Boldly Going Bawdy, Super Bawdy!

I'm going to keep this legit, but this post deals with some big boy topics which could cause some tittering among the children.  So if you feel the tittering, go ahead and get yourself on over to something more your speed.

Indo-Europeans had an surprising fascination, and thus many words, with two categories of things: a) things that shine, and b) things that appear blown up, like your cheeks when you are blowing out birthday candles.  The root word bhel-2 carries the meaning “to blow, swell; referring to various round objects"  The word also has a more intimate meaning, "the notion of tumescent masculinity”.  "Tumescent masculinity"... do I need to break that down for you?

First things first.  From bhel-2 we get such familiar words as bowl meaning just that, a pot or bowl.  Bulk refers to cargo, literally a “rolled up load”.  Closely related is bale – rolled up bundle.  And again, boulder, a rounded stone continues with the physical imagery.

Both ball and balloon resemble a blown up, inflated object - like your cheeks.  You know that piece of paper you mark on to vote, the ballot?  The ballot derives it's name from an ancient form of voting - dropping small balls in one container or the other to signal your preference.  If you've ever been out to the farm and seen a full-grown bull in all his glory you'd agree the shape is full and rounded.  Of course, there's another indication you're looking at a bull, right?  I mean, that's not an udder under there.  A seldom used term, bullock, refers to castrated male bovine... which now has nothing hanging around... down there.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, sometimes the b in bhel-2 can flip vertically when it goes traveling and we wind up with a root something like phel from which we get folly and fool puffed up, but still empty inside.  Turn that b back up and you'll recognize bellows has the same meaning.

Leaving the seat down... I mean leave the p down and we have the root for phallus.  And phallus is not just a reference to the male apparatus, it specifically refers to swollen, erect penis - which is the difference between Michelangelo's David sculpture being phallic or not.  Ironically sounding like bullock, bollix is how the Brits refer to testicles, and no surprise that they're referred to as balls.  That metaphor is technically appropriate and not really a bawdy term.  Speaking of bawdy speaking, that term derives from comments about phalluses, balls, and other matters best left “private”.  Let's get this out there as well... if someone acts bold, what do we say?  Yup, they've "got a lot of balls".

As it often happens, we're kind of back where we started.  I love the college football bowl season and a month after that concludes we finally get the Super Bowl (yeah, I used the term without permission - come and get me Goodell).  We refer to these significant sporting events as "bowls" because that is simply the shape the facility in which they play - the football stadium is bowl-shaped.  Originally, end-of-season games were played in famous structures - the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl - and so the game itself came to be called by the structure in which it was played*.  (Wouldn't it sound odd, now, if we looked forward to the Cotton Arena and the Rose Stadium.  Same thing really.) Isn't it ironic that our modern day bowls are filled with young bulls in their prime - all swollen and bold.  At one point in the tormented history of sport, it is rumored that athletes would shoot themselves up with the stuff their balls were supposed to make naturally.  You know, to ensure that they earned a ticket to the big bowl, the Super Bowl (oops, I did it again).
[Thanks to Mike Pearce for the extraordinarily great bowl mashup.]

Nice to Mete You

Shakespeare said, among a few other things, "therefore it is meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes".  He means it is appropriate that like minds stick together.  (We rarely use "meet" this way anymore.  To "meet" someone for an appointment is from an altogether different IE root.)  Shakespeare's meet comes from the root, med-, meaning "to take appropriate measures".  In fact, measure also comes from this root.  The English root of measure is mete.  Although seldom used in common conversation, I am gratified to see that "mete out punishment" (deliver the right amount) gets well over 100,00 hits on Google.

What do we ask doctors to do if not take appropriate measures to heal us?  Wonder why we call it the medical profession?  Hopefully, before Sawbones prescribes arsenic for a hangnail, he will meditate (consider what is appropriate) on his options for treatment.  Some docs are accused of arrogance when we wish they'd be more modest (taking accurate measure of their abilities).  On the other hand, many parents have wished docs would prescribe less moderate-strength antibiotics when the little ones are suffering an ear infection.  (Moderate means, well, the appropriate measure - neither too much nor too little.)

If you are working on a project - whether a work of art, an essay, or a batch of cookies - and the result is not quite right, you modify it.  If something is not the right shape, put it back in the mold and press harder!  Again, we are dealing with the idea of finding the appropriate measure.

If you want to meet (remember, unrelated) someone who lives in a castle, you must measure up to their expectations or they won't let you cross the mote (literally meaning to be permitted).  If the castle is empty, well, you need to find modify your plans for accommodation.  ("Empty" comes from an Old English word æmettig meaning "not occupied" - having nothing to measure.  "Accomodation" is based on the root mode generally referring the measure of the thing.)

