How Dictionaries Define Us: Margaret Boyle and Ilan Stavans in Conversation
In 2021, on November 11 and 18, Margaret E. Boyle associate professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Bowdoin College, and Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, sat down for a two-part conversation about dictionaries and what they might tell us about cultural crises and the politics of nationality.
Part I is about the “urgent” inclusion of new words in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements. Is a social crisis also a linguistic crisis? Does social struggle automatically create its own lexicon (think “social distancing” and “cancelled”)?
Part II looks at the intersection of dictionaries and national history, and how dictionaries might reflect the changes a nation undergoes.
Check it out on the Los Angeles Review of Books website.
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Words I'm Watching: "Heat Avoidance" and "Shylock"
Heat Avoidance
I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in the Washington, DC-area, it's been fucking H-O-T hot for the past few days, with temps reaching 100 or more and heat index values as high as 110 degrees F. As a result, I've been largely staying indoors and avoiding the inferno outside my door. That got me wondering: is there a word for staying in to avoid hot, humid weather?
It turns out there is: Heat Avoidance. Now, you won't find this word in any of your favorite dictionaries (it's too new), but you will find it defined online. The real question is what is the source of the definition? But I'm getting ahead of myself ....
If you go to your favorite search engine and type "definition heat avoidance" into the search bar, the new AI quick search features that have invaded most search engines will return something like:
"Heat avoidance is a behavioral or physiological strategy used to prevent overheating by minimizing exposure to extreme or dangerous temperatures. It involves altering habits—such as staying indoors during peak heat hours, seeking shade, or taking cooling breaks—to prevent your core temperature from reaching unsafe levels."
At the end of the definition, there will be a little source tab that implies that this is where the definition came from. In my experience, it typically isn't. That is, the definition that begins, "Heat avoidance is a ...." is not found at the source tab that appears next to it. (Seems like source avoidance to me.) So, where do these AI definitions come from?
Shylock
Some years ago, in the cartoon section of the Sunday paper, there was a brainteaser/puzzle called Shylock Fox. In each installment, some cartoonish critter would commit some sort of (petty) crime, deny responsibility, and then a fox named Shylock would appear on the scene to figure out what really happened based on the visible clues. The reader's/player's job was to use his or her own powers of deduction to arrive at the same conclusion Shylock did.
Given that backstory, my question is: was it wrong to name the fox Shylock? I ask because, while watching a rerun of Law and Order the other day, a character on the show referred to some street criminals as "shylocks." I didn't know what that meant, so I looked it up. According to American Slang by Robert Chapman, the word means "usurer" or "loan shark," and it is comes from the name of a character (i.e., Shylock) in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Why is Shylock associated with usury? Well, in the context of the play (and according to the website StageMilk):
"An agreement has been made between two
men—the loaning of a sum of money. One man, Antonio, is Christian. The
other, a merchant named Shylock, is Jewish. The terms and conditions of
the loan are simple: Antonio must repay his debt in full within three
months. However, the small print is a real killer! If the debt is not
repaid within the time frame, he must forfeit a pound of his own flesh to
the merchant."
And why does Shylock suggest these terms? In his famous monologue, he puts it this way:
"To bait fish withal. If it will feed
nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains,
scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies, and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath
not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed
with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you
tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you
wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will
execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
So I'll ask the question one more time: should Shylock Fox change his name? I mean, sure, he's "out-foxing" the "shylocks," assuming you associate that word with any type of criminal. Yet, as the evidence suggests, the word means something more specific.
You think Shylock Fox would have picked up on that ....
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Lexical Evolution: Nature, Beauty, and Disaster
Like it or not, the words we use day-in an day-out are constantly in flux. But hey, don't take my word for it (pun intended). Each of the articles below offers an example of our ever-evolving English, and how the efforts to change what words mean are spearheaded by people working to clear up misconceptions and make the world more inclusive. Yes, some of these articles are a few years old, but the ideas that arise within them are just as fresh and relevant as ever.
What is ‘nature’? Dictionaries urged to include humans in definition
Currently, all English dictionaries define nature as an entity separate from and opposed to humans and human creations – a perspective campaigners say perpetuates humanity’s troubled relationship with the natural world.
Those campaigners are trying to change that, and they are now calling on writers, artists, and thinkers to embrace the broader definition of nature in the hope it can eventually predominate.
Undefine Beauty: Should we change the dictionary definition of beauty? Coty’s inspiring new campaign says yes
The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘beauty’ as “the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at, or someone or something that gives great pleasure, especially when you look at it.”
In a new campaign, #UndefineBeauty, Coty, the brand behind beauty giants such as Max Factor, Rimmel, and Burberry, is leading a charge to change the word's definition. In an open letter to major English dictionary houses, CEO Sue Y. Nabi and Coty’s Executive Committee and senior leadership team declared that it was “time to bridge the gap” and bring the definition in line with a new "more diverse and inclusive view."
What is a Disaster?
Not long ago, at a meeting of Carleton University's Disaster Lab, "the question of 'What is a disaster?' came up." So, too, it seems did the question of who gets to define what events do and do not qualify as such.
"Our research operates on the basis that individuals and communities who experience various forms of displacement as a result of sudden occurrences or slow change should be the ones to determine whether something is a disaster, regardless of the categorical implications."
Note: Lexical Evolution will be a regular feature on the Butter Lamb blog and new installments will appear as I become aware of articles that meet its theme. Until next time, keep on eye on those ever-changing words.
