Ipsedixitism – More of It About than You’d Think

Hello,

This week’s word is ipsedixitism. You may not know the term, but I’m fairly sure you’ve encountered what it describes. Ipsedixitism is defined as “statement presented as fact without any supporting evidence” (BBC) or “dogmatic assertion or assertiveness” (Merriam-Webster).

I’ve encountered a few people in my life who love a bit of ipsedixitism. If they make a statement in a confident, loud voice many around them will assume it to be correct and generally they dislike being asked for supporting evidence. Now it’s not a problem if the statement is self-evidently true such as “the sky is blue”, but if it’s more complex then such talk is misleading, at best.

It’s easier to pronounce than it looks, break it up into chunks, ip-se-dix-it-ism.

The word itself comes from the expression ipse dixit which is Latin and translates literally as “he said it” where the he in this case is the master. The Latin is a translation of the Greek phrase autos epha which was used by disciples of Pythagoras when they were quoting their master. The idea was that they could say something and give “Phythagoras said it so it must be true” as their justification. Ipse dixit came into English in the late 1500s and by the 1830s you could use ipsedixitism to describe any dogmatic assertion.

I wish I could claim that the falling of ipsedixitism from general use (its usage has plummeted in the last century) means that dogmatic assertions are on the decrease too, but I’m not convinced of that statement unless somebody can offer supporting proof.

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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Hipponax and the Word History of Parody

Hello,

If you’ve ever watched an “Airplane”, “Naked Gun”, “Hot Shots”, “Life of Brian”, or “This is Spinal Tap” you probably have a pretty good idea of what a parody is, but when it comes to word history you’re out by a couple of millennia, and in the wrong cultural form and country.

Around the same time in my life when I watched those movies, I accidentally hit on the original form of parody. Grab your time machine and come with me. It’s the last century (yeah, I’m that old) and I’ve managed to wriggle my way onto the school magazine’s writing group.

Magi

We need to fill a few pages and we’ve been studying “The Journey of the Magi” by the poet T.S. Eliot (published 1927) in our English class. Somehow I convinced the magazine’s editor that a parody of this poem was exactly what we needed in the issue. I carefully took each line of his classic poem exploring deep themes of death and rebirth through the hard journey of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem, and tortured them by turning it into a gigantic moan about how hard our final year of studies leading to our state exams had been. Luckily I had enough wit to throw in a few jokes at the expense of teachers and the school thus making it a bearable read.

I found my copy recently and no, I’m definitely not publishing it. There is a good reason why I don’t write poetry. However, it got good reviews from a biased audience and I suppose it was my first published piece of writing.

It was also a parody in the true meaning of the word. A parody is defined as writing which imitates but ridicules an existing work, closing following the original form. Specifically the writing in question is poetry.

The first recorded use of the word in English comes from Ben Jonson (an Elizabethan era playwright and poet) in the 1590s and is drawn from the Latin word parodia (parody). The Latin came from Greek parōidē (burlesque song or poem) which is formed by compounding para (beside, parallel, mock) and ode (song or poem). Literally a parody is a poem which mocks another poem. So, technically, those beloved parody movies aren’t parodies at all. Or so the Greeks would tell us.

One particular Greek wouldn’t be happy about our misuse of the term and would probably destroy us with a well-written verse or two, Hipponax of Ephesus. Known as The Father of Parody, he lived in the 6th century B.C. and wrote about everyday life lived by those in the lower classes, rather than battles and gods. He was renowned for his scalding wit which he turned on sculptors he disliked. Only fragments of his works survive but ancient scholars credited him as inventing parody.

Sayings which are credited to him include –

“There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one carries out her dead body.”

“drank like a lizard in a privy.”

Probably just as well that neither T.S. Eliot nor Hipponax ever read my dreadful poem. I would have been the victim of their new parody.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Issue Three is out this week. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email.