Let's conclude with a personal favorite - Diomede.  A native Alaskan, I grew up hearing about the twin Diomede Islands.  (Only two miles apart and connected with an ice-bridge in the winter, Little Diomede is a part of Alaska; Big Diomede is Russian.)  Diomedes is a personal name with a fascinating etymology.  The man Diomedes was a hero of the Trojan Wars.  Because of his excellence as a warrior, it is said that Diomedes received counsel (as to the right mode and measure of battle to employ) from Zeus (please read that post!).  Dio (Zuess / God) + Mede (appropriate measure) literally means "he received counsel from Zeus".

Sliding Sideways Part II

Every once in a while, I like to talk about subjects tangentially related to word origins and relationships - topics I call "Sliding Sideways".  Lookie here, we got another one.


I'm reading a funny little book by H. Allen Smith entitled The Great Chili Confrontation.  This book chronicles the events culminating in the first famous chili cookoff in Terlingua, Texas in 1967.  Accordingly, Smith (no relation) waxes authoritative and humorous about all things chili.  At one point, Smith treats us to a real etymological delight regarding how chili was once referred to in Los Angeles:

Mr. Beck tells me that chili was once called “size” in the town known to him as Lil-ole-ell-ay. “Size” came into usage by way of one Ptomaine Tommy, once proprietor of the largest and best known chili parlor in the city. Ptomaine Tommy served straight chili and an epical Southwestern variation, a hamburger smothered with chili. He had two ladles, a large and a small. When a customer ordered straight chili, he got out the large ladle. When he wanted the other, he usually said “Hamburger size.” So Ptomaine Tommy put up one sign that read HAMBURGER SIZE 15¢, and another that read CHILI SIZE 20¢. Other chili joints followed suit and before long chili was know throughout Los Angeles as “size”. They’d say, “Just gimme a bowl of size.” source

The actual thing, chili, came to be called something related to its portioning, size.  When I read this section of the book, I was immediately reminded of a prior post here at BackWords Blog on the word ambulance.  Originally, an hôspital ambulant  (walking hospital), the term became shortened in English "ambulance" - just the walking portion was kept, with the actual thing, hospital, getting dropped altogether.  Just like chili in Los Angeles, the primary thing - chili / hospital - came to be referred to by an incidental thing.

Let's return to the food world to get one more example.  Cheese is one of the most ancient and common foods in the world.  Across Europe this substance is called queso (Spain), cacio (Italy), Käse (Germany), queijo (Portugal).  These words come from the IE root kwat meaning age, ferment, or sour.  Fitting.  Did you notice I didn't mention France among that list of countries and their words for cheese?  All those words look and sound like "cheese", but oh no, not the French.  The French do a little sliding sideways themselves and call cheese fromage.  Like size and ambulance, fromage refers to the fact that cheese is formed into brick, wheels, blocks, and other shapes.  The French don't refer to the food itself, but to the process of how it is handled.  (Ironically, here is a page discussing the Forms of Cheese.)


These are just the three words that strike me as related at the moment.  But I'm sure I'll be sliding sideways again soon when I discover more sideways words.

Lighten Up!

I recently read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  It’s a fascinating book about the influence of improbable and unpredictable events.  I recommend it.  The author is from Lebanon which he frequently refers to as “the Levant”.  I’d never heard that term before, but when I looked it up, I realized that I regularly used a lot of words related to it. 

Our ancient root for this word family is legwh meaning light, to have little weight.  (The other word "light", as in illumination, comes from the IE root leuk from which we get lux, lucid, and leukemia - too many white, or light colored, blood cells.)  Before we get to Levant, let’s look at some other words flowing downstream from legwh.

If something is light, it is easy to elevate.  If it’s not light enough, you can always use a lever.  If a conversation is getting heavy, you can always try a little levity to lighten the mood.  If you relieve someone of their cash, their wallet is lighter.  If you like your dinner rolls fluffy and light, you’d better use the proper leavening agent.  It turns out that even lung is related because a lung is light, right?  It’s full of air, after all.  And my personal favorite, leprechaun, is related – a wee leprechaun is light, smaller than “normal” people.

Now, the Levant.  Look back at my post on “star” and other things to the “east”.  Remember that Austria is to the east (of most of Europe) and that’s where the sun rises - lifts up as if it were very light.  The Levant literally means “the rising place” – the place where the sun rises.  While Austria got its name from a compass point, Levant is related to what happens in the east.  By the way, in Germany, the Levant is called Morgenland - the morning land.

Tripping the Light Fantastic

I hope you have read my overview for this blog. What I am doing here is showing the connection modern words have in their ancient Indo-European roots. It fascinates me and hopefully my readers from Sydney to San Francisco. Imagine you were one of those old-timey Indo-Europeans, likely residents of Mesopotamia about the time and place of the Bible’s Tower of Babel. What would be the first words you’d articulate. My guess is the words I’d speak would be about food, family, and common elements of the word around me. It turns out that some of the largest groups of words in language today do indeed flow out of those kinds of core ideas. A while back I blogged about the IE root aus – to shine. Today, I’m going to refer to a different root, bha1, which also means “to shine”. Apparently shiny, shining things were quite important in ancient times – as they are now.

