Apprehend vs. Comprehend

To apprehend, comprehend. These words come into comparison as describing acts of the mind. Apprehend denotes the laying hold of a thing mentally, so as to understand it clearly, at least in part. Comprehend denotes the embracing or understanding it in all its compass and extent. We may apprehend many truths which we do not comprehend. The very idea of God supposes that he may be apprehended, though not comprehended, by rational beings. We may apprehend much of Shakespeare’s aim and intention in the character of Hamlet or King Lear; but few will claim that they have comprehended all that is embraced in these characters. –Trench.
(material dates from 1913)

Use of the word eschew

Someone in Facebook wrote:

Day at high mountain lake. Trout eschewed Kroeger’s Extra Fancy Sharp Cheddar Cheese.

I became curious about the word “eschew” and googled to find
1300–50; ME eschewen < OF eschiver, eschever < Gmc; cf.
OHG sciuhen, G scheuchen, shy

to keep clear of or abstain from (something disliked, injurious, etc); shun; avoid

[C14: from Old French eschiver, of Germanic origin; compare Old High German skiuhan to frighten away; see shy 1 , skew ]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eschew

So, perhaps it is more accurate that the fish were not attracted by the cheese than to say they had the cognitive means to renounce it or even recognize it and fear it….

Famous Quotations

"Commencement oratory … must eschew anything that smac…"

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum. ~John Kenneth Galbraith

"Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who …"

* Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.
Letter (5-6 January 1932); published in Ernest Hemingway : Selected Letters 1917-1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

I am Legion

Legend means your are famous or infamous. Legion means you are demonic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_in_popular_culture

Now allegiance is quite different.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=allegiance

allegiance -
c.1400, from Anglo-Fr. legaunce “loyalty of a liege-man to his lord,” from O.Fr. legeance, from liege (see liege); erroneously associated with L. ligare “to bind;” corrupted in spelling by confusion with the now-obsolete legal term allegeance “alleviation.” General figurative sense of “recognition of claims to respect or duty” is attested from 1732.

The word sacrilegious is often conflated with religious.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sacrilege

sacrilege -
c.1300, “crime of stealing what is consecrated to God,” from O.Fr. sacrilege (12c.), from L. sacrilegium “temple robbery,” from sacrilegus “stealer of sacred things,” from phrase sacrum legere “to steal sacred things,” from sacrum “sacred object (from neuter sing. of sacer “sacred”) + legere “take, pick up” (see lecture). Second element is related to lecture but is not from religion. Transferred sense of “profanation of anything held sacred” is attested from late 14c.

The Proper Use of ANACHRONISM

Here is a very fine article which offers wise counsel and it is written by a skilled attorney who is unusually caring and compassionate.

http://www.smdp.com/Articles-c-2010-06-21-69831.113116_We_have_to_go_back_to_go_forward.html

What bothers me about the article is the use of the word “anachronism.”

When I hear the word “anachronism” I immediately think of something like Shakespeare’s play about Julius Caesar mentioning that a clock sounded. Obviously there were no clocks in Caesar’s day. The mention of a clock during a period prior to the clock’s invention is an ANACHRONISM. Mind you, a clock in and of itself is not an anachronism but rather the MENTION of a clock in an inaccurate context.

If we refer to this article on ANACHRONISM we will see that there is also a secondary meaning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism

IF you were to walk into an office and see someone writing with a goose quill pen, periodically dipping it in an ink well, then that too is an anachronism. It may be that this person is eccentric or affectacious.
The quill pen and the ink well are not in and of themselves anachronisms but rather the active use or employment of them at a time when one would expect to see a pencil or ballpoint pen.

If one strolls through a museum, one is not gazing at anachronisms but rather at artifacts from a bygone era. When you visit Egypt and tour the pyramids you are not seeing anachronisms. IF you should learn that a governor or a president or prime minister or a dictator were having a pyramid constructed for their entombment then that indeed would be an anachronism.

Now if we examine the article in question, it commences with a colorful array of items which catch the reader’s attention as oddities, then the author mentions that all such items are anachronisms and finally, now that he has the reader’s attention and curiosity aroused to a high pitch, he proceeds to make his REAL point by likening such old fashioned artifacts to the feelings and emotional baggage which people bring with them to divorce cases.