The Charisma of Modern Words

Hello,

It’s day four of Wordfoolery Book Week and time to celebrate modern words thanks to my digital-only book “Modern Words with Old Roots”, my fourth book, which I released in 2022. I particularly enjoy discovering modern words which have ancient origins. It’s easy to miss the history which is literally under our nose, plus it’s fun to surprise my teens with the roots of their supposedly cool “new” word.

The book reveals the astonishingly ancient history of a hand-picked selection of 50 modern words from avatar to zarf.

It’s time to login (inspired by an actual piece of wood), open your kindle (inspired by Vikings), forget about the latest world crisis (thanks to an ancient Greek doctor), skip the doomscrolling (with a nod to William the Conqueror), and set off in hot pursuit (from the Age of Sail) of some juicy language facts. You may be surprised by what you discover.

Words change constantly, acquiring new meanings, and finding fans in new generations. Let’s rejoice in their evolution. This one is good for word geeks and anyone who’s ever wondered about the roots of the latest trendy word.

One modern word you won’t find in the book, because it’s impossible to keep pace with teen slang, is rizz. It was named Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2023 this week so it seemed a good time to explore it.

Rizz and Charisma

If you don’t have a teen nearby you may be asking what rizz means. Oxford tell us that rizz is somebody’s ability to attract another person via style and charm. It formed as a shortening from the middle of the word charisma. Other words formed like this include fridge from refrigerator and flu from influenza. It’s worth noting that rizz up is a common use. This means to chat up or seduce somebody.

Of course now that the boring grown-ups have noticed rizz, it’s probably been redefined as old-fashioned. That seems to be the pattern with youthful slang in my house.

Where do the old roots come in? Two words – Greek gods.

Charisma joined Middle English around 1500 when it was spelled karisme and referred to a divine gift. This sense was retained when it became charism in the 1640s and charisma in the 1800s. By the 1930s the meaning focused on the gift of leadership with a little side influence from German and it became personal charm in the 1950s, and of course rizz in more recent times.

Where was charisma before Middle English? It was a Latinised form of a Greek word kharisma (divine gift) which came from kharis (grace, beauty, kindness). One of the three attendants of the Greek goddess Aphrodite was called Charis and presumably she was beautiful, kind, and graceful. Kharis is related to the verb khairein (to rejoice at) from a Proto IndoEuropean root word gher (to like, to want).

Being charismatic has been a gift from the very start and always associated with love, longing, and attractive traits. Some things never change, but I doubt too many will think of Aphrodite’s attendants when trying their rizz today.

If you enjoy stories like these then pick up a copy of “Modern Words with Old Roots” by Grace Tierney in ebook from Amazon. It’s a digital-only exclusive, a quick read to keep you going until “Words Christmas Gave Us” (launching in 2024).

I’ve been talking about my books every day this week, so stay tuned for how to order signed copies and my book plans for 2024 tomorrow. Normal word blogging will resume next Monday.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Issue Three is due in mid-December. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email.

Sycophants and Figs – a Word History

Hello,

I realised the other day that I’d never delved into the history of sycophants and with a Greek-sounding word there was bound to be a story in there somewhere. Now here I am, with fond memories of a trip to the Greek island of Skyros where I ate breakfast each morning under a fig tree.

Why am I rambling about figs? Turns out figs are at the heart of sycophancy. The word sycophant reached English in the 1530s, when it was spelled in the Latin fashion – sycophanta – and its meaning was informer, slanderer, or bearer of tales. Back then a sycophant was a gossip rather than a flatterer, or let’s be honest, a total suck-up.

Sycophanta, like many Latin origin words in English came via French where it was sycophante. Again like many Latin words in English, it can be traced past Latin and into Greek. I’m not saying the Roman “borrowed” mountains of vocabulary from the Greeks, but – no wait, that’s exactly what I’m saying. In Greek it was sykophantes. There it meant a false accuser or slanderer and the formation of the Greek word is where the figs enter our story.

Sykophantes is formed from sykon (fig) and phainein (to show or to shine). This translates literally as one who shows the fig. Who would this be? A fruit seller? A gardener? Why were they known as slanderers?

