Here. Typical Poe. Everything starts out seemingly normal, yet still uncomfortably…cockeyed, and then it quickly progresses into an exquisitely torturous phantasmagoria in which the elements that you would least suspect to betray you do just that, turning the world into a pathetic fallacy of misery.

I think of the I felt a Funeral, in my Brain poem by Emily Dickinson, which is also about sound overwhelming sense. I also think of her poem He fumbles at your Soul, though that could be more of a description of Poe’s authorial technique.

If Emily Dickinson had a motto, it would be Death, God, and Bees — Lots and Lots of — Bees.

For example:

Some things that fly there be —
Birds — Hours — the Bumblebee —
Of these no Elegy.

Some things that stay there be —
Grief — Hills — Eternity —
Nor this behooveth me.

There are that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the Riddle lies!

How does she do that? How???

The adjectival form is Delgadesco – thank you very much. [Thank you @natalunasans for this tidbit – I was using Delgadovian, and it wasn’t working at all.] Now you have the perfect descriptor for [arguably] the most magnificent set of eyebrows ever to grace the screen.

This post brought to you by Amateur Etymologists for Roger Delgado.
Continue reading The adjectival form is Delgadesco — thank you very much.

I recently encountered a person with the first name Gray. English language mostly reserves color-based names for feminine first names [Rose, Violet, Pearl, and other floral or jewel names] or surnames [Black, Brown, Gold, Gray, Green, etc.], so I wondered the story behind their name. The answer was that their birth name was some “hippie” moniker that did not represent them, so they made a new name of their parents’ surnames. In this case, Gray was a surname transposed to first-name status.

This immediately made me think of a character who started off with a very unusual name like Rainbow Sunflower and then, as soon as legally possible, traded it out for Grey in an attempt to reduce noticeability. However, since the name Grey is unusual, just in a different way, the character would still gain attention for their name.

I grew up in Essex Center, Vermont, and, on my frequent travels through the state, cracked up at the highway sign announcing an exit to Middlesex. Being a etymology nerd, I thus had ample time to contemplate the two -sex towns in my state. Where did their names come from?

The most immediate antecedent to both Essex and Middlesex is England. Like so many New England names in the region, the towns of Vermont recapitulate place names of Old England. Essex is a county in southern Old England. Middlesex is another.

But what do such town names mean? Again the map of England holds a clue. Besides Essex and Middlesex, England also has areas by the names of Sussex [East and West]. Additionally, Wessex was historically a kingdom in southern England. Furthermore, while there is no contemporary place name of Wessex, Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex has had such an influence on the region that it may be used today to describe the region in the southwest of the country. In conclusion, Essex, Wessex, Middlesex, and Sussex all cluster in the same southern region of England.

At one point, I stared at all the -sexes I knew and realized that they followed a pattern. They each denote a relative direction. Obviously Middlesex is “the middle -sex.” Essex is “the east -sex.” Thus Wessex is “the west -sex” and Sussex “the south -sex.” The prefixes of the –sexes function as geographical markers.

Having solved a long-standing [at least in my own head] mystery about the sources of the -sexes, I then moved onto the next logical step: the meaning of -sex itself. The Oxford English Dictionary, quoted in the article on Wessex, says that -sex derives from the Old English Seaxe, meaning “Saxons.” The -sexes then point out the geographical distribution of various Saxon settlements: Essex for the Saxons to the east, Wessex for the Saxons to the west, Sussex for the Saxons to the south, Middlesex for the Saxons in the…uh…middle.

This information only led to a further question. Extant -sexes represent three cardinal directions [east, west, south] and one relative one [middle]. But what about the missing cardinal direction? Shouldn’t there be a “north –sex?” Presumably it would be called something like Nussex or Norsex, by extension from Sussex, but it doesn’t exist.

Though the absence of Nussex has pissed me off for years, I have finally figured out why it doesn’t exist. There is no Nussex because it is the default -sex. In other words, it was the Saxon settlement used as the original reference point for the names of the rest of the -sexes. In the same way that the state of Virginia has no geographical adjective, but the later and geographically relative state of West Virginia does, so the -sex used as the point of comparison for all others would remain uninflected. Only those –sexes developing chronologically after and in relation to the original -sex needed geographical adjectives after all.

There — now you know everything I know about the four -sexes.

I love words of Latin origin for turning and going and progressing, which brings me to the cluster of diversity, deviance, perversion, and transgression. Interestingly, all of these have negative connotations, except for diversity, which has somehow escaped the specter of badness.

Let’s start with deviance. It’s from de-, Latin for “away from,” and via, Latin for “way” or “path.” Thus deviance means “going off the beaten path.” In its primary, popular definition, it means “disgusting, immoral criminality and/or sexual behavior.” Example: The deviance of pedophilia represents significant sexual dysfunction. In conclusion, deviance is gross.

Perversion is pretty close to deviance. From Latin pervertere, “to overthrow or overturn,” and thus from per-, “away from,” and Latin vertere, “to turn,” it means “turning the wrong way.” Perversion has never had positive connotations; it’s always about making changes for the worse. More recently, it has also developed connotations of deviant [har] sexuality, thanks to the sexologists of the end of the 1800s who used pervert to mean “someone who has sex in other than a prescribed heteronormative manner.” In conclusion, it’s another word of bad progression.

We now come to transgression. This is from Latin trans-, “through, across, or beyond,” and gressus, “going.” The sense is of “crossing a line” or “going beyond a [legal] limit.” Transgression thus connotes egregious behavior. More than that, it connotes sin, as it tends to be associated with the Christian characters Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil after God told them not to. Oh look — another term of disgusting degeneracy!

These few examples suggest that English words of Latin origin in which people lose their way tend to be loaded with negative judgment. So what’s up with diversity? Coming from Latin de-, “away from,” and vertere, “to turn,” why isn’t it like perversion and deviance? The source material for diversity is very similar to that of perversion and deviance, but somehow diversity has now ended up as a neutral English noun meaning “great variety.” Furthermore, diversity may even signify a positive celebration of the many differences, particularly among a group of people.

The deviation of diversity from the perverted connotations of its cousins becomes more puzzling when one learns that it used to have a negative definition, which is now obsolete. Diversity meant “contrariness or perverse adherence to something wrong” in English from the late 1400s and through the 1500s, but was out of use by the 1600s.

