Ah, how the time flies. It seems like only yesterday HaggardHawks embarked on a series of fifty Top 10 YouTube videos, back when David Cameron was Prime Minister and the UK wasn’t being laughed at by everyone, but here we are! How. The time. Flies.
Unbelievably, we’re already at the halfway point in our series, as this week’s video—looking, appropriately enough, at the meanings and origins of 10 Words To Do With Halves—is the 25th of the 50 in the series. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re officially embarking on the home stretch...
Out of all the halves in the video, however, one word that nearly-but-didn’t make the final cut was Laodicean, a synonym (as Thomas Hardy fans will doubtless know) for half-heartedness or apathy, or else a byword for someone who is indifferent or uninterested in important matters.
The word derives from Laodicea, a city and region of Ancient Greece now located in modern-day Turkey, whose inhabitants were notorious for their religious indifference. In the Book of Revelation, the Laodiceans were one of seven ancient peoples or Christian churches—alongside those of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyateira, Sardis and Philadelphia (no, not that Philadelphia)—to whom messages were to be sent to stir them from their apathy. And in his letter to the Laodiceans, the author of the Book of Revelation John of Patmos accused them of being “neither cold not hot.”
“I would thou wert cold or hot,” he exclaimed, “so, then because thou are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth”. Good old John of Patmos, such a way with words.
It’s this image of someone or something being “neither cold not hot” in their opinions that led to the adjective Loadicean appearing in English in the early 1600s, as another word for a lukewarm disinterest, or apathy regarding important issues like politics and religion. Likewise, Laodiceanism is another word for unconcern or indifference—one thing John of Patmos certainly couldn’t be accused of.
Rhetorical terms and words for different figures of speech crop up every now and then on the HaggardHawks Twitter feed, and are without exception brilliant, brilliant words:
HYPERBATON is a figure of speech in which the usual order of words is disrupted for emphasis or rhetorical effect. pic.twitter.com/kpMVyavXUv
But with our YouTube channel now in full swing—incredibly, this is already video number 16!—we thought it might be good to dedicate an entire episode to bringing together a choice set of ten:
Many of the words language experts use to describe tropes like these—including all those included in the video—are based on Greek word roots, which are often brought together in quite inventive and memorable ways. Take one of those from the video, antanaclasis: it refers to a word being used with two different meanings, like “I can’t wait to wait tables all day” (which no one in the service industry has ever said) or “I can’t wait to bar him from the bar” (which absolutely everyone in the service industry has said). Because of this repetitious, back-and-forth arrangement, the word antanaclasis derives from the Greek word for a reflection.
Likewise another term from the video, chiasmus, takes its name from the X-shaped Greek letter chi because it refers to the criss-crossed arrangement of repeated words found in “ask not what yourcountrycan do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. And elsewhere in the rhetorician’s dictionary we find words like zeugma, which refers to the use of a single word in two different contexts in the same sentence, like “I will take my camera and some photographs”. It derives from the Greek word for an ox’s yoke, in the sense of one word “yoking” its two meanings together in one sentence. A prodiorthosis is a warning that you’re about to deliver bad news, and essentially means “a pre-apology”. Hendiadys is the emphatic use of two separate words rather than a single word and a qualifying adjective or adverb—like “the rain and the weather spoiled our holiday” rather than “the rainy weather”—and as such literally means “one through two”. And prosopopoeia is a form of personification in which an inanimate object is portrayed as talking:
A PROSOPOPOEIA is a figure of speech in which an imaginary or abstract object is portrayed as speaking. pic.twitter.com/LxIoko6MnK
Late on Monday night (or early on Tuesday morning, depending on where you’re reading this…) a brilliant word quietly crept onto the @HaggardHawks Twitter feed:
…and I thought you might like to know a bit more about it.
Ahistriomastixis indeed a theatre critic (or a “severe critic of playwrights” asthis dictionarydefines it), but that’s putting it lightly: the wordhistriomastixliterally means “scourge of actors”, and the suffix –mastixderives froman Ancient Greek wordfor a horsewhip. There’s a reason why this word has such abrasive connotations, however: it was invented by someone who really,really, hated actors.
