hydric and mesic and xeric and xerophilous and xerophagous

If the previous "triad" essay stressed the regions of the earth, this essay will probe the living conditions in those regions--dry, "middling" and damp. But the words xeric, mesic and hydric are so much the richer that they encourage exposition. Let's begin with dry.

Xeric

I have learned to love words beginning with "x" ever since I messed up on one during my first Senior Spelling Bee (in Oregon) in 2004. The word was pronounced "zebeck" and was defined as "a usually three-masted Mediterranean sailing ship (from the 18th century) with long overhanging bow and stern." But the word is derived from the Arabic, and I knew that there was no agreed-upon convention in 2004 of how to bring Arabic words into English. So, I mangled the word in some fashion, though its spelling is "xebec," at least in the dictionary that "counts" (Webster's Collegiate, 11th Ed.). I vowed at the time not only to learn all the dictionary words beginning with "x" but to love them, too. So, I ran into "xeric," defined as "characterized by, relating to, or requiring only a small amount of moisture." I was then told to compare "hydric, mesic," which I did--which led to this triad.

The Century doesn't have "xeric," but it has a host of words derived from the Greek word "xeros" (dry) or "xeraino" (to become dry). Let's review a few. Xerasia and xeransis, which the dictionary tells us are words meaning "drying up" or "siccation," are synonyms though xerasia is, more precisely, a disease of the hair characterized by excessive dryness and cessation of growth. Something xerantic has drying properties or is an exsiccant. Oops, I think I need a digression.

Wandering, Very Briefly

Exsiccant is a rare word, which the OED says is obsolete, but it first appeared in English in 1657: "The exsiccant quality it hath to dry up the crudities of the stomach."* I suppose we could try to

[*A "crudity" is not just something that is raw or unrefined, such as "crude" oil, but is, in respect to food, "the state of being imperfectly digested, or the quality of being indigestible." Holland's 1601 translation of Pliny's Natural History has this: "The crudities or raw humours lying in the stomack, which cause loathing and abhorring of meat." This suggests that the stomach humors themselves are "crude," but the word then seemed to "stretch" to include not simply the humors but the undigested food that goes into the stomach.]

bring back the word today. "The wet t-shirt was quickly dried through the dual exsiccant powers of the hot summer sun and the cooling fan." I found one quotation from 1676 which combines exsiccant with another word: discutient. From a book on surgical treatment: "I caused his knee to be fomented with Discutients and Exsiccants." I went into the interesting history of foment (which in this passage means "lubricated") here. But what is a "discutient?" The OED tells us there are "discutient medicines or preparations," but the first definition interested me: "having the quality of 'discussing' or dissipating morbid matter; resolvent."**

[**We really could get far afield here if I went into the history of discute/discuss. Suffice it to say that its original meaning, derived from the Latin and Old French, is "to shake or strike asunder; break up; disperse; scatter. A surgical usage, where it was most prominent, has "Supposing we should grant that a vigorous heat and a strong arm may by a violent friction discuss some tumor of a distempered body." Another quotation, from the Century, is "A pomade of virtue to discuss pimples." I wonder what would be the effect on a teen if the parent looked at him with furrowed brow and said, "We simply need to discuss your zits." And then I found another quotation which is simply too good to pass up. From Thomas Browne: "Consider the threefold effect of Jupiter's trisule, to burn, discuss, and terebrate." A trisule is a trident, a three-pronged spear. The effect of Jupiter's trident, then, is to burn, to scatter and "to terebrate." A terebra in Latin was something that bores through a surface, a borer. More precisely, it was an instrument used by Romans in siege warfare to begin a breach in a wall. It consisted of a long spear-like beam mounted on an axis, and worked in a groove. So, to "terebrate" means "to bore or perforate, as earthworms which terebrate the earth.]

Thus, from 1740 we can have a "hot, discutient, and restringent Fomentation." Something that restringes has an astringent effect on the body; it tends to "bind it fast" or "confine it." But I don't really understand how something can be both a discutient and restringent at the same time, since the former suggests a scattering while the latter emphasizes the drying up or styptic character of an application. Perhaps we ought to place the emphasis on the resolving action of both the discutient and restringent. Ah, we are bound up in words, aren't we? Costively so.

In any case, let's trace our steps backward to the safe confines of xeric, which got this all started. We go from discutient (scattering) to exsiccant (with drying properties) to xerantic, which also means something with drying qualities. But, alas, we are not only not through with all the "xero" words, but we have not even begun to probe the two contrasting words, mesic and hydric. This will await the next essay.

1768