A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 440

"Just the thing if romping with words is what you want to do."
-The Washington Post

"The most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass email in cyberspace."
-The New York Times

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

From: Ashlea N Smith (asmithk gmu.edu)
Subject: Re: sforzando
Def: adjective, adverb: With sudden force or strong accent

Interesting that the 's' in the beginning of sforzando does not reverse the meaning root verb 'forzare' meaning 'to force' in Italian like 'sfortunato' does for 'fortunato' (unlucky and lucky respectively).

From: Ken Franklin (franklin.ken gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--sforzando

Like, I daresay, many other piano students, I remembered what the notation "sf" meant on sheet music with the mnemonic "sudden forte". (No extra charge for the second illustration of this week's theme!)

Italian is replete with words that begin with consonant combinations not common to English: sb-, sd- ,sf-, sg-, sv-. One that might be familiar to Americans is the chain of fast-food restaurants often located at turnpike stops and in malls: Sbarro

From: Anthony G Morris (anton agmdigital.com)
Subject: kvetch
Def: verb intr.: To complain habitually, whine; gripe. noun: 1. A chronic complainer. 2. A complaint.

Do you know the joke about the Jewish guy lamenting to his friend about his dog going deaf? When asked how he could tell, his friend was amazed to hear that the dog could talk and was complaining verbally about things. Astounded he asked about the deafness and was told that the dog had been asked to fetch, not kvetch.

It should be noted that this word entered English in the United States, where it has taken on a different meaning from its use elsewhere in Yiddish or, for that matter, in contemporary Israeli Hebrew.

The root meaning of "squeeze" or "pinch" noted in your etymology led to the use of the verb to describe a sobbing sound used by cantors in singing many passages of Jewish liturgy. "Pinching" the throat once or twice in mid-note (using internal muscles, of course, not one's hand) yields that sort of sound. From the sobbing came the idea of complaint -- and thus the usage in American English -- and perhaps in Canadian English and around the British Commonwealth as well; I do not know.

In modern Hebrew, the term is used as a noun to describe, among other things, a place at which plumbing narrows or turns -- a very different outgrowth of the same root sense of squeezing or pinching.

A shiksa (non-Jewish girl) I dated years ago had a hard time with the double initial consonants of this word and therefore pronounced it kuh-vetch. I always tried to help her get the correct pronunciation by explaining that the "k" sound was shorter, but to no avail.

The cover of the book "Born to Kvetch" by Michael Wex, should remind us all that indoctrinating children into religion before they are of the age of consent is considered by writers like C. Hitchens to be child abuse. I completely agree.

The etymology for kvetch indicates a first recorded use in 1964. I learned the word from my Jewish college friends in 1960 or so. They, in turn had learned it from their grandparents and so on and so on. Maybe it's 1694 or 1496?? Keep up the great work -- there aren't many slip-ups like this.

I addressed this last week, but the number of emails this week indicates it bears repeating. It's important to note that this is the first *recorded* use of the word in the *English* language. Lexicographers revise the entries when they receive a citation antedating a word. The OED is always on the lookout for documentary evidence that antedates a word. Send it here.
-Anu Garg

From: Stanley Seiden (Stanleyseiden gmail.com)
Subject: Tmesis
Def: Stuffing a word into the middle of another word.

Tmesis was used much more elegantly in ancient times. In Latin texts, it was actually a pretty classy literary technique, as opposed to a means of sneaking profanities into your words.

This line from Book I of the Aeneid: et multo nebulae circum dea fudit amictu, describes Venus hiding herself with clouds; the word "circumfudit" is split to hide the goddess herself "dea" inside. In-freaking-credible.

Tmesis in the shape of the separation of a prefix from a verb was common in Greek literature (particularly Homer). It is like 'pre...this...fer' or 'with...that...hold'. Apart from examples containing expletives (which is itself a tmesis), examples are rare in English, the most familiar being 'to usward' (e.g. Eph 1.19)

The word tmesis makes me think of a ship I was on in Agana Harbor, Guam. It was The Proteus and it was a sub-tender. To accommodate the huge missiles that go into submarines, the ship had been cut in half and another section welded in the middle, big enough to hold the missiles. That certainly is inserting another part in the middle, wouldn't you say? Nautically yours,
Chief Jimmie Carol Ellis, USN Retired in Crescent City, California where the redwoods meet the sea!

From: Andrew Kerr (andrew andrewkerr.plus.com)
Subject: tmesis
Def: Stuffing a word into the middle of another word.

Back in the '60s I was PA to Randolph S Churchill, son of Sir Winston. They both had a passion for the English language and I was constantly asked to look up words in his 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED). He was particularly pleased that tmesis was the only word in the language beginning with 'tm'. He delighted in the discovery of windfucker, that is what they call a kestrel in the Orkney Islands.

In the Marines, the favorite tmesis was (is?) out-f-------standing. Of course, the f-word still functions in all parts of speech.

Ah yes, I remember tmeses from my army days, when it was the "F" word that was stuffed, as in out-effing-rageous or in-effing-consequential. Or is that creamed-effing-chipped beef again?

A probably unprintable example from a World War II American air base in England. As bomber squadrons returned from runs over Germany, some planes missing, some damaged and limping in, named over the base's loudspeaker was the pilot of each landing plane. As one severely damaged plane limped down the runway, the pilot's name boomed out, followed by "and he's only twenty fuckin'-one years old!" This was told to me by a now-deceased law professor who was one of the ground crew.

Well, the first time I ever heard something like this, from a nurse with whom I worked, it took about two clicks for it to hit me. Can't tell everyone this, but she said, "Adi-fuckin'-os!" I was floored!

I am so glad to know that there is a word for this. My favorite example is what I heard from a drill sergeant decades ago, ". . . and don't do it a-goddam-gain."

A gentleman I know emigrated to the USA from Italy after the war. He didn't know a word of English, and was advised to answer "Yes" to everything. He was at the barber shop one day, and was asked "Do you want a crew cut?" He remembered the advice and said "Yes." When he went home that day and his children were appalled at his appearance, and, he told me, "My wife, she no recca-me-nize.

I was once taught this was called an infix (in contrast to a suffix or prefix) -- now I have a-whole-nother word for it.

I was once delighted to hear a mother admonishing her child not just to behave but to "be-really-have!" It started a continuing family discussion about the phonological and syntactic rules that must govern this phenomenon.

From: Catherine Bolton (translations bolton.it)
Subject: Svelte
Def: 1. Slender; lithe. 2. Graceful; suave.

In Italian the word "svelto" also means swift, quick, nimble. "Svelto di lingua" means having a quick tongue and "svelto di mano" means nimble-fingered, a talent that has made the career of many a pickpocket around the world.

From: John Miksits (john.miksits dot.state.nj.us)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--sforzando

Check out the link about penguins. There are many places penguins live. Even a desert!