Word a Week
Saving endangered words from extinction one week at a timein·cipi·ent (in sip′ē ənt)
Image by laRuth via Flickr
in·cipi·ent (in sip′ē ənt)
Adjective
Origin: Latin incipere
Ah, it’s been a long time between drinks. And oh, how very appropriate that after such a lengthy hiatus I would be spurred to recommence with a word which is synonymous with the first word I ever profiled in this blog. This word is incipient.
When something is incipient it is at an initial stage, embryonic and germinal. The implied assumption is that the incipient thing will, in time, develop into a wholesome fullness.
What can be incipient?
Point # 1 (and further evidence that this word came upon us all in an uncannily timely fashion).
You might describe our current government here in Australia as incipient. Imagine that behind the scenes of the hung parliament and heavy negotiations which have been plaguing pollies and media commentators for over a week now, two potential governments lie in wait. You don’t see them but they are there, gestating, incipient if you will, just waiting to be called upon to develop and expand into their role.
Governments aren’t the only things that can be incipient.
In his book On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin describes some species as incipient, a definition they retain until they become distinct species.
Anything can be incipient if it is in its early stages of development, although in my experience incipient tends to describe phenomena and feelings rather than objects. An illness, a revolution, an immigrant population, literacy – all of these can be described as incipient in their early days. It is unlikely, however, that a book, painting or wardrobe would be described as incipient.
Point # 2 (and continuing evidence that this word has come upon us all in an uncannily timely fashion).
I might be the only one of us that hasn’t yet seen DiCaprio’s latest sci-fi/action/suspense/thriller, Inception. Incidentally, I’ve only heard good reports, something about an alternate dream world involving computers perhaps, with remarkable special effects? It sounds good. But right now the point of interest is its title: Inception (noun). Inception means beginning. Rather like incipient, right? And you don’t have to look very far to find out their common root, incept:
Origin of incipient: Latin incipere
Origin of inception: Latin inceptio
Origin of incept: Latin incipere incept – begin
So you see, this word is current, it relates to today’s politics, its close relative inception is the title of a Hollywood Blockbuster: incipient really should be all the rage among closet linguaphiles. Let’s make it so.
Three ways to use incipient TODAY 
1. We had such a great night! And then we sat on the beach watching the incipient sunrise do its colourful thing on the ocean. (See how it makes your trashy sleepless night sound poetic?)
2. Did you notice the incipient spring in the air? It won’t be long before the jacarandas are out.
3. I can feel my incipient frustration at having to wait 30 minutes for a bus during peak hour in Sydney. (Although you may find that that is an understatement.)
A small caveat: Before you step out into the world armed with this new word and an incipient desire to use it, it is my responsibility to introduce you to its non-identical but very similar-sounding twin insipience. Do not mix these guys up. Trust me. The misuse of insipience would result in an embarrassingly reflexive insipience, given that insipience means a lack of wisdom or general foolishness. Just don’t do it. Instead, put incipient in your diary, calendar, iPhone if you must, and use it before you lose it
P.S Thanks go to Erin for suggesting that we save this word
All definitions as found in The Australian Oxford Dictionary (1999)
©ninagallo 2010
Perspicacious \pər-spə-ˈkā-shəs\
Perspicacious \ˌpər-spə-ˈkā-shəs\
Adjective
Last week I was writing something and I was searching for a word. I wanted to describe the weather as fickle, unpredictable, tempestuous. I wanted to conjure a sense of its being somewhat moody and I knew there was a particular word I was looking for but it simply wouldn’t come. I adopted my word searching posture, gesturing vaguely with both hands and looking up to the left, but nothing. Then suddenly the fog cleared and shining sardonically in the sun was the word perspicacious. It was not the word I was looking for.
This was not the first time that this had happened. That searching for one word I was presented with another which was interesting but at the same time somewhat mocking. Why was perspicacious mocking? Because it means acutely insightful and clear-sighted. Exactly the opposite of what I had been in my inelegant fumble for capricious.
Springing from the Latin perspicac-, perspicax, from perspicere, to look through, percipicacious is first seen in English literary writings around 1877. Originally the word was taken literally to mean someone who had keen vision (again the word mocks me and my myopic self!). Eventually it came to be used figuratively as someone who had keen perception.
Perspicacious. It is an interesting word. It makes me think of perceptive, precocious, perspicuity and perspicuous. All of these words refer to a certain acuity of vision, insight, a certain wisdom or capacity to accurately assess and judge a situation.
