Your Sereneness

Of late, I have been quite busy, in a good sort of way.  For “Be-Worded,” most words I write about come from everyday life experiences.  In my busy-ness, I have been distracted, and words for the blog have not been presenting themselves readily.  The other day, I ran across an old Mary Engelbreit-themed journal with the title, “The Queen’s Journal.”  I opened and flipped through entries.  One entry dated 4 January 2005 popped out at me. It reads, “I am feeling serene.  That is an adjective not found on those magnetic ‘Today I Feel’ thingies.”  I have always associated serenity with calmness, so I looked up “serene.”  While I found meanings which I expected, I also found one surprising definition.

I started my investigation with the Oxford English Dictionary.  The first meaning listed is “of the weather, air, sky:  Clear, fine and calm (without cloud or rain or wind).”  The next meaning reads, “of other natural phenomena (e.g. the sea): calm, tranquil.”  With the third meaning, we finally run into serenity regarding people, not the weather: “of a person, his mind, circumstances, etc.: calm, tranquil, untroubled, unperturbed.”  The final meaning was new to me: “an honorific epithet given to a reigning prince (esp. of Germany), formerly also to a member of a royal house.”

Next, I checked the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD), where people trumped nature in the “serene” category.  The first meaning listed is “Content or composed; untroubled,” followed by “Unaffected by disturbance; calm or peaceful.”  Weather shows up in the third meaning, “Unclouded; fair:  serene skies and a bright blue sea.”  For the “royal” definition, the AHD is more general:  “Used as a title and form of address for certain members of royalty.”

Using the AHD definition regarding royalty, those of you who know me as “the Queen of Everything” (whether you agree or not!) can now refer to me as “Her Sereneness” or perhaps the “Serene Serene Queen.”  Some Schroonies in my readership have posted on Facebook some awesome pictures of the recent serene sunsets we have had of late.  While we have had some clear days, the wind of late has rendered our daytime weather not serene

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(For those who care, “serene” came into Middle English from Latin.)

By the way, my serenity in January, 2005, lasted until 13 January, where the entry reads, “I am back to feeling discombobulated (nice word).”  Perhaps that word will supply material for my next blog entry.

Overflection, aka thinking too much

Recently, I resorted to sorting—actually re-sorting—memorabilia, an activity which caused me to reflect upon prefixes and suffixes, a topic which I mention upon occasion in this blog.  As I remused, regarding how affixes can alter meaning, I wondered if “flect” had ever been a viable root word.  My trusty Oxford English Dictionary tells me “yes.”

“Flect,” now obsolete, began word life as a verb of Latin origin meaning “to bend, turn” in both literal and figurative terms.  “Flect” lived a short life before becoming obsolete as a stand-alone word, but it lives on by combining its lexicographical DNA with certain prefixes.  The words which popped into my mind using “flect” as a root, in addition to “reflect,” include “deflect,” “genuflect,” and “inflect.”

A cousin of “flect,” “flex,” with both words descending from the same Latin word, lives on in modern usage, chiefly in scientific usage.

Regarding the word “reflect,” according to the OED the prefix “re-“ comes from the Latin, “with the general sense of ‘back’ or ‘again.’”  However, originally, “back” was its primary meaning.  The OED includes more information on the prefix “re-“ than you probably thought existed.  Next time you have a few minutes on your hands, check out the “histo-re-.”

Combining “re-“ with “flect,” the OED first lists a number of meanings, from “to turn or direct in a certain course, to divert; to turn away or aside, to deflect,” to the idea of throwing beams off of polished surfaces to “to return, turn back, after striking or falling on a surface.”  Because the idea for this blog began with the meaning of “to turn one’s thoughts (back) on, to fix the mind or attention on or upon a subject; to ponder, meditate on,” I am going have some fun with that usage here, first asking some Philosophical Word Questions (PWQ), and then reflecting upon the other words I identified which use “flect” as a root.

PWQs for “reflect”: since “reflect” for our purposes here means to think back upon, could “foreflect” or “preflect” mean to think about ahead of time?  If someone simply does not think, are they “nonflective”?  Parents, imagine asking your children after they do something thoughtless, “Are you nonflective?”  If someone thinks wrongly or wrongly understands, would they “misflect.”  (Honey, you misflect me!)  If someone thinks about something too much, do they “overflect”?  On the other hand, if someone does not think enough about something, do they “semiflect” or “subflect”?  Looking at a noun usage, if someone refuses to think, are they an “antiflect” or “antiflective”?

“Deflect,” the first additional word I cited using “flect” as a root, means “to turn aside; bend or deviate.  The prefix “de-“ means “do or make the opposite of; reverse; remove; out of (deplane); reduce.”  We can deflect anything from criticism to a foul ball at a baseball game hit into the stands.  PWQ for “deflect”:  can it also mean to straighten out if we are doing the opposite of bending or turning, as in “Let me deflect that unclear question” or “Let me deflect that pile of shoestrings.”

“Genuflect” means “to bend at the knees, sometimes as an indication of worship or respect but sometimes to grovel.”  “Genu-“ here is not a commonly used prefix, but comes from a Latin word referring to the knees.  PWQ for “genuflect”:  if to genuflect is an indication of genuine worship or respect, would “pseudoflect” better reflect the second part of the meaning, to grovel, with its implication of insincerity?

