word for Wednesday

Goblin mode engaged

It seemed appropriate that the Oxford Dictionary revealed its Word of the Year for 2022 – goblin mode – earlier this week on the eve of St Nicholas’ feast day or, as we goblins like to call it, Krampusnacht.

I thought that, after a lengthy hiatus, how better to return to these bloggish halls than with a word for Wednesday and a quick etymological romp with some ghoulies and ghosties and European folkloric beasties.

Firstly, goblins. The Oxford Dictionary linguists and lexicographers put the choice of Word of the Year to the public for the first time and were deluged with resounding support for ‘Goblin Mode’. Their president acknowledged that it “resonates with all of us who are feeling a little overwhelmed at this point.” So what, exactly, is goblin mode? They define it as a slang term for ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’

Because … goblins lounge about on sofas, in their pyjamas, binge-watching Netflix, and eating whole packets of Tim Tams. Probably while doing their best Edith Piaf impersonation… Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

Actually, while they are commonly found scattered through fictional fantasy realms and role-playing games, goblins are quite elusive on the etymological front. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the word may originally stem from a Medieval Latin reference to ‘Gobelinus’ – a spirit haunting the Evreux region of France. Given that the city of Evreux was repeated sacked and burnt down in the Middle Ages, during the wars between Normandy and France, it’s not surprising that the spirit may have been responsible for spawning the Norman French word ‘gobelin’ which was first recorded in the early 14th Century as meaning “a devil, incubus, mischievous and ugly fairy.”

Goblin has come to be a catch-all term for mostly malicious creatures and there’s a lot of line blurring between folkloric tricksters and Hellish minions. Goblins, kobolds, knockers, trow, hobgoblins, phooka, bogey, sprites, brownies, gremlins … oh, there’s a whole parcel full of these delightful things that we must unpack one day. But, for now, what about the Krampus?

The banner image above is cropped from a lovely portrait of this beastie by Gerold Pattis, whose work can be found on Pixabay. The figure of the Krampus has become a pop culture icon, particularly since the 2015 release of the eponymous US horror film. In European Alpine and Germanic traditions, St Nick gives presents to good children and Krampus gives the bad children coal or puts them in his sack and beats them with a birch rod or throws them in an icy river or drags them off to Hell.

Seems legit.

There are plenty of regional variations on Krampus including the Bavarian Klaubauf (who prefers to bake children in pies), Knecht Ruprecht (who hits them with a bag of ashes), and Zwarte Piet from the Low Countries who puts children in his sack and, inexplicably, takes them to Spain rather than Hell.

We’ve also got some gender balancing with tales of the iron-beaked Christmas witch, Perchta, showing it’s not just hairy, horned, man-monsters that get to make the holiday season gory and bright. Perchta or Bertha or Frau Holle or Hulda is sometimes described as a goddess or a shapeshifter, with one large foot that shows her nature as both a swan maiden and a spinner whose foot is enlarged from too much hard-core treadling.

Perchta gets out and about in December and early January on her annual domestic workplace inspections which she takes very seriously indeed. If you haven’t spun all your flax, before the Christmas holidays, she shows up and tramples the unspun flax to punish you. If you’re also a messy housekeeper, she will slit your belly open with the knife she hides in her ragged skirts, pull out your guts, and stuff the hole with straw and stones. Or maybe just beat you with stinging nettles, if you’re lucky.

Here’s a delightful summary of Frau Perchta including the description of her creeping “through the house like a mad Martha Stewart crossed with the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” Perchta also has an entourage – the Perchten – that is part Wild Hunt and part horde of Krampuses doing her bidding as she goes around on Twelfth Night, looking for slovenly spinners to punish. It’s kind of cool that St Nicholas has one chained Krampus to mete out punishments and Perchta has an army of them.

When facing down the looming festive season I have to admit that I’ve never been that keen on Santa’s list being all or nothing “naughty or nice” and I think the Elf on the Shelf is a creepy little nark. I’m definitely not about to start handing out coal or judging anyone for their commitment to spinning flax and doing domestic chores. In fact, after another weird year, I am 100% behind the notion of seizing the opportunity over the holidays to go into goblin mode.