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A Dictionary the BLRL Will Never Have
Recently, while reading The Devil's Details, a book about the history of footnotes, I came across the following passage about The Dictionnaire historique et critique (i.e., The Dictionary, Historical and Critical) by Pierre Bayle. First published in 1697, the reference (according to Wikipedia) was developed when Bayle ...
"began making notes on errors and omissions in Louis Moreri's Grand Dictionaire historique (1674), a previous encyclopedia, and these notes ultimately developed into his own Dictionnaire. Bayle used the dictionary to provide evidence of the irrationality of Christianity, to promote his views about religious tolerance, and his anti-authoritarian views on the topic of faith."
Wikipedia notes that the dictionary "influenced the thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, in particular Denis Diderot and the other Encyclopédistes." It sounds like I would enjoy it too, but alas, the Butter Lamb Reference Library doesn't have the resources to procure rare (and likely long out of print) references such as this. Nevertheless, after coming across the following excerpt about Bayle's dictionary, I thought it'd be fun to start featuring references the BLRL will never have on this blog. So, enjoy the following (somewhat lengthy) excerpt from The Devil's Details by Chuck Zerby:
The five volumes of The Dictionary, Historical and Critical, in the edition that now occupies my desk, weigh in at forty pounds. Opened, a volume spreads out to an ample fourteen by twenty inches. Open its last volume and you find just over 9 of its I,015 pages allocated to the great Roman poet Virgil. His nine pages have forty-four lines of text and 1,144 footnotes of commentary. One hundred and nine additional margin notes refer us to Bayle's sources or, in a rare case or two, provide additional information. Commentary can delve into deeply personal biography: for example, a refutation of the charge that Virgil was "inclined to unnatural sin." A note can begin as a correction of a critic's grammar: "[Mr. Moréri's] manner of placing his words..." then lead us off to a margin note for a grammar lesson: "Logic teaches us that in all compounded and copulative propositions, all the attributes sought to agree...." [and end] by referring us to the “Art of Thinking, Part Ii, ch. ix …” should we wish further instruction.
What Bayle chooses to include in his dictionary can be pleasantly idiosyncratic, and reflects his own life in a way that is charming, even touching. The River Auriege is one of those entries. The Auriege has no great claim on a historian's time. Though Bayle assures us it is "full of Fish and also very good to drink," that surely could have been said of any number of French backwaters that were left to splash and gurgle unreported upon by Bayle. But the Auriege entry in the dictionary hits a Wordsworthian note of reminiscence and homage. Once when young, Bayle studied so fervently that he made himself sick, and was sent to a country house "situate [sic] on the banks of the Auriege." Twenty years later he remembers the fish and the refreshing water and his slow recovery, and he gives thanks to the Auriege. We appreciate this human touch but, as Bayle must have counted on, seek an intellectual justification for our time wandering along the river in footnotes.... The footnote does not exhaust our interest in the Auriege nor, indeed, does a second one that explores the river's various tributaries, the Lers, the Arget, the Leze, and so forth. And since a sonneteer has made verse out of his love for the river, Bayle, determined to do homage, finds room for the complacent rhymes. "Auriege, thou noble River," it begins in the translated version, "known to Fame/ for thy bright waters, and thy golden name..., and known now because of Bayle's golden memories.
The Dictionnaire historique et critique was an immediate and overwhelming success. An educated person in the eighteenth century was more likely to have Bayle's work in his library than to have something by Locke or Voltaire or Newton or Rousseau. "In fact it was to become the philosophical blockbuster of all time." One is tempted to ascribe the dictionary's popularity simply to the insatiable desire of scholars of that era for reliable facts and to their gratitude for the inspiration someone else's work could provide them. Voltaire (not someone who needed any other person's inspiration, of course) had a love/hate relationship with the dictionary and with Bayle. He was dismayed by Bayle's carelessness, his failure to "chastise" or to correct his prose. The great eighteenth century art historian J. J. Winckelmann was so smitten by the dictionary that he copied out "1,300 pages of articles... in a minute hand." Testimony from other scholars would be easy to supply.
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Don't Stop Believing ... that the Word Journey Is Overused
When I hear the word journey, I think of the line "the point of a journey is not to arrive" from "Prime Mover," one of my favorite Rush songs. As luck would have it, I've been thinking about that line a lot these days because, unless you've been away from people for a very long time, you've undoubtedly noticed that the word journey has been getting a lot of play lately.
I've been wondering why. Why everyone seems to be on some sort of journey now and why things that would never have been associated with journeys in the past (i.e., hair (re)growth, car buying, education, etc.) are now covered by that label. So, you can imagine my delight when I came across this article from the New York Times that addresses this lexicographical shift head on.
According to the article, this change in the meaning of journey is an example of "semantic drift" and it is the result of a range of cultural trends, including the romanticizing of everyday life, the separation of journey and travel thanks to a modern world that allows us to "accomplish our goals while sitting still" [what?], a curious mix of self-help and toxic positivity ("Americans like to put a brave [and] optimistic, spin on suffering"), and the widespread interest among patients and doctors in finding something more positive than battlefield terminology in the medical field.