I wish that I had some definitive answer to the question of diversity’s goodness. I don’t, but it’s still fascinating to ponder.

“Why don’t you and she touch bases and find where the connection points are so we can have a discussion around how to leverage the synergy?”

Well, okay, I just heard the phrase leverage the synergy, but people are always touching base, finding connection points, and having discussions around things in my workplace, so it’s eminently plausible that this sentence has come out of someone’s mouth.

I just can’t use touch base. It sounds like a grade Z euphemism for something objectionable. Don’t touch my base! Keep your hands to yourself!

I had the joy of writing the following phrase today: UVM Health Network Regional Transport Leadership Structure Analysis. It’s actually pretty cool the way in which English can just drop prepositions and go from An Analysis of the Structure of the Leadership of the Transport System for the Region Overseen by the Medical Center Affiliated with the University of Vermont [26 words] to UVM Health Network Regional Transport Leadership Structure Analysis [10, counting University of Vermont as three]. Sure, it doesn’t dance trippingly off the tongue, but it’s succinct and informative.

Robert Herrick writes six lines Upon Julia’s Clothes:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes

Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

That brave vibration each way free,

O how that glittering taketh me!

I’ve pondered this poem for decades, mostly because the “liquefaction of her clothes” is just about the bestest description of some long, heavy, sweeping, sussurant, layered garment. Last night, however, I realized that the poem can also be easily read as a description of a man watching a woman masturbating, turning herself on, and having an orgasm.

I derive the turn-on from a crashingly literal interpretation of both the sweet flow and the “liquefaction of her clothes” — i.e., her lubricating her clothes from the intensity of her desire. The “brave vibration each way free” connotes an expansive release, reminiscent of the way that some people flail and fling all their limbs out when they hit orgasm. The “glittering” could easily be flashes of perspiration glinting as the woman exerts herself, or the shine from her wide-open eyes, or even the speaker’s dazzled perceptions.

The assumption of masturbation requires a little more explication. The poem sets the scene as one between two people, Julia and the poet. If we’re going with the orgasmic interpretation, let’s assume that Julia is somehow getting turned on. However, we have no indication that the speaker is interacting with Julia in any way that contributes to her desire [although she could arguably get off on being watched, I suppose]. Thus, for this reading, process of elimination suggests that Julia is taking matters into her own hands.

I don’t know what the pharmaceutical marketing teams are thinking when they come up with drug names like Dysport, which is an injectible drug used to treat spasticity in arms, hands, and fingers. It’s also used to temporarily remove frown lines. [Botulism toxin is everywhere these days! I really wish botulism-based drugs were covered by more insurance companies as antispasmodics.]

Dysport, like its cousin Botox, is yet another example of a great drug with a wretched name. Honestly, who thought it was a good idea to give Dysport a first syllable, dys-, that connotes something problematic or difficult, as in dysfunction [poor function], dystopia [bad imaginary future], and dysphoria [unhappy feelings]? This makes Dysport sound like either a bad port or a bad sport. Maybe they were going for homonymy with the rather outmoded verb disport [to frolic], but, since the negative connotations of the dys- prefix seem to have utterly escaped them, I really doubt that anyone on the naming committee knew about disport.

As a bonus, here is a slightly less unfortunate drug name: Gleevic. Gleevic is an extra super expensive drug used against various types of cancer, particularly chronic myeloginous leukemia. It’s an improvement over Dysport in that it has more positive connotations [hell, it starts with glee!]. However, it’s not a complete success, as it still sounds like the noise that a frog makes when you step on it.

Using schm- to substitute for the first letter of the second word in a reduplication automatically makes the resultant phrase dismissive and contemptuous, neatly encapsulating, for example, my feelings about the lingering cold weather: Winter schminter!

Apparently this comes from Yiddish, where the word + sch- + [word minus first letter] concatenation performs exactly the same function.

Prescriptivists schmecriptivists!

“How about Sam Antic and the Semantics?”

“Mmmm, too obscure.”

“Linguaphilia?”

“Is that legal in this state?”

“Floating Signifier and the Semioticians.”

 
“Now you’re just trying too hard.”

I’ve long known about the Puritan virtue names that appear occasionally among New Englanders until about the mid-1800s; I mean hell — when one has a Submit as one’s greatx8 grandmother, one does have an incentive to learn where a name like that comes from. While some virtue names like Charity, Chastity, Faith, and Hope are used even today, others have died out.

Puritan virtue names that have died out include Submit and Thankful, but also two that I recently learned about: Silence and Desire. I’m sure the Desire is something like “desire for God’s love” or “desire to be saved.” The first seems more about not expressing and the second about expression, though. I find it especially interesting that, in the context where I learned these names, Silence and Desire were sisters.

Such names have always gotten me thinking, particularly Submit. Verb names, much less imperatives, are pretty rare [although, around these parts, we are familiar with Remember Baker, Green Mountain Boy and cousin of Ethan Allen]. Was having a command as a name considered odd back then? Did Submit and Remember go by nicknames or by the one-word sentences that served as their first names? What did Submit think of having that name?

Submit, Silence, and Desire just beg for me to write a story about them — well, mostly Submit. It would be a modern-day story about a modern person named Submit and her struggles with family, ancestry, expectations of femininity, and irritatingly overdetermined nomenclature. I envision Submit as coming from a long line of women with Puritan virtue names and being particularly pissed that she didn’t get something like Faith or Hope…or, hell, even Chastity, because at least you can shorten that to Chaz. But noooooo, her mom had to name her ironically in some sort of feminist statement [????]. I get the sense that she rattles off her standard greeting — “My name is Submit Delacroix, sierra-uniform-bravo-Mike-India-tango, like the verb” — through gritted teeth every single time, and if someone says anything more than “Oh” or “Okay,” they receive the Death Glare. >:(

I was looking up how to spell “Was ist das?” and found that a word derived therefrom, the French “vasistas,” refers to small windows in doors of houses in Germany, through which people look to see who’s calling. The word comes from the phrase with which German people answer the door: “Was ist das?” I love it — it’s the French equivalent of calling a peephole a hellothere.