Just remember, if you feel the same, that you don’t need anyone’s approval. You goblin mode best when you’re unapologetic about rejecting social norms.

No regrets, fellow goblins, no regrets.

That very verdant vernal verdure

Ah, springtime! It’s very vert.

Yea, verily!

And since it’s Wednesday and words are our favourite Wednesday jam, let’s enjoy a wallow in the etymology of ver, which is Latin for spring, or the springtime. From it we get the word vernal – pertaining to spring – which doesn’t get much of an outing these days other than in reference to the equinox.

Ver – it’s very straightforward…

But not so fast!

That verdant verdure – or fresh green pasture – which is synonymous with this time of year derives not from ver, but from vert. This Old French word for green comes from the Latin viridis – green, blooming – which derived from virere – to be green.

Viridis also gives us viridian, the name for the colour between green and teal on a colour wheel. The process of making chromium green oxide was discovered in Paris in 1838 by Pannetier, who kept his methods secret. In 1859 another Parisian chemist, Guignet, synthesised a hydrated form of chromium oxide which created the viridian pigment.

Vert also gives us verdigris – that lovely green patina that forms on copper when it is exposed to the air. Verdigris comes from verte de Grece in Old French, which literally means ‘green of Greece’.

So ver beginnings in words are easy because they’re all about spring and green?

No. As Kermit told us, it isn’t easy being green.

Without doubt you could have a verdant verge – in the sense of a lushly green border of, for example, grass by the side of the road. But verge does not share etymological roots with verdant. It comes originally from the Latin virga, meaning a shoot or rod. Leaving aside its 13th century English application to the male member, verge still has a really interesting history.

garden ornament of a fantasy dwarf

It was used in English, to quote the Online Etymology Dictionary, in the phrase “within the verge (c. 1500, also as Anglo-French dedeinz la verge), i.e. “subject to the Lord High Steward’s authority” (as symbolized by the rod of office), originally a 12-mile radius round the king’s court.” But the meaning of the word back-flipped, for reasons that are unclear, and changed to “the outermost edge of an expanse or area”.

In other words, verge went from being inside the area of authority to right at the edge of it, if not actually beyond the pale. (The ‘pale’, of course, being the wooden stakes which marked the outer boundary of a jurisdiction, as in the area around Dublin where English law was enforced in Ireland between the late 12th and 16th centuries.)

And what about our truthful ver words, like verify, verisimilitude, and verily? They’ve got nothing to do with spring, being green, or a rod, right?

Right. They have yet another Latin source – veritatem, which means truth. The maxim In vino veritas – in wine there is truth – is a concept that’s been around for as long as there’s been wine. I could say it’s very true… but I’d just be repeating myself. The word ‘very’ is simply asserting the truth or genuineness of a thing – so it’s the same as saying something is truly true. Unnecessary and bound to make people think you are protesting too much.

spring blossoms cherry tree blue sky

Vera and Verity are virtue names meaning truth, but since people don’t chat in Latin so much anymore, they’re kind of stealth virtue names, like Amity, Benedict and Fidal, rather than the slap-you-in-the-face virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity (which are still an improvement on the beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick Puritan grace names like Abstinence, Humility and Resolve or the hortatory masterpiece of If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-for-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebones).

But, as usual, I digress…

Chasing down all the versions of ver (that’s another one from the Latin vertere, to turn) would take more time that I have for this post because spring has sprung and I have gardening to do. All the photos in the post are from my garden – which makes me happy, but kind of overwhelmed. I grew up in the sub-tropics and having a spring garden is kind of weird.

So, any tips on what garden tasks I should be doing would be very welcome.

Avocado alligators are a snap

Language is weird. Beautiful and weird and I can’t resist it. Plus, it’s been too long since I indulged in a delicious Word for Wednesday*. So let’s go on another adventure in etymology – this time to the Avocado Jungle of DEATH…. **

Or at least to look at the word AVOCADO.

You can enjoy this tropical fruit with its distinctive nutty flavour smashed on toast, mashed into guacamole, cut through a salad or, my personal fave, on vegemite toasties. But have you ever wondered about the origin story of the humble avocado?

