felicific and felicide and featly and nimbly and fauteuil and tabouret and fictile and fingent

A faubourg is a suburb. A favus is a contagious skin disease caused by some kind of fungus, while a feijoa, pronounced fa YO a, is a green round or oval juice fruit of shrubs or small trees native to South America. The word feirie (FEE ree) is another one of those Scottish words; this one means nimble or strong. A felucca is a narrow, fast, lateen-rigged sailing vessel. Ah, finally we get a Chinese word. Everyone knows it now, though few knew it a decade ago. Feng shui is a Chinese geomantic practice which strives to harmonize the placement of buildings and other things with the spiritual forces resident in the area. A fennec is a pale fawn-colored African fox. In law a feoffee, pronounced FE FE or FE uh FE, is a person invested with a fee. During first semester of law school, most property law professors explain the common law notion of "livery of seisin," in which title and possession to property was transferred to a feoffee through giving him a stick or some small token representing the entire piece of property.

Well, let's keep going. A ferrule is a metal sleeve or ring that is placed around the base of a slender shaft to prevent the shaft from shattering. The best example of a ferrule I know is the metallic tip at the base of a flag pole attached to a house--to give reinforcement to the holder when the flag is inserted. Then, we have fescinnine. I was going to do tons of research on this word because it has a potentially interesting story behind it, but none of the dictionaries go further than to say that it means "scurrilous" or "obscene" and is named after a town, Fescennia, in ancient Italy. One online article said that an ancient example of fescinnine verses was in Horace's Epistles but I confess that I am not up to date on the epistles, and I will just have to leave it at that, with the awareness that I am only giving a little bit of the story. The Century tells us that Fescinnine verses are "gay, licentious, or scurrilous verses...extemporized by performers at merry-meetings, to amuse the audience." You can tell that the Century comes out of a different era...*

[*I decided to see what both the Oxford Classical Dictionary and The New Pauly--an "Englished" and updated version, now through five volumes, which gets you through g, of the huge German dictionary, known to me as "Pauly-Wissowa" when I was in grad school--do with the term. Both articles talk about the unproven etymological derivation of the name from Fescennia, a Faliscan town in southern Etruria. No one is quite sure how these improvised ribald and sometimes obscene songs, sung at weddings or in commemoration of triumphs, originated. Well, take about 30 seconds to think about it, and you don't have to have a Ph. D. in classics probably to get it right.]

One more paragraph of The List should be enough. Festinate is a verb meaning to hasten; a "festinating gait" would be one where you are hurrying along. Shakespeare uses it adjectivally in King Lear: "Advice the Duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation." And here is a quotation that comes right out of the American Enlightenment in the 19th century: "It is possible to festinate, or retard, the progress of human perfectibility. In 2005 I think that you have to be a retard to think you can festinate the progress of human perfectibility. I should note feuilleton, which is a European word for the entertainment section in their newspaper. Anyone who has lived in Europe knows the word; it appeared in a rather late round in one of the kids' bees a few years ago. Then, a fichu is a woman's scarf, especially one that fills in a low neckline. Something that is fictile was, originally, something capable of being molded by a potter, but since the 17th century, it is defined as "molded into form by art; made of earth, clay, etc. by a potter." As Bacon said in 1626, "Fictile Earth is more fragile than crude Earth and dry wood than green." Theologians can argue about whether people who make icons are really worshipping fictile deities. Latin has a verb fingo, fingere, which can be translated as "mold" or "invent, pretend." The word fingo came into English as fingent, attested only in Carlyle (1837) in the sense of "molding" ["Man is the most fingent, plastic of creatures"] but I would like to take the other translation of fingo, meaning to invent, and say, "I once devoted myself to fingent concerns, but now I have exchanged my focus to fictile pursuits." Surely if you said a sentence like this you would get beaten up or ignored. You have been warned.

A Few Words in More Detail

The words I was going to comment upon were fauteuil, featly, and felicific. None of these are really "sexy" terms, but a word on each will conclude this essay. The Collegiate defines fauteuil only as an armchair. Certainly that is correct, but the Century gives us a much more comprehensive look into it. It tells us that a fauteuil is indeed an armchair but specifically it designated the seat of a member of the French Academy (in refernce to the forty seats provided for it by Louis XIV). Thus, fauteuil could also mean membership in the Academy. The droit de fauteuil was the right enjoyed by gentlemen of rank of sitting on a fauteuil in the presence of the king. This corresponded to the droit de tabouret (don't get me started) enjoyed by women.

I like the word featly because even if you are dyslexic and read it as fealty, you still have a great word. But, featly it shall be. Its original use going back to the 14th century, as an adverb, means "fitly" or "properly, suitably, aptly." From 1539: "Gellius applyeth this proverbe very featlye to these grosse and rude men." It expanded its definition to include "cleverly, deftly, skillfully" by the next few centuries, and then, with reference to dancing, meant "nimbly" or "gracefully." Pope could say in 1704: "How featly tripp'd the light-foot ladies round." My only desire in these pages is to frame my words featly.

I will close this essay with felicific, a word not only attractive in itself but interesting because it is the gateway to about a dozen other "felic" words that, because they refer to some aspect of happiness, really must be learned. We have so many words for so many bad or difficult subjects in our culture. Why not do all we can to cultivate some "happy" words? Let's quickly discard two words: "felicide" and "feliform." If you realized that the root "feli" in Latin is a cat, you realize that something feliform is in the shape of a cat, while felicide is the practice of killing cats. We really could dwell on that thought for quite some time, but I will mercifully pass over it. Thus, we are left with about a dozen words, from felicific to felicity, that I will comment upon. Only, not here. Let's close with a word on felicific. It finds its home in the ethical realm and means "making or tending to make happy; productive of happiness." "Concentrate your felicific effort where..none of it will be lost." Or, to put things in modern terms, "Bentham's philosophy was rooted in the notion that felicific acts were to be regarded as the most moral acts."

Let's continue to muse on "felic" in the next essay.

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