ambigram

An ambigram is a word, phrase or symbol that you can read from different orientations or perspectives, usually in at least two different ways. So the word or symbol is still legible when you rotate it or look at its reflection, and might reveal a different word or phrase.

If you’ve lost interest after this convoluted explanation, let’s look at a couple of examples:

SWIMS

This is a rotational ambigram, which means it reads the same when rotated 180 degrees (i.e. upside down).

NOON

This can be designed as a mirror-image ambigram – so if you look at it in a mirror, it reads MOON.

Image from https://www.johnlangdon.net/works/angels-demons, © John Langdon

To make them work, ambigrams are often done in fancy-dancy calligraphy, which means they’re popular as logos and tattoos. Dan Brown used this in his rubbish book ‘Angels and Demons’ where the Illuminati’s symbol is an ambigram (that was designed by John Langdon, who has loads of cool ambigrams on his website).

Ambigrams aren’t the same as palindromes, which are defined as words, verses or sentences that read the same backwards as they do forwards. So ‘deified’ is a palindrome. But ‘noon’ is both a palindrome and an ambigram (head explodes).

Ambigram is a portmanteau (a word made up of two other words), in this case a combination of ‘ambi-’ from the Latin word ‘ambidexter’ meaning ‘both’ or ‘on both sides’, and ‘-gram’ from the Greek word ‘gramma’, meaning ‘grandma’. Not really, it means ‘letter’ or ‘written character’.

The term ‘ambigram’ was coined by Douglas R. Hofstadter, an American scholar of cognitive science, physics and comparative literature, in the early 1970s. He’s known for his interest in puzzles and visual art, and exploring patterns in language. He introduced the concept of ambigrams in his book ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid’, which was published in 1979. Such was his influence that he even gets a mention in ‘2010: Odyssey Two’ by Arthur C. Clarke (the sequel to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’), when scary (especially now) AI HAL 9000 is described by the character Dr Chandra as being caught in a ‘Hofstadter–Möbius loop’ (I tried to find out what this actually means, but it was far too complicated for little ole me).

Hofstadter also created his own law (I want a law!), which is ‘It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law’. This basically means that any task or project will probably take longer than you thought, even if you take into account Hofstadter’s law that it’s likely to take longer than you thought (second head explosion).

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, Leonard Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory wasn’t named after our Doug, but after Robert Hofstadter, an American physicist who won the 1961 Nobel Prize in physics. He was Douglas’s dad though (that’s one talented family).)

myrmecophilous

If you’re described as ‘myrmecophilous’, then you’re associated with, benefited by or fond of (hopefully not in a weird way) ants. It’s a scientific term that describes the positive relationships ants have with other species like butterflies, crickets, beetles and mites, all of which help them be good at staying alive (that’s the science). For example, butterflies belonging to the family Lycaenidae (which is almost 6,000 species worldwide), are myrmecophiles. In return for protection from predators, some caterpillars have developed dew patches, small button-like spots on their backs, that ooze a thick sugary fluid that the ants go nuts for, while others have a nectar gland that pumps out the same sweet goodness (sounds gross, I know). So the ants get their fix, and the caterpillars get bodyguards (even if they are all hopped up on sugar).

The word myrmecophilous has Greek roots. ‘Myrmec’ means ‘ant’, while the ‘phile’ ending comes from ‘philos’, which means to love. Like extremophile, galanthophile and lots of other nasty words we won’t mention here.

Okay, ant facts.

• There are over 12,000 ant species worldwide.

• The bullet ant is said to have the most painful sting in the world – it feels like being hit by a hammer. Just kidding, it feels like a bullet, obviously.

• A single ant can carry 50 times its own bodyweight. And they even work together to move stuff they can’t manage on their own.

• Ants can be found on every single continent except Antarctica, which is mental considering it’s the only continent that literally starts with ‘ant’.

• The biggest ants’ nest ever found is over 3,700 miles wide. Yep, you did read that right. Called the ‘Argentine Ant Supercolony’ (good name for a band), it goes from northern Italy through the south of France, and out to the western coast of Spain. Many ant experts think it’s actually much much bigger than this and stretches across the globe – that’s because Argentine ants from opposite sides of the world recognise each other (which I think basically means they don’t try to kill each other), leading them to think they all live in one utterly ginormous colony. Here’s hoping they don’t rise up and take over the world… actually maybe that would be better.

