Jolts, Volts, & Hot Dips

Galvanized planters from the CB2 catalog.

Last week a reader (Sasha-2) asked me to resume writing this blog; her request has galvanized me into action.

To galvanize, in the sense used above, is to shock, stimulate, or excite (someone) into action. Galvanize has a second, rather dissimilar meaning. The flower pots in the picture at left are galvanized in the sense that they are made of zinc-plated steel.

What’s the connection here? Can zinc-plated steel really be all that exciting?

Both senses of galvanize derive from the electrical experiments of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798). In the 1780’s and 1790’s, Galvani showed that the application of an electric shock to the nerves of an animal could provoke muscle spasms, even if the animal was dead. This phenomenon of being “jolted” or “jump-started” into motion gives us our first sense of galvanize.

Illustration from Galvani's 1791 essay "Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion." Two dissected frogs, each with a wire attached to it, are pictured. Galvani observed that "Whenever lightning flashed, all the muscles simultaneously fell into numerous violent contractions."

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Galvani’s work stimulated Alessandro Volta (whose name gives us Voltage) to develop the world’s first battery around 1800. He called it a “galvanic pile” in honor of Galvani. By 1805, another researcher had used such a battery to coat an object with a layer of gold. Today the Oscars are galvanized: a battery gives a negative charge to the Oscar, causing positively-charged gold particles (dissolved in water) to attach themselves to the surface of the Oscar.

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It was soon discovered that a similar electrical process could be used to coat steel with zinc. Zinc-plated steel is the backbone of our industrial infrastructure, because zinc protects steel against corrosion. Ironically, today’s “galvanized” steel is no longer produced by a galvanic (electrical) method. Instead, the steel is plunged into a bath of molten zinc, in what is known as the “hot-dip” process.

Not a close Finnish

Scandinavia comprises Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The Scandinavian peninsula is the land covered by Norway and Sweden.

Quick – which countries are in Scandinavia?

If your answer included Finland, you made a common mistake. According to the OED, the Scandinavian countries are Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Or, as the Danish Wikipedia puts it, we are talking about Danmark, Norge og Sverige.

The Scandinavian countries plus Finland and Iceland are bound together in a regional association that goes by the name “Norden.” Because the term “Scandinavia” can be inconveniently restrictive,

The term Norden has…come into use to denote Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden…(Britannica).

Unfortunately, “Norden” is not really an English word: it does not show up in the OED or Merriam-Webster. Sometimes the term “Nordic countries” is used as an equivalent for “Norden,” but this usage is unclear insofar as the OED simply defines “Nordic” as a synonym for “Scandinavian.”

We are stuck with a lexical gap – a “hole” in the dictionary. It would be nice to have an English term that meant “Norden,” but we don’t have one. (Similarly, it would be nice to have a term that unequivocally meant Canada and the United States, but the term “North America” includes Mexico.)

It is perhaps not surprising that Iceland, hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic ocean, is not considered part of Scandinavia. But what about Finland, which abuts both Norway and Sweden? Why are the Finns not Scandinavian?

The term “Scandinavia” is recorded as far back as Roman times, but given the vagueness of Roman knowledge about Scandinavia, ancient sources will not help us to answer our question. Part of the answer is that Finland, unlike the Scandinavian countries, was part of Russia from 1809 t0 1917. Another part of the answer is that the Finns mostly do not share the Viking heritage of the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians.

Latter-day Vikings (in orange jumpsuits) on the Sognefjord, Norway. In the background, afjordable housing.

Consider the following samples from Viking-derived languages:

Swedish: Fader vår, som är i himmelen! Helgat varde ditt namn…vårt dagliga bröd giv oss i dag.

Norwegian: Fader vår, du som er i himmelen! Helliget vorde ditt navn…gi oss idag vårt daglige brød.

Danish: Vor Fader, du, som er i Himlene! Helliget vorde dit Navn…giv os i dag vort daglige Brød.

Perhaps you can guess what the above lines mean; they are not so very dissimilar from the English version:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name…Give us this day our daily bread.

The color-coding above highlights cognates [from the Latin cognatus, from co- ("together") + natus ("born" - same root as "native")]. “Fader” and “Father” are cognates because they were “born together” from the same Germanic root.

Finnish, on the other hand, is very different from the Scandinavian languages. The following lines, which mean the same as the above, look so unfamiliar that they might as well be in Na’vi:

Finnish: Isä meidän, joka olet taivaissa! Pyhitetty olkoon sinun nimesi…anna meille tänä päivänä meidän jokapäiväinen leipämme.