Our author is perfectly correct in pointing out that the love and affection we once felt or our anger and resentment at some sleight or infidelity are no longer appropriate to nurture in our heart but should be placed aside, released, and replaced with reason, compromise, practicality. We need to make peace with the past and move on.

But, herein lies another problem. The reader is left with the suggestion or intimation that our feelings and emotions are anachronisms. I disagree. Homer’s Iliad opens with the Greek word for RAGE “Mainen aide Thea” (Sing, O Goddess, of the RAGE [of Achilles].)

It is my feeling that FEELINGS and EMOTIONS can never properly be called anachronisms since for one thing they never go out of style and secondly if YOU feel anger or resentment or jealousy or attraction then YOU ACTUALLY FEEL those emotions and they are exactly the same kind of emotions felt in the time of Homer. Our technology had advanced but our psycho-dynamics remains perennial and unchanged throughout the eons.

I think the author could have achieved his goal and avoided the problem by listing the items and calling them antiques which would suggest that they no longer fit in and are “out of place.”

Douglas Adams a Frood Kind of Guy

From a FACEBOOK thread:

She said: That’s one frood who really knows where his towel is.

I said: I will now Google to learn what “frood” means: Frood 1. (slang): Really amazingly together guy. Adjective froody 1. (slang): In the manner of something amazingly together.
Aha, so FROOD is a GOOD thing!

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frood

My, how things do get OLD quickly when often repeated:

“Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who knows where his towel is.”

This robs us of some of the joy and glory of being a “frood in the know,” hip, cool, groovy, “the cat’s pajamas.”

She said: “Modern derivation of the Old English word ‘frod’, pronounced with a long ‘o,’ reintroduced into popular usage by Douglas Adams. It isn’t possible to know whether Douglas Adams actually knew of the Old English predecessor to his coinage, but the word had almost the same meaning in Old English: wise, experienced–in general, a really together with it kind of guy!”

I said: Everything gets old, including US. No amount of spin or rhetoric can change that (even SCHOLARLY spin and rhetoric.)

She said: Or, perhaps better: everything has always been old.

I said: A wise fish doesn’t bite to begin with.

Scheißdreck is a naughty word in German

I want to remember this word since a German friend of mine playfully posted with it.

http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schei%C3%9Fdreck

http://www.lotsofjokes.com/multilingual_swearing.asp

http://www.zoklet.net/totse/en/ego/literary_genius/swear.html

Etymology of the term NIGGARDLY

As I remember from grammar school “niggardly” meant stingy and only superficially resembled the offensive N word which I refuse to use. But now I must search on the etymology:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggardly

The word dates back to 1621 and Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy” (I have a copy here, but perhaps it is on line in public domain).

Derived from the Old Norse verb nigla, meaning “to fuss about small matters”. Cognate to the English word “niggle”, which retains the original Norse meaning.

* 1852 CE: William and Robert Chambers, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal

[H]is heart swelled within him, as he sat at the head of his own table, on the occasion of the house-warming, dispensing with no niggard hand the gratuitous viands and unlimited beer, which were at once to symbolise and inaugurate the hospitality of his mansion.

A miser or stingy person; a skinflint.

* 1618: John Taylor, The Pennyles Pilgrimage OR The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor

All his pleasures were social; and while health and fortune smiled upon him, he was no niggard either of his time or talents to those who needed them.

This word, along with its adverbial form niggardly, should be used with caution. Owing to the sound similarity to the highly inflammatory racial epithet nigger, these words can cause unnecessary confusion and unintentional offense. The word is not related to the word nigger (a corruption of the Spanish word negro, meaning “black”), though someone unfamiliar with the word niggardly might take offense due to the phonetic similarity between the words.

Nota bene: even though I am now armed with all of this etymological wisdom, I would still hesitate to stroll around Harlem chanting a mantra of “niggardly” aloud since passers-by might not share my scholarly bent and might misunderstand and take offense and perhaps beat the crap out of me.