It also makes me think of supercalifragilisticexpialidocius, the wonderful word coined by the eccentric and undeniably perspicacious Mary Poppins. I wonder whether it is a coincidence that this word includes every letter of perspicacious? I think not.
Persipicacious is, like so many words on this blog, one which is difficult to use without sounding like a bit of a wanker. When you could just as easily use insightful, perceptive, sharp or onto it to describe a persipicacious person, why invoke this fancy pants word? To impress. That’s why.
So when should you whip this one out? Try a job interview. Or a management meeting. Or have you seen that episode of ‘How I met your mother’ when Ted goes to the fancy party in the fancy building and has a whale of a time regaling the literati with his marvellous wit? That’s when.
So at your next job interview when your prospective (soon to be future) employer asks you what your greatest strength is you can tell them: ‘my perspicacity’. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like you fully understand the meaning of the word, there is no way your interviewer will ask you to define it. However they may ask you to elaborate and this is the perfect opportunity to explain that you work well in a team as you’re perceptive and sensitive and your clear-sighted approach ensures that you get the job done, producing quality to deadline.
How about when you’re called to your boss’s office to discuss the progress of a junior employee who is working seriously well and threatening your position? You can tell your boss that ‘yes, she is certainly perspicacious but I am concerned that her youth and inexperience are barriers to effective interpersonal communication and this shortcoming may affect our brand’. This kind of language is sure to dissuade your boss from promoting your junior above you.
Or what about the final example, the party filled with the educated bourgeoisie? Feel free to throw it down any time: ‘oh I see you organised several cases of champagne, how very perspicacious of you!’ Or ‘do allow me to share with you my reflections on the characteristics of mustard, chilli and wasabi sauce. I am sure you will find I am most perspicacious’. If you ever find yourself out of your depth or asked to offer an opinion on a subject you’ve never heard of, simply refer back to the previous speaker and say ‘well personally I felt that Penelope’s perspective was particularly persipicacious’. If you can get through all those p’s without stumbling you will command the respect of everyone in the room.
Which, when it comes down to it, is what it’s all about, right? ;P
Not really.
But it sure is fun.
In peace and wordliness
Flaneur \flä-ˈnər\
Flaneur
\flä-ˈnər\
noun
origins: French flâneur/flâneuse, verb flâner.
Date: 1854
This week a friend sent me the link to this excellent website: http://www.wordcount.org/. (Thanks Cint!) The site is an interactive list of the 86,800 most frequently used English words and at this moment, flaneur does not make the cut. This is a concern. Today I would like to introduce you to flaneur, one of my favourite words.
Like ennui, flaneur has been appropriated directly from the French because if you ask me, we anglophones just don’t quite dig the concept.
A flaneur (female flaneuse) is defined as one who strolls aimlessly. A loafer, a dawdler, a purposeless drifter. Born in 19th Century Paris, the notion of the flaneur was inextricably linked to industrialisation and the emergence of the urban landscape. This landscape is the flaneur’s hood. Living off unknown means they roam the dense city streets in a sort of luxurious idleness, disposing of their disposable time in a vacuous way.
If you ask me, this view of the flaneur is rather negative. It’s a shame, because if you look beyond the dictionary definition you find a wealth of philosophical and sociological writing which pushes the notion of the flaneur to get to the heart of this occupation which, it turns out, is far more than it first appears.
Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, Susan Sontag. These are just three of the many thinkers who have devoted much ink and desk time to exploring this phenomenon, convinced that there was more to it than was immediately clear. According to these guys the flaneur is not an idler but an artist and social critic. An aesthete and a philosopher. Far from being aimless, flaneurs are literate and educated and expend huge amounts of creative energy wandering unfamiliar urban landscapes in pursuit of insight.
Vacillating between profound engagement with their surroundings and lucid meditation on their experiences, the flaneur attempts to understand their world and the people in it. Acutely aware, they are the folk who pause to squint at the banal minutiae ignored by the majority. They devote their days to living the rhythms of their environment and reflecting on its idiosyncracies. This search for clarity and insight is what differentiates a flaneur from an aimless stroller.
But it’s not all positivity and romanticism. The flaneur has been described as parasitic, a leach who rather than contributing actively to the wellbeing of society, stands aloof in the crowd and nonchalantly takes notes. No one knows how they finance their lifestyle: perhaps inheritances; lovers; friends; generous strangers. I don’t know why, but I can imagine a sense of entitlement in these street philosophers.