While I was poking around on Wikipedia for information about Gibson Girl bouffants, I followed a link on that page to one on the chignon, which advised me to “see also: cockernonnie.” Of course, since I have never laid eyes on a cockernonnie before, I felt compelled to follow Wikipedia’s advice in hopes of finding out what one looked like. Wikipedia had the grace to inform me that a cockernonnie was a historical Scottish women’s chignon, also known as a “cock-up,” which is, as we all know, British slang for a complete mess. However, though a cockernonnie may also be referred to as a cock-up, cock-up qua mistake does not derive from cock-up qua hairstyle. And still, after all that, I have no idea what a cockernonnie looks like! Woe is me!

On a tangentially related subject, I think “cockernonnie” would make a great insult. Like “nincompoop,” it has vaguely scatological associations, a satisfying plosive at the end of the first syllable, and a wonderful roll off the tongue. The loose association with “cock > dick > dickhead” and the loose homonymy with “ninny” both make “cockernonnie” sound like a word that refers to someone who is rude, arrogant, and offensive in their inane, asinine behavior. Yup, “cockernonnie” is ripe for repurposing…

Dr. Paul Booth of Keele University was looking through Chester County [UK] Court plea rolls for 1310, where he discovered mention of “Roger Fuckebythenavele,” who was in the process of being outlawed. Because Roger was referred to in this way on three separate occasions, Booth opines that “Fuckebythenavele” is Roger’s nickname, as opposed to the clerk’s private joke. Booth further conjectures that the derisive epithet refers to someone who is particularly incompetent and clueless in sexual activities. Those etymologists who thought that “fuck” first appeared in English about 200 years later find Booth’s discovery very exciting.

Most of the news reports stop with Booth’s putative source of the name, thereby failing to take up some truly interesting questions. I, for one, am less interested in this example as a proof of the longer lifespan of “fuck” and more about its implications for Roger. For example, why is Roger recorded with a nickname surname? Surely he has an actual last name, so why is it not used? Is this nickname like a rap artist’s name, by which almost everyone knows Roger publicly, to the exclusion of his legal name? If that’s the case, though, wouldn’t he be referred to as “Roger [Legal Surname,] known as Roger Fuckebythenavele”?

In a broader context, what does Roger’s nickname tell us about the use of “fuck” in Chester County in the early 1300s? Just how insulting was it? What level of taboo did it carry? For example, would the modern equivalent of this be “Roger Navelscrew” [humorous, acceptable in print, broadcast media, and casual speech, but rude] or “Roger Fucknavel” [still humorous, but vulgar, unacceptable in most print, broadcast media, and general common speech]? Does the appearance of “Fuckebythenavele” in a legal document suggest that the word was more acceptable in everyday speech than it is now?

I’m also curious about nicknames in general during this period. Do other similar nicknames appear — i.e., Sue Shit-in-soup or Peter Piss-in-bed? How commonly are such epithets used? Can we determine if they are supposed to be taken as shocking insults, as amusing jokes, or something in between? Can we draw any conclusions about the social status of people likely to have such nicknames?

In other words, this snippet of information makes me want to know more about Roger!

I recently challenged myself to find at least one variant of my name for each letter of the English alphabet. I’m missing 10 letters, but here’s what I have so far:

A is for Ailsa.

B is for Bettina.

C is for Chabella.

D is for ?????

E is for Elizabeth.

F is for ?????

G is for ?????

H is for ?????

I is for Isabel.

J is for Jeliszaveta.

K is for ?????

L is for Liz.

M is for ?????

N is for ?????

O is for Orszebet.

P is for Peka [short for Elikapeka, the Hawaiian version].

Q is for ?????

R is for ?????

S is for Sibeal.

T is for Tib.

U is for ?????

V is for Veta [short for Jeliszaveta].

W is for Wiz.

X is for Xabete [short for Elixabete, the Basque version].

Y is for Yeghisabet.

Z is for Zabby.

As I mentioned a while back, all the digital hairstyles I have created are named after variants or nicknames of my name. Flush with creativity, I have been constructing digital hair like mad — about nine or ten hairstyles in the past three weeks. All but one [Receding Ponytail] is named after me. I’ve tried to distribute the names throughout the alphabet so they neither cluster around the same letters [like E and B], nor overlap confusingly. Names I have used so far are as follows:

• Ailsa
• Aliza/Aliza 2.0
• Bess
• [Messy] Bessy
• Bethiah
• Elisheva
• Elspeth
• Izzy
• Jeliszavet
• Lillibet
• Liziko
• Orszebet
• Sibeal
• Ybel
• Zabby
• Zabelle
• Zsoka

My favorite variants are the ones that either start with an unusual letter and/or connect less obviously to the source. In terms of unusual beginnings, I’m especially partial to Jeliszavet and Yelizaveta [a name I used for a character morph I created]. For less obvious derivatives, I really like Ailsa, Sibeal, Ybel, and Zsoka.

One could probably span an alphabet with variations on my name, even including especially ornery letters like J, W, Y, and Z. I bet I could do it!

In the spirit of “How did this name end up looking like a strange combination of two unrelated words?”, I hereby present the surname Ghostlaw. Speaking of spirits, this word recalls the legislation of the dead, but did it originally mean what it looks like it means?

Typing words, place names, and surnames into search engines can often yield fascinating stories and sources for a word’s etymology, as it does for the previously discussed Braintree. Google’s results on Ghostlaw, though, come up pretty barren. Not until page 3 of search results on “surname ghostlaw” did I yield anything helpful.

Back in 2004, Amy Layton posted on the ancestry.com forums, looking for information on the Ghostlaw surname. She stated that she had been unable to trace this branch of her family tree further back than the Ghostlaw generation because she had been told that they had changed their name from something else. What could it be?

While no one directly answered her specific question, respondent Stephanie Beaver posted with information about her grandfather, Charles James Ghostlaw. She noted that both his and his father’s last names were listed as Gosselin on his baptismal certificate. She thus confirmed what I suspected, viz., that Ghostlaw never started off as “ghost + law,” but, rather, some surname that was changed to some vague homophone.

I like to think, in my unusual imagination, that the Ghostlaws and Braintrees are connected. Maybe the disembodied brains, fruiting from the braintrees, imagine counterfactual legal doctrine known as ghostlaws?

There are a few linguistic errors that I encounter with such frequency that I really think that they will eventually move into standard, accepted use:

• Apostrophes in to signify possessives.
• Quotation marks as a means of emphasis.
• “I” replacing “me” as a direct object, but only in conjunction with another pronoun. I encounter this exchange pretty much daily, in which people of all educational and socioeconomic backgrounds will say something like, “Let’s find some time for you and I to meet.”