• I ate a stir-fry in a restaurant in Cambodia that had ants in it (as an ingredient – it wasn’t a really dirty restaurant) – although I didn’t realise until I was about halfway through. I thought they were saffron or something like that. It was very nice, but once I did realise, I couldn’t finish it.

quiddity

The most popular sport in the wizarding world, it’s played on broomsticks, and involves each team… I jest, of course. Quiddity is a philosophical concept that describes the thing that makes something what it is – its essence. So you could write: ‘Emma’s weekly posts capture the quiddity of complicated words in straightfoward prose.’ Oh really? How kind of you to say, thank you so much.

It’s nothing to do with HP. But there are no good pictures for ‘essence’.

Now, my two major word-of-the-week sources (which are Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster), disagree on the meaning of quiddity. The one above is Merriam-Webster’s definition, which is the one I’m going with because it’s easiest to understand. But according to Wikipedia, quiddity is a bit more complicated, and describes the properties that a particular thing shares with others of its kind. This makes it the opposite of something called ‘haecceity’ or ‘thisness’ (which apparently is an actual word) i.e. a positive characteristic of an individual that causes it to be this individual, and no other. See why I’m going with the first one?

Quiddity comes from a Latin word, ‘quidditas’. That’s a translation of a Greek phrase ‘to ti en einai’ , meaning ‘the what it was to be’, which sounds like something a drunk person would say.

Quiddity can also refer to a small and usually trivial criticism or complaint, or to a quirk or eccentricity in someone's behaviour or personality. Hamlet uses it in this way in, well, ‘Hamlet’ in his graveside speech, referring to a lawyer: ‘Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures.’

That’s not a very fun note to end on, so here’s a quidditch joke:

Why should you never have sex with a wizard?

Because you might catch Hogwarts, and they never stop quidditching.

(I didn’t say it was a good joke.)

vocable

A vocable is a form of non-lexical utterance. Got it? Nope? Okay, in normal-person speak, they’re word-like sounds that aren’t actually words. Their meaning can change depending on the context, and they often show the speaker’s emotional reaction to something. If you’re still thinking ‘WHAT?’, here are some English examples of vocables and their translations:

I think this is definitely ‘um….?’

• uh-huh: yes

• mm-hmm: also yes

• uh-uh: nope

• hmmm: I’m not sure, maybe

• uh-oh: crap, this isn’t good

• awww: thanks or that’s super-cute

• um…?: what the f*ck

• ewwww: yuck yuck and more yuck.

Filler words like ‘er’ and ‘um’ (i.e. words we use to buy more time when we’re thinking and talking at the same time) also count as vocables. And they turn up in music a lot, as in ‘lalala’ or ‘dumdedum’ (in fact, there are lots of Native American songs that consist entirely of vocables). Every language on earth has its own vocables.

There are lots of other types of words that aren’t actually words. These are called pseudowords, and they include the following…

Nonsense words

Beloved of Lewis Carroll, nonsense words sound like they could be words, but aren’t. Have a read of The Jabberwocky to see them in action.

Nonce (!) words

Nothing to do with Prince Andrew (allegedly), nonce words are words coined for a single occasion only. They’re often used to study the development of language in children, because they let researchers test how kids treat words they don’t already know.

The name comes from ‘for the nonce’ which is an old English idiom meaning ‘for the time being’ or ‘for now’ (thank god).

Ghost words

Words published in a dictionary or reference book by mistake, which are often taken as gospel by readers. A great example is ‘dord’, which was accidentally created by the staff of G. and C. Merriam Company (now part of Merriam-Webster) in the 1934 edition of the New International Dictionary. It was defined as follows:

dord (dôrd), n. Physics & Chem. Abbreviation for density.

