This fortnightly
feature was updated on August 8
Word tales
TRACING
the origin of some words is an interesting and
entertaining exercise. Especially when one considers the
fact that every moment, human interaction throws up
opportunities for word coinage, but every situation does
not yield a new word.
The word bunk or bunkum is
a highly expressive word meaning foolish nonsense or
twaddle. It derives from a county in North Carolina, USA.
The name of the county is Buncombe. The new context of
the word come into being as a result of a speech made in
1820 by Buncombes congressional representative
Felix Walker. The speech was exceedingly long and
completely irrelevant to the debate it interrupted. When
asked to explain the purpose of his oration, Walker
replied that the people of Buncombe expected him to make
a speech in Congress and so he made one. His defence for
the irrelevant speech was that it was for Buncombe
as he was only talking for Buncombe. Following
this, the word Buncombe became bunkum, later shortened to
bunk, entering the language in the narrow sense of
political chaptrap. As Walker faded from public memory,
the meaning of the word widened.
A remark or clue whose
meaning or reference is obscure is called cryptic.
Cryptic derives ultimately from the Greek verb Kryptein
meaning to hide. The same source provides crypt,
meaning a vault or chamber beneath a church, often used
in the past as a hiding place and cryptography, the
science and study of writing and deciphering codes.
Cinema has made certain
that there are clear black and white characters called
hero and villain. The poor villain though, was not always
a hated character always at the receiving end. The Latin villanus,
from which villain derives, simply meant a worker in
a country estate. In feudal England, a villain was simply
a serf. There are quite a few much-maligned words like
this one. A crafty person was a person skilled as a
craftsman. As orgy was formerly a religious ceremony; to
mention just a couple.
Now, vandal has always
been a hated word. A person who wilfully causes damage to
public or private property is known as a vandal. The word
comes from the Latin vandalii. Vandals was the
name given to the Germanic tribe which during the first
five centuries migrated south from Scandinavia and the
southern shores of the Baltic, reaching as far as North
Africa. The Vandals left behind them a trail of
devastation, which culminated with the sacking of Rome in
455 AD.
Tantalise, meaning to
torment or tease by exposing something desirable and then
withholding it, comes from Greek mythology. Tantalus, the
kind of Phrygia, was a son of Zeus. As a punishment for
divulging to the mortals the secrets of the gods, he was
condemned to stand in water up to the chin in a river in
Hades. Whenever he stooped to drink, the water would
recede. As if this were not punishment enough,
fruit-laden branches were hung overhead, but whenever he
reached out, the fruit would elude his grasp.
Deepti
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