Mighty Deep Roots

Narcissus, Narcissism, and Daffodils

You know, of course, the story of Narcissus: the vain, beautiful youth who met his end in various ways because he thought he was so darned pretty. We get two English words from this story: narcissism and Narcissus, which is the flower said to have grown in the spot where Narcissus met his end.  The blooms of the flower tend to dip, and when they grow on the slope by a stream they do seem to be gazing at their own reflections.

What I find most interesting about this, though, is that the Narcissus flower has a second, more common name: Daffodil.  This, too, likely comes from an entirely different part of Greek mythology.  It is thought that the name is a perversion of the word "Asphodel," a very different flower.  Asphodels were sometimes called Affodells in parts of Europe, and the "D" probably comes from the Dutch article "de."  It's not clear how the Narcissus started being called by this very different flower's name (but then, how did people keep anything straight before the internet?). 

The Asphodel itself has an interesting story in Greek mythology.  It was considered the favorite food of the dead, and was often planted on or near graves.  It also gave its name to the Asphodel Meadows, the middle of three sections of Tartarus, the place where judged souls spent their afterlives.  The other two sections are pretty standard: the Elysian Fields, where heroes went to have a joyful afterlife, and Tartarus, where the evil went to be tormented.  The Asphodel Meadows, on the other hand, was a plain of Asphodel flowers that was eternally home to those who had led boring lives, neither good nor evil.  There they spent eternity, going through the same boring motions in the afterlife that they did in life.  In some stories they are like automatons, with no choice but to repeat their lives over and over.  In others, they are stripped of their very identities by drinking from the River Lethe.  It's an interesting thought, that those who live boring lives are essentially damned to a boring afterlife (and, in the stories, it is very clearly a sort of damning).  It shows that the Greeks very much valued the hero, the man who makes stories, far more than the working man.  I wonder if, at the time, Tartarus was really considered a very much worse fate than was eternity among the Asphodels.

Defenestrate

To Defenestrate someone is to throw them out of a window.

God, I love this word.  Not only is it absolutely amazing that there actually is a word for this, but it's such a threatening word.  It screams transitive, clearly something, without any knowledge of what it means, that you must do to someone.  Someone bad.  I've been told that it is often mistaken for meaning something along the lines of castrate.  Either way, it comes across as something deeply unpleasant.

Dotage

A person's dotage is the period of their lives when they are on the downward path into senility.

I can often be heard to claim that I dislike euphemisms.  This is a lie, in part.  What I dislike are bad euphemisms.  Dotage, on the other hand, is a very good one.  It refers to something that is sad at best and tragic at worst.  It is a horrible thing to watch a vibrant mind decay.  When you say that a person is in their dotage, though, it makes it sound like they're just old and silly and fun and enjoying themselves and their grandchildren, possibly playing in a greenhouse somewhere (oh, and they're British, for some reason).  To say that someone is in their dotage makes it sound somehow like they're vaguely high all the time, rather than in the grips of a terrible disease.  That, my friends, is a good euphemism.

Words I Hate: Blog

Writing these things is a big part of what I do for a living (not this one, of course, you ingrates don't click shit).  Having to use the word is probably a big part of why I hate it so much.  Nonetheless, my reasons for disliking it are plentiful.  It's not just that I feel like such an asshole saying or typing the word.  I mean, the fact that I hate feeling like I'm trying to sound like some hipster Myspace youth in tight pants but only succeeding in sounding like a douchey frat guy who wants to be sensitive, well, if that were my reason, that would just be childish.  So I must have some better reasons, right?  Right.  So, obviously, I've got some sort of higher-order complaints with it.

It's a contrived word.  Somewhere, someone along the way thought that it would be cute to shorten "weblog" to just "blog."  That's fine, but then suddenly a few people with some sort of media-related superpowers latched onto this word as "the next new hip thing" and started forcing it down our throats, right when we sort of needed to decide organically what these new things would be called (funny how "website" seems to work just fine. . . Then again, they probably would have made us start calling those "bsites").  The problem is that it didn't develop organically, as these things should with language, but was rather decided by. . . . some guy.  Bah.

