William Safire R.I.P.

The New York Times just announced that William Safire passed away.  While I couldn’t agree with his politics, his column, On Language, for the New York Times was priceless.  He will certainly be missed.

Palliative

This word comes from yesterday’s New York Times in an article by the journalist Anemona Hartocollis about palliative care.  Palliative, according to the O.A.D., means releaving pain without addressing the underlying symptoms. Palliative care, often known by its uglier, blunter name end-of-life care has become one of the foci of the recent health care debate.  An early provision for it started unfounded rumors, spread among others by former politican Sarah Palin, of “death panels.”  In actuallity, it is merely the process of living out one’s life comfortably and free from pain.

The word finds an interesting origin from the latin verd palliare, which means “to cloak.”  Literally, one is cloaking the illness by relieving the pain.

Astroturf (political)

I’m falling down on the job this week and this doesn’t bode well for when school starts back up again.

Today’s word comes from the New York Times in this op-ed piece by author Ryan Sager.  Astroturf, in political speak, he says is a movement that is entirely manufactured by an unseen entity and made to resemble a grass roots movement with massive public support. It is a beautiful phrase and the heart of Sager’s piece is whether or not this word can be applied to the movement against health care.  For the record, Sager takes the side that the Republicans are guilty of good organization, but not astroturf.

Niggardly

adv.:  stingy

Yesterday’s post about the word “plantation” reminded me of what was one of the most famous examples of good words gone wrong.  While plantation was a victim of contrary definitions, however, niggardly was a victim of the American public’s limited vocabulary.

The incident is now famous: in 1999, Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams accepted the resignation of one of his top aides, David Howard, a white man, because he said in a meeting, “I will have to be niggardly with this fund because it’s not going to be a lot of money.”  Apparently his staff did not score very well on their SATs, because one lodged a complaint leading to Howard tending his resignation.  Howard was eventually offered his job back, but only after much public debate about political correctness.

According to the New York Times, where I reminded myself of the details of this case, Jesse Jackson advocated for Howard getting his job back, but asked the word to be avoided.  ”You’ve got to be pretty heavy to get into the Scandinavian roots of a word from two centuries ago,” he said.  There it is — a request that our politicians speak less intelligently so that America can follow along.  Worse than anything else, to me, Howard felt the need to publicly apologize for using the word.

This issue aside, it is worth wondering if there is any real need for this word in the English language.  It seems to carry no connotation not offered by the words miserly or stingy.  In fact, most of the places where I looked it up seemed to have only a one or two word definition.  If a word does not have a unique definition, either literal or semantic, then it should, in theory, naturally die off.  Maybe the semantic difference is that it separates people who know its origins, and those who think it is a racist slur.

Plantation

A word whose meanings we all know.  The larger issue, however, is what definition comes to mind, and if the most common thought of meaning has negative connotations, should we continue to use it?

This issue was raised in the New York Times yesterday in an article about the formal name of Rhode Island, which is the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.  Several politicians are pushing for the name to be updated, because of the slavery connotations of the word plantation.  Others dismiss the complaints arguing the use of the word comes from a different meaning altogether.  I am going to stay out of the debate, because I don’t see it as a big deal on either side, but the history of the word is interesting.

Look up plantation in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the first definitions all deal with the physical act of planting something into the ground.  It is the obvious and original meaning of the word.

Definition four in the O.E.D. is a colony.  The idea is that individuals were lifted up from one part of the world and transplanted in another.  The action of moving to the new world was seen as planting oneself into new soil.  This sort of metaphor was quite common in the language of early American puritans.

It is not until definition five that the most commonly used images of the word come into play (interestingly enough this is definition number one in the Oxford American Dictionary).  The idea is that on a large farm, there is much plantation going on, so it was an appopriate name.  A large farm also needed a lot of hands, and it was easier to enslave them rather than pay them.  Plantation very quickly became associated with slavery.

This is not dissimilar to the Spanish settlement word encomienda.  The word means “commission.”  Because these commissions consistently took the form of the right to force the Indians into labor, the word becomes entwined with the horror of slavery.

Obviously, Rhode Island took the word plantation from the historical meaning of a colony.  In the eyes of all Americans, however, a different definition comes to mind.  Should then, we retire a historical definition of a word when a more prevelant meaning comes about?

Apocryphal

adj. of questionable authenticity; specious

William Safire defined this word in his weekly New York Times column, On Language, when questioning a possible origin of the phrase “Location, location, location.”  He defined the word to mean “of questionable authenticity.”  The definition seemed reasonable (I later found it was straight from the O.E.D., but something didn’t sit right with me.  Often I’ve said that something was apocryphal when I’ve meant that it was untrue.  Safire’s definition seems to suggest that the word means something is questionably true.  This is a major difference.

So, I did some basic dictionary hunting.  Dictionary.com, which draws from the Random House Dictionary, offers “of doubtful authorship or authenticity” as its first definition.  As its third, it “false; spurious.”  This suggests a difference between the actual definition and the common use definition.

The Oxford American Dictionary (via my desktop widget) offers “of doubtful authenticity, although widely being circulated as being true.”  It then directed me to an interesting note under spurious, listing the fine distinction between several words meaning false or not what they appear.  It stressed: for something to be apocryphal it must be widely distributed but is still of doubtful origins.

It didn’t look very good for my definition of apocryphal as false.  However, continued search seemed to support me.  Merriam-Webster online had a strange and contradictory entry “of doubtful authenticity: spurious.” I found this problematic because spurious, by its own definition, means “of falsified or erroneously attributed origin.”  There is no doubt involved.  The O.E.D. is a little less vague, offering both of doubtful authenticity and spurious as definitions with a semi-colon, not a colon in between.

Additionally, the Latin origin of the word, apochryphus, was defined by Whitaker’s Words, as “spurious, not genuine/canonical.”  The Greek origin, according to Wikipedia, simply means “those having been hidden away,” casting no judgment as to whether or not their is truth to it.

The earliest usages of the word tacked in the O.E.D. come from the late 16th/early 17th century (oddly late, I thought), and they all imply little doubt that something apocryphal is false, to the point that it is almost fantastic or delusional.

I could go on, but the point is that there appears to be no clear consensus about the actual meaning of this word.  Although it is not quite an auto-antonym, the word does not give a very clear impression of its own meaning.  How sad.

Peccadillo

n. A small and relatively unimportant sin or offense.

This definition was taken from the Oxford American Dictionary.  It is a word whose meaning I always remember, but I would never think of using the word myself, partially because it is such a silly sounding word and far too close to an armadillo.  What would a peccadillo look like would that it were an animal?

Silly might be appropriate however, considering the definition.  A peccadillo is a venial sin, maybe even less; certainly it isnnothing to blow up about.  Maybe the word should sound whimsical.  On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t be so nonchalant about venial sins, as in a sort of Broken Windows approach to sin.

Here is the interesting thing.  The word was brought to my intention by a New York Times article about Silvio Berlusconi.  “Berlusconi Pleads His Case as Tolerance of His Peccadilloes Wanes,” runs the headline.  Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy and owner/president of A.C. Milan, has made much news lately for attending 18th birthdays of pretty women and possibly paying women for his company, much to the shagrin of his wife.  When I went to find the article on the Times website, I couldn’t find it under the search of the word peccadillo.  They had removed it from the headline, which now reads “Berlusconi Pleads His Case as Italy’s  Tolerance Wanes.”  Hmm…

The question is, why remove the word? Could it be that some thought it was casting judgment on Berlusconi’s actions as sin? Could it be that others were upset that they were seen only as venial sins?