As a result, the following sentence will eventually be perfectly acceptable:

Let’s find some time for you and I to meet “really” soon about your proposal’s.

After that, all the prescriptivists’ heads will explode!!!! :p

Actually, I think that the third item will gain ground much more quickly than the first two. People are “extremely” picky about punctuation mark’s!

While I’m talking about words, I should mention some that I don’t like to use on principle, mostly business jargon:

• “Issue.” At some point in the recent past, “problem” disappeared as a perfectly acceptable word to be replaced by “issue.” I mostly see it in the wild as a snide, judgmental term for “difficulties.” For example, our upstairs neighbor throws temper tantrums, complete with stomping, banging and yelling, despite the fact that he’s in his twenties. He clearly has “anger issues.”
• “Liaise.” A back-formation from “liaison,” this means “to act as a liaison.” It sounds, though, like a chronic skin condition…or maybe a rancid condiment. I prefer “connect” or “coordinate.” However, in my capacity as the vice president for the Friends of the Winooski Library, I am the liaison between the library board and the Friends, so I always use “liaise” to describe what I do because it cracks me up.
• “Bandwidth.” This means “something akin to time/energy/availability.” Interestingly, I mostly hear it in a negative context, i.e., people insisting that they do not have the bandwidth for more work. I find other terms serviceable for the same concept, and I don’t wish to use a technical IT term.
• “Contact” and “reach out.” These terms are useful because they cover a variety of means of communication [E-mail, phone, in-person]. I still prefer “talk to.”
• “Pushback.” This, of course, is a synonym for “resistance.” This one really irritates me, as it seems to reflect a euphemistic tendency to avoid calling out conflict and disagreement for what it is.

In other news, I’ve gotten over my revulsion for “webinar,” if only because of its ubiquity. I’m also much more of a descriptivist these days.

It’s all about words and, more specifically, swears!

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1704209.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

If all goes according to plan and I purchase PhilC’s Hair Designer and start generating my own digital hairstyles, I have decided that they will all be called by permutations of my name.

I don’t know if I still have it, but, in my youth, I collected variants of my name. I got well north of 60, I think, before I moved on to other pursuits. Some of my favorites include the following:

• Orszebet
• Lillibet
• Wiz [a former coworker’s nickname]
• Yelizaveta
• Ealasaid
• Isabel
• Ilsabeth

Special mention goes to Zibber, my brother’s name for me when he couldn’t pronounce Elizabeth. This once irritated me to no end, but now I find it hilarious.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1660918.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Skeuomorphism is the practice of including features of old technology in new technology, but as design elements, without their old functionality. Examples include folders in the GUI of a computer to click on to access groups of files and the sound effect on my digital camera that sounds like a shutter clicking whenever I take a picture.

I think you could also extend its use metaphorically to cover terms for new technology that use old technology as a basis for comparison. One example of this type of use would be "horsepower" as a skeuomorph referring to the strength of a car’s engine. Another example would be "astronaut"/"cosmonaut" [literally "star-sailor"/ "universe-sailor" according to the Greek roots] for those who travel in outer space.

This is an extremely useful word, applicable in many instances today. I love it!

Incidentally, the word skeuomorphism has as its roots the Greek terms for "tool" ["skeuo-"] and "shape" [morph"]. Literally it means "a thing shaped like a tool" — with the implication that, although it appears to be a tool, it cannot be used exactly as its appearance suggests. Its very existence interrogates the nature of originality and reality. Whoa, dude — that’s so, like, deep!

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1624549.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

"The abyss, with gulfy maw, / Thirsts on unsated…"

That’s Roy Campbell, trying to translate part of Baudelaire’s Horloge and, tripping on the hurdles of redundant froufrou, failing miserably. 

The sentence in question is, "Le gouffre a toujours soif." Literally, that’s, "The pit is always thirsty." But nah…let’s go with a "translation" that basically says, "The abyss, with an abyssal abyss, abysses abysmally."

Baudelaire tends not to fare well in translation…

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1516399.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Just purchased a secondhand scanner from a person who said she was getting rid of it to "liquefy" unwanted possessions. Is it just me, or can English be an exceptionally confusing language, even for people who speak it as a first language? 

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1508040.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

…how no one chit-chats on TV shows? I was watching Grimm this morning [back from its winter hiatus and as gloriously stupid as ever!], and yet again I noticed how no one ever stammers, stutters, repeats themselves or says hello or goodbye. [Apparently meaningful stares take the place of these conversational markers.] Everyone says everything just once, in the most condensed, pithy, comprehensible way possible, and the listeners always comprehend perfectly and let their interlocutors go without saying goodbye.

I understand that TV represents a stylized view of human interactions, but we spend so much time saying hello, making small talk, repeating ourselves, going "uhhhhhhh…" and saying goodbye that TV’s persistent refusal to even acknowledge the actual form of most modern conversations just kills my suspension of disbelief. Instead of following the story, I’m too busy thinking about a) how actors are apparently paid by the world, so cheap studios limit their lines so they don’t have to pay them too much and b) how rude and socially inept all the characters would be if they acted like this in real life. Then I become irritated with the whole enterprise and start wanting to throw things at the screen.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1481877.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

"Jeggings" are leggings that look like jeans. Some neologisms are cutesy and pointless — I’m looking at you, "meggings" [men’s leggings]! — but I think jeggings serves a purpose. It signifies that the leggings in question are styled differently than your standard simple, stretchy, undetailed elastic-waist tights.

A "quellazaire" is a cigarette holder, not a storage case, but a tube on which the cigarette is mounted. It’s an actual word, but I can’t find an authoritative reference online for it. I have no idea of the etymology either, but I’d love to find out.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1443035.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Pearlene! I suppose that means that there will be a 1:6 scale Pearlene in my future.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1427588.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

While I was in the Unhappy Digestive System section of the pharmacy products this morning, I came across some sort of clear, citrus-flavored diuretic that advertised itself as “the sparkling laxative!”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t care at all about about the refractive index of my poop encouragers. I just want them to work.

I seriously have a problem with the word “lavender.” I can never remember how to spell it, which is very unusual because I usually know how to spell most English words I run across.

L A V E N D A R ?

L A V A N D E R ?

I can’t think of any mnenomic device to help me remember the correct spelling either.