Wonder no more.

I found “avocado” trending on the Online Etymology dictionary the other day and was fascinated to discover that the word is basically a humorous homophone – which is a word that sounds like another word – e.g. humorous and humerus, which is why your funny bone is called that, even though you don’t laugh when you whack the end of it.

Ahuakatl was the Nahuatl word for both an avocado and a testicle, because… well it’s the shape, yeah? It’s like orchids, which derive their name from the Latin orchis, from the Greek orkhis, literally ‘testicle’ because of the shape of their root. Remember that, next time you’re buying your mum a nice potted dendrobium from Woolies for Mother’s Day.

So, back to the jolly green fruit.

The Aztec ahuakatl became, over time, aguacate which sounded amusingly similar to the Spanish word for lawyer – avocado. The appeal of lawyer jokes transcends time, culture and language, and the opportunity to call a testicle-shaped fruit a lawyer could not be denied.

And that’s how a tropical fruit rose from humble beginnings to, etymologically speaking, become an advocate (which derives from the Latin advocatus, for one who pleads on another’s behalf). In English, legal advocates are called barristers, after the railing – the bar – which separated the areas of the Inns of Court.

If you hang out in cafes, scoffing coffee and smashed avo on sourdough, you probably know a barista or two. Etymologically, barrister and barista have the English word bar in common. In the case of barrister it’s bar as a barrier in court, and in barista it’s bar as a tavern. Apparently, that meaning of bar wandered into Italian and came back with a coffee – barista simply means bartender in a coffee shop. Strangely similar words, but with a different amount of bragging rights when your mum is telling her friends you’re now working as one.

But, to meander back over to variations on a theme of avocadoes.

The Spanish word avocado became, in Mexican Spanish, alvacata and, since that sounded like alligato and the fruit have that fabulous green or greeny-black skin, avocadoes were called alligator pears in English from 1763.

Now, alligator simply means “the lizard” from the Spanish el lagarto, and they are not generally considered particularly humorous, being ginormous beasties of reptilian devouring. But the word always reminds me of the tale of an alderman who, when accused of corruption, indignantly declaimed that “allegations have been made and I know who the alligators are.”

A handy thing to know, I think. Almost as handy as knowing that the fruit you’re putting on your toast is, in a wordy way, a reptilian lawyer’s testicle.

Enjoy!

*It all started with polydactylus…

**remember Cannibal Women of the Avocado Jungle of Death? A 1989 B movie spoof of Heart of Darkness? No? It was funny at the time…

Crepuscular lifestyle choices

B18Sunset

Forget decluttering, self-care and elevation training: the hot trend in lifestyle choices is being crepuscular.

Really, it’s more fun than it sounds.

It’s an ugly word*, which is a shame, because when I say it’s a hot trend I mean that, literally. With temperatures across large swathes of Australia breaking records for hellishness (day after day above 40 degrees Celsius / 104 Fahrenheit) official health advice to a wilting populace is to stay out of the sun and the worst heat in the middle of the day, if possible.

So the smart move is to become a crepuscular creature – one that is most active at dawn and dusk.

Crepuscular comes from the Latin word crepusculum, meaning twilight or dusk and the word can be used in a derogatory sense to imply dim understanding or an ‘imperfect enlightenment’. In zoology, though, it’s one of the words used to describe the behaviour of different species according to when they are most active.

Most people are familiar with the idea that animals are diurnal or nocturnal – active in the day or the night, respectively. Again, these words have Latin roots – dies means day and nox means night and urnus is a suffix denoting time. But we should reject this simplistic reduction of choice to one thing or the other – either diurnal or nocturnal – because reality is more diverse and linguistically interesting.

Many animals, including wombats, deer, ocelots, hyenas and mice, are crepuscular.

Some are matutinal, or matinal (if you want them to sound less like mutants). It just means they are most active at dawn.

Vespertine beasts – like some bats and owls – are most active at dusk and vespertine flowers are those that bloom in the evening.