Showing the fig, in those days, was a rude hand gesture. Yes, there’s nothing new under the sun, humans have been at this forever. I’m sure you won’t want to repeat the gesture but how you do it is to stick your thumb between two fingers. The fig was seen as a symbol of the vagina (sykon also means vulva in Greek apparently although Google Translate is only giving me fig). If you’ve ever seen the inside of a cut fig you might agree with this symbolism.

The theory is Greek politicians of the time would never make such a rude gesture but had no problem with their supporters taunting the opposition with it. As a female I have to point out that using a female symbol to throw shade at a male is nothing new and still continues today (big girl’s blouse or fights like a girl, for example) and is disrespectful to women.

There is an alternative theory, discounted as unsubstantiated by the Oxford English Dictionary, that the original sycophant was an informer against the illegal export of figs. Fun story though.

I definitely believe the idea of the hand gesture though. On my trip to Skyros we were treated to daily Greek lessons after breakfast and our teacher explained many basic phrases didn’t even require words because the islanders were fond of body language and hand signals. Even if we couldn’t manage the pronunciations, we could communicate in that way. Thankfully he didn’t teach us to show the fig but I do recall one for “you’re full of it”.

As for the modern use of sycophant, it reached English in the late 1500s and has been with us ever since, without figs.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

Why Draconian Means Strict

Hello,

Despite writing about the history of words for 15 years, I still fall into the trap of assuming roots for words based purely on similarity of spelling. An example is this week’s word – draconian. I was convinced it was related to dragons. There is a tiny link, but no, we don’t get it from dragons.

This is Bashful the Dragon. He’s very gentle, hardly ever starts fires, and love pearls.

Draconian is used to describe rules, or laws, which are particularly harsh and we have the ancient Greeks to thank for this one. The Draconian Code was a set of laws created by Draco, an Athenian of the 7th century B.C. and they were noted for their severity. In a time when punishment didn’t exactly include community service or reduced sentences for good behaviour, they stood out. Nearly every violation of Draco’s code was a capital crime. Demades, the orator, said at the time that Draco’s code was written in blood.

It is possible that Draco wasn’t a real person and we have few biographical details, but he was the first person to provide Athens with written laws instead of the blood feuds in use prior to his efforts. Perhaps his draconian laws were kinder than what they replaced. One story recounts his tragic death. The tradition was to throw hats or cloaks onto the stage in approval. Apparently he was so approved that he suffocated beneath all the garments in a theatre in Aegina.

Regular readers of the blog will spot that draconian is hence an eponymous adjective, another one for edition two of “How To Get Your Name in the Dictionary” (my book about words borrowed from people’s names and placenames).

Draconian, despite coming from ancient times, wasn’t adopted into English until the 1700. Although they did have draconic from the 1600s with the same meaning. Draco is the Latinised form for the Greek name Drakon. Drakon’s name translated literally as sharp-sighted and this is where we get that small link to the dragons.

Dragon, originally spelled dragoun, arrived in English in the mid 1200s from Old French dragon and Latin draconem (huge serpent, dragon) from Greek drakon (serpent, giant seafish). Draco who composed those laws was basically called Dragon, a pretty scary name to have, unless it was a reference to his acute vision.

The source of drakon in Greek was drak (to see clearly) and ultimately a Proto Indo European root derk (to see) which provides related words in Sanskrit, Old Irish (adcondarc – I have seen), Gothic, Old High German, and Albanian.

This would seem to imply that dragons had particularly good eyesight. The young of dragons were called dragonets (c. 1300) and there was a female form – dragoness (1630s). Sometimes they were called drakes from the same roots. Despite our more recent concept of a dragon being airborn and breathing fire the word itself is closely linked to sea monsters. I hope never to find out the truth of the matter via practical experience!

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. this post contains affiliate links which make a small payment to the blog if you choose to purchase through them. #CommissionsEarned. Alternatively, you can use my digital tip jar to say thanks for my work.

