H Words VII--such a Journey

One of the reasons I love words is that each one potentially brings me into a different world from its precedessor. Thus, for those who are intellectually inclined but may have ADD, the study of words is a fine way to learn. Today I will look at hexiology (from biology), helepole (from ancient battles), hartel (From Indian labor movements); harissa (from Middle Eastern cuisine) and henequen (from Mexican agriculture). If we take our time to appreciate some of these words, we are enriched.

1. Harissa is a word derived from the Arabic verb harasa, which means "to crush, pound, tenderize by beating." As early as 1910 we had an attestation for "Harisah" in English, described as a "North African and Middle Eastern dish typically consisting of ground meat (chiefly lamb) and couscous or bulgar wheat, served or prepared with a chili sauce or paste." From 2001, we have: "Specialties include kakori kebabs, nihari (a broth soup made from goat trotters) and harissa (porridge made with lamb)." Of course we could take this latest quotation in a number of directions, especially when we realize that "nihari is an extremely popular national dish of Pakistan," which is also eaten among Muslims in India. Recipes, with a picture, of nihari are here. Here is a picture with recipe for harissa. What can we say to all this? Perhaps that I should stop writing about the food and go enjoy it!

2. So let's leave food for a moment and go to Mexico to find the henequen plant. Pictures abound on the Net, and once you understand that it is from the Agave plant/cactus and that its raw fibers are shredded, pulled, wound together and made into rope that varies in size from fine strands used for making hammocks, for twine to bale hay, for hawsers that tie ocean freighters to docks around the world, you see the strength and value of this Yucatan-native plant. Here is a web site that tells us the history of henequen production, which made Yucatan into one of the richest areas of Mexico. Those who cultivated it, the hacendados, lived lives of wealth and privilege. They were the "green barons" of Mexico about the time that silver was proliferating in the Western US. Hm.. Lots of movies about exploring for silver, aren't there, but I haven't seen one movie about the "henequen culture." Perhaps there is an amateur film-maker who will redress that balance...

3. Let's very briefly turn to a word that fascinates more by its word derivation than anything else. Helepole is a medieval siege engine, a kind of movable tower. It is only very thinly attested in English under that word, with one of which usages derives from Plutarch: "His engines, called helepoles, were a pleasing spectacle to the very towns he besieged." The word is derive from hel, which means "to take" and polis "the city." It is more frequently known as Helepolis, and this brief article from a famous classical dictionary of the 19th century gives all you want to know about it. The Wikipedia article is more extensive, and mentions that it was invented by Polyidus of Thessaly in the 4th cent. BCE. Here is the best online picture of this, called the "Iron Age Ogre."

4. The hartal, derived from the Hindi words for the "locking of shops," is an "organized shutting of shops and cessation of business, to serve, usually, as a protest against government legislation or a political situation, or as an act of mourning." One of the earliest appearances of the term in English was in connection with some of Gandhi's strikes. From 1922: "Gandhi was preparing a Hartal at Bombay." I suppose a full history of the term, deeply embedded in its context, would be inseparable from the great movement led by Gandhi in the quarter century before independence in 1947. So much richness comes to us if we just listen...

5. I first fell in love with philosophical terminology in theological seminary. I wasn't too philosophically inclined in undergraduate days because I was so committed to my Evangelical faith that I had time for little else. But the urgency of my Evangelicalism began to fade when I was student body President at an Evangelical seminary in the mid-1970s, and philosophy then came to the forefront. I was fascinated with its words. Even though I think that in our day philosophy is not a particularly useful discipline, it has bequeathed to us the names, characters and words that keep us busy for many a wonderful evening. Even though hexiology is a scientific term, it reminds me of axiology, a rather useless term meaning "the theory of value" (or whether there is an objective way to determine "value" of things). Hexiology is derived from the Greek word hexis, which means "habit." Hexiology is "that branch of science which treats of the development and behavior of a living creature as affected by its environment." I think that "environmentalism" is the term that has rather swallowed hexiology, but at least the word is "there." I guess Prof. Mivart, who invented the term in the 19th century, now will even more completely be forgotten....

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