They’re all derived from Latin words – Matuta was the Roman goddess of the dawn and the canonical hour of Matins takes its name from matutinus vigilias meaning ‘morning watches’. Hesperos, the Greek god of the evening star, became Hesperus in Latin, which became vesper when referring to the evening, the star and west. Vespers, also a canonical hour, is called evensong in English.

Interestingly, Vespa – the brand name for an Italian motor scooter – is the Latin word for wasp, but wasps are diurnal. WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are unlikely to be found at either matins or vespers, although you might find some high church Anglican varieties at evensong.

Anyway… back to crepuscular. I can’t imagine using it in a non-technical sentence without sounding entirely pompous. But I can imagine adopting the habits of a crepuscular beast – using that delightful time at dawn and dusk to be most active.

Imagine it? I’m living it.

So be crepuscular, stay cool, stay hydrated and remember – for the rest of the daylight hours there is, thankfully, air-conditioning.

*Word for Wednesday can get a little judgey, but even the Online Etymology Dictionary agrees the older adjective form ‘crepusculine’ sounded ‘lovelier’.

Curious stickybeaks and nosy Parkers

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Wednesdays* are perfect for the heady joy of satisfying our etymological curiosity. And what better to consider than curiosity itself…

Curiosity comes from curious which evolved from the Latin cura to care. Lots of interesting developments have wound their way into the language from cura: cure and curate and curator and curio, just to name a few.

From around 1883, booksellers referred euphemistically to erotica and pornography as curious books or curiosa, deriving perhaps from the 18th century meaning that something curious was ‘exciting curiosity’.

The exclamation of “Curiouser and curiouser” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 was attributed by Lewis Carroll to her being so surprised she forgot how to speak good English. Never fear. Like other contributions made to the language by Carroll (which include chortle, galumph, snark, vorpal and the concept of a portmanteau word) it is now commonly used and understood (according to the Oxford Dictionary) to mean ‘increasingly strange’.

It’s a well-known fact that curiosity is inimical to felines, so keep your cats off the keyboard as we delve a little deeper with the help of the Online Etymology Dictionary.**

Busy now means only being continually occupied, but it once also meant being anxiously careful and potentially prying or meddlesome and so a busybody was a person who snooped and pried into things that worried them, but were not really their business (or busyness, if you want to go old school).

‘Snoop’ is from 1832 American English, possibly from the Dutch snoepen ‘to pry’.

‘Pry’ is much older (c.1300) from prien ‘to peer into’.

The use of ‘nose’ as a verb, rather than a noun, in the sense of prying or searching something out, is first recorded in the 1640s, and being nosy meant having a prominent nose for centuries before it was used as an adjective to mean inquisitive in 1882.

To call a nose a beak has also been around for centuries and stickybeak is an Antipodean word to describe being inquisitive. You stick your beak into something in Australia or New Zealand and you are, ipso facto, a stickybeak. The act of sticking said beak can be referred to as stickybeaking or you can say, to justify your curiosity about something, ‘I just wanted a stickybeak.’

It doesn’t necessarily carry negative connotations, but dismissing someone as ‘an old stickybeak’ is like saying they’re a busybody – it’s pretty derogatory.

When I was a kid, with the surname of Parker, if someone showed an excess of curiosity, they were a stickybeak. You may imagine my horror, aged 8, when our substitute teacher told someone off in class for trying to eavesdrop by calling them ‘a nosy Parker’.

Not cool, man. Not cool.

After I lived down the shame (never more thankful that my nose is delightfully retrousse or I would NEVER have lived it down) I looked into what ancestral Parker had doomed us all to being thought stickybeaks.

The popular theory was it had been Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of Queen Elizabeth I, who was to blame. Or it may have been that parkers were park keepers and given to snooping when illicit couplings caused the shrubbery to rustle. It was an occupational hazard (or perk, depending on perspective) in the same way that people out ‘walking their dog’ engage in dogging.

But the first recorded use of nosy Parker isn’t until 1907, well after the heyday of the archbishop and of Parkers being necessarily associated with parks. So it remains unclear just which Parker was to blame for marking us all as nosy.

