Notes from Maine - 2024/01/28

I spent some time this week puzzling over language. Puzzling is a strong word, maybe ruminating is more apropos. I’ve always thought of ruminating as meaning “thinking deeply about something.” Like, turning it over in my mind. I just looked it up though, and the America Psychiatric Association has tagged the word with, “repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences.”

That’s definitely not what I was doing. There was no negative thinking or dwelling this week. 

I’m way off course with this essay so far, but let me just say one more thing on the topic of rumination—it also mean (maybe originally referred to) the act of a ruminant (like a cow or a goat) regurgitating cud and then chewing it further before re-swallowing. Even typing that sentence turned my stomach. I have an aunt who has stopped me in the act of using the word “rumination” and reminded me that it can conjure pretty gross mental imagery.

I’m not a fan of the artistic rendering of the act of vomiting. I watch a lot of horror, sci-fi, and thrillers and it seems like every director is just dying to show you how frightened/disgusted/sick/exhausted/repelled a character is by having them vomit. If you’re ever about to direct a movie or TV show and the script calls for a vomit scene, I urge you to quit the production. You might think you’re portraying the reality of the scene, or being super edgy, but what you will end up doing is repelling the audience. If I really had sympathy for your character, watching them vomit would make me want to vomit as well. “Sympathy vomiting” is triggered when you empathize with a sick person and take on the symptoms yourself. I think it’s a deep tribal instinct. If we were close, we probably ate the same things. If something made you sick, it’s in my best interest to purge it as well in case I’m going to sick soon too. 

Wow—I’m really off course now.

What I intended to write about was language.

This week I was thinking about the word “right.” I can take a right at the next intersection, but it’s also my right to take a left if I change my mind. In that sentence, the two ”rights” are both homonyms, homophones (same sound but different origins, meanings, or spellings), and homographs (spelled the same, not necessarily pronounced the same, but different meanings and origins). There are only so many words—it’s not that interesting that we’ve doubled up on one of them for two completely unrelated meanings.

The fascinating thing about that word (to me) is that in Spanish both of those can be represented by the word derecho. The word derecho can be used to mean the opposite of left and also in the capacity of “derechos humanos,” or “human rights.” Maybe the alternate meaning was borrowed by someone who was bilingual and figured they might as well be dual-use in both languages? 

“To have” in English in a lot of cases is translated to “tener” in Spanish, and both verbs have some overlapping extended uses. In both languages, I can say “I have a pencil” (meaning an object in my possession) and “I have an appointment at noon” (meaning an obligation). These seem like an odd coupling of meanings for the same verb, but both meanings are used in both languages. 

“Have” has become a second-class verb in English (at least American English). We’ve all but replaced it with “got.”

People always say stuff like, “I’ve got a rash on my stomach in the shape of the Aleutian Islands.” Instead of the tighter, cleaner, “I have a rash on my stomach—oh no, it’s spreading! It crossed the International Date Line!”

We changed have into ‘ve got. I think it’s because it’s punchier to say got instead of have and easier to hear in a crowded doctor’s office as everyone looks at your rash. Language shifts—no big deal—but it’s a strange construction. “To get” implies that it’s something you went out and did purposefully, but we use ‘ve got for things that we never really got. “I’ve got a birthmark,” is not really accurate. I didn’t get it. It’s something I’ve always had. It’s more accurate to say, “I have a birthmark,” but honestly the doctors aren’t going to pay any attention because they’re still vomiting over the rash.

I’ve gotten way off course again.

I like neglected words that have subtle variations in meaning. I was watching news and the weather reporter was talking about freezing rain. Instead of “accumulation” they said, “accretion.” They’re pretty much synonymous. Oxford says that accretion is, “the process of growth or increase, typically by the gradual accumulation of additional layers or matter.” But as long as we have two words like that, I like the idea of using “accumulation” for snow and “accretion” for ice. I didn’t make this up—meteorologists use this distinction—but I was delighted when I stumbled on it.

Here’s one I would like to invent: ravel.

Turning back to Oxford, we learn that ravel means to, “untangle or unravel something.” I guess it’s one of those deals (like flammable/inflammable) where the real word (ravel) eventually got a negative prefix stuck on it because it sounded better.

So now we’re stuck with two words that both mean to pull a sweater apart and they are spelled like they’re antonyms. So I’d like to tease apart these two words and apply subtly different meanings to them. We can still use “unravel” to take something from order to chaos—like a sweater. You had it nicely knitted, but we’re going to sit down and unravel it. Then, let’s take “ravel” and use it to mean we’re taking something from chaos to order, as in untangle. I’ve got a tangled ball of fishing line and I’m going to spend my convalescence raveling it. 

One more linguistic idea—a half-borrowed portmanteau. 

Schadenfreude is “pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune” and we borrowed it from German. In the past twenty-five years, we’ve pretty much perfected this practice—now we call it “Reality TV” am I right? LOL. I’ve just learned that, “Schadenfreude has been detected in children as young as 24 months and may be an important social emotion establishing ‘inequity aversion’.”

We all do it. We love to see the mighty fall, I guess. Do you ever do it with someone close to you though? Do you have an annoying person in your life who is just a little too confident and a part of you has to smile when they eventually trip up? 

I give to you: Schadenfriendship.