Your word of the day: "Spermologer"

Came across this one in my fitful studies of Greek. While St. Paul preaches in Athens the local philosophers taunt him and ask, "What might this spermologos [σπερμολόγος] be wanting to say?" (Acts 17:18).  The Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon shows the word is a combination of sperma (σπέρμα) for "seed" and logos (λόγος), a noun from the verb legō (λέγω), in one sense "to pick up."   "Spermologos" originally meant some bird that pecked for seeds, but applied disparagingly to a person it means he is a "babbler," in Liddell's and Scott's translation.  So "What might this babbler be wanting to say?" taunt the Epicureans and the Stoics in the Agora.  But you can Paul a "spermologer," and the word shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Squinch: a false etymology on Wikipedia

There's a couple instances of false etymologies on Wikipedia.  If something on Wikipedia looks too exotic or interesting to be true, it probably is.  Grant Barrett on "A Way With Words" pointed out that "homie" and "homeboy" are nineteenth-century black slang.  He had more than once changed the Wikipedia page "Homeboy" to reflect this, and each time others had changed it back to a false etymology: that homeboy came from homo or homme or hombre.

I discovered what looks like a false etymology in the Wikipedia article "Squinch."  A squinch is an architectural member that was an early (Byzantine?) solution to the problem of stacking an octagonal or a round dome on a square, four-walled structure: create four squinches, or little bridges at the corners of the walls, set at 45-degree angles to the walls.  The dome can sit on these, as well as the center-points of the four walls.  The Wikipedia article thinks squinch comes from a Persian word "pronounced 'sekonj.'"  "Persian, huh?" I thought.  The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to the French escoinson, meaning "from an angle" and via the English word "scuncheon." 

Can anyone out there explain the reasoning behind the Persian-word claim?

A verb "to diary"

I haven't been able to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, or in any of my American dictionaries.  I came across correspondence at work where someone in Britain suggested the letter's recipient "diary for" a certain future date.  According to this post, it means to put a note in your diary.  Does anyone know if this is business jargon?

Pronouncing "permit"

Here's something that makes my skin crawl.  I have noticed many people pronouncing the noun "permit" with the stress on the second syllable, /per-MIT/: "Can I get a per-MIT to do this?"  I believe that it's /PER-mit/ and dictionaries agree with me, although some list /per-MIT/ as a secondary pronunciation.  Everyone thinks the verb is the one pronounced /per-MIT/.  So saying "the city gave me a /per-MIT/" sounds wrong.

A change in stress occurs in other noun-verb homographs--compare the noun /PRO-duce/ to the verb /pro-DUCE/.   As with "produce," the noun usually stresses the first syllable, and the verb the second syllable.  Here's a good list. This change in stress carries over to the nominalized form of the verb--/pro-DUC-tion/ is a noun that comes from the /pro-DUCE/, not the verb noun /PRO-duce/.  Whence we get second syllable stresses in /per-MIT-ting/ and in /per-MIS-sion/, the noun form of the verb /per-MIT/.

Curiously, there seems to be another series.  A government's procedure for issuing a (noun) /PER-mit/ is called the /PER-mitting/ process; in making a verbal gerund out of the noun, it ignores the second-syllable stress the verb typically gets.   So we now have /PER-mitting/ as well as /per-MIT-ting/.

Of course, this latter series won't exist if you pronounce the noun /per-MIT/.  By the way, I can't tell if per-MIT is a regionalism, and I've exhausted the dictionaries on the reference shelf at the New York Public Library.

I.e.

I wrote about "viz." first, because I think it's the most interesting of the "...that is," substitutes.  "I.e." is the only one most people should use these days, although I think spelling out "that is" or "I mean to say" is better style than using a Latin abbreviation.  ("I.e." is from id est, "that is".)  Use "i.e." to introduce a rephrasing, clarification, enumeration, etc. of what has just been said.

Modern authorities say not to italicize "i.e.," even though it's in a foreign language--it's been naturalized into English after centuries of use. Don't put spaces within it.  It is always proceeded by a comma, but not necessarily  followed by one.  This is up to you, as long as you are consistent in your writing.  This is in contrast to "that is," which is usually going to be proceeded by and followed by a comma.

Viz.

I recently investigated the mysteries of "viz.," "sc.," "i.e.," and "e.g."  First, I'd advise against using any of these in your formal writing--they are shortcuts, and are best used as time-savers and space-savers when necessary in technical writing or very informal writing.  Use the spelled-out, plain English words I suggest below.  Future posts will cover "i.e." and "e.g."

"Viz." is an abbreviation of the Latin videlicet, which abbreviates videre licet--"one may read."  John Aubrey uses the word "viz." many times in this 1898 edition of Brief Lives (1696).  I'll use this book to illustrate the two situations in which "viz." is typically used:

1) to enumerate the members of a group just referred to:

"They consist of severall stately trees of the like groweth and heighth, viz. elme, chestnut, beach, hornbeame . . . " (pp. 79-80).

"When these verses were made she had three children by Sir George Kenelme, who are there mentioned, viz. Kenelme, George and John" (p. 231).

2) to reiterate more clearly something already said:

"His deepest divinity is where a man would least expect it: viz. in his Colloquies in a Dialogue between a Butcher and Fishmonger . . . " (p. 249).

This commonly used differentiation is based on the original Fowler's Modern English Usage.  "Viz." was used where you, as a modern writer, should use "namely," "that is to say," or even (if you're in a jovial mood) "to wit."  Another solution is not to use any word at all.  At the top of the last paragraph I might have written ". . . is typically used in two situations, viz. . . ."  but I omitted it.  I got a more succinct, better-flowing sentence.

Some usage notes if you take the plunge: Viz. isn't italicized, or capitalized; put a period after the z; put a comma before it; do not follow it with a comma.

"I.e.," and "e.g." are soon to come!

Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926) and R.W. Burchfield's The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (1996) are useful sources, as is the Wikipedia page.

Mazuma

Here's a word I had only ever heard used once or twice, "mazuma."  Instead of saying "gelt" or "shekels," other words we've adopted jokily into English to mean "money," use "mazuma" or "mazooma."  Mazuma is the Yiddish word for cash or a ready amount; gelt is money or gold; shekelim were biblical units of weight and currency.