And now to digress from etymology and swerve into genealogy:
Despite the huge numbers of Parkers in England, the story in my family was that we were descended from the archbishop, and, since the family came from Cambridgeshire, also from the Parker after whom Parker’s Piece in Cambridge is named.

I was curious.

So, when I lived for six months in Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire, I took the opportunity to do a genealogy course and to trundle down to Cambridge to have a stickybeak in the shire records office. I found no link to the archbishop nor to the Trinity College cook who kept cows on Parker’s Piece.

But I did find that my 10 x great-grandfather was Thomas Hobson.

Hobson ran an inn in Cambridge which hired out horses, to students and academics especially. His practice was to rent out the next available horse – regardless of what horse was wanted – because then the fastest horses didn’t get overworked. The saying that you have ‘Hobson’s choice’ – take it or leave it – is said to have been popularised by the poet John Milton, who as a Cambridge University student, wrote mock epitaphs for Hobson.

So I can’t claim to be a ‘proper’ nosy Parker… but I can claim a remote genealogical link to having a cavalier approach to other people’s wishes.

Hobson’s daughter, Elizabeth, married a chap called Fookes or Fowkes or Fox (they were a little slapdash with the spelling back in the late 1500s) who, before he died, sold his property of Anglesey Abbey to Hobson. When Elizabeth married Thomas Parker, Hobson gave it to them as a wedding gift.

Somehow, despite Anglesey Abbey now being a National Trust property, I never managed to pay it a visit, although I did get to the little village of Bottisham nearby, where lots of Parkers lived and died in obscurity before, in three generations my ancestors moved back to Cambridge, then to London and then to north Queensland.

One day, though, I’ve promised myself I’ll also get back to Cambridgeshire and have a stickybeak at Anglesey Abbey.

* Wednesdays are perfect for words – honestly, it’s a thing.

** An invaluable resource for writers of historical fiction who don’t want anachronistic words in their book.

Scuttlebutt and scuppers

banner_pirate ship Word for Wednesday goes piratical for ITLAPD.

Ahoy me mateys! ’tis Wednesday again ‘n time t’ look at words ‘cos how can ye not be lovin’ yer etymology? Today’s words are ripe ‘n salty, ’cause today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Ye can call me a tailed imp’s elder, though that would set me fair to guttin’ ye like a rum-boggled sea bass, but ’tis no time fer violence, ‘cause we be heedin’ th’ call o’ the sea.

More’n half th’ problem wit’ natterin’ like pirates be that while ye might “yo ho ho” and “shiver me timbers” wit’ th’ best o’ them, ‘n sling about phrases like “salty ole seadog” ‘n “arr”, most pirate natter be peppered wit’ obscure nautical terms which slip out o’ one’s head quicker’n a greasy kraken.

Wha’ th’ Davy Jones’ locker be a topsail halyard ‘n how do ye hoist it?

Wha’s a bowsprit?

How do ye splice a mainbrace?

Can ye do so, ye freebootin’ powder monkey?

Aye, ’tis a sore puzzle t’ scurvy landlubbers wit’ dreams o’ corsairs in thar black-souled hearts.

Now, ye might be ready t’ teach yer barnacle-covered Nan t’ suck cackle-fruit, in which case heave ho, ye son of a biscuit-eater, ye’ve no further business here. But if ye’re three sheets t’ th’ wind on enough rum t’ float th’ Royal Navy, an’ th’ lingo’s no easier t’ ken, read on.

Because that’s the end of the pirating for now – fun though it is – it’s time to consider words.

First up, though, some resources.
One of my favourite spots on the interwebs is The Phrontistery – a thinking place and the home of the International House of Logorrhea. I can’t recommend it highly enough. They have a delightful list of nautical terms full of delicious words like futtock, bunt, cofferdam and windbound.

See the Sea has a very clear list of nautical terms with some brief and illuminating notes on the nautical origins of terms like “a couple of shakes” meaning a short time, hazing and being “at loose ends”. Worth a look, I think.

The Pirate Glossary is full of fun facts – famous pirates, the anatomy of a ship, weapons and flags – as well as insults and phrases. It’s clear, comprehensive and kind of fabulous.