No doubt these explanation are spot on, but I find it interesting that the article doesn't mention that the shift in the meaning of journey might have something to do with the widespread use of social media and its unfortunate side effect of making everyone think they're special. I know, it sounds like I'm scapegoating, but think about it: Is it really that hard to believe that the people who insist on sharing every thought that drifts into their head and every moment of their day, the people who take photos of themselves in the mirror at home AND at the gym, would want to reclassify something as mundane as getting a haircut or going to grocery shopping as part of some journey toward self empowerment or better health? These things used to be considered chores.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Read the article and let me know what you think.
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Bring the Noise … and Maybe Something to Calm Your Stomach
Like a lot of people, I enjoy sleeping. Unfortunately, I suck at it, which is a round-about way of saying I don’t get enough of it. It’s not for a lack of trying. See, on a given day, I typically fall asleep on the couch in our living room around 11:30 pm or midnight, often with great ease. Then, sometime between 3:30 and 5:00 am, things get rocky.
Sometimes I just wake up for no reason, sometimes I wake up because my coffee-filled bladder sends my brain an urgent message about visiting the bathroom, and sometimes my dogs, who start thinking about breakfast around 5, wake me. Whatever the cause of this pre-dawn rousing, I eventually make my way to my bedroom, where I attempt re-entry in the Land of Nod. I eventually get there, but it takes some time. All too often, the walk from the couch to the bedroom is enough to get my blood moving, making sleep that much more difficult. So I lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my eyelids to get heavy. And that’s when the noise starts.
I don’t know why, but in my little corner of the world, 5:00 and 6:00 am is prime time for a few idiots who’ve been inspired by the Fast and Furious movie franchise to drive their loudly modified cars through and close-by my neighborhood (and home) at high speeds. I don’t know why—or why anyone would want such a car—but the amount of noise these vehicles make is obscene. Even though the windows of my bedroom are closed, it sounds like these cars are driving within a few feet of my bed. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. Who are these people and what makes them think such behavior is acceptable? Are they upset that they have to be up at that ungodly hour, so they want everyone else to be up too? Whatever the reason, these assholes should have their licenses revoked—and then forced to attend common courtesy summer school classes.
Anyway, enough about these Vin-Diesel wanna-bees. Living through this cacophony day-in and day-out has me thinking about the word noise and its origins.
According to the good people at Merriam Webster, noise has quite a few definitions. Clearly, though, I’m interested in only this one: “sound, especially one that lacks an agreeable quality or is noticeably unpleasant or loud.”
And where does this word come from? Interestingly, the Latin word for nausea, which is … um … nausea. According to our pal Eric Partridge and his Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, the connection between noise and nausea has to do with the timeless sound of “a shipful of passengers groaning and vomiting in bad weather.” No wonder the people driving the awfully loud cars in the early morning hours make me sick.
It's worth pointing out that this connection, spurious though it may seem, is supported by other etymological texts, including the Ayto Dictionary of Word Origins, which can be somewhat contrarian. As it notes of noise:
Unlikely as it may seem, the ancestor of English noise meant 'sickness.' It comes from Latin nausea, (and of course, English nausea). This was used colloquially for the sort of 'hubbub' or 'confusion' which is often coincident with someone being sick (and particularly seasick, which was what nausea originally implied), and Old French took it over, as noise, with roughly these senses. They later developed to "noisy dispute, and modern French noise has retained the 'dispute' element of this, while English noise has gone for the ‘intrusive sound.’
The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories makes a similar ruckus and so does the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. In fact, the latter even considers another etymological option and then abandons it die to lack of evidence.
[Although] the tracing of the Old French to Gallo-Romance is now recorded in most sources, it is difficult to accept the disparity of both sense and form, which makes it tempting to suggest that noise may be related to the obsolete English noisance a variant of nuisance: however, such a relationship is not sustainable if the record of Middle English is accurate, for noisance and its related words do not appear until at least 100 years after noise and in most instances almost 200 years.
Let’s just assume that record is accurate, shall we?
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Where Is All This Productivity “Leading” Us?
If I had walked by it on a sign or a poster, the headline, “How one notebook could replace all the productivity apps that have failed you” would have stopped me in my tracks. I was sitting down when I encountered it, though, so I wasn’t in motion. In fact, it didn’t stop me from doing anything, because I was at work, sitting in my cubicle, browsing Twitter. I was not in any way being productive, but this headline, from an article on the Popular Science website, did get me thinking about the word productive and what’s required to have such a label bestowed upon you.
As the headline suggests, we’re all a little obsessed with being productive these days. (Although I can assure you that no “productivity apps” have failed me — ever — because I don’t use them.) Yet, I wonder: Do we even know what it means to be productive? In my experience, most folks equate productivity with “getting things done” either at work or around the house. But does productivity always have to result in some product? Is productivity something that only happens at work or when you’re engaged in some sort of labor? Can you be productive at something that others might consider pointless or a waste of time (e.g., my work on this blog)? Can you be a productive sleeper?
To begin answering these questions, I reached for the biggest gun in my lexicographical arsenal: The (compact) Oxford English Dictionary. It defines productive as follows:
1. Having the quality of producing or bringing forth; tending to produce; creative, generative
2. That causes or brings about; that results in; causative
3. (In economics) That produces or increases wealth or value; engaged in the production of commodities of exchangeable value; especially in productive labor
4. That which produces readily or abundantly; fertile, prolific
As usual, I consulted other dictionaries too and all define productive in similar ways, so I’ll spare you the superfluous definitions. I will not, however, spare you a trip down etymology lane, as peering into the word’s history was definitely worth the effort.
