vitilitigate
v. to be particularly quarrelsome
rixation
n. a quarrel or argument
cavillation
n. the raising of quibbles
snoutband
n. one who constantly contradicts his companions
Language
In a Word
consenescence
n. the growing old together
“De Sancta Cruce”
The English scholar Alcuin devised this remarkable acrostic poem in the ninth century. The text can be read in conventional lines of Latin, and additional phrases are embedded in a symmetrical arrangement of lines that represent the cross inscribed upon the world:
Horizontal, top and bottom:
Crux decus es mundi Iessu de sanguine sancta (“Cross, you are the glory of the world, in Jesus’ blood sanctified”)
Suscipe sic talem rubicumdam celsa coronam (“Accept, exalted cross, from me this scarlet crown”)
Vertical, left and right:
Crux pia vera salus partes in quatuor orbis (“Pious cross, true salvation in the four corners of the world”)
Alma teneto tuam Christo dominane coronam (“Beneficent, take your crown, Christ being the Lord”)
The cross:
Rector in orbe tuis sanavit saecla sigillis (“The ruler of the world saved generations by your sign”)
Surge lavanda tuae sunt saecula fonte fidei (“Rise, the world is cleansed in the font of faith”)
The diamond, representing the world (whose four corners are referenced in the vertical line on the left):
Salve sancta rubens, fregisti vincula mundi (“Hail holy scarlet, you have shattered the world’s shackles”)
Signa valete novis reserata salutibus orbi (“Wonders are manifest, revealed anew to the world in saving works”)
A translation of the full text:
Cross, you are the glory of the world, in Jesus’ blood sanctified.
God the king from the cross conveyed heaven’s judgment.
A victor he reigns, destroying evil and conquering the enemy,
Christ the great sacrifice nailed on the cross for us.
The shepherd by dying redeemed his sheep with his healing right hand.
Glorious, holy salvation from the venerable tree,
he seized the prize, shrugging off the ties of flesh.
Though in bonds the highest king freed us, and he himself
giving his life to the cross triumphed over death,
The kingdom of heaven gaped when the world’s enemy was destroyed.
The sign will be more manifest and all good people will wear it,
praising it with all strength; let all discern more profoundly
so that they may see how many his holy passion frees
from eternal sorrow, and see one thrown down by time
to heal those oppressed by the enemy’s torments; there
may the highest and true Joseph now be our salvation,
who suffered high upon the cross such that error can’t seduce
and poison men and drag them from the light of faith.
The ruler of the world saved generations by your sign.
You, my life, my salvation! For you alone my voice composes hymns,
and shall always sing the highest songs, clear and plain
with the plectrum; for David famous for his song
proves that it is proper for us to testify holiness continually
in elaborate style — accept that which I have just begun, O Christ supernal,
true salvation, great sufferer, you sacred and holy light. Now
the secular nations sing the beneficent sign of the cross,
all the earth trembles and in one accord proclaims
the fame of the cross. In prayer it reveals its inmost heart.
Now hear, vain men, confounded in evil:
The almighty shines forth. May blessed faith fill your hearts
and the serpent not drive them back to their old ways.
The highest and most faithful redeemer has restored us
to his kingdom, and has conquered by this sign the obdurate one,
toppling warlike Satan from the place he hazarded to rule.
Glorious cross, the world should loose its prayers to you.
Accept, exalted cross, from me this scarlet crown.
(From Monumenta Germaniae Historica, part one, 1880, and Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson, eds., Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, 2013. Thanks, Brandon.)
In a Word
tonitruation
n. thundering
Finnegans Wake is punctuated by ten thunderclaps, which occur at moments of crisis in the text. “A situation is presented, developed, and subjected to increasing stress until, with the thunder, a collapse, and suddenly a complementary situation that was latent in the first is seen to be in place,” writes scholar Eric McLuhan.
