Fritinancy

Word of the week: Arum

Around midday last Monday I got an urgent call from my friend C.J.: “Come across the street right away! You’ve got to see this!” I know better than to disobey C.J., so I asked no questions, just shoved my feet into some sandals, grabbed my keys and phone, and dashed out my front door. In the driveway of the house directly opposite mine—a house I’d never once entered during the six and a half years I’ve lived on this street—was a Honda with with a hand-lettered sign taped to its rear window.

“Corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) UP DRIVEWAY – Thru Gate. Viewing ===>”

A corpse flower! This was definitely going to be good. 

Word of the week: Choropleth

File this one under “Unfamiliar Words for Familiar Concepts,” “Words That Are Missing from the Big Dictionaries,” and “Fun with Greek.”

I know a few cartographic categories: topographic, thematic, political, economic, and so on. But I’d never encountered choropleth until last week, when I came across it on Twitter.

First genuinely surprising choropleth I’ve seen in a long time. pic.twitter.com/YmBT9pUMYQ

— Dr. Brian Keegan (@bkeegan) May 20, 2021

I couldn’t find choropleth in the OED, or in Merriam-Webster online, or in Wordnik. It isn’t even in my massive Webster’s Third New International (1986), which does include a related word, chorography: “the art of describing a particular region of district.”

Wikipedia to the rescue:

Word of the week: Obelisk

Tom Cotton, the junior US senator from Arkansas, is an army veteran, but these days his preferred incendiary devices are words. A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published an op-ed he wrote urging the Trump administration to “Send in the Troops” to put down the protests taking place in many cities, which Cotton called “riots” perpetrated by “bands of miscreants.” There was outrage and outcry in response to the op-ed, and the Times backpedaled, a little, by tacking on a five-paragraph explanation/apology about insufficient fact-checking. A few days later, the editor of the editorial-page section, James Bennett, resigned.

You can read more that particular drama in this New Yorker essay, if you like. My subject today, however, is a phrase Cotton dropped on June 11 during remarks on the Senate floor about calls, once again, to remove statues and monuments that celebrate the Confederacy (which, you probably don’t need to be reminded, was the losing side of the Civil War). Cotton, from the Land of Cotton, was having none of it.

Sen. Tom Cotton: "Are we going to tear the Washington Monument down? Are we going to rename it the Obelisk of Wokeness?" pic.twitter.com/gPTACs2Ep6

— The Hill (@thehill) June 11, 2020

"Just up the mall is the Washington Monument,” he said, after demanding that his colleagues “end the madness” of “cancel culture.” “Are we going to tear the Washington Monument down? Are we going to rename it the Obelisk of Wokeness?”

Word of the week: Allostatic load

“Allostatic Load Is the Psychological Reason for Our Pandemic Brain Fog” reads the headline on an April 27 story by Emily Baron Cadloff for Vice. The language may seem abstruse, but Cadloff quickly translates it into plain English: “I’m doing so much less than I’m used to, and I’m so tired.” She’s far from alone during this period of isolation and anxiety.

Allostatic load diagram via ResearchGate

Word of the week: Draconian

How much are you suffering under your locality’s COVID-19 restrictions? If you’re reading this, I assume you aren’t running a fever or hooked up to a ventilator but are instead working from home or, if you’re fortunate, collecting unemployment. (Or, if you’re not fortunate, not collecting unemployment because you were self-employed or minimally employed.) Your gym/golf course/favorite restaurant has been closed for weeks; graduations, proms, and sports have been canceled; you can shop only for essentials, you’ve learned how to create makeshift face masks; and you’re washing your hands more than you’d ever dreamed possible.

Maybe you’d call this situation inconvenient. Or stressful. Or tough but necessary if we’re going to flatten the curve and save the lives of our fellow citizens.

On the other hand, maybe you self-identify as a member of the hard-core-individualist, expert-scorning, no-patience-with-patience slice of the Don’t-Tread-on-Me American populace. In that case, maybe you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take any more government interference in your God-given liberties, not for any damn virus, nosiree. You’re calling the situation draconian.

Word of the week: Epistocracy

Aristocracy, as you know, is government by the “best” or the “noblest” citizens. Kakistocracy is the opposite: government by the worst (or, more literally, the shittiest). Idiocracy was invented by director Mike Judge to serve as the title and theme of his 2006 dystopian comedy, set in the year 2505, when a professional wrestler and porn star occupies the White House. (In what passes for the real world, it took only 10 years for a WWE Hall of Famer and porn-star diddler to win the presidency; in a 2017 interview, Judge admitted that in the age of Trump, his film now seems “optimistic.”)

Until now, I hadn’t noticed the idiotic phonetic explainer. Intentional, I hope.

 

And epistocracy, our word of the week? It’s a recent coinage, created about 16 years ago by Brown University political philosophy professor David Estlund, that means “government by the knowledgeable.” The episto- part is related to other words about knowledge, including epistemology (the study of knowledge systems) and epistemic closure (an information cocoon). (I wrote about epistemic closure in 2012.)

February linkfest

Why are some companies, like publishers and fashion businesses, called “houses”? Includes a delightful explanation of how Random House got its name. (Grammar Girl)

*

I’m a pushover for specialized slang dictionaries, and this is a good one: a guide to carnival lingo. Warning: many irresistible rabbit holes on that site. (Good Magic)

A razzle dazzle game (Stevens Magic Emporium)

Word of the week: Cacography

You’d think I’d have known this word for years and years instead of for just a few days, because cacography describes a wide swath of brand naming. Also, I like -graphy words in general (choreography, biography, typography, cinematography, lexicography, orography), all of which have some connection to writing, which is what the Greek root graphein signifies. And I’m also (immaturely) drawn to words beginning with cac- and kak-, my very favorite being kakistocracy. The front part of those cac- and kak- words comes from Greek again: kakistos means “worst,” but it’s probably related to an even older root that means “to defecate.” Thus kakistocracy is, roughly, “government by shitty people,” and cacography is, well, shitty writing.

Word of the week: Chasma

Lately the news on this planet has been just too depressing. So let’s slip these surly* bonds and see what’s happening on Mars.

Here’s Dr. Tanya Harrison, “professional Martian” and director of Arizona State University’s NewSpace initiative, with a weather report and a question for her Twitter followers: If fog on Earth is called @KarlTheFog, what should we call fog on Mars?

My own vote goes to Wanda’s nomination, “Marsha,” which is derived from Latin “Marcius,” meaning “of Mars” and which evokes damp marshes.** But what interests me even more comes further down in the Twitter thread, where Tanya reveals the source of the photo.

Name in the news: Kalorama

Earlier this week, Washington-area news media reported that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, daughter and son-in-law of the president-elect, would be moving into a six-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bathroom house in the District of Columbia. The house, which sold on December 22 for $5.5 million, $400,000 under the listing price, is less than two blocks from where President and Mrs. Obama will live after they leave the White House. (It isn’t clear whether the Trump-Kushners had bought it or will be renting from the buyer).

The neighborhood is called Kalorama, which got my attention.

 

2449 Tracy Place NW. Built in 1923 by Waddy Wood, who championed Colonial Revival designs over the Craftsman style. Walk score: 50 (mostly car dependent).