Categories: linguistics, reading
Date: 12 April 2010 07:40:25
Returning to Ammon Shea's Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, and thanks for all your comments on that blog entry!, here are some words from D, E [had to have 3 for E; although with my inclusion of a suffix I got 13 :) ] and F that grabbed me.
Desiderium [noun] A yearning, specifically for a thing one once had, but has no more.
Desiderium is the appropriate word for lost youth or innocence, for the great love of your life (who perished from consumption), or for the utopian community that you belonged to that was somehow destroyed by forces of evil. It is not the word for your lost wallet.
Dulcarnon [noun] A person in a dilemma.
The quotation the OED provides for dulcarnon is from Richard Stanyhurst's "A Treatise Contayning a Playne and Perfect Description of Irelande," published in 1577, which is a stern and eloquent account of some poor waverer's dilemma between choosing infidelity and the flames of hell on one hand or Christianity and the joys of heaven on the other. I myself will think of the word when choosing between such things as one lump of sugar or two, and imagine Stanyhurst rolling over in his grave.
-ee [suffix] One who is the recipient or beneficiary of a specific action or thing.
With -ee attaching itself to so many interesting words, it seems rather a shame that the only ones still in common use today are pedestrian examples such as employee, escapee, and divorcee. In the interest of expanding your descriptive range I have included the following examples:
Affrontee - a person who has been affronted.
Beatee - a person who has been beaten, as opposed to beater.
Borrowee - the person from whom a thing is borrowed.
Boree - one who is bored.
Complainee - a person who is complained about.
Discontentee - one who is discontent.
Flingee - a person at whom something is flung.
Gazee - a person who is stared at.
Laughee - someone who is laughed at.
Objectee - either a person who is objected against or a person who objects.
Sornee - one who has been sponged upon by others for food or lodging.
Elucubration [noun] Studying or writing by candelight.
From the Latin elucubrare (to compose by candlelight), elucubration is the word to describe staying up late while engaged in putatively productive endeavours, as opposed to just staying up late and watching TV.
Exsibiliation [noun] The act of hissing someone off the stage.
Whenever I hear or read of the grand old custom of hissing someone off the stage I think to myself, "Here is a thing that has been lost to our culture." In fact I mourn the loss of this far more than other departed social customs, such as the rising from a table when a lady enters or exits, or teaching your child how to make seventeen different knots. This is the sort of knowledge we should be passing on to the next generation -- how to hiss someone off stage.
Felicificability [noun] Capacity for happiness.
It seems rather a shame that such a beautiful concept should have such an unappealing and unwieldy word attached to it. Sometimes it is better not to create a word from a double handful of Latin roots, even if they were on sale at the time. Oh well, you can't choose your parents.
Fornale [verb] To spend one's money before it has been earned.
We live in a nation that is overwhemingly and crushingly in debt, awash in credit card debt and subprime mortgages. How is it possible that the only word for "spending money before it is earned" is an obsolete Scottish one?