Before I jump into the modern words, let me remind you that writing came along long after speech. “Bha” may look like it should be pronounced “bah” as in bah humbug? But turn that b upside down, you have p – pha, pronounced “fa”. Consonants often do gymnastics like that over time. All the words we're considering today have that f/ph sound.

Now, imagine you are in a dark or dimly lit room. All is quiet until suddenly there is something moving not too far away. You can’t make out the form, but there is light shifting, dappling such that you suppose another “thing” is there near you. After you stop quivering and hyperventilating, you call for help. “What is it?” “I don’t know. I don’t think it was a person, it was like a phantom.” That’s just what it means, a shining thing that lacks description otherwise. Closely related is the word fantasy – something visible (if only to the mind’s eye), but lacking substance. Isn’t it interesting that fantastic also comes from this root, but now is an adjective describing something in a very positive way?

One of my favorite words, epiphany, is also related. It means “to show” or to become visible and is used in reference to the discovery of Jesus by the magi. It can also mean something like coming to a new awareness - "a moment of epiphany". What do we say, “that’s when the light bulb came on.” A light shining – how apropos.

Bha1 also gives me another favorite word – diaphanous. Dia- means "through". Add that to light or shine and you basically have idea see-through and is often used to describe fabric. When a wife is hoping for her husband to give her some snuggly, warm flannel pajamas for Christmas to keep her warm in the winter, how surprised she is to discover a skimpy, diaphanous little sumpin-sumpin.  And so it goes when people come from two different planets.

In doing my research for this post, I discovered that Tiffany derives from this same root word. In the 1500s and 1600s, Tiffany was a term used to describe diaphanous fabric. Interestingly, in Medieval Europe, the given name Tiffany was often bestowed on girls born on Epiphany Day (usually about January 4, my birthday). This name is special to me because my first daughter-in-love is named Tiffany. Her beauty and sincerity definitely shine through in her character!

Theophany is yet another related word. It means something like “God-appearing” and is commonly used to note instances the Bible’s Old Testament where God (or better, the pre-incarnate Christ) appears to people (as in Genesis 18 or Daniel 3).

Next post we’ll look at several more modern words that come from this ancient root.

High Praise

I read through Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy a couple times in my late teens.  For the younger generation who has only seen the movies, you owe it to yourself to discover the incredible way Tolkein crafted his legendary legends.  Tolkein wove everyday words into fantastic adventures.  One of the most vivid images still fixed in my mind is the shrewish Gollum hovering over his ring murmuring, “My Precioussss”.  Eventually, dear little Gollum pays the ultimate price – his life – for the object of his praise.

Oops, I did it again, Precious, Price, Praise.  All related to the IE root per5 meaning to traffic in or to sell.  Today, all these ideas relate to assigning value to something.  When my beloved wife says she does not appreciate my sense of humor, she means she doesn’t find much value in it.  (What’s up with that?)  When you appraise an object, you establish its value or selling price.  Over time, most things lose value - they depreciate.  When you praise something, you are literally celebrating its value by devoting your energy to acknowledging that value.  Gollum sought to possess the precious ring even at the cost of his own life.  That’s about as high praise as you can give!

A related word is interesting.  Preciosity means extreme meticulousness or over-refinement.  Use it in a sentence?  The owner of the antique store had an air of preciosity to him; always fussing over the smallest detail in his collection.

Think about this family of words the next time you go about buying and selling.  Does the price truly reflect the object’s value?

The Pope's Dentures

Most people of prominence wind up having several titles (e.g. President, Commander in Chief, POTUS) so I didn’t worry too much about the Catholic Church’s Pope also being called the Pontiff.  That is not until I saw a dental term that seemed strangely similar – pontic.  Yes, the Pope often wears a hat that looks like a giant tooth, but that’s not usually the way words work.

First let’s take notice of the word Pope, itself.  Pope, comes simply from papa, daddy.  (In fact, in Italy, the Pope is called Il Papa.)  Many religious titles relate to father because of their leadership, mentoring role, including the Jewish rabbi.  So, is Pope related to Pontiff?  No chance.

Pontiff, the leader of a religious organization based in Rome, is related to another word you see all over Italy – ponte.  One of the most famous of these ponte is the Ponte Vecchio – the Old Bridge in Florence.  (Ponte means bridge, vecchio means old – they say their words backwards in most of the world.)  It’s a fascinating structure you should look into.  Pontiff means something to the effect of “bridge maker” or way-shower – a religious concept of helping people find a connection to God.  By the way, to pontificate (one of my favorite words) means to speak as one in authority - the way the pope would speak.

Now, maybe you are getting out ahead of me on the word pontic.  If you have one or two teeth missing with healthy teeth on either side, your fantastic dentist with solve the problem with what?  A bridge.  Technically speaking, the pontic is the artificial tooth fashioned into a dental bridge.

Our IE root is pent meaning to tread or go.  A bridge is a very important structure that helps us go farther.  Path derives from this root as does find (you have to go to find what you are looking for).  Another memorable word from the youth of Baby Boomers is also related – Sputnik, which means "fellow traveler".