This week’s theme
There’s a word for it

This week’s words
misericord
contrafactum
akrasia
aquabib
eidolon


Previous week’s theme
Words that aren’t what they seem

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(mi/muh-ZER-i-kord)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Compassion, pity, or mercy.
2. Something to provide support to a standing person.
3. A place where rules are relaxed.
4. A dagger used to deliver the death stroke to a seriously wounded person.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French misericorde, from Latin misericordia (pity or mercy), from misereri (to pity) + cor (heart). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kerd- (heart), which also gave us cardiac, cordial, courage, concord, cordate, accord, discord, record, and recreant. Earliest documented use: 1230.

NOTES:

If you were to summarize misericord in plain words, it would be a mercy, a mercy seat, a mercy room, and a mercy weapon. A misericord was built under a church seat for worshipers to support their bottoms when standing (a small projection from the underside of a hinged seat that can be used for support when the seat is turned up). Since a misericord under a seat was usually out of sight, it was an inviting proposition for the woodcarver to depict something naughty, subversive, or forbidden. Examples:

a schoolmaster spanking a student (St. Botolph’s Church, UK)

a fox in bishop’s clothing, preaching to geese (St. Laurence’s Church, Ludlow, UK)

a mermaid (Notre Dame church in Les Andelys, France)

an angel doing something (Church Saint-Prix in Noizay, France)

NSFW (Tréguier cathedral, France)
The fact that a misericord supported the undersides of a person during long homilies probably inspired many a scene of mooning.

A misericord in a monastery, on the other hand, was not just a seat, but a whole room or an apartment where rules were relaxed. One could eat what was forbidden in the regular refectory. Another word for a refectory is frater and the misericord was called flesh-frater. So it was a frat house, in a manner of speaking. A flesh-frater? See the usage example below.

Finally, misericord as a mercy weapon delivered the death stroke (also known as the mercy stroke or coup de grâce) to hasten the death of a mortally wounded person.

USAGE:

“Roddy chose a tapestried stool as a misericord, uncomfortable enough to avert the danger of relaxing.”
David Stuart Leslie; Two Gentlemen Sharing; Secker & Warburg; 1963.

“‘By St. Loy!’ Joan cried suddenly. ‘We’ll pleasure ourselves now. Will you take ale, lady, in the misericord?’
Sweeping with mockery, she led me, while the following shadows loomed behind, down a low passage with a dim, fanned roof and gilded bosses. ‘A shapely building, this,’ I murmured.”
Rosemary Hawley Jarman; We Speak No Treason; Little, Brown; 1971.

“He kept his enemy in sight as his fingers searched frantically for the misericord fastened to his swordbelt.”
Tara O’Dell; My Gallant Knight; Zebra; 1999.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: