Category: Language

Symbolomania – The obsession with symbolism over reality

By all means, accuse me of inventing too many words with the suffix ‘-mania’, but I do find it to be infinitely useful.

The year is 2019. The month is May. Fans of fantasy all around the world gather to watch the final episode of Game of Thrones.

Daenerys Targaryen has, inexplicably, gone mad. Jon Snow decides to kill her. Drogon, her dragon, after seeing this, decides to attack … the Iron Throne.

It makes no sense. Dragons in this world, while unable to speak or communicate telepathically as they can in some other fantasy worlds, are supposedly ferociously intelligent. There is no way that Drogon doesn’t know that it was Jon Snow who killed Daenerys. Dragons are also vicious, and rather indifferent to humans other than the ones they are bound to in some way. Drogon would kill Jon Snow. That would make sense.

But instead the dragon attacks … the chair. Why? It’s a chair. What does it mean to a dragon? Unless of course, Drogon somehow knows what the chair symbolises – the desire for power, and all the infighting it causes. Drogon, in this moment, gains a meta-level understanding of the world he’s in. He momentarily becomes the audience, and that’s why he attacks the symbol and impetus of the show.

For a show that is supposed to be realist, this is ridiculous. It only happens because the writers think it’s profound, and that profundity takes precedence over physical and logical realism. It is one of the many reasons why the show is considered a car crash, and why people hardly ever talk about it now, despite it being one of the most popular shows in the world for about a decade.

In the subsequent years, I have seen this obsession with symbols many other times. I have seen people be obsessed with the symbolism of something – what they think it means – regardless of the actual logical, physical, or logistical consequences of something, regardless of reality.

I won’t enumerate all of the examples, as that would make this post unbearably long, but I will focus on one: royalty.

I am a royalist. It’s actually one of the few ‘-ist’ words I will actually apply to myself. I’ll save a full explanation of why I’m a royalist for another post, but it’s worth saying that being a royalist does not mean that you support or are in favour of every single thing every single member of the royal family does all the time. It means you are in favour of the concept of royalty.

In any discussion on royalty, one of the arguments against it you’ll hear quite often and quite early on is ‘I don’t think anyone should be considered “better” than anyone else.’ – in other words, they see the meaning of ‘royalty’ as being that some people in society should be higher up, higher in status, more important, intrinsically more moral people – better.

It’s a weird argument, because I don’t think anyone who is a royalist today actually believes that members of the royal family are better, more worthy, than the rest of us. I think royalists just see the royal family as inheritors of an ancient tradition who have a life-long duty to preserve a substantial proportion of our cultural heritage. That does not make them better, or more worthy. They are not necessarily more moral people, nor should they escape justice when justice is needed. Now sure, we should expect higher standards of them than we do of most people, since they are the inheritors of this legacy, and the performers of its rituals, but this does not mean they are necessarily better.

I think the people who see royalty as some kind of status of intrinsic superiority are obsessed with what they believe the symbolism of royalty is rather than the practical, real effects that we see in society as a result of them (or even, indeed, a truer, actual symbolism, rather than a false interpretation). In that sense they are the same as the writers of Game of Thrones (and the very small number of people who actually liked that final episode).

So I find I need a word to describe this phenomenon. I choose symbolomania – the obsession with symbols or symbolism – usually a perceived symbolism – over reality or over a more logical understanding of something.

Words of Killing – Words that end with the Latin suffix ‘-cide’

Continuing my series of posts about different etymological families of words, let’s look at the words that end with ‘-cide’.

Once again, these words may be of particular use to fantasy and science fiction authors, like me, as rather a lot of murder happens in these genres. Words like ‘regicide’ – the killing of a king – ‘deicide’ – the killing of a god – or ‘tyrannicide’ – the killing of a tyrant – are obviously useful.

The full list of words that end with ‘-cide’ is quite long, and many of them are technical or scientific, so I won’t cover all of them here – I’ll just look at the ones that might be called poetically interesting.

WordOriginMeaning
suicidefrom Latin sui, ‘of oneself’, and cidium, ‘a killing’, ultimately from caedere, ‘to slay’the killing of oneself
homicidefrom Latin homo, ‘man’, ‘person’the killing of another person
feminicidefrom Latin femina, ‘woman’the killing of a woman; ‘femicide’ is also used, but this seems to be a needless contraction
uxoricidefrom Latin uxor, ‘wife’the killing of one’s wife
patricidefrom Latin pater, ‘father’the killing of one’s father
matricidefrom Latin mater, ‘mother’the killing of one’s mother
fratricidefrom Latin frater, ‘brother’the killing of one’s brother
sororicidefrom Latin soror, ‘sister’the killing of one’s sister
senicidefrom Latin senex, ‘old man’the killing of an old man
regicidefrom Latin rex, ‘king’the killing of a king
tyrannicidefrom Greek tyrannos, ‘lord’, ‘master’the killing of a tyrant
vaticidefrom Latin vates, ‘prophet’, ‘seer’, ‘diviner’the killing of a prophet or seer – potentially a very useful word for fiction
deicidefrom Latin deus, ‘god’the killing of a god
genocidefrom Greek genos, ‘race’, ‘kind’a fairly modern word, less than 100 years old, meaning ‘the killing of an ethnic group’; this word is used incorrectly more than it is used correctly
feticidefrom Latin fetus, ‘fetus’the killing of an unborn child
filicidefrom Latin filius, ‘son’, filia, ‘daughter’the killing of one’s son or daughter
prolicidefrom Latin proles, ‘offspring’the killing of one’s children
floricidefrom Latin flos, ‘flower’the killing of flowers
felicidefrom Latin feles, ‘cat’the killing of a cat – a grave crime
vulpicidefrom Latin vulpes, ‘fox’the killing of a fox
ceticidefrom Latin cetus, ‘whale’, ‘sea monster’the killing of a whale, the killing of a sea monster – possibly a very useful word
avicidefrom Latin avis, ‘bird’the killing of a bird
libricidefrom Latin liber, ‘book’the killing of books
verbicidefrom Latin verbum, ‘word’the killing of a word, usually by perversion of its original or proper meaning
linguicidefrom Latin lingua, ‘language’the killing of a language
temporicidefrom Latin tempus, ‘time’the killing of time – potentially a very fun word to use
liberticidefrom Latin libertas, ‘freedom’the killing of freedom, liberty
legicidefrom Latin lex, ‘law’the killing of laws

Aischomania – The obsession with making oneself ugly

You’ve either noticed it or you haven’t. If you haven’t noticed it, then there’s probably nothing I can do to point it out to you. If you have noticed it, then you probably already know what I’m talking about before I explain it.

Over the last few years, there have been a number of people – a very small number as a proportion of the total population, but very noticeable online – who seemed have developed an obsession with making themselves ugly.

Again, you either know who I mean or you don’t.

This is not something I saw coming. I think it is an internet phenomenon – it’s a phenomenon, for the most part, created by the internet – social media in particular. But ten years ago I would never have seen this coming.

Why do these people do it? I think it’s driven largely by a desire to be different – to be unique. Our society values individuality, which means that anything that shows you as not being like other people is desirable. It’s a fashion to show how you aren’t following the trend – how you’re doing something different – how you’re setting a new trend.

Of course, all of these people end up looking the same. Every generation has had this: a group of people who think that they are all different and special and unique, but who ultimately all end up looking the same. In the 90s and early 2000s it was the Goths. In the mid and late 2000s it was the Emos.

But unlike the Goths, who were (as far as I can tell) just obsessed with black dyed hair, eyeliner, black nail polish, and black clothes, and unlike the Emos, who were just obsessed with eyeliner and a brightly-coloured streak of hair sweeping across their face, covering their eyes, this latest cohort seems to be just obsessed with making themselves ugly. They favour mullets (a hairstyle that I’m sure a few years ago we all agreed should never make a return) – or more often a mullet with the front half of their head shaved. They favour nose piercings – like the ones that cows sometimes have. They reject the idea that people who are slender and muscular are generally better-looking. Like their predecessors, they are obsessed with coloured hair, but it is often a garish mixture of colours that do not go together.

I think this is driven by the desire to look different, but also with the presupposition that there is no such thing as objective beauty – that beauty is wholly subjective. This is a curse that has afflicted the Anglosphere for some time. The reality is that beauty is not wholly subjective. It’s not wholly objective either – it’s partly objective and partly subjective. That explains why humans have such a terrible time understanding it – we like absolutes – absolutes are easy to remember. It’s the same with fine art – paintings and the like – the beauty of a painting is not wholly subjective. The beauty of a building is not wholly subjective. The quality of a book or a movie is not wholly subjective. All of these things are partly objective.

If you are not yet disavowed of the idea that beauty is subjective, consider this: ask a thousand people who is better looking: Chris Hemsworth or Boris Johnson. You already know, roughly, what the results of such a survey would be before you see them. You could try the same survey with many such pairs of well-known people. You would, very often, be able to roughly predict the results. How are you able to do this unless there is a pattern to them? That pattern is simply an objective fact about human beings – what human beings consider beauty to be. That pattern might vary slightly from one society to another, but it cannot be wholly gainsaid. You also may not be able to predict equally as reliably how an individual person might respond to the survey, but that does not negate the pattern for a large population. Beauty is partly objective.

And I think all of these people who are obsessed with making themselves ugly, on some level, know this. What they do is about rebellion. It is using rebellion, as fashion, as a signifier of how virtuous they perceive themselves to be (where, in a society that values individuality and self-expression, non-conformity is considered a virtue). In a society that has mastered beauty (through cosmetic products, digital photo editing, the millions-strong filter for beauty that is Instagram, and even plastic surgery and weight loss injections), ugliness is the only form of aesthetic rebellion that remains.

I have seen this phenomenon enough times now that I find I need a word for it. As always, the best English words are constructed from Latin or Greek elements. There is an Ancient Greek word, αἶσχος, aiskhos, meaning ‘ugliness’, but also ‘disgrace’ or ‘disgraceful deeds’. This would seem to be the perfect word, so I name this phenomenon aischomania – ‘the obsession with making oneself ugly, usually as an act of social or cultural rebellion’. (I have tried to mimic the usual pattern of consonant changes when words travel from Ancient Greek to English, but I might have gotten it wrong.)

This word could also be applied metaphorically to the obsession with ugliness seen in other areas of modern life. Brutalist architecture – and a lot of later styles – is an example of aischomania. Modern art is, often, an example of aischomania. Even some contemporary styles of music are.

Aischomania – the obsession with and desire for ugliness, often with the belief that there is a kind of moral purity that can be found only through disgrace and self-degradation.

Words of Creation – Words that end with the Greek suffix ‘-poeia’

A few weeks ago, I came across the word ‘mythopoeic’. What a nice-looking word! Dictionaries give its meaning as ‘pertaining to the creation of myths’, but I sense it has a true meaning that is a bit subtler than that.

It comes from Greek mythos – obviously – meaning ‘myth’, ‘story’, ‘thought’, ‘discourse’, and Greek poiein, meaning ‘to create’ – from which we also get the word ‘poet’. Who’d’ve thought – the word ‘poet’ literally just means ‘one who creates’. (I guess that means we’re all poets now. Oh dear.)

From ‘mythopoeic’ we can get to ‘mythopoeia’, which is ‘the creation of myths’. It didn’t occur to me, at first, that there were other words ending with ‘-poeia’, but there are, and these form an etymological family of words all pertaining to creation.

As always with this series of posts, first I will list words ending with this suffix that I’ve found in dictionaries. (It may not be an exhaustive list.)

WordMeaning
pharmacopoeia‘the making of medicine’
logopoeiaThe creation of words – not in the sense of coining new words, but in the sense that a word is formed over time by its usage in different contexts, and the associations it gains through its usages. (This word may be worth a blog post of its own.)
phanopoeiaThe creation of images – particularly within the mind, the visual imagination.
melopoeiaThe creation of sounds – again particularly in the sense of writing that builds the idea of a sound in the mind.
prosopopoeiaThe putting of words into the mouths of others – what a great word. (A complex etymology.)
onomatopoeiaThe famous one – ‘the formation of words or names by imitation of natural sounds’.

Most of these ‘-poeia’ words are quite grand, so perhaps any new words made with the ending should be similarly grand. Below I’ve thrown together some new words that could be made with this ending, but they’re a bit literal.