Finnish, far from being a Germanic language like English or the Scandinavian languages, is not even Indo-European. Like Hungarian, it is a Finno-Ugric language, and thus lacks cognates that English-speakers can recognize.

Mind where you put your feet!

Podium n. comes from the Greek pod-, pous (= “foot”). The Olympic skiers at left have their feet on the podium.

The same Greek root gives us some other familiar terms, including:

podiatrist n. – a doctor who specializes in the treatment of feet.

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arthropod n. – an animal of the phylum that includes insects, crustaceans (e.g. lobsters), and arachnids (e.g. spiders). Arthron is Greek for a joint (such as an elbow); the animals at left are arthropods because their feet (or legs, really) have joints. When someone with pain in her joints complains of arthritis, she is using the same Greek root.

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antipodes n. – a place at the opposite end of the Earth. Originally the term antipodes referred to a person who dwelt on the opposite end of the Earth. Anti- is a Greek root meaning “opposite,” and the picture at left illustrates the sense in which antipodean people have feet in a position opposite to ours. The root anti- also shows up in the Antarctic, which is the antipodes of the Arctic. Relative to England, New Zealand is approximately at the antipodes, so the term antipodes is often used for Australia and New Zealand.

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This etymology of podium suggests that the term is often misused. In the pictures below, only Barack Obama is standing on a podium. Sarah Palin is standing next to a lectern. Lectern comes from the Latin legere (= “to read”), the same root that gives us lecture and legible. Strictly speaking, a lectern is something that you read from and a podium is something that you put your feet on, although the habit of calling a lectern a “podium” is now widely accepted.

Disease runs rampant!

Swine flu is running rampant throughout the world. But is it a pandemic or simply an epidemic?

Epidemic n. & adj. comes from the Greek epidemios, which was first used in medical contexts by Hippocrates in 430 BC. Epi- is a prefix meaning “on,” and demos means “people.” Hippocrates used epidemios to describe any disease that preyed on the people of a particular place. The meaning of epidemic has changed somewhat since them; today an epidemic is a widespread, temporary outbreak of a single disease in a particular locality.

By the way, demos is the same root you see in democracy [demos + kratia (= "rule, authority")]. Epi- is familiar from some other words such as epicenter (the point on the Earth’s surface directly above the center of an earthquake) and epidermis [epi- + dermis (="skin")]

Pandemic n. & adj. comes from the Greek pandemos. Pan- means “all” or “whole,” and pandemos was used to describe anything that affected the whole population. Today a pandemic is an epidemic that affects a wide geographic area such as a whole continent or even the whole world.

Policemen wearing masks to protect against the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 (yes, fifty) million people. Photo: National Archives (USA).

Pandemic has an element of exaggeration built into its etymology, since a disease outbreak need not sicken everybody to qualify as a pandemic – unless you use “everybody” in the way teenagers sometimes do, when they say “Everybody is going to the party / buying this gadget / etc.”

Pandemic conveys the opinion that a disease outbreak is severe. There is no precise, generally accepted definition of pandemic in the medical literature, in part because there is no precise way to say “worrisome.” The World Health Organization used to define an influenza pandemic as causing

“enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” But the agency recently pulled the definition, apologizing for causing confusion and anxiety (NYT)

On the other hand, one cannot completely remove the idea of severity from the definition of pandemic. In the words of Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota,

“you can’t use the terminology [pandemic] for just worldwide transmission, because if you did that, you would say every seasonal flu year is a pandemic” (NYT).

To call every seasonal flu outbreak a pandemic would move too far away from the idea that a pandemic must be a cause for grave concern and concerted action. The WHO does call the swine (or H1N1) flu a pandemic, even though the death toll has so far not been very high, out of concern that this outbreak could someday mutate in a way that causes large numbers of deaths.

There is one more germy -demic word. Endemic n. & adj. comes from the Greek endemos [en- ("in") + demos]. A disease is endemic in a region if it has been prevalent in that region for a long time due to local conditions such as, for instance, the presence of a particular kind of parasite.

In no mood to lie down: Rampant

When something bad rears its ugly head, people tend to describe it as rampant: rampant inflation, rampant crime, etc.

Rampant came into English from the Middle French verb ramper. One meaning of ramper was “to climb.” By extension, a mammal that reared up onto its hind legs as if to climb into the air was described as rampant.