There is certainly a kind of self-indulgence in this act. However I feel like there’s a certain value in it too. In a world where not many take the time (or have the time) to stop and reflect on the way we live and why, hearing from those who do can offer us insight, hope and the opportunity to change.
It has been said that the flaneur disappeared when the 19th Century city of arcades was replaced by shiny malls and high rises. So where does that leave the flaneur today?
I have been thinking about what might constitute the contemporary flaneur. This is, of course, pushing the definition . . . but just for fun:
Perhaps the teens wandering the mysterious arcades of the internet absorbing, integrating, understanding? Cyber flaneurs?
Or travellers engaging intimately with new experiences and then retreating (either to a hostel or back home) to integrate what they saw. Flaneurs without borders?
To be honest, I think all of us have our days when we flâne. Days when we wander the streets and find ourselves meditating on things which, on any other day would pass us by. The shape of a certain rooftop. The dynamic between a couple drinking coffee outside a local café. The odd rhetoric of the advertisements in bus windows.
I like to think that the flaneur is latent in all of us, freed when we take the time to experience the world we live in. Always a worthwhile pastime.
In peace and wordliness
Licentious (lī-sěn’shəs)
Licentious
(lī-sěn’shəs)
Function: adjective
A 55 year old married man takes his best mate’s daughter, a pretty little 20 year old, to a stunning lookout to wine her, dine her and then propose an extramarital affair.
A female partner in a law firm invites an engaged junior staff member to her house after work under the auspices of discussing legal matters, but with the private intention of seducing him.
A young woman shares a dinner with her partner and a group of friends, nonchalantly stroking the thigh of her boyfriend’s best friend under the dining table.
Licentious behaviour. Unfortunately it is all around us. Fortunately this means that once we become acquainted with this funky word we may well find opportunities to start using it straight away 
At its base, licentious refers to a lack of restraint in the face of the law or morality. While it can refer to all kinds of corruptions and transgressions, it is most often used with reference to sexual behaviours that flout moral boundaries. Whether it means stepping outside of a monogamous relationship for sex or sleeping your way to the top, licentiousness is probably presumptuous, certainly morally ambiguous and always exhibiting a disregard for social norms.
Where does it come from?
Well, you might have heard the expression ‘having licence’ or the more famous ‘licence to kill’. Licentious finds its origin in this notion of licence as permission, derived from the Latin ‘licentiosus’ and ‘licentia’ in 1535. The basic idea is that a licentious individual claims licence to behave as they choose, disregarding social norms. Have you ever told someone ‘you’ve got a cheek’ or ‘you’ve got some nerve’? Well, it’s possible that they were engaging in licentious behaviour.
Beyond the dictionary definition each of us has our own beliefs about the meanings and connotations of words. I would like to share my feelings about the word licentious – with the disclaimer that this is my opinion, and might not be shared by others!
For me licentiousness is a combination of sleaze and lasciviousness. It conjures images of indulgence, hedonism and, oddly enough, red feathers, corsets and velvet couches. Yup, for some reason it makes me think of cabaret and vaudeville, slender cigarettes in ivory holders held by gloved hands. Must have something to do with the possibly irrational relationship in my mind between literature, Shakespeare, licentiousness and Moulin Rouge.
Sleazy and lascivious it might be, but the word licentious does not describe every brand of morally ambiguous promiscuity. For example, licentious is too negative a word to describe the free loving hippie orgies, dandelions and sunflowers of the 60s, even if their behaviour was outside the social norms of the time. And it’s not condemning enough a word for the abhorrent practice of child abuse, which is certainly a contravention, but one requiring a stronger word. So licentious is somewhere in between these two, vaguely sleazy, unsettling and off.
I am in France at the moment, a country whose charming inhabitants boast a reputation for having rather fluid boundaries in terms of sexual morality. The French are known in Australia for their perceived cultural acceptance of the passionate fling, the steamy affair, the little bit of action on the side. I find myself wondering whether the notion of licentiousness exists in French, and whether it would carry as much weight as its English counterpart?
In any case, where I come from there is a word for this type of behaviour, and it is licentious. These licentious (usually philandering) libertines deserve to have attributed to them this precise and evocative word. So next time you hear about a married boss propositioning a work experience student at a Christmas party or a 38 year old mother of two seducing a 17 year old high school graduate from under his girlfriend, you know what to call them.