WordMeaningAdjectival Form
geopoeia‘the creation of the Earth’geopoeic
rhabdopoeia‘the creation of wands / staffs’ – a great one for fantasy – a person who creates wands or staffs (like Ollivander) could be a ‘rhabdopoet’ – particularly in reference to the magical, rather than mechanical, aspects of creating a wandrhabdopoeic
astropoeia‘the creation of stars’ – for extra grandeur of concept, this could be used for metaphorical stars – i.e., celebrities – ‘the process by which a person becomes a celebrity and the crafting of their public image’ (although perhaps this rather removes grandeur than adds it)astropoeic
oneiropoeia‘the creation of dreams’ – again, could be used for literal dreams, or this word could be used to refer to how aspirations are instilled in the people of a given society – i.e., the process by which the American Dream is instilledoneiropoeic
arithmopoeia‘the creation of numbers’ – could be used to refer to the process by which mathematicians deduce that a different class of number (such as imaginary and complex numbers) is neededarithmopoeic
chronopoeia‘the creation of time’ – could be used to refer to how different events and activities create the perception of time in the mind – i.e., a very boring activity that makes time go slow is chronopoeicchronopoeic
sophopoeia‘the creation of wisdom’ – could be used to refer to the methods and environments that create wisdom within those going through educationsophopoeic
alethopoeia‘the creation of truth’ – could be used to refer to how governmental and media institutions try to ‘create’ a ‘truth’ that may well be different from actual, objective truth (although perhaps this is a rather grim usage of such a grand word)alethopoeic

No, the comma does *not* always go before the closing quote mark – Logical Punctuation

‘The comma always goes before the closing quote mark.’

I’ve heard this a number of times over the last 7 years or so – mostly, but certainly not exclusively, from Americans.

And I had heard it in life before that too. I can’t remember exactly when I first heard it – I think it was possibly in secondary school, from one of my secondary school English teachers. But I do remember that when I first heard it, I immediately thought ‘That’s silly.’.

Consider the following sentence.

‘I think I like pears more than I like apples.’

Now let’s imagine that this is a line said by someone – a character in a novel, perhaps. Now, the ‘he said’ / ‘she said’ could be put at the end.

‘”I think I like pears more than I like apples.”, she said.’

Or we could split the sentence and put the ‘he said’ / ‘she said’ in the middle.

‘”I think”, she said, “I like pears more than I like apples.”‘

This illustrates the problem. That first comma in the line above – those who say ‘The comma always goes before the closing quote mark.’ would have it go before the first closing double quote mark – immediately after the word ‘think’.

But I think this is ridiculous. That comma is not part of the original sentence – what this person is actually saying. It is not part of the ‘inner sentence’ – it is part of the ‘outer sentence’. For clarity, I’ve written the same text again below, but coloured the ‘inner sentence’ green and the ‘outer sentence’ blue.

‘”I think“, she said, “I like pears more than I like apples.“‘

The double quote marks are the demarcations between the inner and outer sentences. You can join together all of the separately-quoted parts of the inner sentence to get back the original thing being quoted.

If we were to follow the ‘The comma always goes before the closing quote mark.’ rule, however, we would have:

‘”I think,“ she said, “I like pears more than I like apples.“‘

This is clearly less elegant. The inner and outer sentence are now mixed together across the quote marks.

So I would say that the correct rule is: only that which is part of the quote goes within the quote marks.

Now sure, commas are for adding structure to written language – we do not speak them. (Well, they sort-of represent pauses in spoken language, but it’s not a hard-and-fast rule, and they’re better understood as making clauses easier to recognise in written text.) But that structure is still either of the inner sentence or the outer sentence, and putting a comma in the inner sentence when it’s actually part of the outer sentence can change the meaning.

I learned a while ago that my preferred style of using punctuation is called logical punctuation. And apparently the other style – the comma-before-the-quote-mark style – is known as typographer’s punctuation, or something like that. I’m not too sure about these names. ‘Logical punctuation’ is a bit grandiose, even if it is more logical, and I don’t know why typographers would be expected to be so slapdash in their approach to punctuation. But apparently these are terms that are used.

I’ve also seen it said that logical punctuation is the British style, and the other way is the American style. I’ve certainly heard Americans advocate for the comma-before-the-quote-marks style more often. I’ve heard Britons insist upon it too, though whether this is just because of the cultural backwash we get from America, I can’t say.

But regardless of what the best names for these styles are, and regardless of whether the Britons or the Americans use one style more, it is better to use logical punctuation.

The main argument I hear in favour of the American style is ‘It looks better.’. There’s just something about the lower punctuation mark followed by the higher one that looks better than the inverse. While aesthetics are very important in language, to some extent (only some) what you like is just what you get used to over time, and aesthetics should generally not be at the expense of function and semantics. (There are exceptions, of course, but generally.)

Some would say that my approach is perhaps the product of a mathematical mind. (I am a physicist by training.) You can certainly see the appeal of logical punctuation to a mathematical mind – logical punctuation perfectly mimics the way brackets work in mathematics. However, this is somewhere where the penetrating orderliness of mathematics should influence human language. Using logical punctuation allows you to avoid a great many problems that arise if you try to use the American style. The American style generally applies not just to commas, but to all punctuation. Consider the following sentence.

‘What did he say after “You’re not supposed to do that?”‘

The typographer’s style advocates for putting that question mark before the closing double quote mark, as I’ve written it above. But is the question mark part of the inner sentence or the outer sentence? Or both? You can’t tell – but it changes the meaning. If the question mark is part of the inner sentence, the person being quoted is asking a question. If it’s not part of the inner sentence, the person being quoted is making a statement.

This is clearly a problem, and if you try to follow the American style for an entire book, you will run into variations of this problem over and over again – with no way to be both consistent and always unambiguous. (You might think the problem won’t come up very often, but it does – it comes up A LOT.)

Logical punctuation solves this easily. If the inner sentence is a statement, you write:

‘What did he say after “You’re not supposed to do that.”?’

and if it’s a question, you write:

‘What did he say after “You’re not supposed to do that?”?’

Some people might find it visually clumsy to have all those punctuation marks bundled together like that. But again, the aesthetics you can adjust to if you just get used to it – but the semantic issues of the typographer’s style cannot be cleanly resolved.

I hope that logical punctuation becomes more popular. Britons seem to be split on it. But I think it’s an easy rule to remember: only that which is part of the quote goes in the quote marks.

Autoparody – when something is its own parody

It used to be that a well-written parody of something was enough to ensure that that something was never done or made again. The parody would show just how ridiculous that something was, and out of fear of extraordinary humiliation, the doers or makers of that original something would never do or make it again in their lives.

That’s how I thought it would always be, but several years ago I noticed that the types of morons that parody was so useful for quelling developed an immunity to it. They would do or make something ridiculous, and then others would rightly ridicule them for it, but they would carry on doing or making that ridiculous thing regardless. I mean, this describes much of what Hollywood has done for the last 10 years.

And then came the next stage: autoparody – when something is so ridiculous and absurd that no parody made by someone else could possibly hope to demonstrate its ridiculousness and absurdity better than it can itself. Autoparody is when something adheres to the clichés of itself so well that it almost appears to show awareness on the part of the doer or maker of its absurdity, even though there is no self-awareness at whatsoever. It is when something becomes its own joke. It is a joke without a punchline, because the punchline is the setup. It is when something is a parody of itself.

To my shock and dismay, autoparodies are becoming very common. Most of them seem to be in the form of television shows made by the BBC, Netflix, and Disney.

Why I’m going back to B.C. / A.D.

When I first found out about B.C.E. / C.E. – standing for ‘Before the Common Era’ and ‘Common Era’ – which I think was towards the end of primary school or sometime during secondary school, I immediately found them compelling. I’d say for most of the time between 2006 and 2023, I used B.C.E. / C.E. exclusively instead of B.C. / A.D.. But now I’m going back.

You have to remember that Christianity in England was different in the late 90s and early 2000s. Nowadays, Christianity is absent from most parts of English life (if you’re an atheist like me) – a result, in part, of New Atheism (of which I was a small part). But 20-25 years ago it was much more present. More people were Christian, and they were more vocal about it – more willing to mention it in casual conversation; more willing to make their allegiance to it known.

I was an atheist from a very early age – possibly six, seven, eight years old. It was very obvious to me, early on, that there was no particular reason to believe in the existence of the Christian god over, say, the Greek gods. I recognised it straight away as mythology.

I also have a rebellious streak, and a great disdain for condescension and that kind of ‘kid-talk’ voice that bad primary school teachers do. The Christians I encountered in the late 90s and early 2000s were extremely condescending, and also quite bossy and expectant. So I found Christianity to not only be incorrect, but also detestable.

This is why I liked B.C.E. / C.E.. As an atheist, it seemed nonsensical to write an abbreviation meaning ‘Before Christ’ when I don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Christ (i.e., the son of a god), or to write an abbreviation of ‘Anno Domini’, meaning ‘in the year of our Lord’, when I don’t believe that Jesus was or is Lord. I also disliked that our year-numbering system was connected to – what I saw as – a very annoying religion filled with quite annoying people.