So how did this happen? Well, on 31 July 1931, Austin M Patterson, the dictionary’s chemistry editor, sent in a slip reading ‘D or d, cont./density’, which was supposed to add ‘density’ to the list of words that the letter ‘D’ can abbreviate. But whoever was doing the dictionary misread this as one word: Dord. It then appeared on page 771 of the dictionary between the entries for ‘Dorcopsis’ (a type of small kangaroo) and ‘doré’ (golden in colour). It wasn’t until 1939 that an eagle-eyed editor realised ‘dord’ didn’t have any etymology and investigated, then flagged the error. Books being what they are though, it took until 1947 before ‘dord’ was completely removed.

haywire

If something goes haywire, it means it works erratically, in a crazy way or doesn’t work at all. We often use it when we’re talking about technology. That might make you think the ‘wire’ of ‘haywire’ is something to do with power-type wires (that’s the official technical term), but you would in fact be wrong. ‘Haywire’ actually has a much older meaning to do with… wait for it… hay.

Well, I didn’t say it was exciting.

People who deal with hay (farmers, I guess?) use baling wire – a thin, flexible metal wire – to bind together (you’ve guessed it) bales of hay. It’s a bit like duct tape, in that it’s used for all different types of quick and dirty repairs (see ‘The Martian’ by Andy Weir – and the Matt Damon-starring film – for the wonders of duct tape: ‘Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.’ I wholeheartedly agree). Some of the repairs baling wire is used for include ‘wiring gates shut, mending a fence, holding rickety machinery together and stuff like that’. This led to the expression ‘haywire outfit’, which appeared around the turn of the century. It referred to New England logging camps which used cheap temporary fixes (often involving baling wire) for repairing equipment, rather than doing it properly. Eventually the word ‘haywire’ came to describe anything that was flimsy or patched together, and then for attempts to fix things that went wrong.

Unlike duct tape, hay wire also has a reputation for being tricky to manage. That’s because, much like Christmas lights, wired headphones and my jewellery, it can get itself in a complete tangle without any outside intervention. It was probably this that led to ‘haywire’ getting the meaning of ‘crazy’ or ‘out of control’.

carceral

Carceral is an adjective meaning of, or relating to, jails or prisons. The sharp-eyed among you have probably already realised that it shares its roots with ‘incarcerate’ (i.e. put in prison). Both of these come from the Latin word for prison, ‘carcer’. And that comes from ‘karkros’, a Proto-Italic word for ‘enclosure’ or ‘barrier’. In case you’re wondering ‘Proto-Italic’ languages are the ancestors of the Italic languages, spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. So well old, then.

There are lots of other slang words for prison and going to jail. Here are just a few I found.

Slammer

This one didn’t appear until the 1950s in the US of A. It’s pretty straightfoward – it refers to doors being closed noisily behind you.

Clink

Possibly from the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer closing the irons around the wrists or ankles of prisoners. There was also a prison called the Clink in Southwark which goes all the way back to 1129 (and is now the site of The Clink prison museum, where my sister and I once spent a memorable afternoon – there are A LOT of awesome photo opportunities in there). It might also have been influenced by the Flemish word ‘klink’ meaning ‘latch’.

Doing bird

Cockney rhyming slang for ‘birdlime’ which translates to ‘doing time’. This is probably because birdlime is horrible sticky stuff spread on twigs to trap small birds by utter bastards (thankfully banned in most places now).

Pokey

This first appeared in the early 20th century, although no one knows its exact origins. It might come from ‘pogey’, a 19th-century English slang word for poorhouse.

Pen

This is short for ‘penitentiary’, which has been around since the early fifteenth century. Then it meant a ‘place of punishment for offenses against the church’, from the Medieval Latin ‘peniteniaria’ meaning ‘of penance’. The slang term ‘pen’ first appeared in 1884.

In other prison news, England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, locking up 149 people for every 100,000 of the population. Yay us. And apparently old people are getting naughtier – between 2002 and 2015, the number of prisoners aged 60 and over rose by 164%.

If all that’s left you feeling a bit depressed, here’s Johnny Depp in a parody of Jailhouse Rock in John Water’s stone-cold classic ‘Cry Baby’. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you watch it immediately – alongside JD, it also has Iggy Pop and Ricki Lake in it, for crying out loud.

juggernaut

A juggernaut is something huge and powerful, usually destructive, that can’t be stopped, either literally or metaphorically. Like a steam roller, or Donald Trump’s ego. In British English we also use it for a big old lorry. But it is a bit of a weird word. So what is a jugger, and why is it nauting?