In peace and wordliness
at·a·vis·tic
at·a·vis·tic \ˌa-tə-ˈvis-tik\
adjective
Today I’m in Berlin, Germany. My cousin Yasmin and I were walking around near Unter den Linden when we stumbled across a warehouse that displayed and sold old opera costumes and props. We spent a while walking around admiring the elaborate costumes, Baroque furniture, impressively liberal use of gold spray paint and some beautiful dark wood tables. As we were leaving I saw a box of random junk and had a rummage. I came across a non-descript piece of animal print fur. Long and thin, it had three press-studs on it. I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I hung it from the top of my pants and gave myself a tail. I checked myself in the mirror and you know what? It looked kind of cool. Yasmin agreed. Imagine if we had tails. They would totally become decorative appendages. They’d be pierced and shaved and tattooed and bejewelled. The works. We discussed the possibilities for a while. Then with just a little reluctance I relinquished the tail and we left.
Tonight when we got home I decided to write about atavistic. I first encountered atavistic in the context of cultural criticism. I’ll come to that soon. But first, when I searched online I discovered that its most common usage is actually biological – the recurrence of a trait or characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence. For example a human tail.
No joke.
On occasion humans have been born with a vestigial tail or ‘coccygeal process’.
A TAIL!
An atavistic occurrence refers to the re-emergence of something beyond which one has already evolved. Perhaps a throwback to a previous generation. It has been observed in many animals such as whales and chickens. Coined in the 1830s, atavistic derives from the French ‘atavisme’ and the Latin ‘atavus’ meaning great-great-great grandfather or simply ancestor.
As I mentioned earlier, atavistic is used by cultural critics to refer to social and cultural reversions which hark back to the values or approaches of previous generations. In keeping with the Berlin theme, I would like to suggest that the Shoah (holocaust) was atavistic. The objectives and methods of that heinous regime were inconsistent with the democracy that existed in Germany at the time. They were also contrary to the equal rights for Christian and Jewish citizens which had been enshrined in Law. In the wake of the First World War primal anxieties and prejudices were revived in the populace. An atavistic phenomenon.
Another example from a bit closer to home would be the infamous 2005 Cronulla riots. The racially inspired violence that occurred on December 4, 2005 was an animalistic reversion to tribe mentality. Another kind of atavism.
On a more pleasant note, rad Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson recognised the importance of this lovely word. He used it several times across his oeuvre, including in his classic ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’.
But it doesn’t end there! The term atavistic regression was also used by Austrian psychiatrist Ainslie Meares to describe hypnosis because, according to her theory, hypnosis denotes a switching off of the higher functions of the mind, and reverting to a less evolved mental state.
Following on from this logic, I would like to suggest that a big night out on the turps could be described as atavistic. Try it. You’ve just slumped out of bed with a hangover. Maybe it’s been a while since you had one. You run into your housemate in the corridor and you mutter ‘last night was atavistic man’. Later on you meet up with your friends and say by way of apology, ‘I was atavistic last night.’
When asked ‘how was your night?’ the response is ‘atavistic’.
I like it And I can almost guarantee that this proud declaration that enough brain cells remain to use this lovely word to describe your condition will ease the pain of your hangover.
In peace and wordliness
Oneiric /oʊˈnairik/
Oneiric /oʊˈnairik/
Adjective
Oneiric is a word I first came across while studying a film called Persona, directed by Ingmar Bergman. It’s a profoundly beautiful and troubling exploration of psychology, dream and reality and with that in mind, I recommend it. In any case, I believe it is a powerful illustration of this week’s word, oneiric. (While I’m on it, another oneiric film which I thoroughly recommend is The Science of Sleep, written and directed by Michel Gondry. And do any of you remember that episode of The Simpsons when Homer and Bart enter another dimension, the animation becomes three dimensional, and the world expands and shrinks into a kind of black hole? That’s oneiric).
Oneiric means ‘of or pertaining to dreams’. Finally, a word whose definition is simple and uncontested! Oneiric is an adjective, so you can use it to describe something you see in the world, for example an object, a place, a situation or a person. Oneiric finds its origins in the Greek ‘oneiros’ – dream; with links also drawn to the Armenian anurǰ – dream. Oneiric is commonly used in film theory and criticism, where it is used to describe the depiction of dream-like states. It also refers to dream-like states as a metaphor through which a film can be analysed.
