Monthly Archives: January 2009

Here’s a headline I wouldn’t be allowed to write at my paper:

US porn barons appeal for $5bn bailout to help prop up limp industry

And that’s in the Guardian, which isn’t a trashy tabloid. It’s a fairly serious newspaper. They just can get away with being a bit cheeky, as the Brits would say.

Apparently, Paul J.J. Payack of The Global Language Monitor is predicting that the 1,000,000th word in English will be coined this year, specifically on April 29. Lots of media outlets have been reporting on it, some of which are linked to from the Language Monitor’s Web site.

Meanwhile, the linguists at The Language Log say it’s a whole lot of bunk, and that journalists are silly for paying it attention:

Gullible reporters keep falling for a self-aggrandizing scam perpetrated by Paul J.J. Payack, who runs an outfit called Global Language Monitor. As regular Language Log readers know, Mr. Payack has been trumpeting the arrival of “the millionth word” in English for some time now. In fact, he’s predicted that the English language would pass the million-word mark in 2006… and 2007… and 2008… and now 2009.

John McIntyre of You Don’t Say tends to agree, and adds that the whole idea doesn’t really matter:

I suppose it has something to do with the journalistic fascination with impressive but essentially meaningless numbers. Think of anniversary stories, a newspaper staple. If it is one year or 10, 25 or 50 years since a particular event, you can count on reading about it. …

It’s of no consequence to me whether English has a million words or 900,000. I’m more interested in what people do with them.

I’d say that’s about right. (And I wholeheartedly agree that newspapers love meaningless numbers.)

But read up and decide for yourself. The Language Log entry talks about why they think it’s a dumb idea and links to earlier posts about the issue. Payack responded to the latest entry in the comments.

(Hat tip to John McIntyre for posting about this, which was the first I’d heard of it.)

I’m still reading Rick Atkinson’s Day of Battle (I’ve been reading other things too) and wanted to share a few of the interesting words he’s used in the book. Although some are clear from the context, these are mostly words that I had to look up — I’ve been reading the book some days with a dictionary next to me:

• On the invasion of Sicily: “For the past two days at Malta (Gen. Dwight Eisenhower) had been both giddy at HUSKY’s apparent early success … and splenetic at the absence of hard news.” (p. 110) In this sense, splenetic means “Having an irritably morose or peevish disposition or temperament; given or liable to fits of angry impatience or irritability; ill-humoured, testy, irascible. (Frequently in the 18th century),” according to the OED. It comes from the Late Latin spleneticus, which is from the Latin splen for spleen.
• On Winston Churchill’s many letters to Eisenhower, urging him to action against Italy and Rome in 1943: “As the prime minister’s rhetoric grew febrile, metaphors piled up.” (p. 136) Febrile means “marked or caused by fever : feverish,” according to Merriam-Webster online. It comes from the Medieval Latin febrilis, from the Latin febris for fever.
• On combat in Sicily: “Four more Army divisions had become combat veterans, joining the four annealed in Tunisia.” (p. 172) And on the invaision of mainland Italy: “Salerno annealed (Gen. Mark) Clark: he emerged stronger and wiser, if still so autocratic and aloof that soldiers now called him Marcus Aurelius Clarkus.” (p. 237). Annealed, in this figurative sense, means strengthened or toughened, according to M-W. That comes from its literal definition: “to heat and then cool (as steel or glass) usually for softening and making less brittle ; also : to cool slowly usually in a furnace.” It comes from the “Middle English anelen to set on fire, from Old English onælan, from on + ælan to set on fire, burn, from āl fire; akin to Old English æled fire, Old Norse eldr.”

The word sanguine, as I’ve always heard it used, is an adjective that describes someone who is happy and hopeful. But the word sanguinary means something that is, according to Webster’s New World, “1. accompanied by much bloodshed or carnage 2. flowing with blood; bloodstained 3. eager for bloodshed; bloodthirsty.” And exsanguinate means to drain of blood.

All three words have the common Latin root of sanguis, which means blood. So what’s sanguine’s bloody history?

It goes back to the four humors of medieval times, which were “the four fluids of the body that were thought to determine a person’s temperament and features,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. There were four humors, and each was associated with a personality type:

• blood (sanguine temperament)
• black bile (melancholic)
• yellow bile (choleric)
• phlegm (phlegmatic)

Brittanica explains how those humors were thought to influence someone’s personality:

According to these early theorists, emotional stability as well as general health depend on an appropriate balance among the four bodily humors; an excess of one may produce a particular bodily illness or an exaggerated personality trait. Thus, a person with an excess of blood would be expected to have a sanguine temperament—that is, to be optimistic, enthusiastic, and excitable. Too much black bile (dark blood perhaps mixed with other secretions) was believed to produce a melancholic temperament. An oversupply of yellow bile (secreted by the liver) would result in anger, irritability, and a “jaundiced” view of life. An abundance of phlegm (secreted in the respiratory passages) was alleged to make people stolid, apathetic, and undemonstrative.

Although the idea of humors has long since been slain by science, we still have the four personality words today.

Here’s sanguine’s full New World definition: “1. the color of blood; ruddy: said especially of complexions 2. in medieval physiology, having the warm, passionate and cheerful temperament and the healthy, ruddy complexion of one in whom the blood is the predominant humor of the four 3. cheerful and confident; optimistic; hopeful.”

I’m actually surprised that the way I knew sanguine — as someone who is cheerful — is the third definition. I didn’t know at all that it meant blood-colored.

One other fun, though obsolete, definition by way of the Oxford English Dictionary. Centuries ago, sanguine was used as a verb that meant “1. To stain or paint a sanguine color. 2. To stain with blood.”