Most of you non-Grinnellians have heard me talking about Plans before, and so know that Plans is the online community of Grinnell students, alums, and professors that allows many of us to stay connected with one another though we're far apart. Plans are different from blogs -- though not too far from a Grinnellian-only "Live Journal" -- because they're text only (one) and they're highly interconnected (two) and there's no ongoing log of them (three) and because the effect of Plans on the Grinnell community and the role of Plans in daily interaction is too complex to be explained properly, ever.
Suffice to say, for now, that Plans are like little community white-boards that many of my Grinnell friends and I check and update daily.
Today, I value Plans for the connection they allow me to have to the Grinnell community. Whenever I have a humorous anecdote or burning question, I turn to Plans. Recently, I was wondering about the etymology of the word "chiropteran" (bat), and -- lacking the Holy Oxford English Dictionary (OED) -- turned to my friends Caleb Lindley (my savior in our "English Historical Linguistics" class), Mark Bourne (linguistic superstar), and others in PlanLand (like Pat O'Neil and Posey Gruener, both English All-Stars, both in my Milton seminar senior year) for answers....
Plan of:
backes
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Wed February 4th, 1:02 AM
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Precipitation Envy
[heroldk], [bournem], [lindley], or other such linguistic genuises:
can someone tell me the etymology of "chiropractor" and "chiropteran" (bat)?
I have a feeling that they're related somehow. Early scientists, who had only skeletons and mating patterns on which to draw connections between species, thought bats to be the closest species to human beings, based on their skeletons and mating/nurturing habits. Closer than apes! The freaky thing is that a bat's skeleton looks like a very tiny human skeleton, only with a little fox-nosed skull and finger-bones that curve into wings.
Oh Grinnell, how I miss your free access to the OED online!
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Plan of:
lindley
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Fri February 6th, 3:52 PM
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Thank you for the OED [bournem]. I feel like not having that thing is like not having my right hand (do note, I am left handed, so it could be worse).
Here's the deal [backes], Chiro- just means hand, and that's true in both words (it's from Greek kheir. . .whatever). However, in chiropractic the last part comes from Greek praktikos, which just means 'practical.' So I guess it's somebody who cracks your bones with their hands. In the bat one though, the last part of the word -pter is from the Greek word for wing (as in pterodactyl, which I think means leathery wing, or really gross wing made of skin or something, I don't remember the second part for sure). So, bats are called (in the New Latin), hand-wings. So the two words are related, unfortunately the dictionary I have access to does not ellaborate as to exactly why a chiropracter has hands in the name. It seems like the word just means hand-user I would think that could mean a lot of things.
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Plan of:
oneil
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Fri February 6th, 7:22 AM
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Fri February 6th, 7:37 AM
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What did you think of the play, Mr. Littlejeans?
[backes] you'll love this. They are related, but not how you think. "Chiro" (or cheiro, apparently) comes from the Greek meaning "hand"; "ptera" from the Greek meaning winged (Greek scholars, forgive me, I know little Latin and less Greek; all these forms and information come from the OED). So bats were named for their funky wings. Chiropractor therefore means, "to practice (or heal) with hands." Which is to say, aside from the fact that bats have funny hands and that humans have hands with which they can sort out people's back problems, the words are unrelated. No one ever noticed something particularly human about bat skulls and gave them a name meaning "carriers of human-ish skulls."
But what *I* learned from all this is that Chiro is also the root of the word surgeon. So now we know.
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Plan of:
gruener
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Fri February 6th, 11:15 PM
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Fri February 6th, 10:29 PM
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to jump on the [heroldk]/[bournem]/[lindley]/[backes]/[oneil] train--because it's fun:
so cheir (or hand), in addition to being the root in chiropractor and chiroptera, is also the root in chirographer--a specialist in penmanship. which is not exactly like, but similar to, a calligrapher (root word kallos, or beauty)--a specialist in *beautiful* penmanship.
which, in turn, is *some*what akin to a callipygian--someone with beautiful buttocks (the new word being pyge, or buttocks).
which finally takes us (via aNOTHER new root word, kakos, meaning bad, or harsh) to my very very favorite greekism, cacopygian. Or, someone with ugly, unshapely buttocks.
cacopygian. cacopygian.
.....
oh, and one more:
nostos is the greek word for a return (home) and algos is the word for pain. put em together and whaddya get?
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Plan of:
backes
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Thu February 6th, 11:26 PM
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Thu February 6th, 11:52 PM
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Precipitation Envy
Thanks, [lindley], [bailey1], [bournem], [oneil], & [gruener]! I got the pter/pterodactyl connection on my way to work this morning. Except a dactyl is a metrical foot (three syllables: accented, un, un, like "elephant"). Hmmm....