His name wasWilliam Prynne, a seventeenth century English lawyer, pamphleteer, and notoriously hard-nosed Puritan. Born in Somerset in 1600 and educated at Oxford, it’s thought that Prynne was first introduced to Puritanism during his training to become a barrister at London’sLincoln Innin the mid-1620s; he published his first Puritanical literature the year before he was called to the Bar in 1628.
Over the next four decades, Prynne published more than 200 books and pamphlets, the majority of which outlined his stringent views on everything from Christian redemption (some people were predestinednever to be redeemedby Christ’s atonement on the Cross, he believed) to the length of a person’s hair (men’s hair should be kept short, women’s should be kept long, and anything in between was “unseemly and unlawful to Christians”).
Like all Puritans, he railed against any form of celebration or revelry, and so out went singing, dancing, music, and Christmas, which was dismissed as derivative of the Roman Bacchanalia,a fact that“should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate [it]”. But as unpopular and uncompromising as Prynne’s opinions were, none landed him in as much trouble as when he turned his reproachful attention to one group in particular: actors.
Prynne saw acting and masquerading as no different from any other kind of revelry, and in 1632 published a rambling 1,000-page essay of unadulterated condemnation to explain his stance. EntitledHistriomastix: The Player’s Scourge or Actor’s Tragedy, in it Prynne attacked almost every facet of the theatre, from the actors themselves (“sinful, heathenish, lewd, ungodly spectacles”, “pernicious corruptions”, “intolerable mischiefs to churches, to republics, to the manners, minds, and souls of men”) to their costumes (“a confluence of all whorish, immodest, lust-provoking attires … sufficient to excite a very hell of noisome lusts in the most mortified actors’ and spectators’ bowels”).
Shakespeare’s trick of having men and boys dressing as women to play female characters—“representing the persons of lewd notorious strumpets”, according to Prynne—was “undoubtedly sinful, yea, utterly unlawful to Christians”. The plays themselves were written off as “deceitful fictions, which would quickly teach men to cheat, to steal, to play hypocrites and dissemblers”. And the “obscene, lascivious lust-provoking songs and poems” performed in them were “abominable unto Christians” as they risked “enflaming the outrageous lusts” of the audience, who are “transported by them to aMahometanparadise or ecstasy of uncleanness”. Well, quite.
Each to their own, of course, but in this instance there was one small problem with Prynne’s vitriol: alongside her duties as queen consort, the reigning King Charles I’s wife Henrietta Maria liked nothing better than donning something from her confluence of all whorish attires and performing in a good old deceitful fiction. Put another way, she was an actress.
Consequently, Prynne’sHistriomastixsoon attracted the attention of the royal household, and his outspoken opinions on the theatre were soon being spun as a less-than-subtle slight on Queen Henrietta herself. The Archbishop of Canterbury,William Laud, and the Attorney-General,William Noy, had Prynne arrested and thrown in the Tower of London, and on 17 February 1634 he was sentenced to life imprisonment, fined an eye-watering £5,000 (equivalent to £400,000 today), stripped of his Oxford degree, and, just when things could scarcely get any worse, ordered to be pilloried and have both his ears cut off. The case understandably caused a sensation—and amid all the brouhaha, the English language earned a new word for a harsh and uncompromising theatrical critic.
But not even that insane catalogue of punishments was enough to stop Prynne. Thrown back into the Tower, he continued his writing, this time turning his attention away from the theatre and towards the moderate anti-Puritan clergy who had landed him in jail. In 1637, he found himself again in hot water after publishing an attack onthe Bishop of Norwich. For a second time he was handed a life sentence, fined another £5,000, pilloried and, for what it was worth, sentenced to have what little remained of his ears again cut off. This time around he was also branded on both sides of his face with the letters “SL”, which according to the courts was to show everyone that he was “seditious libeller” —but Prynne preferred to tell people that it stood forstigmata laudus, or “the marks of praise”.