The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories doesn’t have an entry for productive, so in this instance, we’ll have to settle for produce.
Produce [late Middle English] The first sense recorded was ‘provide something for consideration’ (as in produced a contract). It comes from Latin producere, from pro- ‘forward’ and ducere ‘to lead.’ Current noun senses (as in farm produce, produce of their joint efforts) date from the late 17th century. In the late Middle English period, the Latin verb producere also gave riser to product (as a mathematical term) from Latin productum ‘(something) produced.’ Production via Old French from Latin productio; and early 17th century productive from French productif or late Latin productivus.
The (Ayto) Dictionary of Word Origins sings a similar tune.
Produce To produce something is etymologically to ‘lead it forward,’ a meaning still discernible beneath the veil of the metaphor that clothes the modern English word’s range of meanings. It comes from the Latin producere, a compound verb formed from the prefix pro- ‘forward’ and ducere ‘lead’ (source of English duct, duke, educate, introduce, etc.)
Really, duke? I didn’t see that coming. Strange as it might be, this is backed up the very long Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. This text doesn’t have a proper entry for produce either. Instead, it directs the reader to … wait for it … duke, where said reader finds the following: “Latin dux, leader, hence chief … from ducere, draw to oneself, draw on or along, to lead, conduct.”
It’s here that our etymological journey ends and brings us back to the doorstep of productive, for as Mr. Ayto so astutely points out, when you get right down to it, what we mean when we say we’re being productive is simply that we’re moving things along in the desired direction (aka: forward).
Yes, when we’re productive we “bring forth” stuff, or our activity “results in” something, or creates something of value (be it directly or indirectly). Our creative powers may even be so productive that we earn a reputation as a “prolific” songwriter or author. Yet even in these instances, what we’re doing is moving things along toward some desired goal.
And so herein lies the answer to my initial question: Does productivity always result in some product? The answer is yes and that product is advancement or progress, which it’s worth pointing out, may not be a physical thing.
So, in addition to being productive at work or around the house, we can also be productive when performing activities others deem a waste of time as long as what we’re doing leads somewhere (like the long-overdue end of this post or fresh blog content). We can even be productive sleepers as long as our rest leads us to feeling well-rested.
And hey, if you made it all the way to the end of this nonsense, I hope your efforts have led you to a better understanding of the word productive.
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Hypochondria and that “Gut Feeling”Hypochondria, or the belief that you’re ill, sick, or harboring some awful disease despite any evidence that to support it, is an interesting word. On first consideration, my gut feeling was that it was in some way related to Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician and, according to the Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, and Literature, and Art, “the founder of the school of a scientific art of healing.”
That, however, is not the case. As Webster’s informs us, hypochondria comes from the “Late Latin word for abdomen (pl. of Greek hypochondrion, meaning soft part of the body below the cartilage and above the navel [hypo-, under + chondros, cartilage: so called because the condition was supposed to have its seat in this region].”
The meaning of the word, as I hinted at above, is “abnormal anxiety over one’s health, often with imaginary illness and severe melancholy.” (Webster’s)
Blakiston’s Pocket Medical Dictionary gets a little more technical and requests that those looking for information about hypochondria begin by learning its proper name: hypochondriasis, which it (awesomely) defines as:
A chronic condition in which a person is morbidly concerned with his or her physical or mental health and believes himself [sic] to be suffering from a grave, usually bodily, disease often focused upon one organ, without demonstrable organic findings; this condition is traceable to some longstanding intrapsychic conflict.
Based on the way hypochondriacs are portrayed on television, they always seemed manic, and a little crazy, so I find this association between hypochondria and depression somewhat of a surprise. Apparently, it shouldn’t be, for as my etymological dictionaries reveal, the relationship has been right there from the beginning. As the Merriam Webster New Book of Word Histories notes in its entry for hypochondria:
Many ancient theories of pathogenesis, attractive though they are, have been discarded. That dire humor, black bile (or melancholy), was said to be a secretion of the spleen or kidneys and to produce a morbid state of bleak depression and with it an excessive concern with one’s health. This 'disease’ was named for the region below the breastbone in which it had its origin, the hypochondria.
And from the Dictionary of Word Origins (Ayto):
Originally, hypochondria was an anatomical term, denoting the ‘area of the abdomen beneath the ribs.’ [...] This particular part of the body was formerly supposed to be the seat of melancholy, and so in the 17th century the word came to be used for ‘low spirits, depression.’ The modern sense ‘belief of being ill’ originally belonged to the derived hypochondriasis but was transformed in the 19th century to hypochondria.
So, it seems that Blakiston, who no doubt benefited from the wisdom of the ages, was right—the hypochondriac is suffering from some “psychic conflict.”
But what happens if you dream about being sick? Does that count as hypochondria? Not exactly, says the Dream Dictionary from A to Z.In dreams, indigestion suggests an idea or attitude that does not agree with you or that you are finding hard to stomach in waking life ... The dream may also point to actual indigestion. Alternatively, could your stomach have been protesting in your dream because it is literally crying out for nourishment, either literally or because you are feeling starved of love?
The book goes on to say that if your intestines are the source of discomfort in your dreams, you could be dreaming about something you don’t think you have the “guts” to do. Nausea in dreams may refer to a negative feeling in real life you need to address. Further, if you’re physically sick in a dream, it could mean that you need to “expel” or “get rid” of something in your life, like a job, a relationship, etc.
