Contumelious – a Useful Word for Difficult People

Hello,

If you’re the sort of person who loves unusual words then there’s nothing better than finishing a novel and scurrying off to discover a handful of new terms used by the author. Obviously you don’t want a writer who throws in words simply to display their vocabulary, but a handful of choice words, is like an extra gift to the reader.

One such writer in my experience is Diana Gabaldon and I’ve recently finished reading her latest novel in the Outlander Series (historic fiction/family saga with a twist of time travel), “Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone”, and gathered up a handful of new words, or at least new to me.

The lead character, Claire, is married to Jamie, a rather single-minded Scot. It’s a running joke how stubborn he is and at one point she is composing a list of terms for “bloody Scot” in her mind on this topic, one of which is contumelious (pronunciation here). I knew from context that is had to be about his sheer obstinacy, but anything ending in melious seems like it should be related to honey and sweetness (I was thinking of mellifluous) and with bees in the book title, and scattered throughout the story itself, I had to check it out.

British English dictionaries list it variously as American English or as archaic, so I’m using those as my excuse for not knowing it. It appears that while it was fairly regularly in use during the 1700s (the time period for that scene in the book), it has faded drastically since then.

It doesn’t appear to be a synonym for stubborn, however, as it is defined as rude, insulting, sneering, insolent, abusive, and humiliating – a pretty good term to use for somebody who has seriously annoyed you.

“Grumpy Tiki” – a wood carving by my DH whose Contumelious face adorns our garden

Contumelious has been with us since the early 1400s. It arrived in English from Old French contumelieus, which was a direct borrowing from Latin contumeliosus (insolently abusive). The word was drawn from contumelia (insult).

There’s also a related word contumely which arrived a century earlier and describes abusive speech, from the same French and Latin sources. Contumelia is probably drawn from contumax (stubborn or insolent) so that must be where we get the link to Claire’s stubborn Scot. Contumax was used especially of people who refused to answer a summons to court. Con in this case is being used as an intensifying prefix but the tumax part of the word may be drawn from the Latin verb tumere (to swell up). There are several words in English which link anger or abusive people with the idea of them swelling up with their ire and I know I’ve mentioned them before on Wordfoolery, but the only one I can recall today is blowhard.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling and good luck with avoiding contumelious people.

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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