Hmmm, well, it is kind of like “lave” + “ender,” both of which I do know how to spell. Maybe I can remember it that way.

[To “lave” is a wonderful word meaning “to wash” or, metaphorically, “to soothe.” It rhymes with “save.”]

I will never ever ever use the phrase "doing someone a solid." It sounds like you're taking a dump on someone.

Derek Abbott's Animal Noise Page tells you what the standard onomatopoeia is for animals in different languages. Interesting how a cuckoo basically says "cuckoo" in all languages shown! Snakes also pretty much all say "ssss."

There's also a fascinating section on animal commands, so you can find out how to say "giddyap," "whoa," "here kitty kitty" and "scat" in different languages.

EDIT: For more fun and to hear people actually saying the onomatapoeia [not just for animals], go to bzzzpeek. It's fascinating!

Wow, ya learn something new everyday. I didn't even know that that low, grating tone that you put on the end of words sometimes even had a name, but apparently it does. The New York Times introduced me to the subject in an article about linguistic novelty among girls. Unfortunately, it's difficult to describe vocal fry, but you know it when you hear it. Here's a Youtube commentary on vocal fry, including some examples. In my experience, vocal fry seems to be an affectation to suggest sophistication, doubt, frustration or sarcasm.

I learned a new word recently: tsuris. It's a Yiddish word meaning "trouble" or "distress." It seems to be used in English to refer to a large, annoying vexation, i.e., "They are always creating artificial drama wherever they go, and you really don't need that tsuris in your life." Pronounced "tsir iss" or "tsoo riss."

A collection of fanciful beasts on old maps, presented in a slide show by Slate, addresses the famous phrase denoting the edge of the known world: "Hic sunt dracones," or, "Here be dragons":

It’s a common belief that “Here be dragons” was a typical inscription on old maps. In fact, the Latin equivalent, Hic sunt dracones, has been found only once, on the 16th-century Lenox Globe, and the first scholar to study the globe, one B.F. da  Costa, opined in 1879 that it referred not to mythical dragons at all,  but to the “Dagroians”—a bloodthirsty Sumatran tribe described by Marco  Polo. The phrase may have entered the public consciousness via the writer Dorothy Sayers, who used it in one of her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

Today's word is "wamble," pronounced "wahm bull" or "wham bull." It means "to feel nausea" or "to move unsteadily from side to side." It seems pretty onomatopoetic to me!

I also think there's room for a figurative definition, "to tergiversate," i.e., "President Obama wambles on the issue of same-sex marriage; he used to support it, but now he hedges."

I learned a new word today. It is “gravamen.” It is from the Latin “gravare,” “to weigh down,” so literally it means “that which is heaviest.” It is a legal term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravamen that refers to the most serious part of a suit against someone and/or the basis of a lawsuit. Its extended, non-judicial meaning is “the essence of an objection,” as in, “My gravamen against your character is that you are flagitious!!”

I find Jacqueline Carey’s books about Terre D’Ange [wherein Jesus’ son settled down in France and produced gods of bdsm — it’s better than it sounds] entertaining, but oh my Lord…someone please stop telling her to use "betimes" and "apurpose" in every third paragraph.

Just to make matters more irritating, Carey uses "betimes" as a synonym of "sometimes," but the first meaning for this archaic word  is actually "in good time; early," as in, "The farmer got up betimes to milk the cows in the predawn darkness."

Carey’s lexical problems really interrupt my enjoyment of her mind candy.

When Janet sings that line in Toucha Toucha Touch Me In Rocky Horror, she’s talking about an itch to scratch that she herself can’t reach. Did you know there’s a word for the part of your body where you cannot reach to scratch? It’s called “acnestis.” Just reading the word makes me itch.

…Just because of its name. Its name comes from Latin "trans-," meaning "through," and "silva," meaning "woods." I just imagine that it’s a secretive land surrounded by a deep dark dense forest. By name alone, it’s worthy of fairy tales [and vampires].

I would also like to live in Elizabethtown or Allentown, but the reasons for that are humorous, not etymological.

The word spelled s-l-o-u-g-h has two categories of meanings and different pronunciations for each.

1. If you pronounce the word "sluff," it means "to shed skin" or "skin that is shed."

2. If you pronounce the word "slau" to rhyme with "cow," it means "a swampy area" or, metaphorically, "a depressive state."

Isn’t that awesome?!!

So someone at work today was requesting information from participants for a staff meeting, and she framed her request like this: "Here is my ask: [insert request here]." She used "ask" as a noun to mean "the thing that I am asking you for." Why does this piece of jargon even exist when "request" fits the bill as another noun created from a verb? What does "ask" accomplish that "request" can’t? Nothing!

Here’s my REQUEST: Don’t use "ask" as a noun.

Quiz: What comes out of a suppurating wound? More precisely, how do you spell it?

PUS.

P-U-S.

Not P-U-S-S.

Two Ses mean a cat, while one S means purulent liquid indicated an infected wound. [It’s also that white gunk inside zits.] Stop confusing them, people.

And for God’s sakes, don’t ever think that the adjectival form is "pussy," because that gets us into even more disgusting confusions. Acceptable adjectives meaning "full of pus" include suppurative, pyogenic and purulent.

This word, which means "to look at flirtatiously or lustfully," is pronounced "OH gull." It rhymes with "mogul." It is NOT pronounced "AH gull." It does NOT rhyme with "goggle," "boggle" or "toggle."

Also I’ve been seeing a lot of "groce" instead of "gross" on message boards. Actually, it’s just on one message board, and I can’t tell if the users are purposely misspelling it, or if they just don’t know what they’re doing. It’s a gross error, and it pisses me off. Has anyone else seen this anywhere?

Why do people use the word "submittal" to denote "a thing that is being submitted?" [I run across the term "submittal" in my work when I see discussions of applications, permits, supporting material and related stuff that organizations are supposed to hand to one another to get approval for things.] "Submission" is a perfectly fine noun for these things.

"Submittal" is a redundant and stupid word.

SUBMIT! SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT!

Incidentally, in my job search, I came across a SUBMIT button for some online application labeled SUBMIT TO WEB SITE or something similar. I felt threatened.