This stuffed polar bear is in a rampant pose. Photo: photojenni.

What does this have to do with rampant crime? A rampant creature is often in a fierce and aggressive mood; would you want to tangle with the rampant polar bear at right? Thus a problem that has flared up and become dangerous has, metaphorically speaking, become rampant. The same imagery motivates the expression “X reared its (ugly) head”; the idea is that X has risen to its hind legs and is not, so to speak, in a mood to take things lying down.

The connection between being rampant and being fierce was reinforced by the use of rampant in heraldry. A heraldic animal is rampant if it is standing on the sinister hind foot with its front paws raised. Usually the animals in question look rather fierce, like the Scottish lion below.

Rampant lion on the Royal coat of arms of Scotland, Edinburgh Castle.

Below is another rampant creature, a bear from the Swiss Canton of Berne. Notice that the bear looks as if it is climbing a ramp. Linguistically, that is not a coincidence. Ramper, in its sense of “to climb,” gave rise to the noun rampe – an inclined plane used for climbing. This became our English ramp.

Rampant bear on the coat of arms of Canton Berne. Image: Delta-9.

Our last rampant animal is the horse below. It illustrates the meaning of the expression “rearing to go,” or in U.S. slang “rarin’ to go.” When a horse assumes the rampant position pictured below, it is impatient to get moving. The expression “rearing to go” conveys this sense of impatience and urgency.

Hi-ho, Silver! Rearing horse on the coat of arms of Saint-Renan, France. Image: Frédéric MICHEL.

Lying Again

Last week we discussed prone and prostrate. Now it’s time to flip over onto our backs.

In this painting by Botticelli, both Venus and Mars are recumbent. Only Mars is lying supine.

Supine adj. is the opposite of prone. Like supinus, its Latin forebear, supine describes someone who is lying on his or her back. A secondary meaning for both supinus and supine is indolent; mentally or morally lethargic. The connection between lying on one’s back and indolence is evident from Mars’ relaxed air in the painting above.

Recumbent adj. is similar in meaning to supine, except that a recumbent person need not be lying down fully. A recumbent person can be in a seated position, provided that she is leaning back on something that is helping to support her weight. Thus Venus, who is not supine, is recumbent in the painting above. So is the woman in the photograph below. She is riding what is known as a recumbent bicycle.

This woman is reclining on a recumbent bike. (Photo by Wim Harwig)

To recline is to assume or maintain a recumbent position, and a recliner is an armchair that can be tilted back into such a position. Although La-Z-Boy (pronounced “Lazy Boy”) is a popular brand of recliner, neither reclined nor recumbent has, like supine, indolent as a secondary meaning. That’s just as well, because the woman above certainly does not look lazy.

Prostate vs. prostrate

Yesterday we looked at the word prostrate. What about the “prostrate gland”? Is this feature of the male reproductive system somehow associated with groveling and submission? Well, no…at least not etymologically.

The prostate gland (no r after the t), which sometimes gives rise to prostate cancer, is a structure near the opening of a man’s bladder.

Don’t feel bad if you have been saying “prostrate gland” all these years. The correct term – prostate – actually arose from a mistake. Were it not for that mistake, we would probably all be saying “parastate gland.”

The story begins with Herophilus (335 – 280 BC), a Greek who is often called “the father of anatomy.” He gave the name parastatai adenoiedes to the seminal vesicles, which are near the prostate gland. Parastatai comes from a word that can mean “a helper or assistant.” Herophilus used the term parastatai adenoiedes for the seminal vesicles because these structures help with procreation.

By the late middle ages, some copies of texts describing Herophilus’s work misspelled parastatai as prostatai. (Prostatai is a real Greek word, but it means something quite different.) This mistake was made permanent in 1600 when Du Laurens, a French anatomist, Latinized the wrong Greek word (prostatai), using prostatae to designate the prostate gland. Shortly thereafter, the new Latin word prostatae became the English prostate.

Prone vs. prostrate

This little boy is lying prone, but certainly not prostrate.

Prone adj. comes from the Latin pronus. In Latin pronus means “bent forward, inclined.” A person lies prone if she is “on her tummy” – i.e. if her chest or abdomen is touching the surface on which she is lying. A common mistake is to use prone to refer to someone who is lying “on her back”; the correct word for the latter position is supine.

