cacophony

A cacophony is a big old noise, and an unpleasant one at that. Looking and sounding as chaotic as what it describes, ‘cacophony’ comes from the Greek kakophōnía. That’s a mash-up of kakos meaning ‘bad’, and phōnē which means ‘voice’ or ‘sound’. So it literally means ‘bad sound’. No sugar-coating here.

In classical rhetoric (the ancient art of persuasion through language), ‘cacophony’ referred specifically to harsh or clashing combinations of sounds in speech or writing – phrases that were awkward to say, unpleasant to hear or stylistically jarring. So if a sentence was hard to say out loud or just didn’t flow well, it might be criticised as ‘cacophonous’.

‘Cacophony’ first turned up in English in the mid-1600s, when people were busy developing new types of machinery and opera. So you can see why a word for noisy noises might be useful. Its first appearance in print was in Thomas Blout’s Glossographia, one of the earliest dictionaries (published in 1656 with the subtitle ‘A Dictionary Interpreting All Such Hard Words… As Are Now Used in Our Refined English Tongue’ which I love). There it was used to describe ‘an ill, harsh, or unpleasing sound’.

Despite its unpleasant meaning, ‘cacophony’ has a classy family tree, sharing a root with ‘symphony’ – that’s the same phōnē, but this time combined with sym-, meaning together. Its antonym (a fancy way of saying ‘opposite’) is the lesser-known ‘euphony’, which literally means ‘good sound’.

aspersion

Aspersions are critical or mean remarks about someone. They’re almost always ‘cast’, and usually a bit sneaky. But do you actually know what an aspersion is? Nope, me neither.

‘Aspersion’ actually has surprisingly saintly roots. It comes from the Latin ‘aspergere’, which means ‘to sprinkle’ or ‘to scatter’ (see also, ‘disperse’ and ‘intersperse’). In ye olde church services, priests would sprinkle holy water over the congregation – a ritual called, you’ve guessed it, an aspersion.

An AI-generated picture of people casting aspersions on each other

In print, one of the earliest known uses of ‘aspersion’ (in that blessing sense) appears in John Foxe’s 1570 translation of Actes and Monuments, a work of Protestant history and martyrology (sounds like a banger). The exact phrase is ‘the aspersion of the blood of Jesus Christ’. I’m pretty sure this isn’t literal (I hope so, at least – the dry cleaning bills would be a bitch).

You can also find this use of ‘aspersion’ in Shakespeare’s The Tempest:

‘No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall / To make this contract grow.’

So how did we get from a light dousing of holy water to someone suggesting you’re morally bankrupt? Well, by the late 16th century, the OED and other sources record the word shifting meaning. It picked up a figurative use as a ‘bespattering with slander, derogatory criticism’ in the 1590s, losing its literal connection to holy water. By 1749 it was firmly in the negative, as shown in this quote from Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones:

‘… for I defy all the world to cast a just aspersion on my character: nay, the most scandalous tongues have never dared censure my reputation.’

Are aspersions always plural? No, they can be singular – ‘an aspersion was made against me’, for example. But you’ll sound super weird if you say that (and deserve that aspersion).

‘Aspersion’ is a great example of how words evolve – from blessing people with holy water to lightly soiling their reputation. Sprinkle responsibly.

nimrod

You probably know nimrod as a slightly old-fashioned way of calling someone an idiot. A dope or a dimwit. But like lots of our words, it didn’t start out like that.

‘Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care’ (Nimrod by David Scott, 1832)

The OG Nimrod was a biblical figure. In the Book of Genesis, he’s described as ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord’. He was one of Noah’s great-grandsons, a warrior, a king, a symbol of power and skill, and an all-round over-achiever. Oh, except for the fact that he commissioned the Tower of Babel which, if you know your bible, didn’t end well. Despite that, for centuries, the word ‘nimrod’ was used to mean a hunter or someone with great prowess.

Then Looney Tunes got involved. Yup.

In a 1948 cartoon, What Makes Daffy Duck, Daffy calls Elmer Fudd a ‘nimrod’. Not because Elmer was a great hunter – quite the opposite. He was famously incompetent, and Daffy was being hella sarcastic. Bugs Bunny also used the word later, calling Yosemite Sam ‘the little Nimrod’ in Rabbit Every Monday (1951).

But here’s where it gets interesting: the audience didn’t always get the reference. In fact, most people didn’t know the biblical meaning. So while they understood that Daffy and Bugs were mocking Elmer/Yosemite, they took ‘nimrod’ to mean idiot, not hunter. And because Looney Tunes was such a massive part of pop culture at the time, that misinterpretation stuck.

This is a great example of how language evolves in unexpected ways – not because of formal definitions or careful usage, but because a cartoon duck and rabbit made high-brow jokes that nobody got.