"Slash" Words--Hectic, Latrant, etc.

The title of this essay tries to capture a phenomenon in words that is best given by example. In this essay I want to look at "hectic/schetic"; "cordeliere/cordon;" "latrant/balant;" "privilege/pravilege;" "recolet/recollect;" and "carphology/floccilation." I was originally also going to include "callous/callid" but then I realized they were not derived from the same Latin root. Though these words don't make a world, they tell us a little more about the place we inhabit.

1. Hectic/schetic. The word hectic is derived from the Greek "hektikos," which itself is from "hexis," a very common and powerful word in Aristotelian ethics. Hektikos means "habitual" and hexis is a "habit" or "state of mind." Thus, something hectic is, literally, something that is constitutive of a person, something that is part of the "constitution" of someone. Indeed, the earliest use of the word hectic in English is medical (used to describe a fever) and goes back to 1398: "The fever etyk (hectic) hurtyth..." Or, from 1562: "In consumyng agues which ar called hectice..." A "hectic fever" is also called a "remittent" fever. Such a fever differs from an "intermittent" fever in that the former abates only temporarily without disappearing entirely, though the "intermittent" type sometimes disappears completely. Thus, if you have a hectic fever, you have something lodged pretty deeply in your constitution. I would like to broaden our usage of hectic as a result of this insight--to include not simply the "usual" meaning, of overwhelming or busy, but to stress the connection to the essence of our being or the nature of our habits. "It is my hectic practice to get up in the morning and write."

Schetic, on the other hand, has pretty much dropped out of use but was used, as the 1753 Chambers Cyclopedia tells us, "to express such diseases as were not deeply rooted in the constitution, but might easily be removed." The word schesis in English (derived ultimately from the Greek verb meaning 'to have' or 'to hold,') means "a temporary 'hold' or a temporary habit or state of the body." Yet schesis, it seems to me, didn't really develop a very clear English usage, because it might also be used to expres a "relation, state, condition" that doesn't seem to be too different from a hexis. Well, that is enough Greek for now--

2. The words latrant and balant aren't much used anymore, but there is no good reason to abandon them. The former is derived from the Latin latrare, meaning "to bark" while the later comes from the Latin balare, which means "to bleat." Cotton Mather, in his noted Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), used them both: "The balant and latrant noises of that sort of people." I suppose that when Latin is so deeply embedded in your consciousness you almost without reflection "coin" new terms derived from the rich fund of the classical language. Indeed, once you have them in your mind, you can even push them to figurative uses, such as in this quotation from 1706: "Latrant, barking; as A Latrant Writer, an Author that does nothing but bark and snarl at others." All of a sudden, I see uses for this word...

3. The privilege/pravilege contrast is meant to be humorously ironic. The word pravilege is meant to suggest a "worthless privilege;" therefore, something "depraved" either in fact or law. From 1638: "Lateran (i.e., Rome) calleth this priviledge granted unto Henry (I suppose to separate from his wife) a praviledge, playing upon the word, condemnes it, casseth, and declares it a nullitie." Pravus in Latin means "crooked, deformed, perverse." We actually have the adjectives prave and pravous in English to mean the same. Thus a pravilege is something seeming to be beneficial but, in fact, it turns out as something that corrupts or makes depraved. "The privilege of using the car turned out to be a pravilege for the sixteen year-old."

4. The cordeliere/cordon contrast takes us to Franciscan monks, heraldry and cords worn around the waist by widows. First, the word cordeau is French for "cord" or "girdle." The Cordeliere was an order of Franciscan monks distinguished by the knotted cord worn by them. Well, if the Discalced Carmelites are known by the fact that they go without shoes (the Latin discalceatus means "unshod") and the Capuchins are known from their hoods (the Italian capuccio, capuche means "hood"), so I suppose that it isn't unusual for a Catholic order to be known for the cord around the middle. The cordeliere was also known as the cordonniere or, in English, the cordon. Ok, so we have the monks, even though I found no picture online of a Cordeliere. How about the heraldry and widow meaning? Well, here is a picture of the "cord" around a blank heraldic lozenge, which, it says, was used to display a woman's individual coat of arms in some heraldic traditions. The "widow" explanation is given from this online heraldic dictionary:

"Cordon (fr. Cordelière), is the silver cord which encircles the arms of widows. Its institution has been attributed to Anne of Bretagne, widow of Charles VIII, King of France, "who," says Ashmole(Order if G., p. 126), "instead of the military belt or collar, bestowed a cordon or lace on several ladies, admonishing term to live chastly and devoutly, always mindful of the cords and bonds of our Saviour Jesus Christ; and to engage them to a greater esteem thereof, she surrounded her escocheon of arms with the like cordon." The special used is to distinguish the arms of widows from those or wives.."

Lots about the world tends to make sense, if you just go slowly enough...

I haven't quite "finished" this essay, and the next one does so and includes yet other words.

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