majuscule

You already know what a majuscule is, even if you don’t know the name of it. In fact, I’ve used three majuscules in this post already. Go back and have a look, and see if you can find them (that’s four now).

OK, I’ll stop being a smart-arse now. A majuscule is just an upper-case (or large) letter, or script in which every letter is the same size. It was first used in 1722, and comes from the Latin word ‘majusculus’ which simply means ‘rather large’. So not ‘really large’ – just ‘rather’.

You can also use majuscule as an adjective to describe things that are rather large (stop it) e.g. ‘that’s a majuscular carrot’ or ‘I’ve made a majuscular mistake’. No one will know what you mean though (except me).

You’ve probably guessed that the opposite of ‘majuscule’ is ‘miniscule’. Originally ‘miniscule’ was only used to describe lower-case letters in printing. But while it’s since evolved to describe anything that’s ickle, poor old majuscule got left behind. Shame.

Majuscule scripts are actually harder for us humans to read. That’s because we use the up-and-downness (yes, that is the technical term) of upper and lower-case letters to help us recognise words. So when people capitalise things (like headings) because they want to make them look more IMPORTANT, they’re actually making them harder to read (and they look like they’re shouting). So only use majuscule letters where they belong – at the start of sentences, and for proper nouns.

hocus-pocus

Hocus-pocus is a noun used to describe magic or sleight of hand, often in a derogatory sense (as in ‘the saleperson did some kind of hocus-pocus and now I own a cow’). But did you know that actually, using it might get you struck by lightning/sent straight to hell (if you believe in that type of thing, of course)? That’s because some people believe it’s a corruption (or a perversion if you’re feeling particulary angry) of the phrase ‘Hoc est enim corpus meum’ or ‘This is my body’ which is used in Catholic masses for the Eucharist. GASP. This connection was first made in 1694 (which shows how old the word is) by John Tillotson, who was only the bloody Archbishop of Canterbury. He said this is one of his sermons:

“In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.”

Despite this, there isn’t any real evidence to prove that 17th-century conjurers were actively trying to commit blasphemy or sentence themselves to eternal damnation. It’s more likely that hocus-pocus is just a couple of rhyming nonsense words put together that magicians incorporated into their patter to help them misdirect their audiences.

There’s also a theory that we get the word ‘hoax’ from the ‘hocus’ of ‘hocus pocus’, which was itself used on its own to mean ‘to play a trick on, to trick (someone)’ or, randomly, ‘to stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor ( … to steal from them)’ (from Wiktionary).

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.)

sanguine

This is one of those words that (to misquote The Princess Bride) doesn’t mean what I think it means. If you’re sanguine then you’re confidentally optimistic about something, or eagerly hopeful (I thought it meant you were resigned to something, which is entirely wrong). It also means ‘of or relating to blood’, and you can use it as an adjective to describe something that’s blood red. This second meaning makes sense when you know that the Latin word for blood is ‘sanguis’.

But how did a word that means ‘bloody’ also come to mean ‘optimistic’? Well, during the Middle Ages people believed that the human body contained four different liquids. These were called humours, and they were:

(Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash.)

• phlegm

• black bile (also called ‘melancholy’)

• yellow bile

• blood.

The key to perfect health was to have all these humours balanced. But, everyone had one that dominated. So people who were solid, calm and unemotional were thought to have too much phlegm going on – which is where we get the word ‘phlegmatic’. Too much black or yellow bile meant you were bilious i.e. bad tempered. Blood was the best of the humours to be dominated by – these people were strong, confident and courageous. In short, sanguine.

As medical science advanced and germ theory came to the fore, the idea of humours slowly disappeared. But the words attached to them have stayed with us.

We get a few other bloody words from the same roots as ‘sanguine’ which you may or may not have heard of. These include:

• ‘sanguineous’ meaning ‘bloodthirsty’

• ‘consanguineous’ which means ‘descended from the same ancestor’

• exsanguination, which is what vampires do i.e. drain your blood

• sanguinary which means ‘murderous’ or ‘bloody’

• sanguinolent which is an adjective meaning something is ‘tinged with blood’.

(Thanks to my friend Rob Frankson for giving me the idea for this.)

The four humours in action – which one are you?

(Image from Wikipedia)

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.

adamant

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of…

To be adamant about something is to have an opinion about it which you absolutely refuse to change, despite evidence to the contrary. It’s also, of course, a popstar from the 80s who I once dressed up as for a fancy-dress party (and yes, I did do the Prince Charming dance when I was there, despite being stone-cold sober due to driving, and also only knowing the crossed-arms move and nothing else). But the meaning of adamant as we know it only dates back to around the 1800s. Before that it was used as both a noun and an adjective for something that was really bloody hard – that’s hard like a diamond, not Jason Statham. In fact, ‘adamant’ was used as a synonym (i.e. another word for) a diamond.

If you’re a fan of the Marvel comic/film franchise you’ll probably have realised that this meaning is where ‘adamantium’ comes from – the fictional metal alloy that’s grafted onto Wolverine’s skeleton and claws and is virtually indestructible. ‘Adamant’ or ‘adamantine’ as an unbreakable substance also pops up in lots of classical literature – in Greek mythology, Cronus (Zeus’ dad) castrated his father Uranus using an adamantine sickle given to him by his mother Gaia. That must have made family gatherings quite awkward. And here it is in action in a particularly sexist bit of the novel ‘Romola’ by George Eliot (even though SHE WAS A WOMAN):

Trust not in your gold and silver, trust not in your high fortresses; for, though the walls were of iron, and the fortresses of adamant, the Most High shall put terror into your hearts and weakness into your councils, so that you shall be confounded and flee like women.

Oh, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the name Adam – that’s a Hebrew word meaning, basically, ‘man’.

ingurgitate

This is exactly what you’re thinking it is: the antonym (i.e. the opposite) of ‘regurgitate’. So it means to swallow something greedily (which my mum tells my dad off for doing with crisps). You can also use it figuratively – so you can ingurgitate a good book, for example.

You used to be able to just ‘gurgitate’ as well, although that means the same thing and seems to have fallen out of use completely (and isn’t to be confused with ‘gurgitation’, which means ‘a boiling or surging of a liquid’ (from Merriam-Webster)).

Ingurgitate was first seen way back in 1570. And whether you’re in or regurgitating (and I think we can all agree that the former is probably preferable, although might lead to the latter if you do it too fast), the etymology is the same. Both come from the Latin word gurges which means ‘whirlpool’. Although the link might not seem immediately obvious, it’s probably down to the action of whirlpools engulfing things which brought us to ‘gurgitate’.

(Bonus fact: The biggest whirlpool in the world – technically known as a ‘maelstrom’, which is an awesome word – is called the Saltstraumen, and is just off the coast of Norway, near the Arctic Circle. It forms four times a day as tides carry huge amounts of water through a small channel that’s only 490 feet (150 meters) wide. It’s so big that boats have to make sure they travel through this stretch of water when the maelstrom isn’t active.)

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.