Remarkably, Prynne’s luck suddenly changed in 1640, whenthe Long Parliament—convened by King Charles to fund his on-going battles against rebellion in Scotland—overturned his conviction, released him from the Tower, and reinstated all his legal qualifications (which he soon put to good work prosecuting Archbishop Laud when he was later arrested and tried for treason; Laud was eventually executed in 1645). Prynne also continued his pamphleteering, but as Charles I’s monarchy collapsed and England was thrown into Civil War, his condemnatory attention soon turned to Oliver Cromwell.
Although Cromwell himself was a Puritan, Prynne took exception tohis and his supporters’interpretation of radical Puritanism. He despised those championing the king’s execution, wassuspicious of Cromwell’s republican army, and ultimately found himself supporting the Royalist cause. After Cromwell’s downfall andthe Restoration of the monarchyin 1660, Prynne’s stance was rewarded by Charles II with a seat in Parliament—and, ironically, the position of Keeper of the Records of the Tower of London.
He died in 1669, his hatred of actors and his invention of the word histriomastix earning him a place in the dictionary. It’s quite a life story, though—and would make a great play. Kickstarter, anyone?
If you’ve been keeping up with the new HHYouTube channel, chances are you’ve already seen the second video in our new #500Words project, which went online yesterday. Looking at the meanings and origins of 10 Words Spelled Q Without U, this time around one of the words included the qindarka or qintar, the name of a monetary unit used in Albanian:
Qindarka itself essentially means “a little part of 100” in Albanian—which, let’s face it, isn’t the most original name for a coin equal to 1 one-hundredth of something. But it’s what the qindarka is 1/100th of that’s more interesting. As mentioned in the video, the principal unit of currency in Albania is the Albanian lek, which takes its name from Alexander the Great. According to the history books, Alexander was born in Pella in Macedon (now in modern-day Greece) in 356BC.
But in Albania, there’s an uncorroborated (and somewhat controversial) theory that Alexander—along with the likes of Aristotle, Pyrrhus, and Alexander’s father Phillip II—was born in Illyria, the region of ancient Europe that corresponds today to the Balkans peninsula and modern-day Albania. Was Alexander the Great really Albanian? Well, it’s doubtful. But the theory is nevertheless commemorated by the name of the Albanian currency.
But what about the rest of the world? Are there any more etymological gems jangling around the pockets and wallets of other countries?
Admittedly, the vast majority of world currencies take their names from fairly bland or predictable roots. Many refer to weights and measures, like the pound, which once referred to the value of one pound of silver, and the lira, which in turn takes its name from libra, the Latin word for “pound”.
Likewise, both shekel and peso literally mean “weight” in Hebrew and Spanish (peso derives from the same etymological root as pendant, in the sense of something being weighed on a balance or set of scales), while more obscure entries in this category include the Kazakhstani tenge (which literally means “a set of scales”), and the Mauritanian ouguiya, which takes its name via French and Arabic from the Latin word for “ounce”, uncia. The Ukrainian hryvnia too is named for an ancient local unit of weight once used to measure precious metals.
Like the qindarka, other currencies have straightforward numerical roots, referring to fractions or portions of something larger. Dinar, the name of the main unit of currency in 11 different countries, is derived from the Latin denarius, literally “a tenth part.” Similarly, the cent, centime,and centesimo all have names referring to a fraction of 1/100th.
Some names are even less inspired: the Afghanistan afghani is divided into 100 smaller units called pul, which literally means “money”. The taka of Bangladesh takes its name from a local Bangla word meaning “cash”. The Vietnamese đồng and the manat of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan also just mean “money”, while the ngultrum of Bhutan has a Dzongkha name literally meaning “money pieces.” The Japanese yen, Korean won and Chinese yuan all mean “round”, while the yuan has also been known as the renmimbi since 1949—which literally means “the people’s currency”
More imaginatively, some monetary units have geographical names, and refer either to their home country or to some notable feature therein. The loti of Lesotho, for instance, is named after the country’s Maloti Mountains. The Eritrean nakfa is named for the town of Nakfa that served as a based during the country’s fight for independence. And the kwanza, the unit of currency in four African countries, is thought to take its name from the River Cuanza that flows through Angola.
