labile and illability and illacerabile and illacrymable

The idea for this page emerged when I was working through the Collegiate in preparing for the Senior Spelling Bee on June 18. I found so many words over which I wanted to hover and coo, but I had no time to do it. Many of those words were those which began with a prefix--an "ill" or "im" or "in" or "re" or "ob" or "dis." Rather than "dis-missing" them, I want to "re-discover" them in their richness. It is not "ob-vious" where I should go, so I decided to "im-merse" myself in them, beginning with the prefix "il" or "ill" (the second "l" is the first letter of the root. The first "l" is really an "n" but becomes, by attraction to the subseaquent consonant, an "l"). It may take an essay or two to get my rhythm, but that is the idea.

A Start

Let me illustrate what I am trying to do. I have the OED and the OLD opened up on my desk, as well as the Century and, on occasion, the Webster's 3rd International (Unabridged). One of the first OED "ill" words is "illacerable." The OED just defines it as "not liable to be torn or rent." It comes from illacerabilis, which means the same thing in Latin. It ultimately derives from the Latin lacer, which is derived from the Greek "lakizo," meaning "to rend" (thanks to reader Joe Feeney for bringing me back to this point). We hope to buy garments with tough fabric, garments that cannot easily be torn, illacerable clothes. But the word might have a deeper psychological meaning. "Rend your hearts and not your garments," urges the Prophet Joel (2:13). But what if your heart is illacerable? What if you have been so hurt or wounded by another that you decide to close yourself to all human contact in attempt to make yourself invulnerable? Would you be said to have an illacerable heart?

Characteristic of such a heart is that it is illachrymable. Most educated people know the word "lachrymose"--something that induces tears. Therefore a person who is illachrymable is unmoved to pity, unmerciful, or incapable of weeping (Latin--illacrimabilis). An early definition also had illacrymable mean "unwept, unmourned" but this seems to have dropped out of English usage. One of the deep aspects of inconsolability may be illacrymableness. But the word might have some flexibility to it, suggesting either a person's incapacity for pity (hence, cruelty) or a person's inability to weep (hence, either hard-heartedness or perhaps a shock too great to let the tears flow). Emily Dickenson could write, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes..." but it is not until the last words of that poem, "And then the letting go...," that a person becomes able to join in the expression of grief that matches his or her feelings of inner distress. So, one might have an illacrymable taskmaster or an illacrymable reaction to something. "After nightly pictures of the handsome young people lost in Iraq, she became illacrymable. She sat stunned, unmoved, unable to comprehend the grief of the parents, the girlfriends, the wives, the beloved, the children. She lived in a sort of daze, feeling dissociated from herself and others around her."*

[*The OED does attest illacrymation as "excessive weeping," which seems to run contrary to the definition of illacrymable and "unable to weep." But, the prefix "il" which is really "in" can either be an intensifier or a negativizer. That is why the word inflammable in English can either mean "incapable of being burned" or "highly combustible." A great opportunity thus exists for confusion, if you are so inclined to go in that direction.]

The OLD has one word between illacerabilis and illacrimabilis: illacessitus (no equivalent in the OED). Illacessitus is derived from "in" and "lacesso," which means "I attack." Thus, someone illacessitus is "unattacked" or "free from invasion." I don't think it would work in English, however, since the word suggests something about being "ill accessed" what ever that means. Let's not pursue it any further.

Retreating for a Moment

Well, this start has encouraged me to retreat back in the dictionary to "illab" and see what we have. Let's begin with a simple one, but useful. Something illabile is something that is "not labile." To be labile (Latin labilis) is to be smooth-flowing, and refers primarily, in Latin, to smooth-flowing verse. But the word is more interesting than that. It derives ultimately from the Latin verb "labor" which means either to glide or slip, and can refer to losing one's footing and collapsing as well as smooth gliding over something. We get the word "lapse" in English from this root. A person who is "lapsed" has "slipped," Thus, something/someone that is illabile is NOT liable to slip or err. Illability is infallibility. It was a word occasionally used by preachers/theologians in the 18th century: "It would seem..that all Creatures..must..be labile, fallible, and peccable, and that even infinite wisdom and power could not make a creature..illabile (pronounced il LAB ile) infallible, and impeccable." Isn't that a fine sentence to illustrate how words are negatived sometimes by an "il," sometimes by an "im," and sometimes by an "in"? Now, as the OED informs us, the word labile is used "only in Physics and Chemistry" to contrast with "stable."

This is a good beginning. Let's continue with a few more.

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