Roots
Bibliophiles watch out!
Deepti

Keeping in mind the contemporary storms in teacups over certain books and their ill-fated authors, it seems a good idea to be sure about some book-related words and expressions like the ones given here.

Today, nihil obstat is used metaphorically in English to denote ‘approval or permission to proceed’, but recent events are a reminder of the origin of the expression. In order to receive the official sanction of the Roman Catholic Church, a book was subjected to an authoritative review to ensure that it contained nothing doctrinally or morally unsound. When this scrutiny was completed, a declaration of nihil obstat was made. A Latin expression, nihil obstat means ‘nothing stands in the way or hinders’. In other words, there is nothing objectionable in the book to hinder its publication. The next step was the granting of an imprimatur by a bishop. Again a Latin word, imprimatur means ‘let it be printed’.

Another Latin biblioterm is apparatus criticus, which was ‘borrowed’ by English in the middle of the nineteenth century. It means ‘critical apparatus’ and today is used for all tools of academic research. This means that it refers to the materials used in research, the appendices that often appear in a text, the commentary, glossary, footnotes; all that would normally accompany a scholarly text.

In a similar vein is the Latin word addendum, meaning ‘that which is added’. Towards the end of the 18th century, English adopted and then adapted it to mean ‘something added to a book at a later stage, after the main text has been printed, often supplying material that has been left out by mistake’. Addendum is today also used as a technical term in mechanics, applied to various dimensions of toothed wheels in gears.

Around the same time, the word aide memoire was ‘lent’ to English by French. It came from the world of diplomacy and, initially, was used for ‘a small volume that carries a summary of the items in an agreement’. Later, the usage expanded to any small book containing a digest of useful information or, in Hindi, a kunji. Aide memoire in French means ‘help-memory’.