By far the most famous geographical name, however, is the dollar, which traces its name back to the tiny Bohemian spa town of Joachimstal, now in the Czech Republic: the high-quality silver that was mined there was once used to make coins known as joachimstaler, which quickly shorted to thaler, and finally ended up in the New World as dollar via the colonial Dutch and Spanish. Incidentally, because these early coins were originally quite weighty, the colonial dollar was nicknamed the gourde in the 18th century slang, a name derived from a French word meaning “stupid” or “dull”—it lives on in the name of the currency of Haiti.
Like the dollar, some currencies take their names from their component metal or their means of manufacture. Rubleis thought to come from a Russian word meaning “to chop” or “hew,” possibly because the coins once had to be hewn from solid blocks of metal. The piaster or piastre—1/100th of an Egyptian, Lebanese, Sudanese or Syrian pound—takes its name from an Italian word, piastra, for a thin piece of metal. The Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah,and Ethiopian birr all have names meaning “silver,” while the Kyrgyzstani and Uzbekistani som take their name from local words meaning “pure”, as in “pure gold”.
Stamps of royal authority are behind the names of the Czech koruna and all the various Scandinavian krones and krónas, all of which take their name from local words meaning “crown”. The Brazilian real, the Mauritanian ariary,and the rial of Iran, Yemen and Oman likewise mean “royal.”
Many of the world’s krones and rials are stamped with crowns, and likewise some currencies take their names from the images that once decorated them. As well as the term sterling (literally a “little star”, a mark once stamped on pound-sterling coins) the Russian kopeck once bore a picture of a mounted knight, and derives from a Russian word meaning “lance”. The Hungarian forint (as well as the English and Dutch florin) derives from a coin once minted in Tuscany that was marked with a lily, and so was named for the Italian word for “little flower,” fiorino. The Bulagrian lev similarly means “lion,” and the Portuguese escudo (now replaced by the euro) means “shield”. Perhaps best of all in this category, however, is the Swaziland lilangeni, whose name simply means “a member of the royal family”.
Another currency replaced by the euro was the Greek drachma, whose name literally meant “handful”, or “as much as can be seized in one hand”. The dirham, used in both Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, is its etymological descendant. Along a similar path, the Georgian lari has a name literally meaning “hoard.” Former currencies are also name-checked in Ghana and the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, whose monetary units—the Ghanaian cedi and the Vanuatu vatu—mean “cowry shell” and “stone” respectively, both referring to items once used locally as money. (The cedi, incidentally, is divided into 100 pesewas, which literally means “a penny’s worth of gold dust”.) Similarly, the Guatemalan quetzal takes its name from the fact that the feathers of the tropical quetzal bird were also once so prized that they were used locally as money.
The lek also isn’t the only currency named in honour of someone. The Costa Rican colón, for instance, is named after Christopher Columbus. The Honduran lempira is said to take its name from a native local chief. The Tajikistani somoni is named in honour of the country’s founder, Ismail Samani, and the Venezuelan bolivar is named after Simón Bolívar.
Lastly, amongst the best of the world’s currency etymologies, are the dobra of São Tomé, which takes its name from a Portuguese word meaning “to fold” (which gives a whole new meaning to “folding money”), and the Zambian kwacha, which has a local Nyanja name meaning “dawn”—a reference to a former slogan of Zambian nationalism that promised a “new dawn of freedom.” In turn, it’s divided into 100 subunits called ngwee, which literally means “bright”.
Best of all however, is the Botswana pula, whose name was chosen by a public contest and literally means “rain” in the local Setswana language—in a country in which the Kalahari Desert accounts for 70% of the available land, rain, it seems, is just as valuable as money.
