inarticulate and inarticulated and inarticulata and article and articulate

I thought at first that I would breeze by this word because everyone knows that it means, in the words of the Collegiate, "incapable of giving coherent, clear or effective expression to one's ideas or feelings." We who train the next generation of lawyers often criticize judges, lawyers or public figures for their inarticulateness. But, if we spend some time with the word, we see that its usage is much more complex (and interesting) than the dismissive way in which we employ it today.

Beginning with Inarticulata

We know we are in different world when we run into inarticulata in the Century before we arrive at inarticulate. The former is a term coined in 1836 to describe a division of brachiopoda (lamp shells) which have "inarticulate or non-articulate valves." Brachiopods come in two varieties: inarticulate, which are held together entirely by musculature, and articulate, which have hinges. Now we are getting somewhere. Inarticulate, therefore, means "without hinges" or "without joints."

Before we investigate the Latin origin of the word, let's take a journey with the zoological definition of inarticulate -- "having no articulation or joint." The Century gives two more interesting synonyms of inarticulate: lyopomatous and ecardinal. Lyopomatous doesn't occur in the OED, but the Century tells us it is made up of the two Greek words meaning "loose" and "cover" and means "hingleless, as the valves of a brachiopod." The Lyopomata are an order of the Brachiopoda. Whereas lyopomatous is formed off two Greek words, ecardinal, which also means "hingeless" is formed off two Latin words (ek, meaning "out of" or "without" and cardinal, meaning "hinge").

A Detour

I could go on forever here, I fear, but the point is just too good to lose. The Latin cardinalis therefore means "pertaining to a hinge" and therefore, something on which something else turns or depends, something important, principal or chief. So, the Cardinals of the Catholic Church are not so named because they look like birds but because they are the "hinges" on which the Church turns. Cardinal points or doctrines are the fundamental doctrines of the faith or the phenomenon one is describing.

And, we can make one more point. Occasionally English has words that mean the same thing but are derived from different languages (Latin and Greek). Lyopomatous and ecardinal mean the same thing: hingeless. It is like the words ichthyophagous (Gr.) and piscivorous (Lat.) both of which mean "fish eating." Well, maybe a minute ago you were in the position that you knew none of these four words, but now you know them and an interesting and rare phenomenon about English word formation.

Back to Inarticulate and Articulate

Standing behind inarticulate, therefore, is articulate, which is derived from the Latin articulatus, which means "to joint; unite by means of a joint," as in "two pieces loosely articulated together." Standing further behind this is articulus, from which we get the all-purpose word article, meaning "a joint; a limb," so that the basic meaning of article is "a joint connecting two parts of the body." But an article is not only the joint connecting two parts; it can also refer to one of the parts thus connected. "The first pair of legs of the whip-scorpion is the longest, and the tarsal joint is broken up into a long series of articles." So, gradually the word article grew to mean either the joint that connects or one of the distinct segments which is connected by the joint. From the latter meaning emerged the more common usage of article to refer to "a distinct proposition in a connected series," such as when we talk about the "39 Articles of the Anglican Church" or the "Articles of Confederation."

But the word article also took up a very interesting meaning as "a point or nick of time joining two successive periods; a juncture; a moment." For example, from 1634: "And each article of time/ Her pure thoughts to heaven flie" or, from a few years later, "Very thick Exhalations..in the Article of the Setting of the Sun." And, from 1722: "It was an infirm building, just in the article of falling." It is this use of article which stands behind the medieval Latin phrase in articulo mortis (lit. "in article of death") to mean "at death's door" or "at the very point of death." It is almost as if death is here pictured as a sort of hinge between two realities--not a bad way to look at it at all, I believe.

So now we are truly able to understand the words articulate and inarticulate as they relate to speech or communication. The OED defines articulate as "Of sound: divided into distinct parts (words and syllables) having each a definite meaning; as opposed to inarticulate sounds as a long musical note, a groan, shriek, or the sounds produced by animals. An articulate person, therefore, is one who speaks distinctly, with each of his/her syllables or words having a definite meaning. It picks up on the second definition of articulate given above, something describing a segment that is hinged to another. Therefore we may say that an articulate speaker knows how to "join" or "hinge" words as well as speak distinctly. Someone who is inarticulate, then, literally speaks in an "unjoined" manner or "with indistinct utterance." As OW Holmes, Sr. could say, "Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of memory."

Conclusion

Thus, there ought to be much more going on, when we accuse a person of inarticulateness, than that the person just can't "speak eloquently." It means, literally, that words aren't properly joined or that they aren't clearly distinct. They tend to run together or become mingled rather than separate. Aren't you glad we took this long journey to discover this?

1238

[Note from 3/21/10. Now I know at least four sets of words that are identical--one derived from Latin and one from Greek: (1) piscivorous and ichthyophagous; (2) scapulimancy and omoplatoscopy; (3) erucivorous and campophagous; and (4) lyopomatous and ecardinal. Obscurity abounds, to be sure, but these words can contribute to meaning..."]