A slightly unimpressive photo of the temple

Well, the good news is that ‘juggernaut’ has some epic etymology. The bad news is that it’s a bit grim. It comes from Jagannāth, the Hindi word for ‘Lord of the World’. Jagannath is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and has an important temple in Puri, on the eastern coast of India. That’s not the grim bit, obviously. Each year the temple holds the Ratha Yatra, or chariot festival, when images of Jagannath and his brother (Balabhadra) and sister (Subhadra) are pulled on huge and elaborately decorated (you’ve guessed it) chariots. According to hopefully apocryphal (i.e. bullshit) reports going back to the 14th century, hardcore Vishnu fans would throw themselves in front of these to show their devotion by being crushed beneath the wheels of carriages. That. Is. Commitment. Colonial Brits supposedly saw this, then anglicised Jagannath as ‘juggernaut’ giving it the meaning of unstoppable force that we have today.

Jagannath and his siblings’ temple at Puri is freaking massive – it covers an area of over 400,000 square feet (37,000 square metres in new money). It was built in the 11th or 12th century (depending on which page of Wikipedia you look at) by king Anantavarman Chodaganga, a ruler of the Eastern Ganga dynasty who were in charge of the southern part of Kalinga in India. There’s a flag on the top of it which apparently defies science, and always flies in the opposite direction to the way the wind’s blowing. (Boringly, there is actually some science that explains this involving fluid dynamics and something called a Kármán vortex street, but that isn’t half as fun so let’s ignore it.) Every day since it was built, a priest has scrambled up the walls of the temple – the height of a 45-storey building – without any protective gear, to change this flag. Bagsie not me.

gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is the manipulation of boundaries of electoral districts or constituencies to swing an election a particular way. A good example is when the 19th-century Republican Party split the Dakota Territory into two states instead of one. That’s because each state got at least three electoral votes, regardless of the size of its population.

The OG gerrymander

Gerrymandering is named after one Elbridge Gerry, an American founding father, politician and diplomat who was the fifth vice president from 1813 until he died in 1814. He was also the governor of Massachusetts. During his second term, Republican-controlled legislation created district boundaries designed to increase the party’s control of state and national offices. This lead to some oddly shaped legislative areas, including one in Essex County (a political stronghold for the rival party, the Federalists) that a newspaper said looked like a ‘salamander’ (obvs). They named it the ‘Gerry-mander’ after Elbridge who signed the legislation that created it.

It worked as well – the weirdly shaped district elected three Democrat-Republicans that year. Previously the county had had five Federalist senators.

It’s worth pointing out that apparently Elbridge wasn’t happy about this suspect map redrawing, even if he did still sign the legislation that made it happen. According to his biographer he was ‘a nervous, birdlike little person’ with a stammer, and a habit of ‘contracting and expanding the muscles of his eye’ (I can’t even imagine what that actually looked like). This makes him sound like he might have been bullied into it, but he was no stranger to not signing stuff – in fact he refused to put his name to the American Constitution because he thought the Senate it created could become too tyrannical. So perhaps he would have thought twice about signing that district-redrawing bill if he’d known that two-hundred-and-something years later his name would have become synonymous with this type of cloak-and-dagger political jiggery pokery.

(Gerrymander is an example of an ‘eponym’ or a word named after a person. Check out this post for lots more eponyms, including leotard, diesel and bloomers. Sounds like a party…)

(DISCLAIMER: My knowledge of American politics is shockingly bad. So apologies in advance if any of my facts or terminology are wrong.)

pognophile

Spoiler alert

Any word with ‘phile’ on the end immediately looks vaguely threatening, doesn’t it? Luckily, in this case, it’s fairly innocuous. A pognophile is someone who (hopefully in a healthy way) really likes beards. It has a pretty wide definition, and can include anyone who loves growing their own beard, beards on other people and even those who study beards (because apparently that’s a thing).