I really like the word "submit." It comes from the Latin, "sub-," meaning "under" and the Latin "mit," meaning "to send." So basically it means "to send under," which is a fascinating literal and figurative connotation for submitting documents or submitting to another person. When I think of this word, I think of submarines diving below the surface, letters sliding under doors and people sinking slowly into genuflection.

I may also be biased toward the word because my greatX8-grandmother was named Submit Allen.

One of my dolls is named Submit. ^_^
 

A webinar is a specific type of web conferencing, like a seminar with a presenter and an audience, only online. I have nothing against the concept; I just think that the word sounds stupid. Unlike web + broadcast [=webcast], web + seminar do not easily create one word starting with web. What’s wrong with calling it a web seminar?

1. “Definitely” is frequently misspelled “definately.” Yeah, that’s how people pronounce it, but it’s wrong.

2. “Who’s” != “Whose.” “Who’s” = “Who is” or “Who has.” “Whose” is the possessive form, meaning “belonging to whom.” 

Whose bringing the cupcakes? WRONG.

Whose turn is it to bring cupcakes? RIGHT.

Who’s bringing the cupcakes? RIGHT.

Who’s turn is it to bring cupcakes? WRONG AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH.

1. “Homage” is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable [“hommidge” or “ommidge”], not the second [“home aaaazh” or “ome aaaazh”]. I don’t care how it’s pronounced in French; now that it’s Anglicized, its pronunciation is too.

2. “Unique” does not mean “unusual,” “really cool” or “rare.” “Unique” means “one of a kind.” Its Latin root, “uni-,” means “one,” for God’s sake!  While unique things may be unusual, really cool and/or rare, things that are rare, unusual and/or really cool are not necessarily unique…only if one of them exists in the whole universe.

 I found a new word today: chyron. Emily Yoffe uses it in a Slate blog post here:

Hanna, you quote Ellen Tien’s assertion, “Beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of our marriage—Everymarriage—runs the silent chyron of divorce," and wonder if those of us whose running chyron is saying “I am so lucky I am married to this man” are deluded.

From the context, I thought it was something like a constant refrain, so I looked it up. It turns out that "chyron" is the technical term for combinations of graphics and text that appear at the bottom of a TV screen. Chyrons often include the name of the story being shown, its location, the name of the presenter or the name of the person currently speaking.

My Google search suggests that this word is well-known within the news and reporting industry, but little known outside it. We should all use it more, however, because, as the usage above shows, it has great metaphorical potential!

Logorrheus: A minor demon among those that bedevil writers, Logorrheus is recognized by its bloated form full of bombast and hot air. Its skin is purple so that it may blend in with the type of prose that it feeds on. Though Logorrheus has a distinctive form, authors usually recognize the demon’s presence not because they have seen the demon itself, but because they have seen its effects. Wreaking devastation upon the libraries of writers, Logorrheus consumes all manner of reference books, including dictionaries, thesauruses, style guides and Bulwer-Lytton’s Least Comprehensible Poetry of the Victorian Era, then shits it out everywhere. The resultant fecal matter, which, according to observers, often smells overripe or overdone, contains linguistic abominations once thought achievable only through the unholy congress of monkeys and typewriters. To wit:

“It’s for you,” Japhrimel said diffidently, his eyes flaring with green fire in angular runic patterns for just a moment before returning to almost-human darkness. [Turd from The Devil’s Right Hand by Lilith Saintcrow.]

Writers afflicted with Logorrheus are advised to abstain from authors that could worsen the condition, including Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien. Instead, victims of Logorrheus can repel it with frequent use of any concise, pithy writer. Especially efficacious are Ernest Hemingway [possible side effects: inflated sense of machismo, obsession with Africa] and Emily Dickinson [possible side effects: inordinate interest in bees, romantic liaisons with a mysterious “Master”].

Michael Quinion, a speaker of British English, writes essays about the origins of unusual words and slang. I followed a link to his site because I wanted to find out the approximate date of one of my favorite adjectives, copacetic. Its age is indeterminate, but I did find many other fascinating tidbits on the site.

Lev Grossman describes the style of Stephenie Meyer, whose garbologous vampire train wrecks are the object of my current mini-obsession, as “pillowy…distinctly reminiscent of Internet fan fiction.”  A beautifully evocative adjective, yes? Still rather vague in this sentence, though. I think of a “pillowy” book as one you can take to bed: a comfortable, predictable story that leaves you feeling warm, unchallenged and happy. Since “pillowy” literally means “like a pillow” or “soft,” Grossman seems to have something in mind more along the lines of “squishy, sentimental and lacking in true substance.” I’d argue that Meyer’s books are “pillowy=comfortable and soothing” because they are “pillowy=sentimental and light.”

I also think “pillowy” should be removed from its derogatory relegation because it’s perfect for so many other things: the warm rounded curves of the Green Mountains, the gentle hills of cumulus clouds on a summer day, the layered mounds of petals in a rose flower, the frothy and cool sensations of Key Lime pie, the undulant stillness of floating in a calm body of water, the comfortable portions of a loved one that you like to rest your head against and, of course, the yielding mountains of bedclothes upon which you drop into dreams.

Previous entries in the Stephenie Meyer series are here: #1, #2, #3 and #4.

…Here are some observations from Feministing about the objectification of women to promote meatless eating.

As Feministing points out, using objectified women to sell meat is nothing new. [Here’s one of my favorite examples, a Carl’s Jr. commercial starring Paris Hilton, a hose, a car, a bucket of suds and a hamburger.] But apparently animal-rights activists, vegetarian organizations and vegan organizations exploit the same tropes as well. For example, here’s a commercial from the super-nutball, super-sexist PETA in which Alicia Silverstone comes out of a pool, naked, in slow motion. Somehow, this sells vegetarianism. In a press release about Eva Mendes posing naked for their “Fur? I’d rather go naked!” campaign, PETA, unsurprisingly enough, calls Mendes “one of Hollywood’s sexiest leading ladies,” “a regular red-carpet knock-out” and, just for some useless “hot-blooded Hispanic” stereotyping, a “sexy Latina.” The print text makes it clear that Mendes does not appear as someone you should pay attention to because she decided to abjure fur out of compassion or humanism or rational decision-making. You should pay attention to her because she’s glamorous and attractive, and she doesn’t wear fur, and do you YOU want to be just as glamorous and attractive as she is? PETA, while supplying my two examples, ain’t the only offender of such sexist, objectifying bullshit. See the Feministing entry for details about a vegan strip club [???!!] and the group Vegan Vixens [????!!!!].