The Latin pronus also has a figurative meaning: “inclined or disposed (to something).” (The metaphorical link between leaning toward X and tending toward X is clear; our English word inclined has a similar dual meaning.) This second meaning of pronus gives us another sense of prone: tending or inclined (to do a particular thing). For example, “They are prone to make mistakes” or “He is accident-prone.”

Prostrate adj. is similar to prone in that it describes an “on-your-tummy” pose. Prostrate comes from the Latin prostratus, past participle of prosternere, which means “to strew in front of; to throw to the ground, prostrate.” Unlike prone, prostrate inherits from Latin a strong suggestion of abject submission. This connotation is clear in the following quote from Caesar’s Gallic Wars:

omnem Galliam prosternere et perpetuae servituti addicere (“prostrate all of Gaul and doom it to eternal slavery”; caes.gal.7.77).

Somebody who is lying prostrate is in a groveling pose with face and arms, as well as the abdomen and the rest of the body, touching the ground. Thus everybody who is prostrate is prone, but not vice versa.

By extension, a person or thing that has been forced to the ground and that remains horizontal in a defeated posture – a boxer who has been knocked out, or a building that has been toppled – can be called prostrate. By further metaphorical extension, anybody or anything that is in a defeated, humbled state can also be called prostrate. Kind of like Gaul after Caesar’s legions had done their work.

How to lie (down)

One way to lie is, of course, to do what liars do: tell an untruth with intent to deceive.

Another way to lie is to be horizontal (on a bed, for example). This latter verb is easily confused with the verb lay, and today’s post will try to dispel the confusion.

To lay is like to set. Both verbs express what you do to someone or something. Here are some examples in the present, past, and present perfect tenses:

• Jack lays the book on the table.
• Jill sets the book on the table.

• Last night Jack laid a briefcase on the couch.
• Last night Jill set a briefcase on the couch.

• Jack has laid the rifle on the back seat.
• Jill has set the rifle on the back seat.

In each of the examples above, the orange item is being affected by the person (Jack or Jill) who is doing the verb. The orange item is called the object of the verb, and verbs such as lay and set are called transitive because they are always paired with such objects. [Slap, push, and flatter are also transitive verbs, because they involve the transfer of something to their objects; you can imagine a slap, a shove, or flattery in transit from the doer of the action to the object of the verb.]

To lie is like to sit. Both verbs are intransitive because they lack objects. You don’t lie someone, or sit someone. You simply lie or sit, and your action need not affect anyone or anything outside yourself. Here are some examples in the present, past, and present perfect tenses:

• Jack lies on the table.
• Jill sits on the table.

• Last night Jack lay on the couch.
• Last night Jill sat on the couch.

• Jack has lain on the back seat.
• Jill has sat on the back seat.

The examples above are similar to the ones used for lay and set; the only difference, apart from the switch to lie and sit, is that the objects of the verbs have been deleted.

One more thing to notice – for lie and sit, adding the word down after the verb can change the meaning. To lie or sit is to get into or stay in a certain position, whereas to lie down or sit down is only to get into that position.

Speaking of positions, the next Word Snack will delve deeper into how one can lie. We’ll cover prone, supine, recumbent, and prostrate. And just for kicks we’ll touch on rampant, which isn’t really a lying-down position but is interesting anyway.

Can I have your digits?

Last time we saw that prestidigitation derives from the Latin digitus (= “finger or thumb” or, by extension, “toe”).

One meaning of the modern word digit n. is the same as that of the Classical Latin digitus: a human finger, thumb, or toe; or a comparable structure in another animal.

So, ladies…the next time some loser asks for your digits, you may comply literally with his request by displaying the middle digit of each hand. That particular gesture, by the way, has a Classical pedigree; indeed, a Roman name for the middle finger was digitus impudicus (impudicus = “immodest, lewd”).

Of course, the most common meaning of digit today is a numeral less than ten: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9. The Romans did not use digitus as a mathematical term; digitus only acquired this meaning in Medieval Latin, in books explaining how to use the newly-introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals. One such Medieval Latin manuscript notes that a number less than 10 is “called a digitus because it is contained in the number of fingers.”

The influence of our ten fingers shows up in some of our other number words:

…eleven comes from Old English endleofan, literally meaning “[ten and] one left [over],” and twelve from twelf, meaning “two left”; the endings -teen and -ty both refer to ten, and hundred comes originally from a pre-Greek term meaning “ten times [ten].” [Encyclopædia Britannica]