“Inflect” means “to alter (the voice) in tone or pitch; modulate,” with the prefix “in-“ meaning “in, into, within.”  We can inflect our voices to indicate many things from emphasis to innuendo.  As a teacher, it was informative to take a sentence and inflect each word separately.  For example, “There are chickens in the trees” can have all kinds of meanings, depending on which word you emphasize.  PWQ for “inflect”: could “outflect” refer to people who talk too loudly?

On a serious note, the idea of reflection is particularly relevant now at Yom Kippur, reflecting on the year past and thinking ahead to the upcoming year.  

NOTE:  In researching this blog, I learned that the lexicon contains skillions of affixes, with gadskillions of information about the history of these affixes.

Critters and creatures and varmints—oh, my!

Sometimes when I gaze out into the backyard, I see cute rabbits quietly munching on grass, scrunching their cute pink noses, and wiggling their antennae ears.  I think to myself, “What nice critters.”  Sometimes when I gaze out of the kitchen window into the garden and see those same rabbits quietly munching on my garden plants, I raise the window and yell, “Get out of my garden, you varmints!”  Clearly, my personal connotation for the word “critter” involves cute animals, but when those same cute animals offend me in some way, they become “varmints.”  For this blog entry, I decided to investigate the dictionary meanings (denotations) of these words to see how they fit with my own personal conceptions.  Did I ever learn a lot!

“Varmint” is the less complex word to examine, so I will start with it.  Because both words are slang or dialect words, I started with my dictionaries of slang and then moved of course, to the Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.  Chambers Slang Dictionary treats “varmint” (or “varment”) very briefly, supplying two entries.  The first meaning of the first entry is familiar:  “any animal destructive of game” (in my case, vegetation). The second meaning of the first entry is actually complimentary and new to me:  “an amateur sportsman who has the skill of a professional.”  The second entry defines “varmint” as “shrewd, knowing” and “fashionable, ‘swell,’ dashing.”  Who knew that a smarty pants (see 22 May 2013) could be termed a “varmint”!  (NOTE:  Sadly, The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang project ended with the H-O volume.)

The OED also has two entries for “varmint,” both marked as slang or dialect.  The first entry is the more familiar “vermin; an animal of a noxious or objectionable kind.”  Of course, it makes sense that “varmint” is a variant of “vermin,” “animals of a noxious or objectionable kind.”  I am amused by the second definition, “an objectionable or troublesome person or persons; a mischievous boy (my bold) or child.”  Sorry guys, I copied it as I found it!  The second entry follows that of the second entry from Chambers regarding the amateur sportsman.  The next entry here, however, is more formal: “knowing, clever, cunning.”  The American Heritage definition of “varmint” is to the point:  “one that is considered undesirable, obnoxious, or troublesome.”  So much for compliments!

While my usage of "varmint" was appropriate, my usage of "critter" was not. Chambers treats “critter” quite briefly with a meaning that is new to me, whiskey, making no mention of any animal meaning of "critter."  “Critter” is a dialectical variation of the word “creature,” which also surprised me initially but made sense once I thought about it.  The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang in its first entry for “critter” gives “liquor, especially whiskey.” (Critter can make you fuddled.  See 12 August 2013.)  The second entry defines “critter” as an animal, especially a horse.”  The third entry defines “critter” as “a person, especially a man.” (My bold.)  While the RHHDAS is objective in calling a man a “critter,” the first entry for “critter” in the OED defines “critter” in “jocular” usage as “an ox or cow; a horse; a chicken” and in disparaging usage “a person.”  At least the OED is gender neutral with this insult.

The American Heritage dictionary in its first entry for “critter” goes back to its original meaning of “a living creature.”  The second entry gives “a domestic animal, especially a cow, horse, or mule.”  A “Word History” note gives some interesting background to “critter.”  At one time around America, the word “bull” was not appropriate for “polite” company, and so people developed many euphemisms to avoid saying the offensive word.  (That’s no bull!)  In the Northeast, people commonly used “critter” for this purpose.  The “Note” notes that back in Shakespeare’s time (Early Modern English, NOT Old English), the word “creature” would have been pronounced very much like the word “critter” and so “critter” developed a life of its own.

Originally, “creature” meant “anything created; a created being, animate or inanimate; a product of creative action; a creation.”  In submeaning c of this definition, the OED cites 1 Timothy 4:4, “every creature of God is good.”  (Submeaning d gives the humourous meaning of “creature” as “intoxicating liquor, especially whiskey.”)  In The Book of Margery Kempe, when Margery refers to herself as a “creature,” she is not being self-effacing but referring to herself as a child of God.

The OED (as usual) offers some fun forms of the word “creature,” including creaturedom, “the realm of creatures”; creaturehood or creatureship, “the condition of a creature”; and creaturize, “to make into a creature, to invest with creaturehood”.  (Obviously, Frankenstein engaged in creaturizing.)

Through all of this research, I learned that the term “critter” as I use it for yard rabbits, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, and raccoons is not quite appropriate, as “critter” more appropriately refers to domesticated farm animals.  My usage of “varmint,” though is apt.  I also learned to be careful tippling critter as I may become fuddled.  Finally, I learned that “varmint” can be a compliment.