Etymology wise it’s quite a straightforward one. ‘Pogon’ is the Greek work for ‘beard’, while ‘phile’ is a suffix we put on the end of words to show that someone loves the thing that comes before it (if that makes sense). ‘Phile’ comes from another Greek word, ‘philos’ which means ‘to love’. If you’re scared of beards, you’re a pognophobe, poor you.

The longest beard in the world belonged to one Hans Nilson Langseth (born in 1846), a Norwegian man whose facial hair was a whopping 17 feet and 6 inches long (that’s 5.334 metres in new money). If you fancy having a go at beating his record you should probably get started now though – it took him 60 years to grow it that long. Apparently beard hair dies once it gets past about five feet. So you have to mat the dead hair at the end into dreadlocks to make it strong enough to keep growing. Ewww, I bet there was all sorts of crap in there. And somebody probably knows exactly how much crap there was in there, as the beard (sadly now sans Hans) is in the Smithsonian. You can see a picture of it in all its glory (and still attached to Hans) here.

capricious

If you’re feeling capricious, it means you’re full of caprice, AKA a sudden and seemingly unmotivated notion or action. So it basically means you’re feeling impulsive or unpredictable, or you’re a bit fickle (we use it to describe weather quite a lot). I decided to look into the backstory of ‘capricious’ because I heard somewhere that it comes from the Italian word ‘capro’ for ‘goat’, and referred to the way goats are all frisky and unpredictable (and eat just about anything). But a little bit of research revealed that it actually has nothing to do with goats at all. It does involve another, much smaller animal though…

Try to contain your excitement.

Caprice came to us via French from an Italian word, capriccio. This originally referred to someone suddenly shuddering with fear rather than being all unpredictable. It’s a smooshing together of two other Italian words: capo, which means ‘head’, and riccio, which is their word for ‘hedgehog’. That’s because when you shudder in fear your hair stands on end, making you a ‘hedgehog head’. Nice, right? But absolutely nowt to do with goats, sorry.

Hedgehog facts:

• The average adult hedgehog has between 5,000 and 7,000 spines.

• Hedgehogs are nocturnal, and one of only three animals that hibernate in the United Kingdom (the other two are bats, and the hazel dormouse which I suggest you google immediately because it’s SOOOOOOO cute).

• They’re surprisingly fast – a hedgehog can run over six feet per second and walk over two miles in a night.

• Baby hedgehogs are called ‘hoglets’ while a group of hedgehogs is called an ‘array’.

(You probably shouldn’t actually put a hedgehog in a cup.)

nidification

Spring be sprunging. And that means animals and birds be having babies. And it’s birds we’re looking at here – nidification is the act, process or technique of building a nest.

Nidification has its origins in Latin – nidificare means ‘to build a nest’. This comes from nidus, meaning (somewhat unsurprisingly) ‘nest’. A couple of related words are ‘nidifugous’, which means ‘to leave a nest soon after hatching’, and nidicolous, which means ‘reared for a time in a nest’, and also just ‘living in a nest’.

The Guinness world record for the largest birds’ nest is currently held by a pair of bald eagles and was found in Florida in 1963. It measured 2.9m (9ft 6in) wide and was 6m (20ft) deep. It was estimated to weigh more than two tonnes (4,409 lb). Another massive nest builder is the Australian mallee fowl whose creations can measure up to 4.57m (15ft) in height and 10.6m (35ft) across. We also have some big birds over here as well – in 1954 a golden eagle nest was found in Scotland that was an impressive 15 feet deep.

Phwoar, look at the nest on that – a sociable weaver nest in Namibia (photo by Harald Süpfle).

Little birds are also getting in on the big-nidification game as well. The sociable weaver (who sounds like it’d be a laugh in the pub) is only around 15cm long (so it’ll struggle to carry the drinks). But it builds massive nests which house hundreds of its mates. These are made up of several different ‘rooms’ – they use the inner ones for sleeping at night (as they’re warmer) and the outside ones for hanging out in during the day. They even place sharp sticks at the entrances to stop any predators from getting in.

