09 February 2004

The Etymology Log (Hardcover Title: When Geeks Graduate)

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, 1:26 AM
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Wed February 4th, 1:02 AM
Name:
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!

***

Plan of:
lindley
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Thu February 5th, 1:40 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.

***

Plan of:
oneil
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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.

***

Plan of:
gruener
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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?

***

Plan of:
backes
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Thu February 6th, 11:26 PM
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Thu February 6th, 11:52 PM
Name:
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....

***

Plan of:
lindley
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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).

***

Plan of:
backes
Last log in:
Sun February 8th, 11:34 PM
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Sun February 8th, 11:41 PM
Name:
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).

***

Plan of:
lindley
Last log in:
Mon February 9th, 2:44 AM
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Mon February 9th, 3:10 AM
Name:


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?

04 February 2004

Wednesday Night


Yeah, Massachusetts!!
"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal. For no rational reason the marriage laws of the commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain. The [civil unions] bill would have the effect of maintaining and fostering a stigma of exclusion that the Constitution prohibits."


***

As I was driving home from work tonight, I was brooding about this mistake I made at work a few weeks ago. It wasn’t a big thing, but I was chastising myself for being such an idiot – until I realized that there’s no reason I should have known better. As I have mentioned before, the place where you grow up determines certain assumptions you make, assumptions that don’t get challenged until you move to a place with a different set. I find myself defending certain ideas I have and choices I make by saying, “Well, in Wisconsin/Iowa it’s this way....” Sometimes I feel like Rose from that old show The Golden Girls, who would always defend herself with stories about Lake Wobegon or wherever she was from. And so, for your reading pleasure, I present:



ERRORS AND ASSUMPTIONS I'VE MADE IN NEW MEXICO, or MIDWESTERN MISTAKES


1. If you address a letter to someone’s house, it will reach them.

This is the mistake I made at work: a few weeks ago, we were sending out a mailing to people in the East Mountains, asking them to come to a meeting on February 12. There were probably 35 people on our list, most of whom hadn’t listed their mailing addresses. Without putting much thought into it, I looked up the names in the East Mountain phone book, and only called people for their addresses if they were unlisted in the phone book. Last week, about 10 of the letters I’d sent out were returned, and my boss was pretty irritated. “You can’t send mail to a person’s address,” she said, using a tone generally reserved for the very young, the very old, or the developmentally disabled. “No one gets mail at their house; everyone has post office boxes.” “Um, sorry,” I said, feeling stupid. It wasn’t until tonight that it hit me: why the hell would I know that? I come from a magical land where people either get mail delivered to their houses, or else list their mailing address in the phone book.

2. “I know how to drive in the snow! No problem!”

When I moved out here, I had eight years of winter driving experience under my belt. I had driven through some pretty freaking horrible snowstorms, including one so bad it took me nearly four hours to drive the 60 miles from Iowa City to Grinnell (we left at 2:30 am and didn’t get to Grinnell until 6 in the morning), with visibility at, like, two feet and semi-trucks jack-knifed on the sides of the highway every quarter mile. But. One big difference between driving in an Iowa winter and driving in a New Mexico winter is that if you go off the road in Iowa, chances are good that you’ll land in a cornfield. Whereas if you go off the road in New Mexico, chances are good that you’ll go plunging down some ridiculously steep embankment and end up bruised and broken hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet below at the bottom of the canyon.

3. Gigantic jeeps, trucks, and SUVs are evil.

Modification: gigantic jeeps, trucks, and SUVs are evil if they’re only manifestations of a suburbanite’s wish to pretend her life is far less tame than it seems. I’d guess that 96% of the people in this country who drive these monstrous machines do not actually need them. However, they’re necessary if you live at the top of a mountain and need lots of horsepower and four-wheel drive simply to get home at night.

4. “You don’t need a coat today.” Pt. 1

This continues to trick me: in the mornings when I take the dog out, I decide how many layers I’ll need for the day based on how cold it is in my backyard. Please note that, for the most part, this is a totally viable strategy in this midwest. However, the weather in Albuquerque is often completely different from the weather in the East Mountains. Tonight, for example, I left work early because it was a right blizzard in Tijeras, with big wet snowflakes, slick roads, and crappy visibility. This weather bothered me for all of six minutes on the drive home, until I came far enough down the mountain to be back in the drier, warmer climate of the city. Though I had been freezing my face off all day at work, once home I took the dog for a walk and didn’t even need a coat. Go figure.