B.C.E. / C.E., on the other hand, seemed perfectly clear and neutral – abstract even. ‘The Common Era’ – a term that seemed to make sense given that people right across the world used this numbering system – it really was the common era. I was also drawn to the symmetry of the abbreviations – both containing ‘C.E.’. It seems elegant. That’s the physicist / programmer in me – we are drawn to symmetry and the simplification it brings.

So for many years I consistently used B.C.E. / C.E. every time I needed to write it. But now I’m changing back.

There are several reasons for this. Primary among them is that I abhor the obscuration of history and the loss of tradition. I have always abhorred these things – from a very young age. This isn’t a new trait. (It is something that has long set me apart from a lot of the people on the political left, who generally see no value in tradition – be it national tradition or even local or personal tradition.) And the reality is, the B.C.E. / C.E. system uses the same numbers as the B.C. / A.D. system – numbers which, for centuries, were used to denote how many years had passed since the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. (Whether or not they are accurate is a different matter – that is the meaning they had for centuries.) If any young person, new to all of this, were to ask ‘Why are the year numbers the numbers that they are? Why is the current year 2024 and not 3748?’, you would have to explain that they are based on the number of years thought to have passed since the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. So changing the words doesn’t actually remove the meaning at all – the meaning is still there. All changing the words does is try to obscure the origin of the system – it just tries to obscure a historical fact. And I don’t like that.

Also, as time has gone on, I have gotten a greater and greater adoration for old things. I used to hate old buildings – including churches. They always stank of old building – and it’s quite an oppressive smell. This was true of churches, but also think of old pavilions on village cricket greens or football fields, or municipal libraries built in the 70s and fitted with scratchy, grey carpet tiles. Somehow they all smelled the same – of old. And they were cold – both in temperature and in lighting. I was thoroughly a modernist in this regard – I like super-modern buildings made out of shiny steel and huge glass windows.

But this was before I had really encountered the horrors of brutalism. Brutalism will make you rethink your entire attitude to modern buildings. And really, even the things that aren’t brutalist that have been built over the last 50-70 years or so are also, often, just horrid. They are ugly, stale, corporate, and bureaucratic.

Nowadays, when I go to a new town or city, the place I want to visit is the cathedral or the biggest church. They are by far the nicest-looking buildings, and the ones with the most history. I love wandering through the parts of them where all of the in-church graves and memorials are, and reading things that were carved into the wall hundreds of years ago. (It’s why Westminster Abbey is so much fun – I’d recommend to everyone to go there.)

I adore the things that have lasted for centuries – buildings, statues, artwork, and also conventions, such as B.C. / A.D.. These things connect you to the past – a past, and a society, in which all of your ancestors lived. By writing B.C. / A.D., you are participating in a system that thousands upon thousands of people have used before you. By using it, you are joining them in upholding an ancient tradition. You are passing on what was passed down to you.

And in the end, the literal meaning doesn’t really matter to me. Simply writing B.C. / A.D. – or even the full wording – has no chance of changing my mind about the existence of a supernatural being. Atheism (for me, at least) is not so flimsy.

(As an aside, I did previously wonder whether there was a technical reason to switch to B.C.E. / C.E. – that being the ‘blip’ caused by the switch between Old Style and New Style dates resulting from the change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar. The B.C. / A.D. system, being defined from a time 2024 years ago, could be used to refer to either an Old Style or a New Style date. The B.C.E. / C.E. system – I thought – was defined from now backwards, and thus could only ever refer to a New Style date. This would have made the Common Era system more mathematically rigorous. However, I later found that this wasn’t true – B.C.E. / C.E. is just a wholesale swap-out for B.C. / A.D., with no mathematical fix implied. What rubbish. If you’re going to make the change, at least fix the mathematics of it.)

B.C.E. / C.E. are cold – devoid of all meaning and richness. They are dreary – the kind of dreariness exhibited by brown glass windows, balding civil servants, and – worst of all places – business parks (a kind of dreariness that women in HR dream of inflicting upon their prisoner-employees).

So I’m going back to B.C. / A.D.. In fact I might quite often write out the full thing: before Christ and anno Domini. In fact in fact, I might go as far as to write out their full Latin and longer variants: ante Christum natum and anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi. After all, I do enjoy writing conventions that seem unusually lengthy and detailed.

Obsessed with dying on hills? You’re an orothanatomaniac.