Birds don’t have the monopoly on nidification. Lots of other animals build nests, including insects (termites and ants, for example), frogs and fish. Gorillas also build nests which they sleep in at night – they make a fresh one every day, which is the equivalent to changing the sheets, I guess.

shambles

I can’t imagine there are many of us who haven’t uttered the words ‘it’s a [expletive] shambles’ about something or other. So I’m sure you know that it means a state of disorder or confusion, AKA SNAFU. But, did you know that despite having been around since the end of the 16th century, it was only in the 1920s that ‘shambles’ came to mean this? Before that it had a much darker meaning… DUM DUM DUUUUUUM

Photo by Madie Hamilton on Unsplash

Okay, so the first meaning of shamble (singular) was a stool or a ‘money-changer’s table’ (this isn’t the dum dum dum, don’t worry), from the Latin for footstool, ‘scamellum’. After a time it took on the extra meaning of a ‘table for the exhibition of meat for sale’, with ‘shambles’ (plural) becoming a term for a ‘meat market’ (the kind that sells meat, not the Colchester Hippodrome on a Friday night in the 90s). It wasn’t long before ‘shambles’ became an alternative word for a slaughterhouse and, finally, was used figuratively to describe a scene of blood, like a battlefield or place of execution. DUM DUM DUUUUUUM (there it is).

Here’s ‘shambles’ in action in this way in Shakespeare’s Othello:

‘Desdemona: I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.

Othello: O, ay; as summer flies are in the shambles, That quicken even with blowing.’

Photo by Hayden Pollard on Unsplash

(I think this means he doth not esteem her honest.)

Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester (swoon) also uses it in this context:

‘If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter […] had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?"

YES, EDWARD, YES. Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. The Shambles, the picturesque street of timber-framed buildings in York, is so called because there used to be lots of butchers’ shops there – 31 in 1885 apparently. Its full name was ‘The Great Flesh Shambles’. I can see why they rebranded.

I found a couple of different sources for ‘shambling’ as in wonky walking/zombies. Both stem from the stool/table-meaning I mentioned before all the dum dum dumming above. One source says that because people regularly hacked up chunks of meat on these tables, wobbly legs – or ‘shamble legs’ – were a hazard of the job. A second source says that it was to do with the bowlegged position you have to assume to sit on a stool, or shamble.

(I haven’t been able to find out why ‘shambles’ got sanitised in the early 20th century and came to have the hot-mess meaning it does today. Sorry.)

valentine

It’s that time of year again, when couples can be smug and single people can be depressed. To take my mind off my own spinsterhood, I thought I’d investigate exactly who the Valentine of St Valentine’s Day (note the apostrophe, card companies) is. And it turns out… no one’s entirely sure. Apparently there were a few Christian martyrs named Valentine who could have given their name to it, none of whom were particularly interesting (soz guys).

So, Christian martyrs were a bit of a dead end (both literally and figuratively). But while I was researching them I did stumble across Lupercalia, which is much more interesting. It was a Roman fertility festival which Valentine’s Day may or may not have its origins in (Wikipedia says it’s probably rubbish, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a bit more open to it). Lupercalia was held from 13th to 15th February, and was overseen by a group of priests called the Luperci, the name of which likely comes from ‘lupus’ – Latin for wolf. This is because Lupercalia was probably (the internet is a bit vague on this) connected to Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome who were suckled by a she-wolf (ewwww) after being abandoned on the banks of the river Tiber. They named the wolf Lupercal, and historians think that Lupercalia took place to honour her, and also to suck up to the Roman fertility god, Lupercus.

Lupercalia involved a bit more than flowers, chocolates and cards. It started with the priests sacrificing some goats and a dog, wiping the blood on themselves then laughing (yep). This was followed by the obligatory feast, after which the Luperci cut ‘thongs’ (which I assume are strips of leather rather than uncomfortable knickers) from the skins of the goats. They then took all their clothes off, and ran about whipping any women who got too close with the thongs. If you got hit with one, then lucky you, you’d immediately be super fertile.

Some scholars say there was also a jar of women’s names, which men would pick from. They’d then spend the festival with the woman whose name they’d pulled from the jar. Apparently lots of them went on to get married as well. Sounds better than Match.com to be honest.

