stellify

I came across this lovely word in Greg Jenner’s book ‘Dead Famous’ (well worth a read). To stellify something is to turn it into a star or to place it into the heavens. It comes from Greek mythology where this literally (well, literally in classical mythology) happened to people – in fact it was the best thing that could happen to a puny mortal at the end of their life (a couple you might have heard of who were full-on put into the heavens are Orion and Cassiopeia). But it’s also used to describe someone or something becoming famous. This is down to Geoffrey Chaucer – he of nightmare English lessons trying to read ‘The Canterbury Tales’ while waiting for the dirty bits – who wrote a poem called ‘House of Fame’ (or ‘Hous of Fame’ as it is in Middle English. See, it’s not that hard, is it?).

Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash.

Probably written between 1374 and 1385, the whole poem is over 2,005 lines long across three books (GC didn’t do things by halves). It’s basically about a poet who falls asleep and dreams he’s in a glass temple adorned with images of famous people and their deeds (so kinda like ye olde teenager’s bedroom then). With an eagle as a guide (OBVIOUSLY), he then meditates on the nature of fame for all of those 2,005 lines. I won’t quote it here because it’s in Middle English and therefore really bloody hard to read, but if you want to see it in action, go here.

Etymology wise, ‘stellify’ comes from the Latin work stella which means star. So that’s not very interesting. But it’s still a nice word, right?

janitor

This is a bit of an American word – we tend to have caretakers over here. ‘Janitor’ has a less obvious backstory than caretaker though (because that’s presumably just ‘one who takes care of somewhere’ innit). ‘Janitor’ comes from the Latin word ‘janus’ (yes, it has ‘bum’ in it – no sniggering at the back please) which means ‘arch’ or ‘gate’. So in days of yore ‘janitor’ was used to describe someone who guarded, you’ve guessed it, an arch or gate (and any other kind of entrance – agin, no sniggering please). Here it is in action in Vanity Fair:

“At the expiration of that time, wheels were heard whirling up to the gate – the young janitor went out with his gate-keys. It was a lady whom he let in at the bailiff’s door.”

— ‘Vanity Fair’ by William Makepeace Thackeray

Janus is also the name of a Roman god (who’s starred in a previous word of the week – contronym), who was the doorkeeper/bouncer for heaven. He had two faces, which presumably made him very good at his job (as he could see people coming and going – although I can’t imagine many people were leaving…). I like to think he said things like ‘your name’s not down, you’re not coming in’ and ‘no shirt, no entry’.

forensic

Photo by Nicole Reyes on Unsplash.

I listen to a lot of true-crime podcasts, and the word ‘forensic’ comes up all the time. I’ve recently been listening to an audiobook about a forensic scientist, which said that it doesn’t (as I thought) just relate to physical evidence like bits of skin and other gross stuff people leave at crime scenes. It’s actually a much broader term, and is a synonym (i.e. a word that means the same as) for ‘legal’ or ‘related to courts’.

Etymology-wise, ‘forensic’ comes from the Latin term forēnsis, which means ‘of or before the forum’. This is because, back in Roman times, people accused of crimes were presented to a group of important public individuals in the forum (AKA the marketplace). The naughty person and the person accusing them of being naughty would both give a speech telling their side of the story. The person who gave the best speech would then win. Yup, it was all about the argument and how they delivered it – the definition of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. So I guess as long as you could do a good presentation then you could literally get away with murder.

Stay sexy, and don’t get murdered.

ultracrepidarian

We probably all know an ultracrepidarian. It’s someone who gives advice or opinions on things they don’t know anything about.

A different type of cobbler.

The story behind this word comes, as do many of my words of the week, from Ancient Greece. A famous painter by the name of Apelles (said to have been court artist to Alexander the Great – so a pretty big deal then) heard a cobbler being rude about the way he’d painted a foot in one of his works. Apelles then said something very cutting and witty to the cobbler about how he shouldn’t judge things that were beyond him (although, to be fair to the cobbler, he probably had seen a fair few feet working as he did in the shoemaking game… Anyway, I digress). Sadly, Apelles’ exact remark has been lost in the mists of time, which is annoying. But much cleverer people than me think it probably went something along the lines of ultra crepidam, which means ‘beyond the sole’ in Latin. And from that we get ultracrepidarian. Or, in modern parlance, mansplainer.

disaster

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash.

You know what a disaster is – a shitshow. So basically the whole world at the moment (just in case you’re from the future, it’s late 2020 and we’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic). But ‘disaster’ is another everyday word that has an interesting backstory.

It first turned up in 1567, and the ‘aster’ bit comes from the Latin word for ‘star’ (‘astro’). And the ‘dis’ bit is Latin for ‘baaaaaaaaaaad’. Or, to put it in a more professional way, the ‘dis-’ prefix expresses that a word is negative (think discontent, dishearten, dislike, and so on). This all comes from ye olde idea that the position of the stars influences what happens on terra firma. And that if those stars are out of whack, bad stuff goes down here. Like how Romeo and Juliet are described as ‘star-crossed’ AKA (spoiler alert) doomed to be thwarted by outside forces.

‘Disaster’ isn’t the only word that has a galactic flavour – ‘influenza’ comes from the Medieval Latin word for ‘influence’, based on the idea that epidemics were influenced by the position of the stars. Well, it’s as good a theory as any, I guess.