So, with all of that at our disposal, we could talk pirate all day, but instead I want to spread a little scuttlebutt and look at scuttling and scuppers.

A scuttlebutt is the shipboard equivalent of the office water cooler and of the gossip that’s exchanged around it. Butt is one of those hard-working words which mean a lot of different things because they’ve all snuck in over the centuries from different sources – Frankish, Dutch, Old French, Norse, etc, etc. The relevant source for scuttlebutt is from Late Latin “buttis” meaning cask – which became “bot” for a barrel in Old French.

So we’ve got a barrel full of drinking water on deck, yo ho me hearties.

Now a scuttle is a hole or covered hatch in a ship – possibly derived from the Old French “éscoutille” to cut something to make it fit, or directly from the Spanish word “escotilla” for hatchway – and a scuttle can be used for scuttling, deliberately sinking, the ship. Of course, the water barrel would have had a hole cut in it to allow a cup or dipper to get in and scoop out some water. I think that the theory that the dipper had holes cut in it to stop sailors from lingering and gossiping over their water break sounds a bit stupid – you don’t want to go wasting fresh water on sea voyages.

Aye, drink yer Adam’s ale through a sieve, while we stand around and laugh.

Just as you can scuttle a ship to prevent enemy capture by cutting holes or opening the seacocks in the hull, you can deliberately ruin a plan by scuttling it. So far, so clear.

But what about if you scupper it?

Scuppers, as a noun, refers to the holes cut in the bulwarks of a ship to allow water on deck to drain off. It may derive from some more Old French – “escopir”, meaning to spit out – because as long as your scuppers are spitting out the water you’re less likely to sink. It may also refer to Margaret Wise Brown’s sailor dog, Scuppers, but only if you’ve had the pleasure of his Little Golden Book company.

scuppers

Of course, if you were to die on deck you might be washed into the scuppers, which may be where it got its negative meaning of to be killed or to ruin something.

But according to modern definitions, to scupper is to sink your own ship on purpose. No, wait – that’s to scuttle it! Well, it would appear that the two have become synonymous. Ah, the English language. A rich grab bag of mutable stuff – it’s unsinkable.

All of which means that you should feel free to scupper or scuttle or shiver yer timbers for ITLAPD – just remember to abandon ship for the first two.

A bonfire of my vanity

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Tonight, I’m off to a bonfire of my vanity, rather than a more generic bonfire of the vanities which would call for the righteous roasting of anything which might encourage sin.

Let me explain and, since it’s Wednesday and there’s always time for a little wordsmithery, before I set fire to the pyre I’m going to investigate some history and wordalicious etymology.

Back in the 1490s, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was ruining his former patrons, the de Medicis, by preaching that luxury and ostentatious excess were sinful. (And, yeah, those Medicis knew a thing or two about ostentation.)

The good people of Florence, egged on by Savonarola, in the spirit of abstinence called for by the upcoming Lent, spent Shrove Tuesday 1497 chucking anything that might tempt them to sin – mirrors, cosmetics, musical scores and instruments, playing cards, paintings, books – onto a fire.

This wasn’t the first falò delle vanità, bonfire of the vanities, but it is the most well-remembered, at least in part because it was said that the great Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli consigned some of his own paintings to the pyre. Che cavolo!

Things didn’t end well for Savonarola – only fifteen months later, after being excommunicated and tortured, he was hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, along with two other friars. Their ashes were dumped in the Arno to prevent his followers from making relics of his bones.

And, yeah, that’s the Arno in Pisa – stop being picky. Its the same river and it brings us to the etymology of bonfire which is that it is a bone fire. That is a fire in which you’re burning bones.

Why, you might ask. Or even, what sort of monster are you?

Firstly, they don’t have to be human bones. Don’t go all wicker man on me, alright?

Secondly, burning bones is a great way to turn them into a nice, friable fertiliser. So, you bring the beasties in from their summer pastures after harvest, knowing there’s not enough feed for them all for the winter, and after the butchering and everything is done you’ve got a pile of carcasses which need burning to make fertiliser for the fields for the next year’s crop.

