the Wild Things Are?)