First thunderclap:
bababadalgharaghtakamminaronnonnbronntonnerronnuonnthunn-
trobarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurknuk
Second:
Perkodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhurthru-
mathunaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun
Third:
klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrottygraddaghsemmih-
sammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot
Fourth:
Bladyughfoulmoecklenburgwhurawhorascortastrumpapornanennykock-
sapastippatappatupperstrippuckputtanach
Fifth:
Thingcrooklyexineverypasturesixdixlikencehimaroundhersthemagger-
bykinkinkankanwithdownmindlookingated
Sixth:
Lukkedoerendunandurraskewdylooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalna-
bortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk
Seventh:
Bothallchoractorschumminaroundgansumuminarumdrumstrumtrumina-
humptadumpwaultopoofoolooderamaunsturnup
Eighth:
Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacwhack-
falltherdebblenonthedubblandaddydoodled
Ninth:
husstenhasstencaffincoffintussemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusaghhobix-
hatouxpeswchbechoscashlcarcarcaract
Tenth:
Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibaugiman-
dodrrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockar
Like everything in Joyce, the claps’ meaning is open to question, but they’re not arbitrary: Each of the first nine words contains exactly 100 letters, and the tenth has 101. Joyce, who called thunder “perfect language,” had apparently adjusted the spelling of the thunderclaps as the book took shape: McLuhan found tick marks in Joyce’s galley proofs, “the only evidence of actual letter-counting I have found in any of the manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, and galleys.”
(Eric McLuhan, The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake, 1997.)
Cross Purposes
The Indonesian word for water is air.
The Czech word for guest is host.
The Basque word for cold is hotz.
The Hebrew word for she is he.
(Thanks, Alec and Daniel.)
Big Talk
“The German long word is not a legitimate construction, but an ignoble artificiality, a sham,” wrote Mark Twain. “Nothing can be gained, no valuable amount of space saved, by jumbling the following words together on a visiting card: ‘Mrs. Smith, widow of the late Commander-in-chief of the Police Department,’ yet a German widow can persuade herself to do it, without much trouble: ‘Mrs.-late-commander-in-chief-of-the-police-department’s-widow-Smith.'” He gives this anecdote in his autobiography:
A Dresden paper, the Weidmann, which thinks that there are kangaroos (Beutelratte) in South Africa, says the Hottentots (Hottentoten) put them in cages (kotter) provided with covers (lattengitter) to protect them from the rain. The cages are therefore called lattengitterwetterkotter, and the imprisoned kangaroo lattengitterwetterkotterbeutelratte. One day an assassin (attentäter) was arrested who had killed a Hottentot woman (Hottentotenmutter), the mother of two stupid and stuttering children in Strättertrotel. This woman, in the German language is entitled Hottentotenstrottertrottelmutter, and her assassin takes the name Hottentotenstrottermutterattentäter. The murderer was confined in a kangaroo’s cage — Beutelrattenlattengitterwetterkotter — whence a few days later he escaped, but fortunately he was recaptured by a Hottentot, who presented himself at the mayor’s office with beaming face. ‘I have captured the Beutelratte,’ said he. ‘Which one?’ said the mayor; ‘we have several.’ ‘The Attentäterlattengitterwetterkotterbeutelratte.’ ‘Which attentäter are you talking about?’ ‘About the Hottentotenstrottertrottelmutterattentäter.’ ‘Then why don’t you say at once the Hottentotenstrottelmutterattentäterlattengitterwetterkotterbeutelratte?’
He calls the long word “a lazy device of the vulgar and a crime against the language.”
In a Word
pensum
n. a piece of schoolwork imposed as a punishment
In a Word
tongue-shot
n. speaking or talking distance, voice-range
Inhabitants of La Gomera, a small mountainous island in the Canary group, use a whistled language called the Silbo to communicate over great distances. “This is a form of telephony inferior to ours as regards range, but superior to it in so far as the only apparatus required is a sound set of teeth and a good pair of lungs,” noted Glasgow University phoneticist André Classe in New Scientist in 1958. “The normal carrying power is up to about four kilometres when conditions are good, over twice as much in the case of an exceptional whistler operating under the most favourable circumstances.”
In a Word
greenswardsmanship
n. the cultivation of an unusually and enviably excellent lawn
Talking Down
The interactive installation Text Rain (1999), by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv, invites participants to view themselves on a monitor while letters rain down upon them. “Like rain or snow, the text appears to land on participants’ heads and arms. The text responds to the participants’ motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall again. The falling text will land on anything darker than a certain threshold, and ‘fall’ whenever that obstacle is removed.”
The letters aren’t random — they form the poem “Talk, You,” from Evan Zimroth’s 1993 book Dead, Dinner, or Naked:
I like talking with you,
simply that: conversing,
a turning-with or -around,
as in your turning around
to face me suddenly …
At your turning, each part
of my body turns to verb.
We are the opposite
of tongue-tied, if there
were such an antonym;
We are synonyms
for limbs’ loosening
of syntax,
and yet turn to nothing:
It’s just talk.
“If a participant accumulates enough letters along their outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark object, they can sometimes catch an entire word, or even a phrase,” the artists note. “‘Reading’ the phrases in the Text Rain installation becomes a physical as well as a cerebral endeavor.”