Unfortunately this lovely word is not used widely in daily conversation, but I think it is time that this changed . From my perspective, oneiric is like the sophisticated sister of words like ‘trippy’, ‘out there’, and the cousin of ‘surreal’ and ‘ethereal’. Which is not to say that these words all mean the same thing – they don’t, and in fact I am ignoring their beautiful precision by suggesting that the sentiment is similar. What I would like to say is that all of these words describe experiences or phenomena which are somehow out of the ordinary, somehow profound and otherworldly. By using oneiric, we can describe something which resembles a dream.
Dreams have long been a source of fascination in the worlds of art, literature, music and psychology. Despite enormous advances in the fields of clinical psychology, neurobiology and psychoanalytical thinking, the forces behind the dream world remain a mystery. And you know what, it’s interesting that in the case of the word oneiric, the way that you choose to use it may reveal much about how you experience dreams.
So how would I use oneiric? If I was being creative and not limiting my use of it to that which is conventional? What is dreamlike to me? Dreams can be horrifying, moving, beautiful, surreal, irrational, frightening, enlightening. And now I’m procrastinating by writing a long list of words describing dreams instead of exploring what oneiric means to me. Truth is it’s kind of hard.
I think that watching the sunset over the Alps can be oneiric. The world stopping in silence to observe that sublime descent, white heat sinking behind the proud grace of those snowpeaks. The world didn’t stop of course, but all around me was the thick silence of wonder and peace, the cold of the snow disappeared and I was just there. That was, in a sense, oneiric.
If I was going to describe someone as oneiric, what would that mean? That they are unrealistic? That they have their heads in the clouds, live in a fantasy world, are hopeless idealists? Or in fact that they are dreamy? Could I say, for example that Johnny Depp is oneiric? I reckon that could work
I don’t have much experience with drugs, but I just had the thought that drugs – especially hallucinogenic ones – are probably a great source of oneiric experiences. I generally prefer my brushes with the oneiric to be natural – stumbling through the moonlit kitchen at night, being pummelled like a leaf in the surf and crawling ashore to see the world anew, riding a snowboard or a motorbike and struggling to focus as the world passes faster than I can process. Super oneiric man.
Or was it? I’m not really sure if all this quite captures the oneiric . . . in my mind the oneiric is more surreal, more incomprehensible than that which I have described. There is steam rising from the sewers, there is a couple holding polka dot umbrellas silhouetted against the dingy wall and they’re speaking in tongues. The oneiric is concealed and irrational, it connects us with a dimension which is beyond the quotidian, beyond even the sublime.
The oneiric is not commonplace, so I don’t know why I am suggesting that we try to use the word as though it is. Perhaps it’s better that it remains a precise word with a specific application, somewhat mysterious and unknown, hidden and sacred.
In peace and wordliness.
Futz \ˈfəts\
Verb, noun, 16 pts
This week’s word is brought to you by the letters S, C, R, A, B, B, L and E. Scrabble is a funny game because though it’s ostensibly about words, ultimately it’s a numbers game. A game in which a lovely word will be heartlessly cast aside in favour of one which will yield a higher score. In my opinion, this week’s word is not lovely in the conventionally aesthetic sense. It is however interesting and capable of netting a decent Scrabble score.
As a rule numbers are not what motivate me when I play Scrabble, but after a recent experience I can see the value in having a few sneaky ‘Z’ words up your sleeve. (‘Z’, along with ‘Q’ is the highest scoring letter, worth 10 points).
So, enough futzing around. On to the point of this week’s entry, which is twofold. One: to explain the meaning and origins of futz, and two: to introduce you to the world of Scrabble point-scoring joy which will be yours once you expand your knowledge of English words of Yiddish/Hebraic descent.
First thing’s first. Futz is both a noun and a verb, so you can tell a futz to stop futzing around: fiddling with something – perhaps files or wires or the ribbon on a typewriter – without accomplishing anything. Possibly even without the intention of accomplishing anything. With the word ‘futzing’ comes a sense of ineptitude or vagueness, of taking a lot of time and achieving little.
To say someone is futzing around kind of invalidates his or her actions. Take for example the old man who spends every Sunday afternoon in the garage tending to his Harley which hasn’t been ridden (nor started) for thirty years. His wife and kids tell him to stop futzing around (without understanding the personal significance of the ritual – but that’s another story). Or the lawyer who charges by the hour and spends 40% of that time futzing around with their facebook profile. Or the student who rearranges all the pens on their desk just so before finally starting that essay. Life’s full of futzes futzing around.
Why do I feel like I’m being naughty when I write that?! And more importantly, why is it worth getting to know ‘futz’? Here are four reasons:
1. Interesting and contested origins
The first explanation I found for the origin of ‘futz’ was: ‘1930-35. Possibly blend of fuck and putz’. I wasn’t super happy with this, so I looked further and came across this:
ארומפארצן זיך
arum-fartsn zakh
Now that’s more interesting. The Yiddish word meaning ‘to fart’. Far more exotic. I also found references to the German verb ‘furzen’, meaning the same thing. So in fact ‘futzing around’ is pretty much the same as ‘farting around’, but European and therefore sophisticated
2. Because NYC says so
Yidioms (Yiddish idioms) such as ‘futz’ are all the rage in New York, evidently the birthplace of all things hip and happening.
3. It is the name of a film and the subject of a song.
‘Nuff said.
3. It will help you to use your ‘Z’ in Scrabble
If you haven’t played Scrabble before, or you are better at it than me, you may not find this useful, but I have noticed that English words derived from Yiddish or Hebrew are a treasure trove of ‘Z’ words. I am convinced that having a working knowledge of these words will pick up your game. To that end, here is a brief list of words whose validity I have verified– thanks to Steph and Olle for alerting me to that necessity
Chalutz – a member of a congregation of immigrants to Kibbutzim. 21 points.
Kibbutz – a collective farm or settlement in modern Israel. 24 points.
Kibbitz – 1. To chat or converse. 2. To offer meddlesome advice. 24 points.
Klezmer – Jewish folk music played traditionally by itinerant Eastern European bands. 22 points.
Mitzvah – A commandment of Jewish law. 24 points.
Plotzed – To be overwhelmed by an emotion. 16 points.
Tzaddik – One who acts justly or righteously. 22 points.
Zikkurat/ziggurat – A temple tower of the Babylonians or Assyrians. 25 points.
This next one will score you a bonus 50 points for using all your letters – now that’s chutzpah! (Audacity). 27 + 50 points: not bad.
So we have learned what futz means, where it comes from and how to use it. We have learned several other words containing ‘Z’ to be used while playing Scrabble. We haven’t really broached the issue of restoring futz to the streets beyond NYC, but I think I’ll leave that in the capable hands of Woody Allen and his contemporaries, whose track record in the area of Yidiom advocacy is admirable.
In peace and wordliness
Loquacious \lō-ˈkwā-shəs\
Imagine my surprise when I opened the book my French friend had been reading to find the word ‘loquacious’ on page two.
Why was this surprising ?
For two reasons.
The first is that the day before I had received an email from a friend in Australia suggesting that I spend some time thinking about the word garrulous, a word often considered a synonym for loquacious. The second is that, well, if a word like loquacious isn’t enough to put a foreign reader off continuing, I don’t know what is. Props to Niko for keeping on
(Just a quick aside : the book was an auto/biography called ‘A drink with Shane MacGowan’ by Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane MacGowan. As I didn’t have the opportunity to finish it I will just say it’s certainly a book worth starting. Full of surprising and exciting vocabulary, and more than that, genuine and down-to-earth narration. Shane MacGowan is an Irish character, musician, poet and general wild card. I think he might also be loquacious.)
Loquacious comes from the Latin loquac-, loquax, from loqui to speak, and is defined as chatty, communicative and wordy. It can also refer to one who speaks fluently and freely. It seems to me to be a positive thing, but I gather that this word walks a fine line between compliment and insult, able to function as either, or indeed as a neutral adjective, a simple observation of fact.
If you want comment on someone who is expressive and precise with their language, you can say they’re eloquent (which incidentally comes from the same root as loquacious – loqui), or articulate. For example, you might say that Junot Diaz is quite an eloquent speaker or that Zadie Smith is always articulate in interviews and on panels. Loquacious refers less to the quality of what you say than the fact that you say a lot.
If you want to suggest that someone talks excessively or repetitively on trivial or tiresome subjects, you can use garrulous – a person gluttonous with words, if you will. For example, if you have a dinner guest who dominates the evening with dull anecdotes and then repairs to the bathroom or a moment, you might discreetly mention their garulousness, and you can all have a quiet chortle before they return. Loquacious has a less negative spin than garrulous.
