kowtow

If you kowtow to someone, it means you agree to do something a bit too easily, or in an obsequious way – AKA sucking up. It now has quite negative connotations, but in days gone by a kowtow was actually the ultimate way to show respect to a superior. It involved bowing or kneeling so low that your forehead was touching the floor (if I did this I wouldn’t be able to get back up again), or even lying fully prostrate on the ground. Apparently a kosher kowtow was three kneelings and nine knockings of your forehead on the floor – and if you can’t hear your skull hitting the ground then you ain’t doing it properly. Ouch.

Vietnamese graduates kowtowing to their teachers in 1897

The word ‘kowtow’ itself comes from Cantonese – it’s a combination of ‘kòu’ which means ‘to knock’ and ‘tóu’ which means ‘head’. In Sinospheric culture (which is a fancy-dancy term for countries in East and Southeast Asia that were historically influenced by China, like Japan and Korea), it was used to show respect for one’s parents and elders, superiors and religious big-wigs, all the way up to the Emperor of China himself. The Emperor wasn’t immune either – apparently he would do a kowtow (possibly not the right terminology) to the shrine of Confucius, and also to heaven (that was it though).

The kowtow caused an international incident in 1793 when Lord George (not Paul) Macartney*, the first British ambassador to China, refused to do a full kowtow to Emperor Qianlong (because, British). He went as far as removing his hat and bowing, but that was it. This pissed off the Chinese no end, especially as every other European ambassador had just got on and done it. The Brits agreed to do a kowtow only if the emperor would do the same to a portrait of King George III (yes, the mad one). Unsurprisingly that was a hard ‘no’. China then rejected every single one of Britain’s diplomatic and trade requests. All for the sake of a bow and not a kowtow. Also, MEN.

Macartney’s first meeting with Qianlong. Hope he sang the Frog Chorus

The term ‘kowtow’ arrived in English in the early 1800s, probably as a result of those failed trade negotiations. Within a few decades its meaning had changed to the ‘fawning’ verb we have today.

The kowtow tradition pretty much disappeared after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911–12. Nowadays in China it’s reserved for paying homage to ancestors at family burial grounds.

* Yes, it is spelled differently but I liked the Frog Chorus joke so I left it in.

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.

boondocks

If someone lives out in the boondocks (also boonies), it means they live in the middle of nowhere. It’s generally an American term (the British equivalent is probably ‘the sticks’) and is usually used in a derogatory way to mean somewhere that’s considered backward or dull, AKA the basis for many a disturbing redneck-based horror film.

While boondocks might be a more popular word in the US of A, it didn’t originate there. It’s actually a term from Tagalog, the language that’s the base for Filipino, one of the official languages of the Philippines (obvs). That word is ‘bundok’, which means ‘mountains’. So how did it get from southeast Asia to Murica? Well, during the Philippine Revolution of 1896 to 1898 (when the Philippines fought for independence from 300 years of Spanish colonial rule), occupying American military forces adopted ‘bundok’, broadening its meaning to refer to the wild and remote country they found while fighting abroad. They then took it home with them as ‘boondocks’.

Tagalog is spoken as a first language by the Tagalog people (again, obvs), who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by almost everyone else who lives there. Taglish or Englog, a mixture of Tagalog and English is also widely spoken. In fact, it’s so prevalent that non-native speakers can be identified easily because they use pure Tagalog, whereas native speakers speak Taglish.

prosody

Image courtesy of Tshirt Superstar - Music

Prosody is a linguistic term – wait, don’t stop reading! – concerned with the way we say things. So basically it’s not interested in the actual words we use, but in the way we deliver them. To put it rather more romantically, it’s all about the music of speech – its rhythm (spelled that right first time, well done me), stresses and intonation (called suprasegmentals, fact-fans).

Prosody plays a really important role in communication because it gives us humans information beyond what the words in a sentence literally mean. In case you’re thinking WTF, let’s have a look at it in action.

Imagine someone says this to you:

Wow, this is a really great post about words, isn’t it?

Depending on the intonation and rhythm (nailed it again) this person uses, they could be saying that this really is an excellent post about words that’s packed with useful information. Or they might mean that actually it’s incredibly boring, and they wish they’d never come to this godforsaken website. It all depends on the delivery.

As you’ve probably gathered, prosody is particularly important when it comes to picking up on nuance, like if someone’s being sarcastic or not. It can also change the meaning of simple one-syllable utterances like ‘Ah!’ or ‘Ooh!’ to give them loads of entirely different meanings depending on how you say them. Don’t be smutty.

According to Charles Darwin, prosody probably predates the evolution of human language. That’s because even animals use it. For example, monkeys express their feelings using different tones: low ones for anger and impatience, and high ones for fear and pain.

Wow, this is a really great post about words, isn’t it?