Now I know why I always feel sick at work.
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Yawn: Not Boring at All
Now, just why yawns spread so easily is a mystery. What isn't so hard to explain, however, is the word’s definition, etymology, and lore, all of which I will share with you now. I hope it doesn’t put you to sleep.
Definitions … and Synonyms
Yawn, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is defined as “something that yawns; a gaping opening or entrance” such as “a chasm or an abyss.” I know, that’s not really what we’re talking about, but you can see how it’s related to the other yawn, an “involuntary, prolonged inspiration with the mouth wide open and the lower jaw much depressed, as from drowsiness or fatigue.”
Blakiston’s New Gould Medical Dictionary offers a similar description for yawn, “to open the mouth widely,” and then adds “also called chasma.” But wait, there’s more! Blakiston’s goes on to define yawning as “a reflex stretching of the muscles accompanied by a deep inspiration, occurring during the drowsy state preceding the onset of sleep.” It goes on to say that a yawn is also known as a hiant.
Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary offers similar fare. It defines yawn as “1) To open the mouth involuntarily, as in drowsiness or fatigue; 2) Involuntary act of gaping, accompanied by attempts at inspiration, excited by drowsiness.” Oddly, although in step with the aforementioned texts, Taber’s offers a separate (and somewhat unnecessary) definition for yawning: “Deep inspiration, gaping induced by drowsiness or fatigue,” and then offers yet another synonym: oscitation.
Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary doesn’t offer any synonyms, but it does extend its definition of yawning — “a deep involuntary inspiration with the mouth open” — by including the phrase, “often accompanied by the act of stretching.” (See what I did there? Extend? Stretch? Ha!). It then suggests that readers compare yawning to pandiculation, or “the act of stretching and yawning.”
Somewhat notably, The Thinker’s Thesaurus goes beyond the association of pandiculation and yawning to listing the former as a synonym for the latter. Perhaps the authors of this text need to think a little more about this relationship, as pandiculation does not necessarily include yawning, at least according to Webster’s Third International Dictionary.
Etymology
Okay, so now that we have a clear definition of yawn, let’s look into the word’s etymology and see if it’s just as exciting and varied.
The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories says yawn is of Germanic origin, but then adds “the Old English geonian is from an Indo-European root shared by Latin, hiare, [there’s your synonym hiant] and Greek khainein (meaning ‘gape’).” Early uses, says the ODWH, “included the sense [of having] the mouth wide open, gape,” while the senses of the current noun “date from the early 18th century.”
Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins puts it a little differently. It says, “Yawn goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base ghei (or ghi), which also produced Greek khaskein ‘gape’ and Latin hiare ‘gape’ and ‘yawn’ (source of English hiatus). Chambers Dictionary of Etymology offers essentially the same information, as does Partridge’s Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, which is likely the source material for all the above.
I Dream of Yawning
Okay, so there seems to be a good deal of consensus about where yawn comes from. There is less agreement, however, about what yawns symbolize in dreams.
Theresa Cheung’s Dream Dictionary from A to Z gets things rolling with the (rather dull) notion that, “just as in waking life, yawning is a sign of fatigue, but also boredom.” However, she kicks it up a notch, albeit with some mystery, when she notes, “It can also be a warning against hidden aggression within yourself or others.”
Why Cheung leaves it there I can’t say. Perhaps she was getting tired and just wanted the work of writing her dream dictionary to be over. Fortunately, others, such as the Watkins Dream Dictionary pick up the slack. In this text, yawning is said to be “indicative of weariness and involuntary communication.” Yawning in a dream may be a sign of non-aggression (as with animals), or a sign that one wishes to ingest (oxygen, food, drink) or somaticize something (an emotional hurt, an already expelled scream, a trauma).
Somaticize is a psychiatric term meaning “to convert an anxiety into a physical symptom,” and it helps explain what Cheung was getting at when she associated dream yawns with hidden aggression. Tony Crisp’s Dream Dictionary takes a similar tack as it notes that, along with the boredom and fatigue, yawning in dreams may represent “the unconscious trying to say something,” as it belongs to a cast of movements associated with the self-regulation.
I Ain’t Superstitious (I’m Just Tired)
I don’t believe I’ve ever yawned in a dream. I do, however, cover my mouth when I yawn (at least in public). I thought this was just good manners. As it turns out, the impulse to cover one’s gaping maw is a holdover from more superstitious times. But hey, don’t take my word for it. As the Cassell Dictionary of Superstitions explains:Most people are familiar with the rule of etiquette that a person should cover their mouth when yawning but may be unaware that this has its roots in medieval superstition, when it was thought that evil spirits could get inside a person’s body when their mouth was opened too wide, though making the sign of the cross prevented this happening.
The text goes on to say that, elsewhere in Europe, it was believed that “yawning too long allowed one’s soul to escape.” In still other cultures, “a yawn may be interrupted as a death omen, which was to be countered by snapping one’s fingers.” Now if you’ll excuse me, all this research and writing has made me sleepy.
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The Bedeviling Symbol of the Octopus
After teasing the reader with a somewhat poetic description of the beast — "Its arms, depicted as rolled up in spirals, form an impressive symmetry around the body with its two eyes, the whole suggesting a head surrounded by snake-like hair" — the DoS suggests the creature might have been the inspiration for the mythical figures of Medusa and the Scylla, “the mythical sea monster who menaced Odysseus and his crew.” Then the book goes on to talk about the cuttlefish and how the ink emitted by both these animals was deemed a symbol of their ties to “mysterious and otherworldly forces.”
