Appendix (Old Words Revisited)

{Remember, though it's fun to think words carry latent traces of their initial meanings with them, the truth is they mean only what they mean NOW.}


Abroad, a widening.

-- Chris Leo


Albania is the other Land of the Rising Sun. Like Japan, it lies east of the country that named it. In this case, Italy. "Alba" is sunrise in Italian.

-- Chris Leo


Cream. "Letch" and "lecher" come from The Old French "lecheon", a debaucher. "Lecheon" came from Latin "lingere", to lick. "leche/lait/latte" come from the Latin "lactare", to suckle, and before that from the Greek "galaktos". So yes, not only does it look like the letch and the suckling baby are linguistically linked and that the Milky Way Galaxy is redundant, but it seems that from our most micro to our stellar macro and all the debased galas inbetween, the word is always milk. Take a look at the Milky Way when it appears in the night sky before it gets too late. "Milk" comes from the Proto Indo European melg, a stroke, I guess a very very large one. The suffix -"-latry" signifies worship, but if everything is latte already that would render worship rather narcissistic. How lecherous!

-- Chris Leo


Gown comes from "gyne" and sounds like "gone" because the idea of every good gown is to stimulate the desire in others to get it gone quickly, like how "dress" is the opposite of what men want to have it continue doing. And while we are here, let us pause for a moment on the utter awesomeness of the word "negligee".

-- Chris Leo


World comes from the Old English wer ("man", like "werewolf") + "old", Old Man Mother Earth.

-- Chris Leo


The accepted etymology of noose has it coming from "knot" from the Latin "nodis", but that "k" suddenly appearing and then disappearing again should raise a flag. The "k" only exists in Italian and Latin in foreign words. Coming before vowels the "k" sound is represented as "c" in Italian; coming before consonants the "k/g" sound is written as "g" (Greek "k/gnosis" becomes "gnoscere" in Latin and "knowledge" in English via Germany). "Pneus" in German is "tire", from the Greek "pneuss" for "air". Though "p" generally falls to an "f" via lenition, its odd placment here before the "n" would have made that impossible. In fact, the only time the "pn" combination happens in English is with words from this same root (pneumatic, pneumonia), but the "kn" combination is common and therefore human error might have one transcribing the awkward and unrecognized "pn" consonant blend into the awkward and recognized "kn" consonant blend. "Noose" from "knot" from "pneuss" has it draining and framing air in the former and latter respectively. "Noose" is wrapped around something "loose". Further removing this word from the Boot, modern Italian uses a word whose root has no relation to "noose", "cappio", as in "a header".

-- Chris Leo


Secretary, one who keeps secrets.

-- Chris Leo


Survive means literally to be "on life", different from the Italian "sopravivere", which is to be "above life".

-- Chris Leo


Vaudeville. Other than the Statue of Liberty and the true art of trains, this is the only example of something the French created for New York. The Vaux de Vire, "Valley of the Plateau," is a river that runs through Normandy and empties out into the English Channel. In the 15th century the people of the region entertained each other with tales and chants regarding the British invasion of Normandy. Another claim has the word's derivation from voix de ville, "voice of the city," the song and dance of triple agents during Le Reign of Terror. The fundament of vaudeville is that it travels, and rapid motion through space is no better evinced than by a river. But vaudeville finally found a home in the biggest shipping town there was, New York City. And wouldn't vaudeville have been comfortably familiar in theaters of the 20th century's first thirty years designed as those in Paris, the food and wine fat with Frenchsomeness, the stage acts frolicking with the acknowledgeable innuendo of French chicks? But finding a home actually did not mean vaudeville stopped moving. Jackson Heights, Queens, was established along the 7 subway line as an all white enclave within New York City at the turn of the Twentieth Century to zip fancy commuters into Times Square for their jobs and back out again in time for dinner with fellow snobs. The "problem" was that the developers failed to take several French innuendos into equation. First, the borough chosen was called "Queens" which when coupled with the gayness of vaudeville and the phallicness of trains meant that it was the white gay vaudevillian actors more than any other group that took to Jackson Heights. Soon the miffed rich moved on and within thirty years Jackson Heights, echoic of the Statue France gave us, had become the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the world. The valley has moved to the heights.

-- Andy McCarthy, Chris Leo