furibund and esquamulose and ustulation and ustulate and crenature and collimate

5. Collimate. Oops. I guess this one is in the Collegiate. It is only defined, cryptically, as "to make (as light rays) parallel." A collimator is something that collimates. We see we are in big trouble when the Collegiate, never really that big on etymology, says "L. collimatus, pp. of collimare, MS. variant of collineare to make straight." Well, you guessed it. I went to the OED and saw that the manuscript tradition of Cicero seemingly attested collimare when it meant collineare. The Century also said that Aulus Gellius did the same thing. Shame on Aulus! It brought me back to my doctoral days when I was trying to work through some of Aulus' Attic Nights. Thus, I journeyed in my mind to the late 1970s and to the Rockefeller Library at Brown University and remembered thinking, 'If I just find this ONE THING from Aulus, the world will be clear.' Of course, the world wasn't clear, but I lived under the illusion that life was to be found in texts for decades thereafter. I may still be there. Ok, returning to 2005. Instead of doing a lot of dictionary work on collimate, I found an attractive web site on the phenomenon, which has only been visited a few thousand times since its inception in 2003. No wonder kids misspell the word! Here it is, so you can bump the guy's hits. In brief, he says that collimation is the alignment of lenses and mirrors to their optical path in a telescope. Optical and physical alignment, however, are not the same thing...hence his site. And, that is where I will leave it. Oh, by the way, he isn't hung up with Cicero or with Aulus Gellius.

6. Crenature. I was sort of surprised that this word would have made someone stumble, for the Collegiate has all kinds of cognate terms, such as crenate ("having the margin or surface cut into rounded scallops," from the Latin crena, meaning "notch"), and crenation and crenellated and crenellation. Indeed, any student of medieval castles knows the triad of terms crenellation, merlon and machicolation like a preschool teacher knows nursery rhymes. To use the "castle" or "rook" chess piece for an illustration, The crenallation is the notched or low part of the top of the "castle," while the merlons are the high part. So, the Century defines crenature (identical in meaning to crenation) as "a tooth of a crenate leaf, or of any other crenate part." I, who studied hymnody for years, started humming a tune while writing this entry. "All Creatures of our God and King..." I changed the second word and sang, "All crenatures of our God and King.." It didn't make any sense at all, but lots of hymns don't.

7. Esquamulose. Do you realize where I had to go to get a definition of this word? It isn't in the Collegiate. It isn't in the OED. It isn't in the Century. Finally, I ran across this entry in the Webster's Third New Interntional (Unabridged, 1993), "not squamulose." I would hope not! Then came the breakthrough. "Squamulose" means to be "squamous with minute scales." And, "squamous" derived from the Latin squama, means "scaly." So, esquamulose means "not scaly with minute scales." Now, this creates a little problem for me. Does it mean that the creature to whom the word is applied has scales, but that they just aren't little ones, or that the creatures has no scales at all? I assume the latter, but it really does put a person into a bind. As I thought further about the word, I realized that I already knew that desquamate meant to "peel off" or "exfoliate" and hypothesized that some day a really sophisticated body salon would advertise services for desquamation, but I hadn't run into esquamulose. But when I started walking through the word, the scales began to fall from my eyes. See how much grief we could avoid in life just by learning Latin?

8. Furibund. I am afraid I am going to go on a little journey, here, so bear with me. I think it will even slop over to the next essay. Something furibund is "furious, raging, mad." But this brings us into the realm of things that burn. I have never played with matches, and I don't really like pyrotechnic displays, but I love to explore the sinuous ways of "hot" words. So, let me begin by connecting furibund with word 19 on my list: ustulation, which is the "action of burning or fact of being burnt; spec. in later use, torrificiation." Whoops, can you see how the world is beginning to open? Let's finish this part of the essay by disposing of ustulation quickly. Derived from the Latin ustulare, it has been used in English primarily in the physical sense of burning. From Chambers' Cyclopedia's Supplement, "Ustulation...the roasting or torrefying (there's that word again!) of humid or moist substances over a gentle fire." But then, whenever you have a word that has a physical meaning, you can always count on a 17th century preacher to give it a "spiritual" significance. So, Jeremy Taylor leaps into the breach with his reflections on Paul's words in I Cor. "A state of celibate exposes us to a perpetual ustulation." And, "It is not certain that they took the better part when they chose ustulation before marriage." Just think of it, if you were offered ustulation or marriage, before you read this paragraph, which would YOU have chosen?

Let's pursue our wandering road.

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