And, oh, is that the time? Somehow it’s the end of October and time for Samhain, so you build up bonfires – bonefires – and make a party of it. You drive the rest of the cattle between two of the bonfires and you pass through them too, as a cleansing ritual. The wall between the worlds is thin, so you make sure you appease the spirits of the fae and of the dead.

So the bonfires (with or without their bones) were being lit at that time of the year (preferably by a fire made by friction = force-fire, needs-fire or neatsfire, neat being an Old English word for cattle) long before the Catholic Church moved its celebration of All Hallows from the 13^th of May to the 1^st of November, and long before English justice saw Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators drawn, hung, mutilated and quartered for their conspiracy to blow up King James and the parliament on 5 November 1605. A ‘guy’ has been burnt in effigy on that date – Bonfire Night – ever since.

Because what’s a bonfire without at least a few (notional) bones?

And what’s it all got to do with my vanity?

Well, I’m off to have one of my manuscripts critiqued, tonight, by the CSFG novel critiquing group. If producing a book is like producing a child, which it really isn’t, this is like asking some other parents to tell you how ugly your kid is. No, honestly, tell me. I can take it.

Actually, it’s more like taking all the things you’re proud of in your work and watching while others throw them onto a bonfire.

Well, it will be cold tonight, here. About 4 decrees Celcius. Books, as Mr Bradbury told us, burn at 232 Celsius. And bones, as it happens, will become friable due to the breakdown of collagen at around that temperature too.

Still, even if all I’m left with is the charred remains, they’ll make a good fertiliser for the next version of my manuscript.

Word*: the villains are revolting!

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Darling, I know! **

Today’s word has a wain’s worth of class attitude: villain.

It seems logical to think that villain would share some sort of etymological root with vile and vilify – all the nasty things in one bucket, what ho?

But English is a language which defies logic. No, it snatches logic down from the tree and squeezes the life out of it, adding logic juice as a spicy flavouring to its hot-pot melange of the half dozen other languages it has smashed together. Tasty!

So vile and vilify come to English from French and originally from the Latin vilis meaning base or worthless. And villain comes via the same route, but not from vilis. Villain comes from villa, as in a Roman’s country house. Someone attached to – working at – the farmhouse or villa was a villanus.

Wait. We’re getting there. It makes as much sense as insulting someone by saying they are churlish or a boor.

By the time the Norman’s conquered their way across the Channel in 1066 villanus had become villein – meaning a low sort of peasant. In the feudal world even peasants had hierarchies and the villein/villain was above a serf, but below a thane. Clear as muck? Excellent!

Soon there were villains all over England – raking muck, sowing and reaping, wassailing and morris dancing. Of course it wasn’t all filth and giggles. They had plague and pestilence to keep things real.

But the point is that villains were peasants and they weren’t too clean or too fussy about what they found entertaining. It didn’t take long before the word villain meant not only a peasant but anyone who was low-born, rude, coarse, base and with no manners or taste.

A yokel, a hick, a hayseed.

And, as has ever been the way, it’s a short skip from low manners to low morals. You know: you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. As well as a general insult meaning common as the muck they raked, villain started to mean an immoral, criminal and dangerous person. A knave and a rascal.

Etymologically speaking:

knave = male servant (Old English/Germanic),
rascal = rabble/people of the lowest class (Old French),
churl = peasant(Old English/Germanic),
boor = peasant (from the Latin for cow).

I’m seeing a pattern emerging here.

By early in the 19th century, villain had been attached to the idea of a character in a book or play whose evil actions drove the plot forward. From there it became a more general word for a wicked or malevolent person, and by the 20th century it had also acquired the gloss of being a criminal mastermind.

A defamatory transformation for those poor peasants, but what’s the take-home message for the writers in the room?

Well, you’re no doubt aware that your villain/antagonist shouldn’t be a moustache-twirling cardboard cut-out, who is evil for the sake of being evil and has no reason for stopping the hero/protagonist from achieving their goals other than that someone has to or, hello, no plot.

Villains need depth and motivation and they need to believe in their reasons for doing the evil things they do.