What “mysterious and otherworldly” forces might those be? The book doesn't elaborate, but the implication is that, like the ink, those forces are dark.
Fortunately, there are other symbol dictionaries more willing to lay it on the line. Among them are the Continuum Encyclopedia of Symbols, which declares “Even in earliest times, [the octopus] became a symbol of the spirit of the devil and of hell in general because of its eight tentacles.”
Okay, that’s dark, but what the hell does possessing eight tentacles have to do with the devil or hell? (Get it, possessing?)
Sadly, Cirlot’s A Dictionary of Symbols, my go-to symbol reference, doesn’t offer much more.
[The octopus] … has the same significance as the dragon-whale myth. As a decorative motif…. It is related to the spider’s web and the spiral, both being symbolic of the mystic Center and of the unfolding of creation. It also has been credited with a merely existential significance.
Clearly, Cirlot cares more about dragons than octopi, because one must read that entry to find out just what that "significance" is. I took the time to read the entry for dragon, and I was glad to find it wasn’t wasted.
The dragon … stands for ‘things animal’ par excellence, and here we have a first glimpse of its symbolic meaning, related to the Sumerian concept of the animal as ‘adversary,’ a concept which later came to be attached to the devil.
Now we’re getting somewhere! With it’s odd, alien form and serpent-like appendages for arms, no wonder the octopus was the inspiration for terrifying creatures like Medusa and sea monsters who emerge from the inky deep to imprison us or drag us off into the dark realm they call home. It’s the stuff of dreams, or better yet nightmares!
As a matter of fact, it is the stuff of nightmares. This is why, in addition to symbol references, it’s worthwhile to have a few dream dictionaries hanging around the shelves of your library, for the meaning of the images, icons, and symbols conjured by our minds at night often make themselves known in our dreams.
To see what I mean, consider the following excerpt for octopus in The Dream Dictionary from A to Z:
In their positive form, [octopuses] reflect emotional depth and the ability to direct your energy in many directions without losing your center…. [They] may also be associated with a person or situation that has many ways of holding or affecting you, such as a mother or a debt.
The Watkins Dream Dictionary of Dreams offers a similar, albeit slightly more sinister interpretation of the octopi in our dreams. According to this text, dreamed of octopi are noteworthy because:
For a two-handed human, the idea of having eight legs, each with a different function, might suggest an inability to focus on one thing at a time, or a tendency to disperse one’s essential energies in unfruitful activities. Octopi may also be threatening, and indicative of emotional minefields—lunging unexpectedly at a human being from the depths of the ocean.
Crisp’s Dream Dictionary, after echoing the previous sentiments about mothers (um ... what’s that about?), simply notes that an octopus in a dream can “symbolize any unconscious fear” capable of “dragging us into its realm of irrational terror.”
That sounds rather devilish and adversarial to me.
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A Person Who Wanders City Streets -- There's an Old, Forgotten Word for That
I came across the word while reading The Way the World Works, a book of essays by Nicholson Baker. And since learning of it, vicambulist has become my new favorite word -- and not just because it's an uncommon term and with a good mouthfeel. I like it because it directly applies to me. I love to wander aimlessly through cities, and since learning of it, I've been reminiscing about the time I spent in London, England, my junior year of college.
It was the winter/spring of 1993 and I was participating in my college's study abroad program. England is an expensive place and being there for the entire semester severely strained my resources. To put it in non-euphemistic terms, I was broke. I'm talking not sure I had enough money to eat every day of the month broke. So, for entertainment, and to escape my flat where I lived with my friend Christian and three strangers, I went for walks. Very long walks. Every day. It was a wonderful time of my life and I learned a lot about the city and myself. But I digress ....
To say vicambulist is a lexicographical deep cut is something of an understatement. The word does not appear in any of my dictionaries or thesauri, including the Dictionary of Uncommon Words; Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, or Preposterous Words; The Highly Selective Dictionary for Extraordinarily Literate, or The Thinker's Thesaurus. The closest any of these books have to it is flaneur, meaning "an idle man-about town" or "one who strolls through city streets idly or aimlessly."
The word is also absent from the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is strange because the essay of Baker's that contains the word is about Ammon Shea, the man who read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, one volume after the other.
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Acedia: Lost to Neither Time Nor Translation
I bristle at being told how or what to feel by the articles I read in magazines or online. I mean, if you want to tell me how you feel, then great, but I reserve the right to determine my own emotional state. I can’t imagine such an assertion is somehow out of bounds, but if it is, I stand by it.
Unfortunately, being told how I feel during the pandemic is only one of the problems I have with the article, “Acedia: The Lost Word for the Emotion We’re All Feeling Right Now” that appeared on the website The Conversation on August 26, 2020. Another, and more significant, issue is that a good portion of the article’s premise — that the word acedia has been “lost to time and translation” — is flat out wrong.
Before I get to that, though, I’d like to assert that I do agree with the rest of the author’s point. Acedia, a word that describes a sort of anxious listlessness, is particularly useful in describing how a lot of people seem to be feeling during this ongoing pandemic. This is understandable. The pandemic has lasted for close to a year and it’s clear from the number of folks I see out and about, a lot of folks have had enough. In short, this pandemic shit is getting old.