Ann Friedman, post author, sums up the screwiness: “[U]sing the “ideal” female body type — something men want and women want to be — as an incentive to go vegan…is deeply fucked up, especially because there are dozens of real, compelling reasons to switch to a vegan lifestyle — none of them based on sexist bullshit.” 

P.S.: Here’s a super special bonus article from Salon, analyzing the misogynist, objectifying tactics of the popular Skinny Bitch “secret vegan ambush” cookbook.

I just came across the word “vegangelical” in an New York Times article about dietary differences among couples.

A slang term from the late 1960s and early 1970s, it means “sexy or desirable.” I don’t know where I’ve picked it up. It has a rather derogatory resonance, in my opinion. Then again, “phat” also sounds derisive to my ears.

I always knew about diphthongs, but I didn’t know there were monophthongs and triphthongs as well. Monophthongs may be obvious [single, consistent vowel sounds], but triphthongs — single-syllable vowel sounds that vary three times over their duration — are more elusive. The only English example I have found is the pronunciation of “our” in dialects that drop the “r,” like a Bostonian accent, I guess, where someone would say “owww-uhhh-aaaaah,” to put it exaggeratedly.

Wow, I just greatly expanded the number of English words with the -phth- compound in them that I know. Monophthong, diphthong, triphthong, ophthamology [and variants], exophthalamos [and variants], naphthalene [and variants]. Man, that combination of letters together just looks odd.

Fricatives are those sounds you make when you’re blowing air out your mouth, like ffffffff, sssssss, vvvvvvvv and zzzzzzzz. In fact, the word “fricative” begins and ends with a fricative! Frickin’ awesome!

Sibiliants are an awesome subtype of fricatives when the air that you’re blowing out is channeled by your tongue through your teeth, as in ssssssssss and zzzzzz. Wouldn’t you know — the word “sibiliants” begins and ends with a sibilant! Simply superb!

Plosives are those sounds you make when you stop air from going through your nose or your mouth, like bbbbbb, ddddd, gggg, kkk, pppp and tttt.  Oh look…the word “plosives” starts with a plosive. Positively preposterous.

Nasal stops are those sounds you make when air goes out your nose, but not your mouth, like mmmmmm and nnnnn. Hey, there’s a nasal stop begining the phrase “nasal stop.”

Affricates are sounds where you start blowing air out your mouth, then stop suddenly, so they are fricatives that end in plosives. They are sounds like chchchchchch and jjjjjjjjj.

As I was writing this entry, I just noticed that almost all of these terms for oral articulation contains in itself an example of the term it’s describing. They are self-descriptive. [There’s probably a technical term for that, but it escapes me now.] They’re almost onomatopoetic. Sound and sense sometimes do go together in a poetical way.

I’m astounded, boggled and vomitoriously grossed out by my sheer accidental discovery of the extremely rare surgical procedure known as hemicorporectomy.

As the word itself suggests, a hemicorporectomy involves the removal of essentially half the body.

 …make them up.

Say you want to describe someone who looks like a rat or a mouse with a kind of long pointy face and prominent front teeth and twitchy disposition. “Mousy” indicates a shy person, which is not quite right, while “rat-like” has negative connotations [sorry, rats — but it’s true], and “rodent-like” is too general, given that rodents go from cabybaras to jerboas.

As a solution, I present to you the word “murine.” It means “of or pertaining to the family Muridae, a group that includes mice and rats.” It comes from the genitive plural murinus, which means “of or belonging to mice.” It also has deceptively tranquil and pleasing connotations, due to its accidental homophony with “marine.” 

Murine would make a good name for a murine therianthrope!!

You know that sharp, light, floral odor of the first rain? It has a name: petrichor. Actually petrichor is an exudation of certain plants during dry spells. This chemical leaches into rocks and soil, which then give it off, along with a compound known as geosmin [literally, “earth smell,” that full, brown, slightly crunchy, moist smell of, well, earthy things, like beets]. Petrichor + geosmin = “smells like rain.”

Incidentally, Petrichor and Geosmin are perfectly conceivable, under the current ridiculous drug-naming schemata, as names for medication. Petrichor is for drooling idiots with rocks in their heads…it comes in little brown pills. Geosmin, which comes in swirly blue and green tablets, aims to counteract LGS [Loss of Gravity Syndrome], when excess air in the cranial cavity causes a person to float away. Neither of them are really effective, but they sure sound imposing.

If I’m wracked with an emotion, should I be RACKED or WRACKED? If I use “rack,” I conjure up the pleasant image of someone’s tendons being unscrewed on a Procrustean bed. If I use “wrack,” it connotes “wreck” and “wreak,” a verb that absolutely must be conjoined with “havoc.” [Seriously, what else do you wreak besides havoc? Destruction, maybe, but that’s about it.] Both spellings are acceptable and absolutely synonymous, so the choice comes down to a predilection for connotations. I use “wrack” because, when someone is wracked with pain, sobs, a coughing fit, etc., he/she is usually incapacitated, hunched over, deflated and otherwise wrecked. I like the wreckage, not the rackage.

Boy, that silent W in “wracked” looks stupid. I guess I shouldn’t look at words like “write,” “wriggle,” “wrap,” “wraith,” “wreath,” “wrath,” etc. They all look RONG! :p

The online version of Online Poetry, Genius edition, certainly has a lot of vituperative terms in it… Either that or it’s just so much fun to denigrate someone with polysyllables.

An exceedingly rare occurrence, given that I know the standard “unusual words.” Today’s word is hypaethral.  Can you guess its meaning from the context in the following sentence?

We were thinking of putting a roof over our porch, but, if we leave it hypaethral, we’ll get more sunlight and we’ll have a convenient location to look at stars on clear nights.

This is why you should listen to Quirks & Quarks because you can learn the answers to riveting scientific queries of the day, like this one. 

The sensation of mint as cold has long fascinated me, but I have never known why mint makes my mouth chilly. Now the answer is here. Apparently mint, like Tabasco sauce, stimulates your taste buds with a sensation like pain. It’s not technically a taste, but rather a feeling of pain! 

Because your taste buds have been primed by this painful mint, anything cold that you eat afterward with seem colder. Interestingly enough, anything hot that you eat afterward will seem hotter. 