In the late 5th century, the-then Pope, Gelasius I (who sounds like a super villain), decided that Lupercalia had to go (too much nakedness and BDSM I guess), and declared 14th February a day to celebrate some non-specific marytrs called Valentine. The new feast day didn’t have any of the lovey-dovey shenanigans that we have to put up with today though. These didn’t come about until the 14th century, when bloody Chaucer wrote a poem about it.

So how about it? Next year, forgo the sappy cards and garage forecourt flowers, and try hitting your other half with a piece of leather instead while running round the streets naked. They’ll LOVE it.

aspersion

To cast aspersions on someone (or have them cast on you), is to make false or misleading claims about someone meant to harm their reputation. But have you ever wondered what an aspersion actually is? Well, it turns out that back in the day an aspersion was actually quite a nice thing to have thrown at you. Have a look at this quote from Sir William of Shakespeare’s tale of a magical island The Tempest:

‘No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall.’

So, why is the aspersion sweet here? Let’s get our etymology on… ‘Aspersion’ comes from the Latin word ‘aspersus’, which itself comes from the verb ‘aspergere’, meaning to sprinkle or scatter. It first appeared in English in the 16th century and was used for nice sprinklings (which sounds weird), like holy water in religious ceremonies. In fact ‘aspersion’ is a type of sprinkly baptism, alongside ‘immersion’ (which is self-explanatory) and ‘affusion’ (which is when you get water poured on your head). There’s a whole load of kit that goes along with aspersion as well, including an aspergillum (a tool that holds the water pre-sprinkle), and an aspersorium, AKA holy water bucket (good name for a band). Aspergilla (the plural of aspergillum) aren’t limited to the Christian church either – apparently modern-day pagans and Wiccans also use them to throw liquid at other people in various cleansing rituals.

(There’s also a fungus called aspergillus, so named by its discoverer because it looked like a holy water sprinkler – he was a priest as well as a biologist – under a microscope. According to Wikipedia, aspergillus are ‘found in millions in pillows’. Gross.)

So when did aspersions become bad? Pretty quickly, actually – by the end of the 16th century we were using the word to describe reports that stain someone’s reputation. Why? I don’t know, is the short answer. But I imagine it was because most sprinklings to the face (that aren’t holy or made of chocolate) probably aren’t good. Probably.

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.

inmate

I’ve just started watching Screw on Channel 4, a comedy-drama (although two episodes in there’s definitely more emphasis on drama than comedy) about a category-B men’s prison oop North somewhere. One of the prisoners talked about the word ‘inmate’. and how it hasn’t always applied to prisoners. Which got me thinking…

You might have already guessed where ‘inmate’ comes from (although I didn’t). It dates back to the 1500s and originally meant someone who lived in a house which was rented by someone else (AKA a possibly illegal sub-letter). It’s literally just ‘inn’ (as in pub where people can stay) and ‘mate’ (as in pal) smushed together. Which seems a bit unimaginative, but whatevs.

Over time, ‘inmate’ came to mean anyone who lived with lots of other people in a single house. Then, in the late 1800s, people also started using it to refer to those who’d been locked up against their will in prisons, asylums and hospitals. At around the same time, the words ‘roommate’ and ‘housemate’ appeared in the dictionary. So it wasn’t long before ‘inmate’ lost its original meaning and came to be used only to refer to people who’d been incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

matutolypea

I can guarantee you’ve had matutolypea at some point in your life. Don’t panic – it’s not some horrible internal disease or toe fungus. It’s when you wake up in the morning feeling grumpy and out of sorts. So it’s basically a posh way of saying that you got out of bed the wrong side.

A very old figurine that may or may not be Hakuna Matata, sorry Matuta Mater (from Wikipedia).

Etymology wise, despite its grand appearance, matutolypea is actually pretty straightforward. It’s a word of two halves. The ‘matuto’ bit comes from ‘Matuta Mater’, an ancient Roman goddess of the dawn. She was worshipped on the western and southern edges of the Roman empire and would later matutate (this is a bad play on words, sorry) into the slightly better-known Aurora. The second part of matutolypea comes from the Greek word ‘lype’, which means ‘grief or sorrow’. So it basically translates as ‘morning mourning’, which is pleasing (unless you’ve got it, or live with someone who does).

