loan word – Richmond Writing

Word of the Week! Autarchy / Autarky

Our word came to me spelled “autarky,” but then I discovered a second spelling, “autarchy.” The OED reveals a curious double-meaning, both related to our current economic moment in the United States and perhaps, around the world.

First, autarchy can mean policies that promote “economic self-sufficiency in a political unit,” but second and more darkly, “despotism.” Both ideas clearly have been tossed about by supporters and opponents of current tariffs on foreign goods. This blog is not interested in advocacy; feel free to ask my opinion of tariffs, in person. You’ve been warned.

For this blog, however, I do find that the double-meaning needs a bit of unpacking. Why would self-sufficiency and tyranny share one word? Both meanings come from the Greek αὐτάρκεια, so we have a loan word that caught on in the 1600s. Both senses of our word first appeared in print then with an example meaning “absolute sovereignty, despotism” cropping up in 1665. Earlier, in 1617, we get “The Autarchie and selfe-sufficiencie of God” but here it’s God’s self-sufficiency and not supreme power being evoked.

Autarky in its dark sense was often used in the 1930s to describe the enemies of world trade, then Imperial Japan’s drive for a “Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” and, as you’d expect, European Fascism.

In the US, the America-First platform after World War 1 and the rise of Technocracy, Inc. in the 30s both included autarchy in both senses of the word, with the latter wanting to build a continental “Technate” from the North Pole to beyond Panama as an “independent, self-sustaining geographical unit.” We heard this idea again recently and I looked up the old maps of the planned Technate. One appears at the top of this post. Make of its influence what you will.

When I studied Technocracy as part of my doctoral dissertation in the early 1990s, the idea seemed quaint, even ridiculously antique. Since then the frequency of usage for our word remained nearly steady, peaking in 2000.

Will ours be a Century of Autarchy / Autarky? We’ll find out.

Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

image: 1930s map of the Technate, from Technocracy Inc.

Word of the Week! Picayune

Cigarette paper wrapper I love this word. I love the idea that New Orleans named a newspaper after it. There’s a Mississippi town called Picayune that I should visit, and of course I love it that Mark Twain / Sam Clemens used the word and has also been skewered with it. In this recent example in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood, he describes a new biography focusing on Clemens’ difficult personal life and financial disasters thus: “His credulity led to misadventures the details of which are so picayune that Chernow’s emphasis on them can be maddening.” No detail about Clemens’ life can be maddening to me: I immediately ordered a copy of Chernow’s giant biography, Mark Twain.

What makes something picayune? We have an answer! The OED notes a French / Occitan etymology but Southern US origin with an 1806 first recorded use, “One can’t buy anything [at New Orleans] for less than a six cent piece, called a picayune.” Over time, the term morphed from a small amount of money to a trifling amount to a worthless person. Thus it became a metaphor for things or people of no value.

We can name many such persons, some with considerable influence (I don’t care for influences nor do I wish to be one). In any case, despite the rise of many picayune people and pastimes, our word continues a gradual decline in usage.

Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image: though blocked by the picayune I.T. rules on campus, I managed to outsmart them and got this form cigarettecollector.net. I dislike cigs, but not cigars. They will yank my final stogie from my tobacco-stained, dead lips.

Word of the Week! Supine

Hard to think that this word, another I found in the work of Edith Wharton, has not yet appeared as a Word of The Week. So what do we know about “supine”?

The OED notes its Latin origin, to lie face upwards. The dictionary records earliest uses to the 15th Century, making it again a Gutenberg word. Printing simply made available a term already in the vocabulary of educated folk.

I thought of being supine as merely lying down, or for one of Wharton’s characters, collapsing upon a fainting couch.

To be truly supine, however, not just any sort of fainting will do. One must face upward, as in the final pose of Yoga practice, savasana or “corpse pose.”