Mr. Zecher, who is not so blunt, puts it this way:
No one is posting pictures of their sourdough. Zoom cocktail parties have lost their novelty. Netflix can only release so many new series. The news seems worse every day, yet we compulsively scroll through it. We get distracted by social media yet have a pile of books unread. We keep meaning to go outside but somehow never find the time. We’re bored, listless, afraid and uncertain.
“What is this feeling?” Zecher asks, forgetting he put the answer in the title of his article. Why, it’s acedia, of course, and as Zecher rightfully points out, humans have known about it since the 5th century, when a monk and theologian by the name of John Cassian took the time to describe it.
A mind “seized” by this emotion is “horrified at where he is, disgusted with his room … It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading.” He feels … “such bodily listlessness and yawning hunger as though he were worn by a long journey or a prolonged fast … Next he glances about and sighs that no one is coming to see him. Constantly in and out of his cell, he looks at the sun as if it were too slow in setting.”
To Zecher’s ears, this description sounds “eerily familiar,” because it “so aptly describes our current state.”
Well, maybe his state, or some people’s state, but not my state. But, again, I get where Zecher is coming from and I get the gist of his article: A dude back in the 5th century wrote about feeling the same way a lot of folks feel now in the 21st — ain’t that a pip! I guess everything old really IS new again.
Yet, Zecher isn’t content to leave it at that. He feels compelled to go a step further and claim, “the name that so aptly describes our current state was lost to time and translation.”
He shouldn’t have.
What possessed Zecher to make such a claim I cannot say, but he’s wrong. The word acedia has not been lost to either time or translation. It has been with us for centuries, quietly perhaps, but it’s been there, and the evidence is ample.
To begin, if you really want to know if a word has been “lost to time and translation,” then you ought to consult a dictionary, or better yet, dictionaries. Since I have more than a few, I consulted several to see what they had to say about the word, its history, and use.
The two oldest dictionaries in my collection, Nuttall’s Dictionary of the English Language (1872) and Donohue’s Standard New Century Dictionary of the English Language (1914), do not have an entry for acedia, but most of the later references do. The National Dictionary (1940) has it. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (1971) has an entry for acedy (which it associates with acedia) but labels the word as both “obsolete” and “rare.” Webster’s Third International Dictionary (1961) has an entry for acedia free from such cautionary labels. It’s a similar story with the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary (1966), the American Heritage Dictionary (1969), The Oxford English Reference Dictionary (2002), and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition, 2003). Interestingly, the Dictionary of Obsolete English did not contain an entry for acedia, which suggests it has not fallen out of use. Even more interesting, perhaps, is that the word does not appear in either the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology (1983) or the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (2001). It can be found, however, in the Psychiatric Dictionary (1989), but this book describes the term as “obsolete” too. (Thus, if the term has indeed been lost, perhaps it’s just the members of the psychiatric establishment who can no longer find it, or no longer wish to.)
I will admit that, when it comes to the term’s use, these are somewhat mixed results. Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that a word purported to be “lost to history” would not regularly appear in dictionaries from 1940 to the (near) present.
So much, then, for the word being lost to time, but what about translation? Here Zecher fares a bit better. In his article he notes that, although Cassian’s use of the term makes it “sound like apathy,” a close reading of the monk’s description “shows that acedia is much more daunting and complex than that.” To wit, Zecher defines acedia as the “strange combination of listlessness, undirected anxiety, and inability to concentrate.”
The dictionaries at my disposal aren’t so exacting, but they are rather unified in their association of acedia with physical and spiritual listlessness and/or apathy. The Oxford English Reference Dictionary (2002) defines it simply as “listlessness,” whereas Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines it as “apathy, boredom.” Things get a little livelier in the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, which defines the term as, “a pathological mental or spiritual torpor” and “sloth regarded as one of the seven deadly sins.” The American Heritage Dictionary plays along and defines acedia as “spiritual torpor; ennui,” and, finally, The National Dictionary provides my favorite definition, “an abnormal condition of the mind, characterized by lassitude, listlessness, and general indifference; the sin of sloth (one of the seven deadly sins).”
Clearly, none of these definitions say anything about “undirected anxiety” or the “inability to concentrate,” although I would argue feelings of “listlessness” would include an inability to focus and stay on task. So, while Zecher may be right that Cassian’s concept of acedia was more nuanced and textured than it seems to be today, it’s a stretch to say we moderns lack sufficient understanding of what acedia means.
It’s an even further stretch to claim, as Zecher does, that the word is “barely used today.”
Again, that’s just not true.
As Zecher rightfully points out, acedia was commonly referred to as “the noonday demon,” because it was said to impede the ability of monks to concentrate on their studies at this time of day, leading them toward the silkiest of the seven deadly sins, sloth (as noted in some of the dictionary definitions mentioned above). Zecher’s awareness of this phrase, “noonday demon,” is important because it should have tipped him off to the existence of a book by Andrew Solomon titled … you guessed it … The Noonday Demon. This book, which details the author’s experience of severe depression, was published in 2001, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and thus was both well-known and widely available (I got a copy at a Barnes and Noble). In addition, the religion writer Kathleen Norris authored the book Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life in 2010, which got a fair amount of press in religious circles because Norris is an oblate monk. Given that Zecher is a research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, it seems like he should have known about both these texts. Further, a quick Google search reveals that there are also several other books that discuss the subject of acedia (or at least have the word in their titles), so to say the word is “barely used today,” is absurd.
It’s also worth pointing out that, at least in the cases of Solomon and Norris, these writers don’t just use acedia in their books haphazardly, as a synonym for depression or melancholy. Both authors make it clear they are aware of John Cassian and his writings on the subject and, as a result, both use the term quite deliberately. (I know this because Solomon devotes a couple pages to Cassian in his book and Norris discusses her awareness of the monk and his writings during a 2018 interview with the Biola University Center for Christian Thought. Indeed, the interview is itself proof that word is still in use today.)
Okay, so Zecher is wrong … really wrong … on this last account. Why do I care so damned much?
Well, despite my snark-filled tone, I’m not out to take Mr. Zecher down a peg. (Really, I’m not.) Again, I am not quibbling with his assessment that acedia just might be the perfect word to describe what some folks appear to be feeling as they cope with pandemic-born isolation and inactivity. I will even agree that acedia is likely a lesser-known word compared to its synonyms (e.g., depression, melancholy, lethargy, listlessness, stagnation, and so on.) Nevertheless, what bothers me about Zecher’s take is, isn’t the word’s relative obscurity enough? Why tack on the bit about the word being lost to history or translation when (A) it just isn’t true, and (B) it’s not that hard to prove otherwise?
That said, I want to cut this dude some slack. It’s tough to be a writer these days. There is a lot of competition out there and coming up with a new angle for a pitch is hard. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that after four years of the Trump administration’s lies and scores of politicians and conspiracy theorists taking to the airwaves and social media to spout falsehoods about everything from the election to the COVID-19 vaccine, the world could use a little less bullshit—and I expect people with the title of “researcher” to help us eliminate it.
Note: This item first appeared in issue #3 of Alternative Incite magazine
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Going Round with Saturn
Not long ago, when I was suffering through what I can only call a dark time, I turned to more than a few of the books in my library to find some answers as to what might be happening and why. (I tried a shrink too, but the books were more useful.) One of them that left a “mark” was Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, which has a chapter with the rather curious title, “Gifts of Depression.” Within that chapter is a section bearing the sub-heading, “Saturn’s Child,” which contains sentiments like this:
… There was a time, five or six hundred years ago, when melancholy was identified with the Roman god Saturn. To be depressed was to be “in Saturn,” and a person chronically disposed to melancholy was known as a “child of Saturn.” […] These melancholic thoughts are are deeply rooted in Saturn’s preference for days gone by, for memory and the sense that time is passing. These thoughts and feelings, sad as they are, favor the soul’s desire to be both in time and in eternity, and so in a strange way, can be pleasing.
In traditional texts, Saturn is characterized as cold and distant … Saturn was also traditionally identified with the metal lead, giving the soul weight and density, allowing the light, airy elements to coalesce…. As we age, our ideas, formerly light and rambling, and unrelated to each other, become more densely gathered into values and philosophy, giving our lives substance and firmness.
For whatever reason, these words of Moore’s have stuck with me and I’ve become a little obsessed with this notion of a sort of “god of melancholy.” So, naturally, I dug into the reference section of my library to learn more about this god of yore and to see if what Moore had to say about him was accurate.
What I found, not surprisingly perhaps, were differing myths surrounding Saturn and a rich symbolic history that seems to contradict the myths without completely destroying the somewhat tenuous, yet highly visible thread that weaves its way through and unites them all.
Here are a few excerpts demonstrating both those contradictions and unifying themes.
Saturn symbolizes time, with its ravenous appetite for life, devours all its creations, whether they are beings, things, ideas or sentiments. He is also symbolic of the insufficiency, in the mystic sense, of any order of existence within the plane of the temporal, or the necessity for the “reign of Cronos” to be succeeded by another cosmic mode of existence in which time has no place. Time brings restlessness–the sense of duration lasting from the moment of stimulus up to the instant of satisfaction. Hence Saturn is symbolic of activity, of slow, implacable dynamism, of realization and communication; and this is why he is said to have devoured his children and why he is related to the Ouroboros (or the serpent which bites its own tail). Other attributes are the oar (standing for navigation nad progress in things temporal), the hourglass and the scythe. In the scythe we can detect a double meaning: first, its function of cutting parallel to and corroborating the symbolism of devouring; and, secondly, its curved shape, which invariably corresponds to the feminine principle. This is why … Saturn takes on the same characteristic ambiguity of gender and sex, and is related to the earth, the sarcophagus and putrefaction, as well as the color black…. Saturn is in every case, a symbol of the law of limitation which gives shape to life, or the localized expression in time and space of the universal life.
– A Dictionary of Symbols
A very old Italian god identified with Cronus. He was said to have come from Greece to Italy in very early times, when Jupiter dethroned him and hurled him from Olympus. He established himself on the Capitol, on the site of Rome, and founded a village there, which bore the name of Saturnia. The reign of Saturn was extremely prosperous. This was the Golden Age. Saturn taught people how to cultivate the ground…. He was depicted armed with a scythe and his name was was associated with the invention of viticulture. He was, however, sometimes considered as a god of the underworld.
– Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology
[Speaking of his reign in Italy …] Men lived like the gods, without care, in uninterrupted happiness, health, and strength; they did not grow old; and to them death was a slumber which relieved them of their present nature and transformed them into daemons. The earth yielded every kind of fruit and gave up all its treasures without cultivation or labor. Under the reign of Saturn, men lived a life of paradise.
– Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature
