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Dog Days and Dandelions
A Lively Guide to the Animal Meanings Behind Everyday Words
By Martha Barnette St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2003 Martha Barnette
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-5688-2
CHAPTER 1
A
A
The first letter of our alphabet has an "ox" in it. The letter A goes all the way back to the first letter in the ancient Semitic alphabet, which was apparently adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyphic. In Hebrew, this first letter was called aleph, which literally means "ox." Scholars believe the earliest versions of this letter may have looked more like an inverted V with a bar across it, perhaps symbolizing the horns on an ox's head. The Phoenicians later simplified the Semitic letter and turned it on its side. The Greeks adapted the letter further, calling it alpha. The Romans borrowed this ox-inspired letter and gave it its final form. Actually, the letter A isn't the only one with animal origins. See C.
AARDVARK See LOBSTER.
ADULATION
When the ancient Romans used the verb adulari, they were alluding to the enthusiastic wiggle of an eager-to-please puppy. In its earliest sense, adulari literally meant "to fawn over someone like a dog wagging its tail." Over time, this word's meaning expanded to include the more general notion of "to flatter in a servile fashion." As early as the eighteenth century, speakers of English were using a descendant of this word, adulate, to mean "admire or praise excessively," and its noun form, adulation, for "excessive admiration or flattery." See FAWN.
AEGIS
Usually pronounced "EE-jiss," the word aegis means "protection," "patronage," "guidance," or "controlling influence." (As in "The all-day seminar, 'Undergarments of the Ancient Babylonians,' will be presented under the aegis of the Classics department.") The source of the word lies in classical mythology, where the ancient Greek term aegis could denote either the mighty shield of Zeus or the breastplate of Athena, which bore the dreadful visage of the snake-headed Medusa, the Gorgon who turned to stone anyone who dared to gaze upon her.
Most authorities believe that the Greek word aegis derives from an earlier Greek word, aix, meaning "goat." The reason: in antiquity, people often made shields out of stretched goatskin. This idea of an aegis, or a goatskin shield, performing a protective function expanded to include a more abstract sense as well — that is, providing the auspices under which something occurs. (In fact, see AUSPICES.)
AERIE
Today the word aerie denotes "an elevated and often secluded dwelling," as in "Harry and Mary and their canary Larry live in an airy aerie near Glengarry." In its original sense, however, the word aerie referred to "the nest of a bird of prey built in a high place, such as that of an eagle or a hawk." This word is pronounced either "AIR-ee" or "EER-ee," and is sometimes spelled eyrie.
English speakers modeled aerie after the French word aire, which denotes such a "nest," or more generally "a flat, open space." The connection between the two is the fact that eagles sometimes make their nests on a flat space high on a rocky cliff. The source of the French aire, however, isn't entirely clear, though it may derive from the Latin word area, meaning among other things, "a piece of level ground" or "threshing floor." (For another animal word involving a threshing floor, see HALO.)
AIGRETTE
Pronounce it "ay-GRETT" or "AY-grett," but any way you say it, an aigrette is a spray of jewels usually worn in the hair or on a hat. English speakers borrowed this bird word directly from French, where the term aigrette is the name of the etymologically related egret, a bird whose head sports a similarly shaped plume. If you want to get really fancy, you can also correctly apply the name aigrette to the feathery top of a dandelion — a weed that, incidentally, has a name that commemorates another animal entirely. See DANDELION.
AILUROPHILE
An ailurophile ("eye-LOOR-uh-file) is a "cat-lover." It's from the Greek word for cat, ailuros. It's sometimes spelled aelurophile, in which case it is pronounced with an initial "ee" sound. An ailurophobe, on the other hand, is someone who suffers from a morbid fear of felines, as in "Isn't it funny how they always seem to insist on climbing into the lap of the one person in the room who's an ailurophobe?" See CHATOYANT.
ALBATROSS
With a wingspan of up to twelve feet, the huge sea bird known as the albatross can use sea breezes to glide for hours at a time, coming ashore only to breed. Because of this bird's remarkable size and its ability to remain aloft for so long without flapping its wings, sailors long believed that the albatross possessed magical powers, and that harming one brought bad luck.
This superstition is at the heart of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1798 poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in which a mariner cruelly kills an albatross while onboard a ship near Antarctica. Shortly afterward, the wind dies down and the ship is stuck at sea. Angry crewmen blame the mariner and hang the large, dead bird around his neck in retribution. "Instead of the cross, an albatross / About my neck was hung." The image of this heavy load around one's neck has become a metaphor for any seemingly unshakable burden, guilt, or worry.
The roots of the name albatross apparently lie in the term sixteenth-century Spanish and Portuguese sailors used for another sea bird, the pelican. They called this bird an alcatraz — a name possibly deriving from an Arabic term meaning "the diver." Seafaring Englishmen borrowed this name, variously spelling it alcatras and alcatrace. They also mistakenly applied it to the large ocean-going bird whose name eventually morphed into albatross.
The term albatross also appears in golf, where it refers to a score of three strokes under par on a hole, or double eagle. The use of albatross for such a three-strokes-under score arose by analogy with other ornithologically oriented golf words, such as birdie ("one stroke under"), eagle ("two strokes under"), and buzzard ("two strokes over").
And the small, rocky island in San Francisco Bay called Alcatraz? The name of this famous prison site is indeed thought to derive from a preponderance of pelicans there.
ALCATRAZ See ALBATROSS.
ALOPECIA
Alopecia (pronounced "al-uh-PEE-shuh)" is the medical term for baldness or hair loss. It derives from the Greek word alopekia, or literally, "fox mange" — because foxes often suffer from that skin disease. (For another foxy word, which also happens to be a distant relative of alopecia, see VULPINE.)
ALYSSUM
The popular garden plant alyssum is lovely to behold, but a rabid animal snarls inside its name. The word alyssum derives from the ancient Greek term ályssos, which means "curing canine madness," a combination of a, meaning "not," and lýssa, a word for rabies that may go back even further to an ancient root meaning "wolf-ness." If so, this would make alyssum a distant linguistic relative of another wolf-word, lycanthropy. See LYCANTHROPY.
The reason behind this frightening flower name: For centuries, people believed that this plant could cure rabies. (The same belief is reflected in alyssum's English synonyms, madwort and heal-dog.) The Greek word lýssa also inspired the English flower name antholyza, so named because its blossom resembles the gaping jaw of a rabid dog.
Actually, a form of the Greek lýssa also survives today in the modern veterinary word lytta, which refers to the thin, cartilaginous strip on the underside of a dog's tongue. The ancients thought this structure was a parasitic worm that left dogs vulnerable to rabies, and that surgically removing this "worm" during puppyhood would make dogs immune to the disease. (The dubious nature of this prescription is reflected in Samuel Johnson's always entertaining Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. Johnson defines the expression to worm this way: "To deprive a dog of something, nobody knows what, under his tongue, which is said to prevent him, nobody knows why, from running mad.")
ANSERINE
If you want to describe someone or something that is gooselike, the word anserine will do just fine. Pronounced either "AN-suh-ryne" or "AN-suh-rinn," the word derives from the Latin for goose — anser — a distant relative of gander. These words are also relatives of the name for a type of duck that dives for fish — merganser. This bird's name is a combination of anser and the Latin word mergere, meaning "to plunge," which is also a relative of merge and submerge.
ANTHOLYZA See ALYSSUM.
ANTHURIUM
This flower's name was inspired by the distinctive "tail" that droops from the middle of its brilliant, heart-shaped bract. Anthurium is a combination of the Latin stems anth- meaning "flower," and - urium, meaning "tail." (For another Latin "tail" word, see PENCIL.)
The anth- in anthurium is a linguistic relative of several familiar words, including chrysanthemum, or "golden flower," as well as one of the loveliest words in the English language, anthology. Literally, an anthology is "a gathering of flowers" — a literary bouquet, in other words — that takes its name from the Greek words anthos, or "flower," and legein, "to gather." The -urium, or "tail" in anthurium, meanwhile, also wags inside several other English words, including arse (and its American English variant, ass), as well as the doggy word cynosure. See CYNOSURE.
ANTIPELARGY
The rare but lovely word antipelargy is a bird word that is certainly worth reviving. It comes from the Greek word antipelargia, meaning "mutual love," but take a closer look at this word and you'll see the faint outlines of a pair of devoted birds looking after each other.
The word antipelargia derives from the Greek pelargos, meaning "stork," a bird the ancients considered especially affectionate. (In this case, as sometimes happens in Greek, anti- connotes the idea of "in exchange for," rather than "against.") In 1656, an English glossary defined antipelargy as "the reciprocal love of children to their parents, or (more generally) any requital or mutual kindness." A later text defined it as "a mutual thankfulness or requital of a benefit; but especially a child's nourishing a parent in old age." In any case, antipelargy is a word — and an idea — that deserves wider use. (For another stork word, see PELARGONIUM.)
APIAN
If you want to describe someone or something as being "like a bee," whether in terms of appearance or industriousness, the word you want is apian. [(As in "Um, I can't tell if this is a typo — did you mean to say the new employee is 'apian' or 'a pain'?")] Deriving from the Latin word apis, meaning "bee," apian is a relative of apiculture, the keeping of bees, and apiary, a place where bees are kept.
