Lexie Kahn Gives a Damn

Posted on February 22, 2012 by

The check arrived – a tidy sum that would have kept me in chicken salad sandwiches and Frappuccinos for a month. Ms. Khan plunked down a credit card from her boss lady’s eponymous foundation. Well, the trustees weren’t going to question this expenditure. Rumor has it the director is like a mother to them; in fact, she is their mother.

“So if that odd word contemn is not related to condemn,” Amira Khan began, “then what is the etymology of condemn?”

“Well, it’s another one of those words English got from Latin through Old French. The Latin condemnāre, which sometimes took the form condamnāre, meant ‘to condemn, convict, sentence’ and so on. The root damnāre meant ‘to damage, hurt or condemn.’”

“The prefix con- means ‘with’; doesn’t it? How does that fit in?”

“You’re right; that’s the usual meaning, but it can also be just an intensifier, making the root more forceful.”


“Well, I’ve been wrong before,” Ms. Khan said, “but if condemn comes from damnāre, I’ll be darned if it isn’t related to damn.”

“Bingo! Look at this.” I turned my phone toward her, but saw she had pulled up the OED on her iPad. “Damn used to mean ‘to pronounce adverse judgment on, affirm to be guilty; to give judicial sentence against,’ in other words it was a synonym for condemn, and, yes, it does come from damnāre.”

“Score one for me!” she said. “And we already saw that damnāre meant ‘to damage,’ so that one’s a gimme.”

Illustration: Taddeo di Bartolo (http://clement.livejournal.com/185983.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Valentine No Longer Holds Love in Contempt

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

The waiter tilted his head, “Where did you get that glass, ma’am? Martinis aren’t on the menu here.”

“I won’t be needing it then,” I said, tucking it into my purse. “Bring me the tart tatin and the large Ethiopian coffee, please.”

Ms. Khan passed on dessert. “Do you have contempt for my employer?” she asked.

“Certainly not. I have the greatest respect – Oh, you mean she wants to know the etymology of contempt.”

Ms. Khan rested her chin on her hand and waited.

“Well, it turns out to be unrelated to the temp- words or to tempt and attempt.”

I turned the screen of my phone toward her. “Here’s what the OED says about the etymology:

< Latin contempt-us (u stem) scorn, < contempt- participial stem of contemnĕre to contemn v.”

“Contemn? Is that a variant of condemn?”

“Good guess,” I said, “but no. See, it comes into English from Old French, which got it from:

Latin contem(p)n-ĕre , < con- intensive + temnĕre to slight, scorn, disdain, despise.

“It means ‘to treat as of small value, treat or view with contempt; to despise, disdain, scorn, slight.’The dictionary says it’s now chiefly a literary word. I doubt that anyone has used it since the 19th century, but there’s an apt quote for today in Shakespeare. In Two Gentlemen of Verona Valentine says:

I have done penance for contemning Love.”

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Word Snooper “Ironic” Poll

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

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The Word Snooper Feels Temptation

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

While Ms. Khan texted her boss I stared out the atrium window. The sun was beating down like the overhead bulb in an interrogation room. I suddenly had an odd craving for ice cream tempura.

“Mrs. A—uh, my employer just made us an offer: a working lunch at Pinot.”

“Deal. Just a second, though. I’ve got an unsolved case here.” I scooped up C.J. Chan/De Sica’s eyeglass case as we made our way to the escalator. At the first floor I passed it across the counter to the guard who deposited it in the Lost and Found box along with other cases, glasses, pens, magnifiers, wallets, phones, notebooks and other flotsam, jetsam and detritus of the lives of writers, scholars and assorted hangers-on who haunt the Central Library.

We got a patio table overlooking the gardens outside the library. The unseasonably warm weather brought a few purple jacaranda blossoms and a clutch of bankers and beggars to the garden. I ordered the mussels appetizer and striped bass entrée. It was the boss lady’s nickel. Ms. Khan had the eighteen-dollar burger.

“So,” said Ms. Khan between bites, “My employer wants to know whether tempt, attempt and contempt are related to all the temp- words, from temper to tempura.”

I pulled up the OED Online. “It’s tempting to be tenacious, but it looks like we’ve reached the end of the line. Tempt has another root; it comes from Latin temptāre, temtāre ‘to handle, touch, feel, try the strength of, put to the test, try, attempt.’

“Those were some of the early meanings of tempt in English. In a 14th century translation of the Bible, when God tempted Abraham, scholars will tell you, He wasn’t trying to lure him into evil, just testing him. The same Wycliffite Bible also uses tempt to mean ‘try, endeavor,” in other words, attempt. But look at definition II.-4.-a.:

 trans. To try to attract, to entice (a person) to do evil.”

“Wow,” said Ms. Khan. “That’s how we use it now and that’s the oldest meaning, going back to the year 1230!”

“According to the OED,” I said, “attempt comes, through Old French, from temptāre. This time the dictionary stretches the etymology further, noting that tentāre is the frequentative of tendĕre to stretch. It seems to have entered English in the 16th century with the same meaning it has now.”

“What about contempt?”

“I’ll have dessert first,” I said, waving my empty Martini glass at the waiter.

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The Origins of Tempera and Tempura

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

“How did you know who my employer is?” whispered Amira Khan.

“I didn’t,” I said. “I played a hunch and you confirmed it.”

She rolled her dark, neatly outlined eyes. “Oh, that old trope.”

“You can’t have a pastiche without a few clichés.”

“Okay, well, back to your temp- assignment. Are tempera and tempura related to tempo, temperature, temperament and the rest of those words relating to time, space and mixing in proper proportions?”

“Ah. Food and art: some of my favorite subjects. Tempera and tempura sound almost the same, especially if you approximate the Japanese pronunciation of tempura by eliding the U, but you wouldn’t want to paint with the wrong one and eat the other. Reminds me of an art instructor I once had who confused ocher and okra.

“Starting with the simplest, as you see here in the OED, tempura, the Japanese dish of seafood and vegetables — and sometimes some other things — deep fried in batter, probably comes from the Portuguese tempêro, meaning ‘seasoning.’” I pulled out my phone.

Ice cream tempura

“As you can see here on Infopedia Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, tempero comes from the verb temperar, which comes from the Latin temperāre, so it is related to those other temp- words.

“The origin of tempera is a bit stranger. Tempera is a paint that can be mixed with water. They used to use egg yolk as an emulsion for the pigment. Very popular for painting on wood panels in the Middle Ages; not so big once oil paint came along.”

“Look at this,” said Ms. Khan. “The OED defines it as ‘The method of painting in distemper.’ I thought distemper was something dogs got.”

“Right. The dictionary directs us to the second definition of the noun distemper and from there to the verb. Here’s the etymology

:

Old French destemprer , to dissolve in liquid, soak, mix < dis- prefix + Latin temperāre to mingle in due proportion, qualify, temper.

“Dis- in Latin meant ‘two’ or ‘split in two,’ so distemper referred to changing the temper, or constitution, of a substance by diluting it. Distemper in the sense of the canine disease goes back to what we said about temperament being the proper mixture of bodily ‘humors.’ Shakespeare uses distemper in several plays to mean ‘Deranged or disordered condition of the body or mind; madness or ill health.’”

“Well, You-Know-Who will be in quite a temper – or is it lose her temper – if I don’t check in with her. Excuse me while I text her an update.”

Tempura ice cream photographer: Derek Mawhinney Date: 8/27/2005. *I license this under Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 |Source=Originally from [http://en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia]Laura as Lexie: J.B. Herman
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The Word Snooper: Of Time and Temples

Posted on January 25, 2012 by

“So,” I said to Amira Khan, “your mysterious employer wants to know the origin of the word temple as well as temporary, temperature and the other temp- words we’ve discussed.”

“Yes. She’s attempting to make the most of this tempting temp- assignment.”

“Mmm-hmm. All right. Well, we’ve shown that time and temperature have a common origin. It looks as if time and space do too – etymologically anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“Temple dates back to Old English, from at least the early 9th century. It comes from Latin templum meaning ‘a section, a part cut off.’

“Look,” I went on, “Here’s Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary. Someone must have brought it up from International Languages. Guess there are other word snoopers lurking around here. Cassell’s gives the literal meaning of templum as:

a space in the sky or on the earth marked out by the augur for the purpose of taking auspices.

Then it cites Livy using the word to mean

A consecrated piece of ground, esp. a sanctuary, asylum.”

“Didn’t tempus, the source of our words tempo and temporary, also have something to do with sectioning or dividing?” asked Ms. Khan, absently sectioning and braiding a strand of hair.

“That’s right. Look at what Cassell’s says about tempus:

a division, section

(1) in space; only of the temples of the head, usually plur.

(2) in time; a portion of time; period of time

“Well, we’ve got time, temperature and space properly proportioned,” I said, “but one thing puzzles me.”

“What’s that?”

“Why is your boss lady on the down low about her interest in etymology when she flaunts her other interests by emblazoning her name on buildings all over town devoted to –“

“Shhhh!” Ms. Khan hissed, pressing an index finger to her lips. It occurred to me that in all my years making the Central Library my office I had never seen a librarian do that.

Photo illustration by J.B. Herman

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A Temperate Tempest

Posted on January 20, 2012 by

I like the high ceilings and spacious oak tables in my second office, the L.A. Central Library, but speaking of temperature, it was getting as hot as a stereo that fell off a truck. Ms. Khan lifted her long hair off her neck.

“I notice you don’t wear a head scarf,” I said.

“You’re very observant, Ms. Kahn,” she replied.

“Who me? No, I’m not relig—“ I started to say. “Oh. Sorry. I’ll confine my snooping to words.

“You asked about temperate and tempestuous. Your hunch was right: though they are antonyms they probably come from the same root. Temperate comes from the Latin temperāt-us, meaning ‘tempered, regulated or restrained.’ It’s the past participle of temperāre ‘to temper.’

“Tempest, ‘a violent storm,’ came into English from Old French tempeste, which derived from Latin tempestās , -ātem ‘season, weather, storm,’ ultimately from tempus ‘a time, a season.’ We were just saying that most etymologists believe temperāre derives from tempus.”

“Yes, I remember, but I don’t get it.”

“What?”

“How did tempestās, meaning a time or a season get to mean weather and specifically stormy weather? Well, I can see how a certain season or time period is associated with a certain kind of weather, like the rainy season.”

‘And if someone says, “We’re expecting some weather,” you know they don’t mean sunshine and soft breezes.”

“That’s true,” she agreed. “‘Some weather,’ means tempestuous, not temperate weather.

“To shift the subject a bit,” she went on, “What about temple?”

“I told you I’m not relig—“

“I’m talking about the etymology of the word, meaning a place of worship, yes, and also this one here,” she said, tapping the side of her head.

“Of course.”


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