Communication Breakdown

Prostrate

This week's word discusses the connection between body and emotion. The word prostrate still implies its original meaning of a laying on the ground in a downward position, as if in worship or rest. It also has the second definition, emerging in 1651, meaning to be overcome by emotion; grief, fear, or shame.

This vocabulary connection is unusual, but strikingly logical. When you are prostrate with grief, you feel suppressed, overcome by the emotion. Your energy has been deprived of its force, and it is at its lowest. When physically prostrate, your body is at the lowest earthly position it can occupy.

How does a word change its meaning? What occurred in the year 1651 that catalyzed the shift in etymology from a physical arrangement to an emotional affliction. According to my research, the English civil war ended in 1651, in the scholarly period known as the Age of Enlightenment. Perhaps in this period of peace and self-reflexiveness, individuals were able to draw the connection between spatial arrangement and emotions. The emergence of this specialized way of thinking is seen in the adoption of jargon from popular writings at the time, such as Hobbes' Leviathan.

King's College Library in Cambridge, UK

Onomatopoeia

Download Onomatopoeia- Creating the Blog

(Sound file: All words spoken in this blog have onomatopoetic applications. Everything else are the sounds of production! Typing, dictionary page flipping, pens clicking, and drafting! )

Onomatopoeia- a word that most English lovers have learned to appreciate in their study of poetry. It refers to words that imitate a sound, such as buzz, hiss, and pop. Does this mean that onomatopoeia is also a sound? If so, what sound does it itself imitate?

I ask this question after considering the word's origin. Derived from Greek onomatopoiia, which discusses the naming of things by poets; onoma being name, and poeia being poet. When we name something, do we consider the sound it makes? Do names incorporate some essential quality about its object?

Certainly, onomatopoeia has more vowels than any one word should be allowed (in fact, the only vowel that is missing is the letter "u"). Vowels are created by formants, which are certain peaks in the human hearing that allows us to understand and distinguish between different words (for example, cat and cut. The "a" and the "u" resonate at different frequencies).

As a result of its spelling, onomatopoeia is hard on the mouth in terms of prononuciation. The end result of its repetition results in what ties back to my previous word, dithering: an endless stream of noise. Perhaps the poets had a cynical view of their own work when they created a word that means to imitate sound. In doing so, they created one of the more obnoxious terms to correspond with their endless chatter. 

King's Cross Station, London UK

Dithering

Dithering; to dither. I came across this word in a discussion of digital audio recording. As the participant with the least technical prowess, I had to suppress a giggle when considering the word's true meaning and origins.

An adaption of a Middle English word from around 1375, dithering first appeared in its modern context  in 1649, nearly 300 years later, meaning "to quake". This trembling motion is not limited to objects, in the late 1800s the term evolved to imply an anxious feeling expressed in conversation and movement. In my travels in the UK, I have heard this term used among young adults to describe a long, rambling speech without focus: "There she goes again, dithering about boys, her hair, her shoes."

In digital audio, dithering emerged as a technical term in the late 1950s, early 1960s. It refers to extra noise added intentionally to a track being recorded from an analog format to become stored digitally. Dithering somewhat masks the occasional inaccurate approximation of sound values. To me, this is humorous because its definition essentially incorporates useless noise, both digitally and in discussion.

What other commonplace words have made the jump to technically accepted terms? This may be an interesting point of investigation for the next entry.

Rainy UK: View from the London Eye