Linkage

Since I am, as mentioned, at SWF being impressed by Faramerz Dabhoiwala, brought to tears by an astounding Women of Letters session, developing a mild crush on David Astle and of course listening to the Inky Fool talk about all the words, today you just get a link or two to read.

Conrad H. Roth has a long, thoughtful and slightly quirky piece on neologism, which starts here.  Sir Thomas doesn't appear until the second part, but it's worth a read otherwise, and when it gets to Sir Thomas we also get some maths discussion - make sure you read the comments as well.

On the lighter - and shorter - side, here is a Wordnik list of words from Sir Thomas' Rabelais. I have my doubts about a few of them, but it's an entertaining list.

Voltaire on Rabelais

I'm gallivanting at the Sydney Writer's Festival for the rest of the week, so blogging may be intermittent (err, more intermittent?) due to my being overcome by logofascination, liquor, lack of sleep or all three. Fear not, though - I have a number of links and things which I shall foist on you in the interim.

To start you off, here is Voltaire's opinion of Rabelais - I'm afraid I've lost the referencing for it, but I will attempt to restore it later*:

The former has interspersed his unaccountably-fantastic and unintelligible book with the most gay strokes of humour; but which, at the same time, has a greater proportion of impertinence. He has been vastly lavish of erudition, of smut, and insipid raillery. An agreeable tale of two pages is purchased at the expense of whole volumes of nonsense. There are but few persons, and those of a grotesque taste, who pretend to understand and to esteem this work; for, as to the rest of the nation, they laugh at the pleasant and diverting touches which are found in Rabelais and despise his book. He is looked upon as the prince of buffoons. The readers are vexed to think that a man who was master of so much wit should have made so wretched a use of it; he is an intoxicated philosopher who never wrote but when he was in liquor.

For one iconic French writer to have such a poor opinion of another has caused a number of people some difficulty, although it has also given them something to write theses and books about. Rabelais is considered by some to be an early champion of democracy, individualism, libertarianism or various other -isms as the writer saw fit. I suspect Rabelais would have made fun of -isms on general principle, but here is a link to a biography of Rabelais from a libertarian perspective, which claims that Voltaire eventually saw some worth in Rabelais' work.


*Update: it's from Voltaire's Letter XXII.--On Mr. Pope and Some Other Famous Poets; thanks to a commenter for the link.

Pasquinade

Meaning: a lampoon, satire or libel. Cotgrave:

The name of an Image, or Poste in Rome, whereon Libels and defamatorie Rimes are fastened, and fathered; also, as Pasquille.  A Pasquill; a Libell clapt on a Poste, or Image.

Usefulness: 2 (The reply-all email, the passive-agressive post-it, the anonymous online outburst, the aggrieved graffito; pasquinades all, and all potentially as comic.)

Logofascination: 1 (Derived from the nickname of a statue in Rome, on which such things were posted - for more on the statue, and the etymology of lampoon as a bonus, see here.)

In the wild: First encountered at LTA (see here for one in Latin) and then in the post linked to above, which mentioned Rabelais.

Quellenforschung

Meaning: source research; the study of a work's sources and influences.

Usefulness: 1 (If I'd known this word earlier, this blog would be the Sir Thomas Urquhart Quellenforschung, or possibly the Quellenforschung* Urquhartian.)

Logofascination: 2 (My German etymology is not so strong; the OED links it to a few other words - including quellen for sources - but they're all either very old or very dialect, or both. Unrelated to quell as in quash.)

In the wild: It was the OED word of the day recently, and LTA dug up a few earlier citations.

Cidentine

Meaning: this side of the teeth

Usefulness: 2 (I'm having trouble putting it in a sentence: "You might want to eat some chocolate while some of it remains cidentine" doesn't specify whose teeth it is on 'this side' of. Its opposite, tradentine, meaning beyond or on the other side of the teeth, might be more useful. "Where'd that chocolate go?" "It's already tradentine." Suggestions welcome.)

Logofascination: 1 (Invented by Sir Thomas; the Alpine comparison - see below - makes me wonder if he had made this joke before.)

In the wild: Not really; Sir Thomas seems to have been the only person to use these words, which fortunately hasn't stopped the OED including them.

Accidence

Meaning: Inflectional morphology. (Helpful, eh?) The parts of grammar that are concerned with the way words change to indicate different things - conjugation, declension and so on.

Usefulness: 2 (At first I thought this might mean I wouldn't have to think about whether a word was being conjugated or declined, but after writing that definition I think I'm better off sticking with my basic verbs-are-conjugated theory.)

Logofascination: 1 (It's accidents, but this specialised term has developed from the sense of an accident as something incidental, not of the essence. So number and gender are incidental - accidental - to some words, rather than essential, and are therefore expressed through inflection. The word cars indicates that there is more than one car, but the car-ness of the cars involved is not altered by the -s; the plural is an accident.*)

In the wild: Mentioned in Asterix, and explained rather better in the post translating the Latin joke in the same comic: it's funny, if you find grammar amusing.  There's a post for every Asterix book here - I'm going to be scouting second hand bookshops for a while, as it's brought on a terrible nostalgia for them.

Philodine

Meaning: A bdelloid rotifer of the genus Philodina or family Philodinidae. (Straight from the OED: I don't know enough to try and write it myself).

Usefulness: 1 (Besides rotifers being ridiculously interesting - in a really geeky way - philodine could well mean a love of whirling, or a whirl of love, either of which is useful.)

Logofascination: 1 (If you can resist saying 'bdelloid rotifer' aloud, you should probably stop reading this blog.  The OED etymology for philodine merely points out that it's from philo- and dinus, the Greek for whirling or vertigo. Rotifers are very, very tiny and very, very interesting - for starters they are technically animals despite being so tiny, and for seconds the Bdelloidea* have managed to survive for 80 millions years despite reproducing asexually. Since this isn't a science blog, I will stop there and point out that however much I like the idea that a biologist named them lovers of whirling, it's also possibly it is, etymologically, something more like the 'whirling family', or 'family of whirlers'.**)

In the wild: The philodine themselves are everywhere, but this being the internet, there are a number of fan pages.