Mint also increases your salivation and washes away thick protective saliva from your taste buds, so more of the cold or hot thing hits your naked, shivering taste buds.

You know what really pisses me off? When I’m reading an otherwise cogent, insightful and pretty well-written work on the philosophy of Victorian corsets [‘Hooked and Buttoned Together:’ Victorian Underwear and Representations of the Female Body, Casey Finch, Victorian Studies 34(3):337-363], and the author pulls a sentence like this out of his/her ass:

The ideology of reproduction was troped into a system of erotics where the meaning of sexuality operated not as a public “fact” but as a private secret.

TROPE is not a verb! It’s a noun, a pretty obscure noun, unless you live in the rarefied atmosphere of the academy. Bloody hell, people! “System of erotics” is just as bad. What is a “system of erotics?” Nobody knows! How am I supposed to enjoy my history of underwear if you keep making up jargon-laced sentences that don’t actually mean anything?!

Why not write something like this:

Erotic images centered around women’s reproductive capacities and visible sexual signs slowly changed into a set of erotic ideas about sexuality as dissociated from public reproduction and thus secret and hidden.

Sure, my version definitely has more words in it, but it’s much more readable, especially if you stopped living in an English department upon graduation.

Histories of underwear should be lucid, limpid, lively, highly illustrated and see-through, not complicated, obscure and difficult to undo.

P.S. And, if you’re going to use “trope” as a verb, don’t use it twice within 4 pages! Bad form, as Captain Hook would say.
 

Blog for language nerds: Language Log. This site appears to be an eclectic mix of etymology, observation of word use in the wild, history, misconceptions, etc.

I’ve been enjoying A Way With Words, a KPBS radio show, for a while. Just today I found another show, a podcast, in the same vein: Word Nerds. It’s a weekly podcast of about 40 minutes, a thematically organized discussed of the ways language is used past and present. The presenters are a bunch of high school language and literature teachers with solid knowledge of Germanic and Romance languages among them. Their style is quieter than the lively, explosive A Way With Words, but I still enjoy the dry wit.

I like A Way With Words, hosted by one of my favorite etymologists, Martha Barnette, along with slang dictionary author Grant Barrett. For about 45 minutes every week, the two answer callers’ questions about grammar, punctuation and slang. They also host listener quizzes about slang and solve language puzzles themselves. I rev up my inner word geek with A Way With Words every Monday morning since the shows originally air on Sundays. 

Additionally, the LoreMistress of Rampant Bicycles mentioned CBC’s weekly science program, Quirks & Quarks, to me last week. Since then, I have been slowly moving through the archives. With a robust catalog of shows going back years, Q&Q is a round-up of experts speaking on current scientific topics of interest and answering your questions. So far I’ve learned about growing new bladders for persons with spina bifida, the names dolphins give to themselves, the challenges of sampling ice at the North Pole, how to find planets around distant stars, etc. With a new downloadable hour every week, Q&Q will introduce you to many fascinating bits of information and make you feel smart.

Both A Way With Words and Q&Q have entered my regular rotation of programs I listen to at work. Add them to your bookmarks and increase your brains!

So I’m reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses [translated by Allen Mandelbaum] for the nth time, enjoying it immensely. Ovid is such an overwrought, yet mellifluous, writer with a constant sense of fun.

One of my favorite Ancient Greek/Roman myths concerns Tiresias, a seer. He was walking along when he saw two snakes mating. He struck the female snake with his staff and changed sex to be a woman. After being a woman for 7 years, Tiresias came upon mating snakes again. He struck the male snake with his staff and changed sex to be a man.

After that, the gods had a fight about who enjoyed sex more, men or women. Zeus said it was women. Hera said it was men. They asked Tiresias to decide, since he had been both. He said women enjoyed sex more. Hera got pissed and blinded him in vengeance.

Tiresias passed the Amazing Transsexual Stick on to Hermes, messenger god, whose symbol is a winged staff called a caduceus with two snakes wrapped around it. This is not the same snake on a cane as Aesclepius’ rod, a medical symbol which probably comes from the way that ancient doctors tried to get, say, tapeworms out of people: by wrapping one end of the worm around a stick and pulling. More than you ever wanted to know here.

Aesclepius’ rod most properly symbols the medical practice that performs transsexual operations. Hermes’ rod most properly symbolizes transgendered persons who have had sex-change operations!

See Snakes on a Cane [a caduceus] below…

(un)real life 5.5, “Elucidation,” is up. I’m particularly proud of this ep because of the photo montages and manipulation involved. The pomegranate superimposed on the fire isn’t that technically advanced, but the “snow” filter on Muriel with the ice sheet in the background looks cool.

I also really like Muriel. She comes across as bossy, pissy and snappy, but I think of her more sympathetically as Anneka’s counterpart 100 years earlier. She’s so sharp and frustrated because she had very little place to develop herself when she was alive, and, now that she’s dead, all she does is hang around. For a smart, adventurous, kinky person like Muriel, watching life, rather than participating in it, constitutes the worst sort of hell. Too bad she’s dead dead dead [as opposed to Anneka and Will, who are just dead dead]. I sort of want to bring her back and let her cross blades paths with Anneka and Will s’more.

P.S. The word of the day is asphyxiophilia, which means the sexual practice of inducing arousal through partial, threatened or full asphyxiation, either by one’s own hand [bonus phrase: autoerotic asphyxia] or by another’s.

P.P.S. Though we usually think of asphyxiation as stopping someone’s breath, the origin of the word actually means “stopping the pulse.” Check this out. “Asphyxia” comes from the Greek prefix “a-,” meaning “without,” and the Greek noun “sphuxis,” meaning “heartbeat.” Literally, it is “the state of being without a heartbeat.”

P.P.P.S. Do you think the word “asphyxiation” is onomatopoetic?

Subscendent: Of or pertaining to a state that’s shallower, less insightful and less alert than usual. The opposite of transcendent. Its appropriateness is best illustrated by the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon where Calvin describes the brain death that comes when he watches TV for too long. The punchline: “Yeah, I achieve a lower consciousness.” Exactly — it’s a subscendent experience.

Transcension: The act of transcending. Needed because transcendence refers to a static state rather than the struggle to achieve that elusive state. That struggle is transcension.

I’m also thinking that this language needs subscend and superscend, but I’m still working out what they mean. Stay tuned for more sub-, super- and trans- words!