rhetoric

Nowadays, when we say something is ‘rhetoric’, we usually mean it’s a load of bollocks designed to manipulate whoever’s unlucky enough to be listening to it. But this much-maligned word didn’t always have such a negative meaning. In fact, ‘rhetoric’ used to simply refer to the art of persuasion. Throughout Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ‘rhetoric’ was a prestigious and essential academic discipline, and one of three ancient arts of discourse (also called trivium) along with grammar (yay!) and logic (boo!).

Rhetoric, innit

The word ‘rhetoric’ has a Proto-Indo-European root, *werh₁, which means ‘to speak’ or ‘to say’. This appeared during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, i.e. bloody ages ago (about 6,500 to 4,500 years ago, if you want actual numbers. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the weird notation, the asterisk means the word was never written down, and the small 1 marks a soft throat sound, apparently). *werh₁ evolved into an Ancient Greek word, eírein, also meaning ‘to speak’, which then produced rhētōr meaning a public speaker or orator (although I’m not sure how – it’s something to do with the Greek letter for W vanishing, I think, but much too boring to go into here, which is saying something). To further complicate things, the Greeks then took the root of rhētōr and added the adjective ending -ikē (meaning ‘pertaining to’ or ‘the skill of’) which created a new adjective, rhētorikē, meaning ‘oratorical’. This clearly wasn’t complicated enough though, so they stuck tékhnē (‘art’, ‘craft’ or ‘technique’) on the end to make it mean ‘the oratorical craft’ or ‘the art of the public speaker’.

Understandably, as time passed people stopped bothering with the tékhnē bit, and just used rhētorikē on its own to mean ‘the art of speaking’. This made its way into Latin as rhētorica, then into 12th-century Old French as retorique, and finally into Middle English in the early 14th century as rethoryke or rhetorik.

Annnnnnd relax.

Now we all know too much about rhetoric, let’s have a look at the tools and techniques that people use when they’re trying to be good at it, AKA rhetorical devices. There are bloody loads of these, and they all have very long complicated names, so I’ll just give you a few. I can almost certainly guarantee you’ve used at least some of them in everyday speech.

Complicated name	Sounds like…	Actually is…	In action
Epizeuxis	Something that hangs at the back of your throat	Repeating a word or phrase back-to-back with no other words in between to make a point	‘Location, location, location.’
Anaphora	A shop that sells overpriced makeup	Repeating a phrase at the start of sentences or clauses for emphasis	‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields…’
Tricolon	A bowel complaint	Grouping things in threes to add rhythm and punch	‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
Hyperbole	An American sports event that no one outside America cares about	Deliberate, extreme exaggeration used to make a point or emphasise a feeling, and not meant to be taken literally (and pronounced ‘hy-PER-buh-lee’, confusingly)	‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’

What about rhetorical questions, I hear you ask in a not-rhetorical way. Yes, rhetorical questions come directly from the study of rhetoric. They’re called that because they were traditionally used to make a point or persuade an audience, with the answer either immediately given by the speaker, or being so bleedin’ obvious that they didn’t need to. In speechmaking, posing a question forces the listener’s brain to process the thought actively rather than just listening (or drifting off…). Rhetorical questions also subtly steer an audience’s thinking without explicitly telling them what to think. Sneaky, huh?

enervate

I love the wonderful English language. But sometimes it’s stupid. This is one of those times.

Much like lots of us think ‘inflammable’ means something won’t catch fire (it means it totally will catch fire*), ‘enervate’ isn’t a synonym (AKA a word that means the same) for ‘energise’. It actually means completely the opposite – as a verb (a doing word), to enervate is to sap something or someone’s strength, to weaken or exhaust them.

You can also use ‘enervate’ as an adjective, AKA a describing word. So you can be enervated by someone or something. Hopefully not this post.

