Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Dare to read this one!



Without indulging in lexiphanicism (showing off with words) we should admit that we all have our bad habits or cacoëthes (from the Greek kakos, bad, and ethos, habit). The English Dictionary confirms the existence of this unusual term and divides it into three forms with a Latin ending: cacoëthes loquendi, carpendi & scribendi, namely insatiable urge to talk, a compulsion to criticize, and the incurable itch to write. In every word there is also some magic -- the more words we have, the more we add to our thoughts and lives. Sometimes words tell stories hidden in their meaning, or evoke unexpected connections between things and places. Years ago I played the role of Dracula in a small European community theater and for the occasion had to simulate a staurophobia, a beautiful word meaning: “a fear of crucifixes”. Unfortunately this is one of those words you can’t really use in real life unless you have to play the terrible Transylvanian Count or some other vampire. But sometimes, by chance, you can learn a few useful terms by simple means or even by reading this article. To walk home, while in France, I would pass every day by a blue painted brick house with a weathervane on its slate roof; a rusted weathercock that cast a thin shadow down the street and on windy days would make a plaguing noise that followed me like pattering of rain. It was only during my last night in Paris that I finally learned the French name for that damn thing: girouette. So far this story could have ended in Paris if ten years later a political activist on a downtown sidewalk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wasn’t handing flyers to passersby, complaining against the “girouettism” of politicians. At first I could not understand what a French iron rooster had to do with politics, but later found in the Dictionary that this was also a legitimate English word, used to define the slimy attitude, widespread among certain politicasters, of altering their opinion or positions to follow popular trends. Before that casual encounter “girouettism” was known to me only as “flip-flopping”. Amazing how through words you can move from roof weathervanes to politics. The topic of politics is also a verdant field for word genesis and inspires new terms in almost every generation: Aristotle, clearly referring to Plato, began one of his most famous work on the subject, saying that men are “ζῷον πολιτικόν, zoon politikon“ (political beings): since then the debate rages on and nowadays some people argue whether we live in a mesocracy (government by the middle class), in a cryptarchy (government conducted in secret), in an androcracy (consisting of men alone) or in a logocracy (rule by words) more than in a timocracy (rule by honorable persons – Plato again). Personally I would love to live in a paedocracy, not in the negative sense of “being ruled by adults that still think like children”, but by the real children, because when children behave in a bad way, they are sorry for that, and sincerely apologize with a tender smile that makes you smile too.

(© Sergio Caldarella, 2009)