The Greek word for bee, however, comes from an entirely different linguistic family and is the source of a popular feminine name. See MELISSA.
APRINE
If you wish to compare someone to a boar, try using the term aprine. It's a rare word, but serviceable, as in "Not only was Vanessa's most recent date a bore, he was positively aprine." The term derives from the Latin word aper, meaning "wild swine," and is a relative of apricide ("the slaughter of a wild boar"), as well as the masculine name Everett. See EVERETT.
AQUILINE
Most often applied to a nose that is curved or hooked like an eagle's beak, the adjective aquiline derives from Latin aquila, which means "eagle." Aquiline is also used more generally to describe anything "having eaglelike characteristics." From the same bird word comes the Spanish surname, Aguilar.
ARI
The masculine name Ari comes to us courtesy of the Hebrew word ari, meaning lion. Similarly, the name Ariel comes from Hebrew words that mean "lion of God." (For more lion names, see LEO.)
ARIEL See ARI.
ARNOLD
The name Arnold, and its French variant, Arnaud, literally means "strong as an eagle" or "eagle-ruler." Both derive from the Old High German words arn, meaning "eagle," and wald, meaning "power."
AROUSE See ROUSE.
ARCTIC
The ancient Greeks' word for north was arktikos, a name that literally means "of the bear." The reason: the Greeks associated this direction with the most prominent constellation in the northern sky, the (vaguely) bear-shaped set of stars now referred to a Ursa Major (Latin for the Great Bear). In fact, the Greek word for bear, arktos, and its Latin counterpart, ursa, derive from the same prehistoric root. See URSINE.
ASININE
This word for stupid, silly, or stubborn derives from Latin asininus, literally meaning "asslike" — a reference to a donkey's obstinancy and presumed lack of intelligence. (The backside type of ass, by the way, is a variant of the English word arse, which goes back to an ancient root for tail.)
Asinine, incidentally, is a linguistic cousin of the "beast of burden" that supports a painter's canvas — see EASEL.
AUSPICES
In ancient Rome, the auspex was a state official whose job was to predict the future by observing the behavior of birds. The name auspex (and its plural, auspices) is a descendant of the Latin word for bird, avis (a relative of such words as aviation), and specere, "to look at," from which come several other words involving "looking," including spectacle, perspective, and conspicuous.
Whenever the Romans faced an important decision, they made sure to consult these professional bird watchers, or auspices, who would study the flight, chatter, and feeding of birds for clues that would help them foretell the future. The service that these auspices provided was known as an auspicium, a term that eventually came to refer to the good or bad omens themselves.
Occasionally speakers of English now use the word auspice to mean "observation of and prophesying based on the actions of birds," also known as ornithoscopy (pronounced "oar-nih-THOSS-kuh-pee"). More often, however, we use the word auspice to mean any kind of omen, especially a favorable one. This favorable sense of auspice also remains in our phrase under the auspices of, which implies the presence of some sort of benevolent protection and guidance. Similarly, an auspicious debut is a promising one — regardless of what any feathered fortune teller might say. See AEGIS.
AVIATION
Just as the invention of the airplane was inspired by the flight of birds, the word aviation itself has its origins in the Latin word for "bird," avis. This makes aviation a linguistic relative of such words as avian, meaning "of or pertaining to birds," and aviary, a "place where birds are kept." See AUSPICES.
AZTEC
The name of the Aztecs derives from that of a leggy bird and commemorates the legendary site in Central Mexico where the Aztecs supposedly originated. This place was called Aztlan, a name that in Nahuatl, the Aztecs' language, literally means "the place of the herons," from the Aztecs' word for "heron," aztatl.
B
BAT ONE'S EYES
There's an animal moving around inside this phrase, but not the one you might expect. The bat in this case alludes to a term from falconry, one that refers to the action of a hawk rapidly beating its wings. As a 1615 falconry manual puts it, "Batting, or to bat, is when a Hawke fluttereth with her wings either from the pearch or the man's fist, striuing as it were to flie away."
This "bat" is a variant of the word bate, a descendant of the Latin word battuere, that means "to beat." Thus the phrase to bat one's eyes is an etymological relative of such "beating" words as beat, battle, and abate (originally, "to beat down," then later "decrease").
And the leathery-winged, nocturnal animal we call a bat? The name of this vespertilian creature is an alteration of the Middle English term for it, bakke, which in turn was adapted from a similar-sounding Scandanavian name. See VESPERTILIAN.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dog Days and Dandelions by Martha Barnette. Copyright © 2003 Martha Barnette. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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