Tetrous et al.

Many are the words in Cicero's speeches that have come down to us as relatively rare English words. Some of them only appeared in the 16th or 17th century, walked across the stage, took a bow and then retreat forever. But by learning the Latin word we get two benefits at the same time--a Latin and (rare) English word. Thus, a new Billphorism--s/he who studies Latin is twice blessed. Thrice?

Tetrous

The Latin word underlying this is taeter, taetra, taetrum, something "foul, hideous, offensive, disgraceful, abominable." As almost always, however, a little digging in a Latin word appearing in English yields some interesting results. First of all, the word comes in as tetrous, which means "offensive" or "foul." So, from 1890: "A leper whose tetrous spots threaten every soul that looks upon them." One can have a "tetrous humor" or a "tetrous vapor" also. But then, an interesting note in the OED said that it is sometimes confused with tetterous, which relates to the word tetter, a skin eruption. Tetter doesn't derive from the Latin but from various medieval Germanic languages, and is, officially, "a general term for any pustular herpetiform eruption of the skin..." Tetterous, thus, suggests the eruptions, themselves, while tetrous stresses something foul or offensive. But when looking at tetterous I found this quotation from 1719: "Noli-me-tangere, touch me not, is a tetterous Eruption, thus call'd, from its Soreness, or Difficulty of Cure." But the phrase "Noli me tangere" is a Biblical one, taken from Jesus' words to Mary (in the Vulgate, of course) upon rising from the dead in John 20:17. He cannot be "touched" because he has not yet ascended to God. As this dictionary says, it was formerly associated to several varieties of ulcerous skin diseases, but now is restricted to Lupus exedens, an ulcerative affection of the nose. Well, this journey is fascinating, and so I will conclude this part of it with a word on tettix, which I hadn't written on previously. Tettix is the Greek word for grasshopper or cicada. It is an echoic name, at least to the Greeks. Next time you hear a cicada, listen for it--see if it says "tettix." And then there is the delightful "golden tettix," an "ornament worn in the hair by Athenians before Solon's time as an emblem of their being aboriginal." Maybe that was the logo of an ancient Athenian hip magazine, "Autochthonous Living." Thus, from tetrous, we went to tetterous, to noli-me-tangere, to tettix to golden tettix.

Crastin/Crastinate/Procrastinate

Crastinus simply means (in Latin) "tomorrow." (Cras also means "tomorrow"). It comes into English as crastin or crastinate. There is even the phrase "the crastin of Trinity Term" to mean "the day after the last day of Trinity Term" in English colleges. I wonder if any of your colleagues would understand you if you began talking about he "crastin" of the Fall term. To crastinate means "to procrastinate" which means "to delay from day to day, prolong, put off until tomorrow." But tomorrow leads to more tomorrows, as Shakespeare and others have said, and so when we think of procrastination, we think of someone who puts off a task so long that it might never get done. The "pro" in procrastinate means "instead of"--"instead of tomorrow..."

But while on crastin, I couldn't help but notice crassulent and the related crassitude. These last two derive ultimately from crass, which means "coarse, thick, dense, fat." Thus, the crassitude of something is its "thickness; density; coarseness" (all said to be obsolete). But we can also think of crassitude as describing "gross ignorance or stupidity, excessive dullness of intellect, obtuseness." Bacon was one of the first to use the term to describe the thickness or consistency of something. From 1626: "The Dead Sea..is of that Crassitude, as Living Bodies...cast into it, have been born up, and not sunk." I can think, however, of lots of ways to use the term in 2009....

Obtrect and Obtemper

Cicero uses both of these terms in his speech on the Manilian Law--a law that enabled Pompey to attain additional power in Asia, and thus extend Rome's glory in those realms in the mid-first century BCE. The Latin obtrectare, which is rendered obtrect in English, means "to disparage or decry." Jeremy Taylor, the widely quoted (by the OED) 17th century divine, has this: "When men will speake their pleasure of men absent, obtrecting and detracting from them." Thus, it means about the same thing as "detract from." An obrectation is a slander, disparagement or calumny. From Foxe's Actes and Monumentes (Acts of the Martyrs) of 1570: "Charging also the prelates and priestes for their slanderous obtrectations, and undeserved comtumelies." The word has fallen out of use; perhaps we feel we have enough words for this but, as I have found, you never have quite enough words as you need for purposes of vituperative rancor.

If you carefully take apart obtemperare, the Latin verb, you have "temper" or "restrain," combined with the prefix "ob." Thus, obtemper meant, in the 16th century, "to temper" or "restrain" but came to mean "to obey, comply with, yield to, or submit to." From 1650: "Being asked, if he would obtemper and obey the Act of the Assemblie." It now is a technical term in Scots law, meaning "to comply with" or "to obey." So we also have, in English, obtemperance and obtemperation.

Finishing with Promiscuous

Every teenager knows this word--it means to be the type of person (usually associated with a female, but there is no reason it can't be an equal-gender word) who "sleeps around." But some attention to its derivation can make the word more memorable. It is from the Latin "pro" and "miscere," the latter meaning "to mix." Thus, it literally means "to mix forth," or something that is "consisting of parts or individuals grouped together without order; mingled indiscriminately; confused." From Dryden, "In rushed at once a rude promiscuous crowd." Or, from Congreve, "Distinction in promiscuous Noise is drown'd." George Eliot, in the Mill on the Floss, a standard of high school reading in 1960 but not present now, has "He went on contentedly enough, picking up a promiscuous education chielfy from things that were not intended for education at all." I wonder, now that I think of it, whether any education is not promiscuous... Its specialized meaning--to characterize a person "undiscriminating in sexual relations" or "casual" in sexual matters--comes from Samuel Coleridge in 1804: "He is...addicted to almost promiscuous Intercourse with women of all Classes."

Well, it did me good on this Sunday night to get back into my words...though there are many more good Latin-derived words that deserve our attention...

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