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Plan of:
lindley
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Sat February 7th, 12:44 PM
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Sat February 7th, 3:10 AM
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OK [backes] and [gruener], I was intrigued enough by [backes]'s mentioning of datyl being a metrical foot to force me to look it uup too. . .perhaps you've already done this, but I thought I'd share anyway. Dactyl comes from the Greek word daktulos meaning finger. It can mean this in English too. (In the word pterodactyl it means winged finger, or digit, I'm assuming due to their unique, i.e., gross, wing structure.) My guess is that it can also refer to the metrical foot, which is comprised of three sylables, because their are three joints on any given finger. But alas, since I don't have access to the OED. . .Oh, and to tie dactyl and -graph, a dactylographer is someone who studies fingerprints.
Also, you might be interested that the -pter suffix occurs in another, far more oft used word--helicopter. The first part of the word is from helix, meaning spiral (I assume that the -o- is just a sort of bridging vowel).
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Plan of:
backes
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Sun February 8th, 11:34 PM
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Sun February 8th, 11:41 PM
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Precipitation Envy
Continuing the linguistic saga of bats... (and here it gets really weird!)....
from the OED entry on BAT:
[1535 COVERDALE, Molles and Backes; 1590 Genev., To the mowles and to the backes; 1611 Moules and battes.] 1414 BRAMPTON Penit. Ps. lxxx. 31 A backe, that flyith be nyt. c1440 Promp. Parv. 21 Bakke (v.r. bak), flyinge best (v.r. fleynge byrde), vespertilio. [...] 1496 Dives & Paup. (W. de W.) III. viii. 144 Lyke oules & backes whiche hate the daye & loue the nyght. a1500 in Wülcker Voc. /761 Hic vespertilio, hec lucifuga, a bake. 1509 FISHER Wks. I. (1876) 87 More louynge derkenes than lyght, lyke vnto a beest called a backe. 1513 DOUGLAS Æneis XIII. Prol. 33 Vpgois the bak wyth hir pelit ledderyn flycht. 1552 HULOET, Reremowse, or backe whiche flyeth in the darcke, nycteris. c1554 CROKE Ps. (1844) 20 The backe or owle, That lurketh yn an olde house syde. 1607 Schol. Disc. agst. Antichr. II. vi 71 To cast them to the Moules and to the backes. [1808 JAMIESON s.v. Bak, The modern name in Sc. is backie-bird. 1863 Prov. Danby, Back-bearaway, the bat, or rere mouse.]
The plural of bat used to be BACKES??? What??
Caleb [Lindley], can you explain the transformation from bak/backe to bat for me, please? I'm afraid I blanked all that out, on the suggestion of my therapist (Dr. J. Beam).
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Plan of:
lindley
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Mon February 9th, 2:44 AM
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Mon February 9th, 3:10 AM
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Whoa, Molly [backes], that's . . . I don't know what. Here's what the OED etymology section said:
The mod. bat, found c 1575, takes the place of ME. bakke, apparently from Scand.; cf. Da. aften-bakke ‘evening-bat,’ ODa. nath-bakkæ, OSw. (Ihre) natt-backa ‘night-bat.’ Swedish dial. have also natt-batta. natt-blacka: with the latter cf. Icel. ler-blaka ‘bat,’ lit. ‘leather-flutterer,’ f. blaka ‘to flap, wave, flutter with wings,’ whence it has been suggested that bakke, backa have lost an l; but as the l does not appear in the OSw. and ODa. forms above, this is very unlikely. The med.L. blatta, blacta, batta, glossed ‘lucifuga, vespertilio, vledermus’ (Diefenbach Suppl. to Du Cange) = cl. L. blatta ‘an insect that shuns the light’ (blattæ lucifugæ, Vergil) ‘cockroach, moth,’ is distinct in origin, but may have influenced the English change to bat; evidence is wanting. Back- in comb., backie-bird, bawkie-bird still survive in north Eng. and Sc.
And, if I'm not mistaken, all that golbidy gook means that they don't know either.
If you want, I could give you my own personal musings on the topic, whatever that's worth.
What I find interesting is that Old Swedish had both bakka and batta, just in different dialects, which means it could be the same in English (they are two voiceless stop consonants after all). I also find it interesting that the Old Icelandic and the Latin both have a bl- thing going on, and the OIce ends with a [k] and the Latin with a [t]. I was going to make speculations about the words being cognate, but I'm either full of crap or lack the necessary education to even begin to go down that road.
Beyond that, it would appear as though you have stumbled upon a mystery that requires a considerable amount of research. I don't suppose there are any family stories about the origins of your surname?
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