Man Martin's Blog, page 215

The Alphabet Project

Z, z: From the Phoenician zayn "ax." The Greeks bent the handle to create zeta, (Z) and the letter has not changed in pronunciation or appearance since.


Zed: The British word for Z, the only letter Shakespeare ever used as an insult: "Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!" (King Lear II, ii)

Zeugma: a pun employing the same word with two different meanings in one sentence: "The patient wasn't."

zero: One less than one, from the Arabic sifr, "cipher." The addition of zero to the set of whole numbers facilitated momentous mathematical achievements in the Arabic world, achievements not possible among Westerners hampered by the inflexible numerical system of the Romans and Greeks. (Aristotle offered as proof of the unique intelligence of mankind, the fact that some people could be taught long division.) As the indisputable practicality of Arabic numerals overcame the prejudice of religious zealotry, a number of Arabic words made their way into Western Europe: algebra, azimuth, zenith.

STOOPID CONTEST

RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST
Can you guess the Jack Lemmon movie represented by the cartoon below?  Send your answer along with your name and address, to mailto:manmartin@manmartin.net  The winner, chosen at random from the correct answers, will win a free autographed copy of the award-winning novel, Days of the Endless Corvette.  The answer and a new puzzle will be revealed December 31st.
"They've been acting like this all week!"

Y, y November, the Alphabet Project

Y, y: One of five letters of the alphabet, along with F, U, V, and W, derived from the Phoenician waw "peg," and the one that most closely resembles its ancestor. In addition to its familiar pronunciations as vowel and consonant, it is also on rare occasions pronounced /th/. Typesetters used Y in place of a defunct Old English letter, the thorn, (Þ) which represented the /th/ sound. The "ye" in kitschy signage such as "Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe," does not mean "your;" it is prosaically and unromantically pronounced "the."

yoga: Vulgarly meaning a system of exercise, but more accurately, "discipline." From the Sanskrit for "union" from yogu, "yoke" or "harness." The three types of yoga as revealed by Krishna to Arjuna before the battle of Kurukshetra, are Karma Yoga, discipline of action without attachment to results, Jnana Yoga, discipline of understanding what is Real and Unreal, Permanent and Temporary, and Bhakti Yoga, discipline of loving devotion to the Cosmos.

TOMORROW! RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!

X, x November, the Alphabet Project

X, x: The origins are in dispute whether the Greeks themselves invented the letter or adapted it from the Semitic samek,"fish." The confusion over the letter's origin is compounded by the fact samek looks nothing like a fish, and indeed seems to be adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph djed, which resembles a pillar or scaffold and represented the backbone of the god Osiris. In Greek, samek lost two of its cross-bars, becoming a simple cross, and fell to its side. In Western Greek, the letter was ksi and pronounced like the English X; Eastern Greek, however, which became the dominant dialect, called the letter khi and pronounced it /kh/. English is the distinct loser by adopting the Western Greek pronunciation. Had we done otherwise, XING would not be a bastard expediency of signage, but a legitimate abbreviation, and the words Christ, cross, and crucify would all begin with a cross.
xenos-: "Stranger," from which xenophobe, "fear of foreigners."
WEDNESDAY - RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!

W, w November, the Alphabet Project

W, w: Indirectly derived from the Semitic, waw, "peg."  Originally as the name suggests, co-joined Us. (V, as a distinct letter did not exist except as a variant of U, which is why the letter is not named "Double-Vee.") In some typefaces, such as Garamond, we can still see the overlapping tops. Along with Y, W is one of only two letters that is sometimes a vowel, as in a few archaic Welsh-derived words, such as cwm, "a steep hollow."


wed: From the Old High German, wetti "to pledge," similar to the Gothic gawadjon, from which also come engage, wage, wager.

word: From the Latin verbus, whence, also verb. Capitalized, it refers to the Bible, "the Word of God," as well as the Son of God: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God." (John 1:1) The original Greek, logos, meant not only word," but "reason" or "purpose." John seems to have had in mind the Aramaic translation of Isaiah, 45:12 "I, 'by my word,' have made earth and created man upon it."

work: Effort undertaken unwillingly or for pay. (wûrk) The lips squeeze together and then pull apart, expressing a resolute pant, followed by /û/ and /r/ in a straining combination between grunt and growl as if urging some ponderous boulder up a pyramidal slope before concluding with a plosive /k/ as it drops into place amidst a puff of dust. From the Old English worc, werc, and woerc, and thence from the Latin urgere by way of the Germanic, werk, which comes from the Greek, ergon – from whence also energy and erg. Changes wrought by six millennia have almost restored the word to its original Proto Indo-European root, werǵ- as one of the earliest words ever spoken.