I have noticed in the last two or three years that there are increasingly people who seem desperate to die on whatever (political, social, or moral) hill they see. Whatever issue or cause comes along, they immediately make it their entire personality – everything about them is devoted to it. They will spend hours and hours of their life fighting imagined mortal enemies online over their new cause. And then a few days or weeks later, another issue or cause – or even just vague concept – will come along, and that is now their new personality – the one thing in all of time that they must dedicate their life to.

It’s a phenomenon I see more on the political left than the political right.

I found I needed a word for such people: perhaps orothanatomaniac. Oro- is an English prefix of Greek origin meaning ‘mountain’ or ‘hill’. Orography or orology is the study of mountains and their formation. Orogenesis is the process of mountain formation. An oronym is the name of a mountain.

Thanato- is an English prefix of Greek origin meaning ‘death’. Thanatology is the study of death. And -mania is an English prefix of Greek origin meaning ‘madness’ or ‘obsession’. So orothanatomania is the obsession with dying on hills – in this case metaphorical ones. An orothanatomaniac is someone who exhibits this obsession.

Words of Pain – Words that end with the Greek element ‘-algia’

The word ‘nostalgia’ refers to a sense of longing for a time in the past – perhaps a time in one’s own life or a time long before one’s life.

This word used to have a different meaning: a sense of longing to return home. This makes more sense given its etymology – it’s from Greek nostos, meaning ‘returning home’, and Greek algos, meaning ‘pain’.

The word is part of an entire etymological family of words that end with ‘-algia’. There are actually quite a lot of them. Most of them are nothing as abstract and philosophical as ‘nostalgia’ – most of them just refer, very literally, to pain in a certain part of the body. The table below lists a few (though far from all, as there are A LOT).

NounMeaning
myalgiamuscle pain
abdominalgiaabdominal pain (obviously)
brachialgiaarm pain
cephalalgiahead pain – a headache
dentalgiatooth pain – toothache
glossalgiatongue pain
ophthalmalgiaeye pain
polyalgiamany pains

There are a few particularly interesting ones. ‘Analgia’ – a state of painlessness. ‘Hypalgia’ – a reduced sensitivity to pain. ‘Hyperalgia’ – an increased sensitivity to pain. ‘Hypnalgia’ – pain during sleep. ‘Pygalgia’ – a pain in the arse.

There is another abstract one – ‘solastalgia’ – referring to a type of homesickness not when one has moved, but when one’s environment has changed. A very useful word.

Words of Healing – Words that end with the Greek element ‘-iatry’

What’s the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist? I remember wondering this years ago, and learning that a psychiatrist is the actual medical practitioner, while a psychologist is an academic who studies the human psyche.

I had this distinction memorised for many years without knowing the etymologies of the words. (Well, without knowing the etymology of ‘psychiatrist’ – ‘psychology’ is a fairly easy etymology to work out.) But recently I wondered where this ‘-iatrist’ ending comes from.

‘Psychiatrist’ is obviously just the agent noun from ‘psychiatry’, which is in turn from Greek psykhe, meaning ‘mind’, and Greek iatreia, meaning ‘healing’. So it’s a perfectly-formed word – no etymological quirks.

There are a few other Modern English words that use this ‘-iatry’ ending – or its derivatives and variants ‘-iatric’ and ‘-iatrist’. I’ve listed some of these in the table below. Curiously, in each case, only one form – the adjective, the noun, or the agent noun – is commonly used in Modern English, with the others not, and sounding a bit out-of-place. I’ve put the common-ish words in bold.

AdjectiveMeaningNounAgent Noun
bariatric‘of or pertaining to obesity’, ‘of or pertaining to the healing of obesity’bariatrybariatrist
geriatric‘of or pertaining to old age’, ‘of or pertaining to the care of the elderly’geriatrygeriatrist
paediatric‘of or pertaining to the care of children’paediatrypaediatrist*
podiatric‘of or pertaining to the healing of the feet’podiatrypodiatrist

(*Of course we usually use the word ‘paediatrician’ here, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be ‘paediatrist’.)

Not a very large selection of words. It’s curious that such a useful word-forming element is not used that much.

As I have done with the other posts in this series, however, we can get creative and imagine some new words that use this ending.

NounMeaningAdjectiveAgent Noun
ailuriatry‘the healing of cats’ailuriatricailuriatrist
cyniatry‘the healing of dogs’cyniatriccyniatrist
chiriatry‘the healing of the hands’chiriatricchiriatrist

And more. Such words could be quite useful in fantasy fiction, where there might be various different kinds of healer.