5. “You don’t need a coat today.” Pt. 2

A few weeks ago, my new intern and I were strolling from the parking lot to the Talking Talons center, enjoying the balmy spring air and sunshine. At least, I was strolling and enjoying the day. My intern was hunched over and shivering, cursing the bitter winter. After a minute or so of listening to her bitching, I finally snapped, “Oh my god, woman, it’s in the mid-50s!” She nodded miserably. “I’m wearing thermal underwear under my jeans and sweatshirt and jacket, and I’m still c-o-o-o-o-o-o-l-d!”

6. “You don’t need a coat today.” Pt. 3

This weekend, I was at a conference in Santa Fe and it was legitimately cold. The temperature was in the teens, and it was snowing and windy. Leaving the hotel for the day, me: thick wool socks, boots, long corduroy pants, a teeshirt, cardigan sweater, long wool coat, scarf, gloves. Leaving the hotel for the day, my intern: open-toed sandals (!!!), no socks or stockings, thin linen pants, short-sleeved silk blouse, loosely-knit cardigan sweater. And that’s all. Being the paranoid midwesterner that I am, I usually have one or more sweatshirts, hats, pairs of gloves, extra socks, boots, and sometimes jackets in the back of my vehicle (in case I get in a blizzard and have to exist in my car for a few days, or dig myself out of a snowbank, or stand around talking to police officers after someone slides into my truck, of course). Raising an eyebrow, I offered my intern an extra jacket and pair of gloves – “You’re welcome to take an extra sweatshirt as well, if you’d like.” Understand that this was just a light unlined spring jacket, good for keeping out wind and rain, but not much else. Imagine my surprise when I came back to the truck to find that my intern had put the jacket on but had taken the sweater off and was throwing it into the truck. “Don’t you want to wear the jacket over your sweater?” “Oh, no, that’s not a sweater, that’s my winter coat.”

7. Given the state’s rich Spanish heritage and bilingual nature, places with Spanish names have Spanish pronunciations.

WRONG! Even though I studied Spanish for more than five years and had a good enough grasp on the language to get by in Costa Rica, I never guess the correct pronunciations of towns and cities. This week’s example: Malpais. El Malpais National Monument is in New Mexico, and whether it was this area or the Malpais Pueblo in Arizona to which Aldous Huxley refers in Brave New World, I am not certain. However, I am certain that “el malpais” is Spanish for “the badlands.” I was talking about the book this weekend, and said something about the savage from “ell-mal-pie-ees” when a certain snooty someone jumped in and corrected me. “You mean Maal-pie.” “Oh, is that how you say it? I just assumed the Spanish pronunciation.” “It’s not Spanish, it’s Indian,” says my know-it-all friend, as if I am the most retarded person she’s ever met. [For the record, I looked it up, and it is Spanish, and I actually pronounced it correctly.]

Other cities I’ve pronounced incorrectly:
Amarillo, TX (Spanish: ahm-ah-REE-o, Texan: Aa-mah-RILL-ah)
Santa Fe, NM (Spanish: san-tah FAY, New Mexican: SANNA-fay)
Madrid, NM (Spanish: mah-DRID, New Mexican: MAD-rid)
And so it goes....

The thing that really bothers me, though, is when people are really condescending and snotty about my incorrect pronunciations. I mean, for god’s sake, if someone from New Mexico were visiting me in Wisconsin and wanted to go to Prairie du Shee-ehn, I wouldn’t be laughing at them, I’d be laughing at us. That’s Prairie doo SHEEN, friend.

8. “Up” and “North” are the same direction.

Because Albuquerque is built at the base of the Sandia mountains, the entire city slopes eastward. Thus, if you tell someone to go up the street, they’ll take you literally, and go east. Naturally, “down” and “west” are synonymous as well.


***

Of course, this list is only a small sampling of all the ways I make a fool of myself here. One day, perhaps, I'll make a list of all the ways a person can kill themselves out here (spider bites and mouse poop come to mind, not to mention the plague), or all the words that have different meanings (hot sauce, patio, weather).

For now though, I'll leave it be, with this post-script only:

If you want to make fun of someone from Wisconsin, it's funny to mock their exaggerated long o's (AriZOna, MinneSOta) or talk about cheeseheads, hockey, hot-dish, Lutherans, or Mary Jo's lemon bars.

It is not funny to say "Wis-CAN-sen! Wis-CAN-sen!" because NO ONE IN WISCONSIN ACTUALLY SAYS THAT! Everyone from Wisconsin pronounces the word like it's spelled: Wis-con-sin. The only people in the whole goddamn world who say "Wis-CAN-sen" are the idiots from everywhere else, who think they're so funny by misprounouncing the name of the state in a completely inaccurate manner.

Arrrgh!


However, if you want to make a Wisconsinite fly into a homicidal rage, I've got just the ticket....