Even with these impressive classical roots, ‘matutolypea’ seems to be a fairly modern word, first turning up in print in the 1990s. Sadly, you won’t find it in any mainstream dictionaries either (but that’s never stopped me before).

Despite Matuta being largely forgotten when it comes to goddesses, we get lots of other morning-type words from her name, some more well known than others. They include ‘matins’ which are morning church services, ‘matinee’ for an afternoon performance and ‘matutinal’ which means something is happening in the morning (these have come to us via the French word ‘matin’, which I’m sure you’ll remember from school means ‘morning’).

Your challenge for this week is to say something like this to as many people as you can:

‘Don’t talk to me for at least an hour until my matutolypea subsides.’

And feel free to let me know their reaction in the comments.

bezoar

You know when you come across a word you didn’t know, and then you keep seeing it everywhere? This is what happened to me with ‘bezoar’ this week (well, in two places – QI, and an episode of Audible’s excellent dramatisation of Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Sandman’). A bezoar is a solid mass of indigestible material that forms in the digestive tract. So far, so gross. But, for years many people have believed bezoars to have medicinal properties, and even that they’re full-on magical.

A ring made out of a bezoar. Why, WHY?

The word itself comes from the Persian language – specifically pād-zahr, which means ‘antidote’. In fact, if you were born in 11th-century Europe and were unfortunate enough to get poisoned, it’s likely you’d be presented with a bezoar in a glass of water by your friendly neighbourhood medicine person. That’s because they were believed to be universal antidotes that would cure any type of poison. This was proved to be utter bullshit in 1567 by a French surgeon called Ambroise Paré. He found a cook in the King’s court who’d been sentenced to death and chosen to be poisoned. He gave the unlucky chef a bezoar stone. As you can probably guess, the man died in agony seven hours after taking the poison. Merde.

It’s actually not all complete bunkum though – modern experiments have shown that bezoars can actually remove arsenic (I guess our French cook was poisoned with something other than arsenic – quel dommage).

There are lots of different types of bezoar. One of the most minging is a trichobezoar. That’s a bezoar made of undigested hair, often formed as a result of Rapunzel syndrome, a (thankfully) rare intestinal condition which comes about from eating too much of YOUR OWN HAIR. One of the largest trichobezoars I could find online was removed from the stomach of an 18-year-old woman in India and was a metre long, weighing in at 1.13kg (2.5lbs). If you’d like to feel a bit sick, you can check out the actual thing in this article. Wikipedia also lists a 4.5kg (9.9lbs) hairball which came out of a woman (ladies, what are you doing?!) in Chicago in 2006, but thankfully I couldn’t find a picture of that one (actually I didn’t look, as I didn’t think my stomach could handle it).

gird

You’ll no doubt have heard the phrase ‘to gird one’s loins’ which means to prepare yourself for something, usually stressful. It’s always given me a slightly minging image of hairy thighs rubbing together (sorry). But it’s also made me wonder where the word ‘gird’ comes from. And do we gird anything other than loins? Let’s find out…

‘To gird’ something means to encircle or bind it with a flexible band (like a belt – that’s also where we get ‘girdle’ from). Girding of loins goes all the way back to the Bible. The actual quote (from the King James version) is:

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ…

So, what does it actually mean? Well, ye olde Biblical fashionistas would have been decked out in long flowing tunics. Yes, these were great in the desert-y heat, but they weren’t all that practical for anything other than standing around. So when they had to do running or crucifying or killing first borns, they’d take all that long flowy fabric and tie it up with their belt like a pair of shorts, AKA ‘gird’ it round their nethers.

Because you can literally find anything on the internet, someone with too much time on his hands has put together a guide on how to gird your loins. So if you ever find yourself wearing a floor-length tunic then needing to run away from someone or something, you’re all sorted. I know, I spoil you.

Turns out you can gird something other than loins, because ‘gird’ also has a secondary meaning, which is to be sneering or mocking. So presumably if someone mucks up their tunic-tying – think the fashion show testicle in The Inbetweeners – you can be girding about the way they’ve girded their loins.

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’).