Only a few more days until the RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!  November 30th

V, v November, the Alphabet Project

V, v: The direct descendent of U, with which it was once used interchangeably. Johnson omits V from the first edition of his dictionary, although conceding it "ought to be" considered as a separate letter. The Latin V was pronounced /w/, so that Caesar's famous boast, "Veni, vidi, vinci," came out somewhat effeminately as "waynie, weedy, winky."





Venus: The Roman goddess of love and desire takes her name from the Latin uenus, but even more anciently from the Proto Indo-European, wen- "to desire," a fertile root, which has grown into venerate "to respect," wish, winsome "desirable," venison derived from "to hunt," venereal, pertaining to sexual desire, and win, to obtain by purposeful desire.

very: Commonly used to mean "to a great extent," but originally "true," as in "the very thing." From the Latin uerus, "true," whence veracity, "truth," verdict, "to speak truth," verify, "to ascertain truth," and verisimilitude, "true-seeming."

Coming November 30th, RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST

U, u November, the Alphabet Project

U, u: Like F, From the Semitic waw, "peg," but with the bottom stem lopped off altogether. U is the immediate ancestor of letters V and W, which as late at the Seventeenth Century, were not represented by distinct letters, so the word value would have been ualue. Given that in the Middle Ages, J had not yet become a letter a either, juvenile would have been iuuenile.




Uranus: Roman sky god, husband of Gaiea, "earth," from the Greek ouranos, "heaven," possibly akin to the Hitite wara, "to burn," therefore, "giver of light" (?)



Coming November 30th, Return of the Stoopid Contest

T, t November, the Alphabet Project

Throughout the month of November, I'll be blogging about the alphabet and etymology.

T, t: From the Semitic taw, "mark," a meta-letter unique in the original so-called Phoenician alphabet in that instead of a monkey or a house or an ox or a throwing stick, it is a mark that represents nothing but a mark.


time: The interval between events. (See space) From the Old English tima, also meaning tide, the sea-faring Anglo-Saxons not differentiating the swell and sink of ocean from the abstraction embodied. From the Greek kairos, and ultimately from the Proto Indo-European di-mon, a compound using the root da-, "cut in pieces."

tmesis: (tə mē΄ sĭs) A figure of speech in which a syllable or word is inserted into another word, often for dramatic or rhetorical effect, as in "a whole nother" or "in-freaking-credible." From the Greek tmesis, "cutting" or "cut." (See time.)

Coming November 30th, Return of the STOOPID CONTEST!

S, s November, The Alphabet Project

November I'll be blogging about the alphabet and etymology.

S, s: From the Phoenician shin, "tooth," the original letter looked a good deal more fang-like than its modern incarnation. The Greek sigma resembles shin laid on end, but the earliest form of sigma was a backwards Z. It was from this earlier form that the Etruscans, and later the Romans, derived our current S. S has the distinction of being the only letter to become the name of a US president; the S in Harry S Truman, does not stand for anything; his middle name is only an initial.


spork: An appropriate portmanteau of spoon and fork for an object which itself is a portmanteau. One knows hearing the word for the first time, precisely what it is, and that it will be made of white plastic.

Coming November 30th, Return of the Stoopid Contest!

R, r November, the Alphabet Project

R, r: From the Canaanite resh "head." The Greek rho (P) faced the opposite direction. The Romans added a leaning-post under the nose to prevent confusion with P. In the lowercase R, the entire bottom half of the face is amputated.



real: Almost incredibly, this monosyllable is a compound. From the Latin re "thing" and –al "real." Real is not real by itself. It must be a real thing.

redundant: Needless repetition, as in "bare naked." It would be as redundant listing redundancies here as listing clichés under the heading cliché would be cliché. From the Latin, redundans, "overflow," the unda meaning "water in motion, wave," whence inundation, undulate, surround, and abound, but not under which seems to come ultimately from the Proto Indo-European andher.

Coming November 30th, the RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST