Word To Use Today: empester.

What's the difference between empester and pester?

Well, more or less everything, really.

It's a great word, too. I must allow that empester doesn't seem to have been used since 1611, but that doesn't mean it isn't a jolly fine thing deserving of resurrection.

And what does it mean?

Well, firstly, it means to hobble a horse while it's feeding, which I must admit is likely to be of very limited use to most of us...although, come to think about it...it would be nice to be able to have a picnic, but we're not allowed.  School lunches are taken empestered in the dining hall.

Or: lunch in a pub? Ha! Chance would be a fine thing, I'm always empestered: chained to my desk, I am.

The other meaning of empestered means entangled, which I'm afraid few of us avoid for long:

Sorry, can't talk now, I'm empestered in the rush hour.

I have tried using a skipping rope, but I always get empestered.

Can't stop, the dog's pulled the colander off the work surface and he's all empestered with spaghetti.

So even though the last example of the use of the word empester in the Oxford English Dictionary is over four hundred years old, I can't imagine how on earth we've managed without it.

Word To Use Today: empester. This word comes from the French empestre, from the Latin in- which means, er, in, plus pastōrum, which is a tether for a horse, from pasci, to feed.

Relevant facts: a rant.

I had to change the dates when I was doing my children's version of Gulliver's Travels.

(No, believe me, the original Gulliver's Travels is a very grown up book indeed. Jonathan Swift has a history of being very fond of little girls, but he didn't write books for them.)

The original goes like this:

I began this desperate voyage on February 15, 1714/15, at nine o'clock in the morning.

The date in my new version was simplified to the frankly dull February 15, 1715.

Why does Swift date his adventure 1714/15? Well, the calendar year used to begin on March 25th (so that March 24th 1714 was immediately followed by March 25th 1715). Then it was decided it would make more sense to start the year on January 1st instead. In the period while one system was giving way to the other it was thus necessary to make it absolutely clear which year was intended when writing dates between January 1st and March 25th. Hence 1714/15.

Yes, my publishers said, we will be having footnotes. But the stuff about the dates isn't relevant to the children.

Relevant? Relevant??

Relevant???!

Of course it's relevant. What piece of information can be more all-pervadingly relevant to everyone than that so many of the pillars of our existence, even our measures of Time Itself, are entirely arbitrary?

Anyway, blow all that, it's really interesting.

Okay?????

Deep breath....

Phew.

Well, it was good to get that off my chest. Perhaps I'll start feeling a bit better, now.

Word To Use Today: date. This word comes from an Old French word, and originally from the Latin phrase epistula data Romae, which means letter handed over at Rome.

Nuts and Bolts: boustrophedon

Boustrophedon is the easiest writing in the world:

Or that's the idea, anyway.

A picture is, they say, worth a thousand words. (Actually, my estimate of the value of the illustration above is about 153 words, but, hey, it gives you the idea of how boustrophedon text works.)

Which, as far I'm concerned, isn't very well at all. I can read it, and can skip merrily over the right-way-round lines; but the alternating mirror-image lines are like trudging through mud.

This is entirely appropriate, because the word boustrophedon is to do with the path of an ox as he ploughs a field.

The idea behind boustrophedon text is that it's quick to read because the eyes have to cover the smallest amount of ground. But as the system, invented by the Hittites, died out during Ancient Greek times:



 it seems that the human mind soon found that having all the letters the same way round was much easier.

Nowadays the term is sometimes used in America for numbering sections of towns, and in the UK for describing a rather eccentric house-numbering systems.

What the numbering system of my own street is called, where No 1 is opposite No 2, but No 55 is opposite No 22, I , however, do not know.

Nothing polite, probably.


In art history, confusingly, boustrophedon means that you read a series of pictures from the bottom left.

Writing System To Be Glad You're Not Having To Use Today: boustrophedon. This word comes from the Greek words bous, which means ox and strephein, to turn.

Many thanks to Roger Prue for persuading this computer to paste the first example of boustrophedon writing into this window. You wouldn't believe how long it took.

 

Thing To Do Today: be portly.

Easter can't help but have an effect on the figure: all that chocolate, all that roasted food, all that staying in watching old films because the east wind has reduced the temperature to something on the blue side of freezing. 

So, as we're going to be occupying more space than previously, then I can only suggest we be portly.

Portly has a nice dignified ring to it, after all. Portly is impressive. Portly is comfortable in its own roomy skin.

Portly is unapologetic. Portly proudly follows its own paunch into the most glittering of social occasions.

Portly is cheerful and unthreatening.

So, if we can't be slim, then let's not be blubbery, gross, or fat.

No. 

Let's be portly.

Thing To Do Today If You Can't Be Slim: be portly. This word come into being in the 1500s and is basically the same word as is found in deportment. It used to mean stately or impressive, and still does have something of that ring about it. It comes from the Old French porter, to carry, from the Latin portāre.

Spot the frippet: soutache.

We're only just emerging from the bleak mid spring in England at the moment - snow has fallen snow on snow, snow on snow, and the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la, have spent far too much of the time, I'm afraid, buried - so here's something utterly trivial to divert us.

This:



is soutache.

The decoration on this bit of curtain is, too.




And so the stuff round the bottom of this skirt, and on the sleeves:



If you should look out of your window and fail to see a lady in a crinoline then perhaps one of these:





might come marching by.

(Actually, that's a confederate captain, so on the whole perhaps let's hope not. Lovely sleeves, though.)

Nowadays soutache is used to make some gloriously peachy jewellery:


Allegro Appassionato by Anneta Valious

Which is only to be expected, because it's an absolute peach of a word.

Spot the frippet: soutache. This word came to English from French, but it's one of the rare English words that originated in Hungary. It comes from sujtas.

As for spotting some soutache, I should think the best bet might be a bridal shop, a milliner's, a brass band, or a passing-out parade in Ruritania.

If none of these is possible, then soutache should to be found in any good shop selling sewing supplies.

Sunday Rest: Word Not To Use Today: drupe.

I must admit that it doesn't help that drupe sounds the same as droop, but the main reason why this word should never be used outside a laboratory is that it's a truly dismal way to describe something as luscious as a peach, plum or cherry.


photo by Teodoro S Gruhl.

I suppose it could be worse, though - and in fact sometimes it is. Some poor fruits, such as blackberries and raspberries, are known scientifically as drupelets.



On the other hand, the walnut is a drupacious nut.


Photo by Andrew McMillan

And you know something? I feel quite sure that now I'm aware of that then every walnut I eat will taste all the nuttier.

Word Not To Use Today: drupe. This word comes from the Latin druppa, which means wrinkled overripe olive.

And, hey, you know something? I think I used to know her.

Saturday Rave: Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

I did Virginia Woolf (To The Lighthouse) for 'A' level; and she, in her turn, very nearly did for me.

I was totally baffled.

I've tried Virginia Woolf again at intervals of about a decade, hoping it might begin to make - not sense, exactly, that isn't to be expected - sparks in one or two synapses of my brain, which might lead in turn to some sort of understanding.

And what did I find?

No idea. Haven't a clue. I might as well have been reading Swahili. Or HTML.

Anyway, enough history. Last week I had a go at Orlando, and it was great fun. Orlando is full of sumptuousness and silliness (as well as quite a lot of stuff about Time Itself and the male/female thing) as well as glimpses of notable historical personages.

It was written for the fun of it, and as a sort of tribute to Virginia Woolf's much admired friend Vita Sackville West. As such, Orlando is a bit like reading someone else's fan fiction: but it's worth it for the splendour, breathless excitement, and extraordinary generosity of style.

The poet then gave Orlando the full story of his health for the last ten years or so...He had had the palsy, the ague, the dropsy, and three sorts of fever in succession, added to which he had an enlarged heart, a great spleen, and a diseased liver. But, above all...

But such is the strangeness and joy of Orlando, that the said poet lives on triumphantly for several hundred years.

Word To Use Today: dropsy. Not a habit of dropping things, but water retention in the body. It can also mean a tip or a bribe. It's a shortened form of ydropesie, originally from the Greek hudōr, which means water.