Wednesday, October 17, 2001
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Wednesday, October 17, 2001 |
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A stoth and his kith in allision By
SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
It's time to clean out the file where I stash words that stump me or amuse me, words I deem worth sharing. As one who works with words, plays with words, dips her hands into the dictionary and watches words run out between her fingers, I am presumptive enough to believe others will share my discoveries and refrain from sniggering when I confess unfamiliarity with a word that everyone else in the English-speaking world has known from childhood. So. This week's lexicographic recipe follows, with an analysis of its ingredients. See if you can tell which words are old, which are new, and what they mean.
The online edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary updates its list of nearly half a million English words annually, adding roughly 100 new words. The print edition gets a rewrite every 10 years. Not surprisingly, the word "chad" was the most frequently looked-up word at HtmlResAnchor www.m-w.com in 2000, but long used by teletype operators is not a new word. The new entries you almost certainly know include "dot-com," "24/7," "eye candy," "max out," and "GPS" (global positioning system, a staple among instruments of navigation.) Just to be esoteric, I included four of M-W's newest entries in the list above. "Electronica" is dance music using synthesizers, electronic percussion, and samples of recorded music or sound. Can't say I'll need that one. "Enculturation" seems to me to be a very useful word, although I was surprised to learn it is new. It means the process by which an individual learns the traditional contents of a culture and assimilates its practices and values. You can probably figure out "nutraceutical," a fortified food or a dietary supplement, and "terabyte," a measure of vast computer information storage capacity. New entries to M-W reflect the editors' evaluation of their staying power rather than their current popularity. Dave and I have a nominee. We have forever used the word "stob" to mean a post or dead tree sticking out of the water or ground, but I never thought to check up on it until my Word 2000's spell checker flagged it as incorrect. To the dictionary. I found "stoat" and "stochastic" with no "stob" between them and had to stop long enough to find out what they mean. "Stoat" turns out to be a mostly British term for an ermine, especially in its brown color phase. "Stochastic" means conjectural, or involving chance or probability. Off-hand, I can't think of a sentence in which it would fit. Never did find "stob" in the dictionary. Until it gets there, however, I do not plan to stop using a word that works so well. When you're trying to steer a boat through unknown water, a cry of "Stob, right!" works better than "Watch out for that old fence post, railroad tie, half-submerged rotten pier or dead branches sticking out of the water over there on your right." I came across the word "allision" while checking some maritime terms for a column on barges. The context made me think someone had failed to correct a typo in "collision." None of my dictionaries was any help, so I went online and eventually found a definition in General Maritime Law: "An allision is the impermissible touching of a [moving vessel] with a stationary or moored object resulting in damage." In a 1997 report of a Hudson River incident, a court found that the M/V Spirit of New York "allided with pier, scoreboard, and building causing in excess of $50,000 in damage and injuring 16 persons. " There's at least one word on the list that you think you know, but it has another meaning you may not. An "expletive" is not always best deleted. It is a word that stands in place of and anticipates a following word or phrase. The example in my dictionary is the word "there" in "There are many books on the table." I used the same word at the beginning of this paragraph, and I believe the word "it" at the top of this column also fits the bill. Likewise, the word "kith." You may know it means "friends," and appears almost exclusively in company with "kin," to mean all those close to us, related or not. But did you know its old English root word is also the root of "uncouth," and originally meant "known"? Our kith are people known to us, and those who are unknown we find to be uncouth. You master words by using them in a sentence. Hmmm. Let's have a go at it. "It may be stochastic to suppose that the stoat and his kith allided with an enculturation that favored neutraceuticals and terabytes of electronica." The expletive is in the construction. I think. |