The best villains see themselves as heroes.

Also… check your assumptions.

Are your villains perpetuating class, race or gender stereotypes? Are you thoughtlessly writing white hat/black hat characters. That is, are all your good guys good-looking? Or slim? Or polite, educated, well-groomed, gainfully employed, whatever other virtue you prize, while the villains are ugly, physically deformed, thuggish, fat***, stupid, etc, etc.

You can do better than that. Great antagonists are often a shadow mirror reflecting back the opposite of the hero – what the hero could be if they chose the dark side. But you don’t have to take an either/or approach to every aspect of these characters.

And you really shouldn’t leap in and assume the antagonist is a peasant because all villains are, aren’t they? Make conscious choices about your antagonists and your protagonists – don’t just have default settings.

The etymology of the word villain is a lesson in class prejudice – it permeates our language without us even realising it.

Words are your tools, writers – know what they mean and what they imply and use them with intent.

*It’s Wednesday word time again. This could get to be a thing.

** I know – that’s not a photo of villains or peasants! They’re Skaven and they’re revolting.

***Someone I know has stopped reading a best-selling thriller author because anytime a character is introduced and described as fat it’s a giveaway that they’re the bad guy. Kind of kills the thrill.

Wed shelf What do Wednesday Addams, Sir Garfield Sobers, Hannibal Lecter and Count Tyrone Rugen from The Princess Bride have in common?

That’s right! They were all polydactylous.

Polydactyly is the congenital physical abnormality of having more than the usual number of fingers or toes.

Polydactyly. Now there’s a good-looking word.

When writing, you want to make your characters memorable. According to the exhaustive TV Tropes, polydactylism is one of those shorthand (ba-dum-dum) tropes for difference – your character is either shown to be adorably quirky and unconventional or their mutation is a metaphor for being a monster. For example, the allegation that Anne Boleyn had six-fingers (and an extra nipple to feed her demonic familiar) circulated after her execution and was (probably) false.

In terms of plot, being able to say “I’m looking for a six-fingered man” definitely narrows your field of suspects, as demonstrated in the detective series Monk and by Count Rugen. You know the routine:

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

They didn’t bother with Hannibal Lecter’s extra finger in the films. In Thomas Harris’s book, The Silence of the Lambs, he is described as having the comparatively rare central polydactyly on his left hand. Sinister! More common is ulnar or postaxial polydactyly, where the extra digit appears on the side of the hand, by the little finger.

In real life, many people born with ulnar polydactyly (like ‘Bond girl’ actress Gemma Arterton) have the extra digit surgically removed when they are children. Or, in the case of West Indian cricket legend, Garfield Sobers, they remove their own littlest little fingers – with the aid of catgut and a sharp knife. *shudders*

So what about Wednesday?

You may not be aware, because she isn’t the sort of girl to traipse around barefoot, but according to Charles Addams, writing in 1963, Wednesday Friday Addams has six toes on one foot. Of course, an extra toe is easier to disguise than an extra finger. Fans of classic sci-fi author John Wyndham’s book, The Chysalids, will recall that Sophie’s ‘blasphemous’ mutation was hidden for years by the simple expedient of not removing her shoes and socks in public. Until she did.

In Hungarian folk belief a person born with a sixth finger on one hand could be a táltos and capable of supernatural power. In fiction, extra digits can be good or bad omens, signs that characters are secretly related, or the reason why the character can do something that no-one else can.

They set the character apart, with an abnormality far more subtle than other supernumerary body parts – polycephaly (extra head), polymelia (extra limb), polyorchidism (extra testicle…although I guess that would only be unsubtle if you took your pants off in public). Moving on…

I don’t have any supernumerary body parts, and have to make do with a mere congenital anomaly – the atavistic swelling of the posterior helix of my right auricle. That’s right, I have a unilateral Darwin’s tubercle, which Charles Darwin called a Woolnerian tip when he wrote about it in The Descent of Man. It’s my vestigial pointy ear.

I’ve yet to read any fictional characters who are marked out as destined for greatness because of their tubercle, but I live in hope. Recommendations, anyone?