A Brief History of Bumf and Alphabetary

Hello,

This week’s words are with thanks to “The Dictionary of Lost Words” by Pip Williams. With a title like that you might expect nonfiction but actually it’s a charming historic fiction novel about a young woman’s coming of age during the early 1900s in the shadow of the First World War, the female suffrage movement, and the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. She collects neglected words along the way and these included bumf and alphabetary.

First to alphabetary. This is a word the heroine loves but which isn’t included in the dictionary (hence the idea of lost words). This sadly obsolete word means rudimentary (i.e. basic) and has its roots in the Latin word alphabetarius. As you’d expect this all links back to the alphabet (the letters of a language arranged in a particular order) which has been in English since the late 1500s. Alphabet is borrowed from Greek alphabetos which was compounded from alpha and beta – the first two letters of their own alphabet.

As for bumf, its origins are somewhat less lofty.

Bumf is used to describe unwanted leaflets and excess paperwork. Apparently it entered English in the late 1800s as slang by British schoolboys for toilet paper. Certainly by the advent of World War One it was in widespread use perhaps by soldiers lacking certain basic supplies? The idea is that it’s a shortening of bum-fodder (hence the toilet link). I can only hope my books are never regarded as bumf!

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. this post contains affiliate links which make a small payment to the blog if you choose to purchase through them. #CommissionsEarned. Alternatively, you can use my digital tip jar to say thanks for my work.

The Fleshy History of Sarcasm and Sarcophagus

Hello,

This week’s post is with thanks to the wonderful QI Elves podcast “No Such Thing as a Fish”. It’s not specifically about words and etymology but sometimes they let slip a mention which sends me scurrying for the dictionaries, as was the case this week. This time it was the notion that sarcasm and sarcophagus have something linguistic in common – the idea of biting. Naturally I had to explore.

First let’s take a look at the word sarcasm. Sarcasm, tagged by Oscar Wilde as “the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence”, is one of my favourite forms of humour. It has been with us as an English word since the 1570s when it was spelled sarcasmus and was defined as a biting taunt or satirical remark. Aha, our first mention of biting.

Sarcasmus was a borrowing from Latin and before that from Greek sarkasmos (sneer, taunt, mockery) so presumably the use of sarcasm even existed in Ancient Greece. Sarkasmos had its roots in the verb sarkazein (to speak bitterly or to sneer). It translates literally as “to strip off the flesh like a dog”. Sarx or sarkos (genitive form) translated as flesh or a piece of meat. This worries me. As a vegetarian do I need to stop using sarcasm?

Back in English the spelling evolved into sarcasm by the early 1600s and has been with us ever since although most people don’t think about dogs ripping meat with their teeth when they make a sarcastic remark nowadays.

But what about the sarcophagus? How do ancient Egyptian coffins get in on the act?

While you may find the whole dog-biting thing a tad grim on sarcasm, wait for the next level grimness of sarcophagus. The word enters English around the year 1600 to describe not the Egyptian coffins themselves but to name the type of stone used in them. It came from the same word in Latin and before that from Greek sarkophagos lithos (limestone used for coffins) where the sarkophagos adjective translates as – flesh-eating. Delightful.

The idea was that the particular type of limestone (which was from a quarry near Assos in Troas in what is now modern day Turkey) helped to quickly decompose bodies. Given all the effort the Egyptians put into preserving their dead, I’m surprised they favoured this stone.

The word itself is compounded from sarx (see above, same root in sarcasm) which meant flesh and phagein, the verb to eat.

For a hundred years the word sarcophagus in English was all about the stone. The idea of it being a stone coffin didn’t arise until 1705. The word was shortened in Latin to sarcus and gives us the word for coffin in French (cercueil), German (Sarg), and zerk the Dutch for tombstone.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. I’m trying out Bluesky, the new social media app. If you’re on there you’ll find me at @wordfoolery.bsky.social . Yes, I’m still on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram too, don’t worry.



The Word History of Pilates

Hello,

If, like me, you’ve reached an age where some of your muscles and joints creak like an old sailing ship in a gale then this week’s word is for you.

