Lots More Words Beginning with "H" (Second Essay)

As I continue to comb through words beginning with "h," it dawned on me that lots of 'em are foreign words. Indeed, I found myself longing for those good 'ol English words, words that just let me feel comfortable in my "Englishness." But, the more I study words, the more I realize that the English language mostly consists of words we borrowed or stole from someone else. That means that we don't really have good grounds for hating other people or nations, because we have probably taken some (or a lot) of their words. All those Muslims, all those Indians--and they give us words! Maybe words will be the bridge for understanding in the 21st century...

1. But let's begin with a word as English as Winston Churchill and that is halfpace. A halfpace has nothing to do with how fast you run a marathon. It was, at first, a "step, raised floor, or platform on which something (e.g., a throne, dais, etc.) is to be placed." That is, it was about half a pace or more above the rest of the audience. But, beginning in the 17th century another definition took over, which is the common one today. A halfpace is a "broad step or small landing between two half flights of stairs." We see them all the time; here is a picture. We probably take stairs like this almost every day of our lives. So, that little landing is a "halfpace." Very nice and useful. It can also be called a "foot-pace." Well, the OED hyphenates both words, but the Unabridged doesn't. Who knows, and who decides, whether it should be hyphenated? The Collegiate solves our problem deftly by having footpace but not halfpace. By the way, confusing matters more, the OED and Unabridged both have "quarter-pace" (or quarterpace). It is defined as "a resting place or landing where two flights of stairs converge at right angles to each other in a quarter turn." Why does this confuse? Read on.

Ok, so this is getting a little complex now. If it is a rather ornate staircase (why not stair-case?) and you have to negotiate three 90-degree turns in it to get from one floor to the next, each of the three mini-landings is called a "quarterpace." But if you only have one "landing" on the way upstairs, it is a "halfpace." The latter can also be called a "foot-pace/footpace." But there is no reason why a "footpace" couldn't be a "quarterpace" is there? Indeed, I think it can. But we have a further problem. What is it called when you have only two 90-degree turns as you go from one floor to the next? What is each "intermediate landing" called? Most logically it should be called a "thirdpace," shouldn't it? But there is no word for it. I happen to stay frequently in a home, built in the 1920s, which has two landings in between the first and second floors. What do I call them? I am sort of bummed out now because we have three words, none of which seems to apply to my situation in life--unless we want to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the definition of footpace. Wretched condition that we are in. Even the "pure" English words don't bring us unmitigated delight and clarity.

After all, I say in conclusion (for this word), the racists developed language to describe persons "part Negro." We had mulattos (1/2) and quadroons (1/4) and octoroons (1/8), but there also was a word, which the OED calls "rare" to describe the offspring of a white person and a mulatto, being "third in descent from a Negro"--and this is terceroon. If the racists could come up with all kinds of "scientific" terminology, don't you think that makers of stairs could do the same?

2. I am afraid I am going to have to digress here, because I am getting hung up on all the nice words, hyphenated or not, beginning with "half" in English. My eye first alighted (do eyes alight? or do they land?) on half-ass in the noble OED. Prepared to chuckle, I looked at the definition. It says: "Obsolete: a mule." Well, I had to check the Collegiate to discover that the word in English usage now is half-assed. Glad that the dictionary on which we base the National Spelling Bee has half-assed but doesn't have quarterpace or halfpace. By the way, half-assed, according to the Collegiate is an "often vulgar" (oh my!) word meaning "lacking intelligence, character or effectiveness." But we won't be able to use it in the Bee because it is hyphenated. All this learning for nought...

Well, I don't want to get too far off the mark here, so let's just do half-saved, half-cut, and half-shaved. Half-saved isn't the time between commitment to Christ and baptism at a Baptist Revival meeting. Rather, it is used to describe a half-witted person. The first attestation is from 1834: "He was what is called half-saved. Some of his faculties were more than ordinarily acute, but the power of self-conduct was entirely wanting in him." I wonder if the word was a sort of funny take-off on old Puritan theology, where a person was either "saved" or "lost." This would be a person who doesn't really "fit the categories" but is halfway "there."

Well, half-cut and half-shaved both mean drunk. "I've seen that man half shaved on cider afore breakfast in the mornin'." And, half-cut has nothing to do with a poor circumcision job done by mohel who might be half-shaved. Instead, we have, from 1971: "Inebriation...is the sport of all ranks. How many executives can work reasonably effectively unless they are half-cut?"

3. Let's finish this essay with another "half-word," but a word that builds on the Greek word for half--hemi. We know of hemispheres or, more sophisticated, hemiplegia (paralysis of one side of the body), but we don't know, though we should, hemitery. It isn't a half-assed burial place; rather it is built off the words hemi (half) and teras, which means "monster" and it is "a general term for a malformation that does not amount to monstrosity." This is a great term, for it can be loosed from its medical context and used to describe something that is pretty strange but not completely "out there." I like the phrase, to be said to select people, "You are a hemitery," by which we would mean that the person only possesses half the characteristics of a "monster." Actually, we have the word teratology to describe the study of "wonders" or "monstrosities" or "prodigies" and teratological, the adjective. We need words, in our modern world, to express "partial" conditions. Often people aren't "full blown" or "extreme" examples of things; they are only "half-gone" or "halfway impaired." We could even push the limits and coin an adjective: hemiterous, to describe such a person. You would have no shortage of situations where the word is proper...

Well, another essay, and I just went so slowly! Just have to live with it, I suppose...

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