The Oxford Dictionary makes it nice and simple by defining loquacious as talkative, and garrulous as excessively talkative. Both refer to a volume of words : high and very high respectively.
Loquacious is actually quite a hip word at the moment, having been used in the Sydney Morning Herald on at least two occasions this month.
This article by Damien Murphy on March 15 describes Steven Fielding’s retreat after being ‘likened to a worm’ :
‘Family First senator and creationist identified as more stupid than an earthworm by visiting English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, appears to have taken the classification literally and gone underground. . . Fielding, normally loquacious to a fault, sought sanctuary in Parliament all day and so avoided being questioned about his backbone or lack of one.’
Hehehe
In an article about Tony Abbot ‘s visit to an indigenous community in Alice Springs, Mark Davis wrote on March 1 that ‘for once the loquacious Opposition Leader appeared stumped for words as he met three elderly Aboriginal inhabitants of Hoppy’s Camp, two men and a woman making do in an open-air shelter, cooking a meal amid a few meagre possessions.’ Well, I won’t comment further on that HUGE subject here . . . we ‘ll see how things unfold over the next few months.
My point is, loquacious is hip, happening, and now. So get into it.
Be loquacious. Or if that doesn’t feel right, find someone who’s loquacious and tell them so. Spread the love.
In peace and wordliness
Flabbergasted ˈflæbəgæstəd/
Flabbergasted
ˈflæbəgæstəd/
It’s all fun and games til someone gets flabbergasted.
I discovered this today when, having mulled over this fun little word for several days, I was flabbergasted myself.
I was in a camera shop on the main street of Bourg St Maurice, attempting to get my camera repaired. A couple of days ago I had tried to turn it off, and the lens had stuck, refusing to budge despite my gentle coercion. The shopkeeper informed me that my camera’s lens had stopped working for an unknown reason, and that as it is the most expensive part of the camera, it would cost more to repair it than to buy a new one. My camera should be put in the bin (yes, this is what he said). I was flabbergasted. Shocked. Amazed.
At first I wasn’t sure if he was genuine. I mean, he worked in a camera shop after all. It was in his interest for me to believe it was more economic to buy a new one than ship my old one off for repair. The fact that I’m still not convinced of his expertise or honesty may reveal more about me than I would like . . . in any case, I’m not ready to throw the camera in the bin! What a flabbergasting notion.
Last week, when I tried to imagine the possible origins of flabbergasted, this is what I came up with: take the word and divide it in two. The result is flab and gast (or aghast). That is, flab – soft, fatty body tissue, the type which tends to wobble back and forth in the jowl or tricep region; and ahgast – struck by shock, amazement or terror. Of course I wrote this whole explanation off as cute but thoroughly implausible, fanciful even. That is, until I searched online to find that actually, I wasn’t too far off the mark.
Flabbergasted has been in use since it appeared in the Register of New Words in 1772. Hard to imagine that at that time, this odd-sounding word was considered a chic little number employed by the funky and with it.
Since then, most explanations of its origins seem to employ the same two-part approach that I did. It seems to be agreed that the ‘flab’ is derived from flabby, a variant of flappy. This could refer to either the flapping motion of a flabby person moving (that’s not very nice!), or the flap that people get into when an exciting event is imminent . . . in 19th Century England, that is. For example: ‘Oh dear, they were in quite a flap before the bachelors arrived at the manor’.
The ‘gast’ is equally exciting! I found references to the Old English word gast, meaning spirit, which also gives us ghastly and ghost. This then leads us to the Middle English word gasten, meaning to terrify, which also lead to aghast. Which gives us the element of shock, amazement and surprise in flabbergasted. So there you have it, a brief exposé of the history of flabbergasted.
I think I mentioned that flabbergasted was once a funky word. I don’t know how you feel, but from my perspective, it’s lost its edge in recent times. It seems to me to be kind of unwieldy. A bit, dare I say it . . . lame.
Turns out that I need to get with the times. In 2005, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival Catherine Lockerbie was quoted as saying “I’m flabbergasted that the Rushdie wasn’t on the list” in reference to Salman Rushdie’s ‘Shalimar The Clown’ being skipped over for Man Booker Prize. If Ms Lockerbie, director of one of the more celebrated international book festivals (and therefore obviously literate and eloquent) deems flabbergasted usable, I think we ought to follow suit.
Here’s how:
Lighten the tone of serious political conversations by exclaiming ‘I think it’s flabbergasting that the government hasn’t managed to resolve the issue of the national health care system this far into their term.’
Ease an awkward first date moment – you know the one where you’ve just come out of a film and have to actually talk? ‘I was flabbergasted at the special effects! I’d heard Avatar was amazing, but wow!’
Follow the lead of the British comedian Frankie Howerd, who used to say in mock astonishment: ‘I’m flabbergasted — never has my flabber been so gasted!’.
Get street slang: Flab ma’ gast, yo sista be datin my homeboy o’ wha’?
Use your imagination! There are plenty of options with this handy word which is well overdue for a mod revamp.
In peace and wordliness
Big thanks to Isa of Bellentre, who alerted me to the strange coolness of the word flabbergasted. Thanks so much for your warmth and hospitality! Look forward to seeing you again.
ennui \ˌän-ˈwē\
ennui
noun
\ˌän-ˈwē\
Among the many effective ways to evade ennui is to spend an afternoon googling ennui.
To the uninitiated, ennui may seem to be a tiresome word. Its meaning: listlessness; tedium; world-weariness, does little to counter that. Ennui is a feeling I’ve experienced and a word I’ve encountered on many occasions, most recently in my French class last Friday.
Yep, ennui, like so many English words, is French too if you say it with an accent. Actually, to be more accurate, it was French first. To discover its origins, let’s take a quick trip to France in the year 1660.
A leap year that began on a Thursday.
The year that Blaise Pascal’s ‘Lettres Provinciales’, a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, was ordered to be shredded and burned by King Louis XIV.
The year that Samuel Pepys had his first cup of tea and wrote about it in his diary.
The first year of the decade during which ennui, meaning annoyance, first appeared in old French. It later came to mean annoyance, problems and boredom.
Ennui was co opted by English in the 18th Century, possibly by the bourgeoisie who sought a fancy way to say they were dissatisfied.
Ennui is a special brand of boredom. It refers to a general 
disinterest in the matters of daily life. Not so much a boredom resulting from a lack of preoccupations, but a listlessness despite them. See exhibit A: cat lolling on a shelf when it could be reading any one of those interesting books all around it. A person in the thralls of ennui may resemble the cat, sprawled or leaning on some inanimate object, unable to take pleasure in that which surrounds them.
Ennui is a state of affairs, and to an extent a state of mind. For example, in his novel ‘Breathe’ (which I thoroughly recommend), Tim Winton evokes the ennui of adolescence in small-town Australia. At the same time, you could say that the characters are driven to destructive decisions by their ennui.
Paradoxically, ennui has been a source of much artistic inspiration across the centuries. It has been the subject of artworks, poetry, music and writing. Check out Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire. Imagine all the hours of ennui which were eased by the dedication to its portrayal! I reckon it was many.
I came across this painting, ‘Ennui’, by Askerov, an artist from Azerbadjan.
It was painted in the mid 1900s.
See how the woman is surrounded by the accoutrements of daily life, but is completely disinterested? Ennui.
This painting by Walter Richard Sickert, also entitled ‘Ennui’, is perhaps more evocative of the dismay which can go hand in hard with ennui. The pervasive blandness of another long afternoon waiting for the rain to stop, smoking with the windows closed with your back turned to your lover? Ennui.
I’ve heard it said that ennui is becoming a bit passé in this age of 24 hour online shopping, bright pop music and constant media bombardment. That concerns me. There is something poetic about ennui that I don’t want to lose. Jeff Nunokawa agrees – and he studied Oscar Wilde, so he must be cool. He wrote ‘The Importance of Being Bored: The Dividends of Ennui in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’’, an entire essay dedicated to the phenomenon of ennui within the text and its construction. I also came across a French article which lamented the deficits of a society free from ennui.
My own exploration of ennui killed several hours today as I trawled the internet, thoroughly absorbed in this phenomenon. Yep, today ennui gave me the gift of enthusiasm and vigor.
Ennui, despite its somewhat negative connotations, can inspire contemplation and reflection. If we lose the capacity to revel in ennui, we may sacrifice much in the worlds of art, philosophy and literature.
So, ennui. Self indulgent? Maybe.
The opiate of the middle class? Quite possibly.
Frustrating to watch? Yes.
But I still think it could be a worthwhile part of life, and deserving of a place in our future sentences
And even if it isn’t, it sure inspired some cool songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqg-vqo-BL4
In peace and wordliness.