Figuratively, as the OED entry also notes, our word can mean disinclined to act, from laziness, fear, greed, or some other motive. Here I’ve heard our word used to describe the current Congress, supine before a leader with authoritarian intentions.

When will they wake up? I thought that I had covered “Quisling” here before; perhaps that one will be a Metaphor of the Month soon. We shall see if events warrant that frightening word.

Send me words and metaphors at jessid-at-richmond-edu or by leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Word of the Week! Ennui

Some time back, I picked up a copy of Thomas Jefferson: Travels, Anthony Brandt’s edited collection of Jefferson’s correspondence from 1784-1789, his years working in Paris. I find the “American Sphinx,” to use Joseph Ellis’ term, endlessly fascinating in all his complexities, obscurities, and patent hypocrisy. In some ways, his is the story of the state of Virginia, even the entire South. Partly my interest stems from Deism, a spiritual path I share with the Founding Father, partly the long shadow cast by my alma mater, The University of Virginia.

Jefferson, with his many flaws, lacked one: idleness. That brings us to our word, one he saw as the emotional outcome of doing nothing. Here, in a letter to Martha Jefferson from 1787, “guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. A mind always employed is alway happy. . . .it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is. . .” In an earlier letter from the same month, he finds the cause of such poison to be “want of industry which I had begun to fear would be the rock on which you would split.”

Ennui, as befits Jefferson’s experience, come to us from French. In its modern sense, it only dates to 1758, during Jefferson’s own lifetime. Thus, we have a ‘Modern Problem”! On the other hand, The OED dates an older sense to the 13th century, meaning “weariness.” Often the word “annoy” got employed in the same sense.

The modern loan word implies an annoyance or torpor of the soul, a lassitude. it’s that waiting-for-Godot state of mind. I’ve covered the words malaise and doldrum here before. They both can be used as near synonyms for our week’s word.

I fear we turn to dopamine-dispensers called smart phones and social media for quick bandages to slap over ennui, when instead we might find uses for our time that leave us with something tangible. If you experience ennui, get some exercise. Do some useful work. Improve your mind (and yes, you can find such content via a phone). As Jefferson advises Martha, “it is wonderful how much can be done, if we are always doing.”

Spend your time well! Send us a word or metaphor and I will feature it here. Let me know by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below. Also let us know if you would like to write a guest column.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image Source: Ennui by Robert Seymour, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Word of the Week! Patois

I have quite a pile of ideas from readers currently. Thank you! We will begin to work through the backlog soon, but first, student Leo Barnes has a really strong entry on a loan-word from French that I often hear in academic settings.

In terms of definition, we have “regional dialect” from The OED entry. Now I’ll turn things over to Leo:

The term ‘patois’ refers to the language of the common people of a region. A patois can vary greatly from the standardized language and is usually only spoken within communities and passed down orally. It differs from pidgin which is a simplified version of a language spoken between people without a common vernacular.

In French, ‘patois’ means dialect though in Old French, it means clumsy or uncultivated speech. Thus, the use of the word can have a condescending overtone. Writing on the fickleness of dialectical hierarchy, linguist Jean Jaurès notes, “The language of a vanquished people is called patois.” In other words, it isn’t linguistic merit but pure might that decides who’s dialect is cultivated and who’s is crass.

Having seen patois before in Charles Elster’s weighty tome, Word Workout, I was already aware of its first meaning. This past week, though, while working at Long Wind Organic Tomato Farm in Thetford, Vermont, I learned its second.

Patois (also called Patwa) is the native language of almost three million Jamaicans including five who worked alongside me at Long Wind Farm. Patois is a Creole language derived from the English colonists who ruled Jamaica, African word borrowings, and French, Spanish, and Portuguese influences.

No doubt aided by its condescending namesake, The New York Times reports that Patois is “stigmatized with second-class status and often mischaracterized as a poorly structured form of English.” One balmy summer evening, while enjoying a beer and jerk chicken, I had the chance to learn some. Here are highlights:

Patois: Wah Gwan
Meaning: Hello

Patois: De olda de moon, de brighter it shines
Meaning: The older the person, the wiser, more beautiful, and vibrant they are

Patois: Ya so bad luck even an empty gun would still shoot ya
Meaning: You’re so unlucky even a gun without bullets would harm you.

While talks are afoot on changing Jamaica’s official language to Patois, for the foreseeable future, it will remain English. Unfortunately, like many small languages, Patois isn’t available on mainstream language learning platforms. For those interested, here’s a good resource to start: Jamaican Patois.

This blog will continue all year, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below. Also let us know if you would like to write a guest column.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image Source: Jamaican Flag & Jerk Chicken courtesy of Leo Barnes. I’m hungry now!

Word of the Week! Impetuous

This week’s word bears close relation to last week’s metaphor, fast and loose. With its Latinate sound, impetuous remains formal enough for academic prose yet captures, in a few syllabus, a sense of rushing headlong and without due consideration. We have all known impetuous people. Maybe we are that, ourselves!

For both objects and people, our word has meant the same thing for about the same number of years, to act with “rash energy,” as the OED notes. Ocean waves, wind, people who plunge ahead recklessly, even imprudent stock investors can be said to act impetuously. The word implies, in people at least, a variety of passion. Now dear Valentines, hear this: don’t fall in love in an impetuous manner. You will come to regret it! And that’s our link to this week’s holiday.

The word itself comes from the French impétueux. As with so many very useful terms, ours is loan word.

If you have a word or metaphor you enjoy, send them by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image credit: Diana Robinson at Flickr, “Waves Crashing Near Pacific Grove, California.”

Word of the Week! Euphoric

Let’s end a dark year on a happy note. Do you feel euphoric that 2023 has ended? I sure do.

It’s a greeting-card’s whistling in the dark to say “the best is yet to come,” “hope springs eternal,” or “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” but hey. We are mostly still here and surprises, good and bad, await us in 2024. So we might spare a moment or three to be euphoric on New Year’s Eve.

What about the word itself? It’s from the Greek euphoria, εὐϕορία, which the OED tells me means to “bear well.” That’s a ways from the ecstasy I associate with feeling euphoric. Digging in a bit, the dictionary shows that the original and now obsolete meaning, from pathology, meant a state of well-being. Only later did our word come to mean “a state of cheerfulness or well-being, esp. one based on over-confidence or over-optimism.”

So which mood do you wish for ending 2023? Pick your sentiments, and whichever one you choose, be it whistling in the dark or finding some peace, may your 2024 bring only good tidings.

If you have a word or metaphor you enjoy, send them by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Word of the Week! Gestalt

Jessie Bailey Assistant Director for Recruiting, Admission, Student Services nominated this word. I’m surprised we have not featured it before, but then it’s not a word I often use.

One reason? I think of the 1970s and pop-psychology when I see our word, rarely these days. Indeed, usage peaked in the year 1970.

Gestalt comes from German in the 1890s, and it began in the then-new field of Psychology. Any pop-culture misuses arose far later. A 1926 example in the OED sums up “The work of the Gestalt school with its stress upon the unity of psychic processes. Note, The Gestalt theorists.”

I’ll quote the OED here for a definition, “A ‘shape’, ‘configuration’, or ‘structure’ which as an object of perception forms a specific whole or unity incapable of expression simply in terms of its parts.” The human personality certainly qualifies. We all, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, contain multitudes. Our childhood experiences good or bad, educations, work, associations, cultural and linguistic backgrounds all contribute to our personality.

Loosely speaking, “the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts” expresses the idea of gestalt. A homely example would be any event that becomes full of meaning from many inputs. Consider the recent Thanksgiving meal you may have enjoyed with loved ones. That event means more than eating, certainly more than turkey and stuffing. The OED says this about the arts, providing a 1962 quotation that abstract paintings “are concerned with gestalt effects, and with after-images, they are not out to batter one’s eyes into submission.”

I happen to really like Jackson Pollock’s work. It took me a while to see that his techniques involved more than mere dripwork. Somehow the paintings began to take me places, emotionally, by their color and vastness. Thus the gestalt of Pollock’s work, difficult to name, but to me more than line, color, and size. They evoke in me a relaxed contemplation, and your mood may be different from mine. You might feel battered into submission, whatever the OED says. I feel transported now by abstract expressionism, in a way I was not when I first encountered it four decades ago.

So thanks, Jessie, for a thought-provoking Word of the Week!

If you have a word or metaphor you enjoy, send them by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image source, Flowcomm at Flickr

Word of the Week! Eminence Grise

I had never run into this phrase before encountering it, in a story from my course Reading Science Fiction and Fantasy. A student who pays close attention to new words–take heart, there are some!–pointed out the term and we talked about how it functions in the story.

In short, an eminence grise works quietly and decisively behind the scenes rather than serving as a public face for important events. We have a precise origin for our term, in the person of François Leclerc du Tremblay, a monk of the early 17th Century who advised Cardinal Richelieu. Our image, a painting from 1873, shows the respect (and likely fear) this publicly quiet man evoked among powerful French clergy and nobility. Though never a Cardinal (and thus worthy of “Your Eminence”) Tremblay was given that honorific, paired with his gray robes, we get our term.

One rarely sees our phrase, with a usage frequency of 2 (of 8) in the OED editors’ estimation. That’s “0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage,” so I stand unsurprised that I’ve not met the term before.

“Power behind the throne” comes to mind as a possible synonum here, yet some of these figures have been very public. Another possibility is the word “Svengali,” worth a look in a future post.

Look at any circle of the powerful and influential and you’ll find an eminence grise, sometimes quietly working for good, often not. As usual these days, I asked ChatGPT if something like it might become an eminent grise. Here’s the response:

While it is possible for AI like myself to assist famous and influential individuals in various ways, it is unlikely that AI would become an eminent grise in the traditional sense.

This is because AI is designed to assist humans in performing specific tasks, such as generating text or making predictions based on data. While AI can be very helpful in many contexts, it lacks the complex decision-making abilities and nuanced understanding of human behavior that are often required to wield significant influence behind the scenes.

Would that more of my students wrote a first draft that well, and would that influencers (who do not act behind the scenes) possessed that level of humility.

Nominate a word students need to learn by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Word of the Week! Dungeon

“All those years of Dungeons and Dragons taught me…” begins a hilarious moment of wisdom from the old and often wonderful series The X-Files. Still, what is a dungeon?

The game envisions a dangerous place full of monsters where one can get lost forever. Or in the case of the image above, history teaches of a dreadful below-ground prison where people get put and forgotten. That wretch of a manakin was being gnawed on by a stuffed rat, at Bolton Castle in Yorkshire, when I visited in 2009. The history was horrible but the effect? Monty-Python and Far Side cartoons.I began to wonder about dungeons this week when I asked our Registrar’s office to get me the heck out of a ground-floor classroom with terrible lighting, a loud air-handler that will not stop running, and two tiny windows to natural light that vanish as soon as our overhead-projector screen lowers.

At 9am, such a setting does not bode well for teaching undergrads. We discussed the term in our new room today, and a few students recalled donjon from French. The origin appears (according to the OED entry) Anglo-Norman and first recorded use in the 1300s. Later senses moved the dungeon from a fortified tower (think of the Tower of London) underground, as at Bolton Castle.

In case your mind dove into the gutter, only in our strange current times has the term acquired a sexual connotation. First use in the OED’s reckoning? 1969.

D&D’s dungeons? 1974.

There you have it, dungeon-crawlers (a D&D term for a party of adventurers who descend into the inky, horror-filled depths).

Nominate a word students need to learn by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.