The word itself just sounds unpleasant, too.  Blog.  Like lug or blurg or bug or blech or belch or blah.  Something about these sounds doesn't work well to convey the meaning that we're going for, giving us a sort of gummy, sticky sound where there should be crispness and interest.  Then again, this sort of incongruity between sound and meaning is, I suppose, what happens when we try to force language to develop rather than letting it happen organically.  That'll teach you.

Nougat

-Nougat refers to any of a variety of similar candies made of sugar or honey, roasted nuts, and sometimes chopped fruit.  The term is very loosely applied when we use it to describe the substance in various American candy bars, as those are generally made of mixes of whipped sugar and sucrose.

Nougat has managed to be the primary selling point of many candy bars since at least my youth despite the fact that very few of us know what the hell it actually is.  I certainly didn't know until a few months ago.  All I knew is that it's a really fun word to say and, if that's the stuff in between the chocolate in a 3 Musketeers, I like it.  That's why they say it on the commercials, you know.  Not because we like it or even know what it is, but because it just sounds so damned delicious.  Go ahead, say it: "Nougat."  Hell yeah.

Anatidaephobia

-"The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you."

This comes from a Far Side strip by Gary Larson published years ago (thus the quotation marks).  The word has snuck into some popular culture (the nerdier side), mostly based on the fact that it's really damned funny.  Maybe I've just hung out with some of the very nerdiest of nerds, but I've heard people use the word anatidaephobia to describe the sensation of impending doom, and I really like it for that.  Using it as such is, I suppose like a nerd secret handshake that lets other nerds know what you are.  Then again, you spout off about anatidaephobia, and norms might have the distinct impression that something's up.  So maybe it's like a really obvious secret handshake: everyone knows that something's going on, but only those who are hip to it will know quite what.

(photo dramatization)

Masturnapping

-Masturnapping: the ultimate in lazy indulgence.  To spend a day masturnapping is to spend the day idly cycling between eating, masturbating, watching TV, and napping.

My very dear friend Layla introduced me to this word.  I was so glad to have a word to encapsulate those days where you manage to get absolutely nothing of any use to any other human beings done.  It's one of those words that you don't get to use very often, but when you do use it, it's perfect.

Or maybe you do get to use it often.  You should be careful, you'll go blind or something.

Complexity

I believe in the power of words, and even more so in the power of language.  It is the flexibility of language that gives it the power, though.  We adapt it to ourselves and each other.  It's the conduit to the world and each other.  It cannot, though, be captured in a book so cold and inflexible as a dictionary or thesaurus.  Language cannot be contained.  My glorious friend Lovely Lovable Lindsay captured this, and I blatantly stole it (with her permission, mind you).

Schadenfreude

-Schadenfreude is the feeling of sudden, unexpected pleasure at another's misfortune or pain.  It's commonly mistaken with sadism, but true sadism is taking pleasure in actually inflicting harm on another. 

The etymology is simple: it comes directly from the German, with Schaden, meaning harm, and Freude, meaning joy.  In that delightful German way, the two words are just slapped together to make a new, complex word.

All on its own, Schadenfreude is a great word.  It succinctly describes something that would otherwise require a wordy, less elegant description.  Plus, it's a word that's coming into vogue, so it's pretty likely to be understood by a literate crowd.  What I love most about the word, though, is how utterly German it is.  I don't think that I can explain it adequately, but it seems to me that if any language should have a word for this feeling, it is German.  Partly it's because we associate black leather and whips with Germany, I think (let's face it: even among Europeans, Germans are pretty odd).  Partly, too, it's that German seems to have a word for everything, probably because the Gerrmans are so likely, when searching for a word, to just glue several other words together and make a new one.  It's just good engineering.  This is very much one of those "I just love that there is a word for this" words.

Duty

Heh heh, duty.  Ok, that's really childish. 

And yet. . . . . . .