‘Enervate’ comes from a Latin word, ‘enervare’. The ‘e’ at the start means ‘out of’, and ‘nervus’ means ‘sinew’ or ‘nerve’. Together, the term originally meant ‘to remove the sinews’. Why? Well, in ancient Roman and Classical contexts, sinews (or tendons) were seen as essential to physical strength and vitality. So cutting or removing them was a way to render someone literally powerless. Over time, this vivid and somewhat minging image of losing strength evolved into the metaphorical sense of being drained of energy or vitality. And that’s where we get ‘enervate’ from.

You might also have heard of the word ‘innervate’, which comes from the same Latin root. If you innervate someone or something, it means you supply it or them with nerves. Chaotic parking situations do this to me.

* Yes, the prefix in- almost always means ‘not’ in English. But not in this case – ‘inflammable’ comes from the word ‘enflame’. And that’s why inflammable means flammable, not not flammable.

geminate

I’ve been doing some geminating this morning, with my socks, which I hate (the geminating, not the socks. I’m fine with socks in general).

Not to be confused with germinating, ‘geminate’ as a verb means to put something into pairs. Although it’s usually used in this way by linguists to describe sounds that are doubled, you can also use it to be fancy-dancy when you’re doing laundry (and who doesn’t need to add a bit of fancy-dancy when they’re sorting out washing?).

Geminate is also an adjective (AKA a describing word). So when you’ve finished sorting those goddamn socks, you can says that they’re geminate (sadly I still can’t say this about mine as many of them are still lounging in the laundry basket).

It’s not just about socks of course – you can use ‘geminate’ for anything that comes in a pair, like headlights, eyes or the twins from The Shining (other twins are available).

So, where does the word come from? Well, if you were born between 21 May and 20 June then you’re probably well ahead of me – like the star sign gemini, it comes from the Latin word ‘geminatus’ which itself comes from ‘geminus’, meaning ‘twin’.

The constellation Gemini is named for the twins Castor and Pollux from Greek mythology. The story goes that their mother, Leda, was seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan (the logistics of this always bother me). She later laid four eggs (because, swan) out of which hatched the aforementioned twins, as well as two others – Helen (later to become ‘of Troy’ and launch a bunch of boats) and Clytemnestra (which I always think sounds like an STD). Because Leda had also had relations with her husband (not a bird) on the same night, it seems that Castor and Clytemnestra were his kids, while Pollux and Helen were Zeus’, which therefore gave them demigod status, and immortality. When Castor was later killed in battle, Pollux was so upset that he begged his dad to let him give up half his immortality to give to his bro. Zeus agreed, and Castor and Pollux were transformed into the Gemini constellation.

Woman impregnated by swan? Sounds like a load of old Pollux to me.

The geminate twins from ‘The Shining’. I used to work with the grown-up version of one of these actresses. Yes, really. Dunno which one though.

steganography

Steganography is the practice of hiding a secret message inside another message or a physical object that isn’t secret. Think Tim Messenger, Adam Buxton’s character in the film ‘Hot Fuzz’ (one of my all-time favourites) who hides messages in misspelt newspaper headlines about what’s going on in the village of Sandford (‘He’s Judge Judy and executioner!’). Other examples of steganography include invisible ink or playing a record backwards to reveal a hidden message.

Steganography is action – if you look at the first image under white, blue, green and red lights you see different hidden numbers (not that well-hidden, but still).

Etymology time (my favourite time). ‘Steganography’ comes from the Greek word steganographia. That’s made up of steganós, meaning ‘covered or concealed’, and ‘-graphia’ meaning ‘writing’. The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by one Johannes Trithemius (amazing name) who wrote a book called ‘Steganographia’. It was a treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a book on magic.

The advantage of steganography over cryptography – i.e. converting text into something unintelligible so only someone who has the key or cipher can convert it back – is that the secret message doesn’t attract attention because it’s hidden in something else. So while cryptography is just about protecting the contents of a secret message, steganography hides the fact that there’s a message at all.

The earliest recorded use of steganography was in 440 BC in Greece, which Herodotus (writer, philosopher and all-round clever dude) mentions in his book ‘Histories’ (an account of the Greco-Persian Wars). A ruler by the name of Histiaeus sent a message to a minion about an upcoming revolt by shaving the head of a servant, tattoing the message on to his scalp, then sending him to deliver it once his hair had regrown. Obviously there are a lot of issues here, not least that hair growth takes a long time. Oh, and you need a new servant for every message.

Today steganography has moved on a bit. The word is commonly used to descibe the ways hackers infect people’s computers i.e. by hiding nasty bits of code in common-or-garden documents like PDFs. Then when you open the doc it installs a horrible bit of malware or ransomware on your PC. Bastards.

Warning: contains a lot of blood and some swearing (just a ‘wanker’).

illeist

If you’re an illeist, it means you’re speaking about yourself in the third person, instead of the first. So if I said ‘Emma has a wet bum, because she just spilled a full cup of coffee in her lap’ (true story folks), then I’d be using illeism. And also sounding like a bit of an idiot.

Etymology-wise this one’s pretty straightforward, with ‘ille’ being Latin for ‘that man’ or ‘he’, plus the suffix ‘-ist’ which we add to things to show that someone’s doing them (if that makes sense) – like ‘pianist’ or ‘capitalist’. The term was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (he of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which I genuinely love, and also the opium-induced, unfinished Kubla Khan) in 1809.

One of the most famous historical illeists is Julius Caesar, who used it in Commentarii de Bello Gallico, his non-fictional account of the Gallic Wars. This was to make it sound like it was impartial, when obviously it wasn’t at all. And it might also be better filed in the ‘Fiction’ section at Waterstones, as several of Caesar's claims seem to have been outright lies. For example, he said that the Romans fought Gallic forces of up to 430,000, which was an impossible army size for the time, and also that not one Roman died during this battle. I call bullshit…

Other more modern illeists, both fictional and non-fictional, include:

• Gollum from Lord of the Rings – although he does it because he doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, which is sad

• Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson who used illeism in his wrestling catchphrases – ‘Do you smell what The Rock is cooking?’ (um, no thanks)

• Hercule Poirot, who almost always talked about himself and his little grey cells in the third person

• Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter series (god rest his soul) – ‘Dobby has no master. Dobby is a free elf!’

While you might think talking about yourself in the third person makes you sound like a dick, in fact psychologists suggest that there are real benefits to doing just that – but only in your head, not out loud. The idea is that it can help you change your perspective to get past biases and improve decision-making. Emma will definitely be trying this from now on (once her bum dries off).

(With thanks to the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast, which is where I heard this word.)

cupidity

Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash.

The ‘cupid’ bit of this has probably given you a clue as to the meaning. And while it does relate to the chubby Roman god of sexy times, it’s a bit darker than that. If you’re suffering from cupidity then you have a very strong desire for something, usually wealth or possessions. The word’s been around in English since the 15th century, and comes from the Latin ‘cupere’ which means ‘to desire’.

Cupid facts: The Roman god of love started out in classical myth as a slender youth, but for reasons best known to themselves (maybe because when you’re in a new relationship you always get a bit fat?) painters during the Hellenistic period (323 BC to 31 BC – but I’m sure you already know that, clever reader) made him increasingly chubbier until he became the lard-arse with a bow and arrow we see today. He’s the son of Venus (goddess of love – yay!) and Mars (god of war – boo!). According to the usual in-depth research I did (which just means I read the Wikipedia page on Cupid), Isidore of Seville (a Spanish scholar and cleric born in the year 560), Cupid is depicted with wings because lovers are ‘flighty and likely to change their minds’, he’s a young boy because love is ‘irrational’, and he has a bow, arrows and a torch (I assume not the battery-powered kind) because love ‘wounds and inflames the heart’. Sounds to me like Isidore hadn’t been having much luck with the ladies (or the gents – no heteronormativity here) when he wrote that.