Pilates is one of those eponyms I missed in my book on the topic (“How to Get Your Name in the Dictionary”). Yes, pilates is named for a person and a rather interesting person at that.

The word pilates has been with us since the 1980s to describe a physical fitness routine which became a worldwide craze at that time, but to understand the word you need to look a little earlier in history, in a war internment camp.

Joseph Hubertus Pilates (1883-1967) was born near Düsseldorf, Germany to a Greek father and German mother. His health was poor as a child and his father introduced him to gymnastics to help him become strong. This led him to a strongman job in a circus where he posed as a Greek statue to display his well-developed muscles.

His circus was touring England in 1914 when the World War I was declared. As a German national he was arrested and interned in a camp on the Isle of Man (between Britain and Ireland).

Joseph was inspired, so the story goes, by the movements of the island’s cats (who famously have no tails) and the contrast between their stretches and energy in contrast with the prisoners. He created a series of exercises to stretch human muscles, possibly even creating some gym equipment from the camp’s beds.

The legend goes that the prisoners learned his routine and when sickness hit the island none of them fell sick. They left the camp in better shape at the end of the war than when it began. Given that he then went on to craft a business from his exercises you may need to take a pinch of salt with that claim.

Pilates was released from the camp in 1919 and in 1926 journeyed to Manhattan, meeting his wife Clara on the ship. Their business was founded on Eight Avenue and soon boasted the dancers of Balanchine’s ballet company and various Hollywood stars as clients. However, ordinary folk attended too and Pilates was always keen to display his physique to impress them.

He cut an impressive figure and not just for his muscles. He had a glass eye (possibly a boxing injury), long white hair, drank heavily, and smoked 15 cigars per day. Not the modern image of a fitness guru but he lived to the age of 86, dying in 1967. His system of exercise experienced a huge boom in the 1980s making his name an entry in the dictionary. Today it’s estimated that 12 million people worldwide practise pilates.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. this post contains affiliate links which make a small payment to the blog if you choose to purchase through them. #CommissionsEarned. Alternatively, you can use my digital tip jar to say thanks for my work.

p.p.s. Some of the biographical information in this post is drawn from an excellent article about Joseph Pilates by Danielle Friedman in India Vogue.

The Many Uses and History of Ditto

Hello,

Ditto is one of those English words you may not hear that often, and yet it is needed and used regularly. I remember being astounded when somebody explained to me at school that if I used two small parallel vertical lines below an item in a list that was a way to show the item was repeated. “That means ditto,” they said. “What’s ditto?” I replied.

What is ditto? Ditto is the same thing again, often indicated by the ditto mark (those little parallel lines, sometimes typed via the double quote mark on your keyboard) beneath the word or figure to be repeated. Ditto can also be used in speech or writing to indicate a repeated action. For example, “He crossed his legs, so did she. He folded his arms, ditto“.

Ditto has been with us for a long time in English and has old roots. It arrived in English in the early 1600s with thanks to Italian and Tuscan dialect in particular, but with links to Latin. In Latin there’s a verb dicere (to speak, tell, or say). In Italian that verb became dire (to say) which may seem very familiar to French speakers as dire is also used in that language. The verb dire in Italian is conjugated into detto. The Tuscans took a twist on it with ditto (in the said month or said year).

It was that twist which led Italians to use ditto to avoid repetition of month names when writing a series of dates. This shortcut was then adopted by the English, who traded widely with Italy at the time. By the late 1600s ditto was being used to mean “the same as above” for any item, not only dates.

By the late 1700s you might also find the word dittoes being used for a suit of men’s clothes of the same colour and fabric. This use persisted at least to the early 1800s.

A similar but unrelated word is dittography. This is defined as “the unintentional repetition of letters or words in copying or printing”. For example, writing tabble instead of table. I expected it to share roots with ditto, but apparently not according to several dictionary sources. It’s imported to English from Greek dittos (double) and graphia (writing) – literally the idea of writing something twice.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. I may clicked the wrong button when posting last week and made some posts available to subscribers only. Apologies for this mishap!

The History of Philtrums and Love Philtres

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