6 posts tagged “word”
During the course of my reading in Calculus I came across this interesting little anectdote. After a cursory search I'm happy to relate it here because I've always enjoyed the sense that words make.
"Minute" is shortened from the Latin phrase pars minuta prima which translates first small part [of an hour]. It's the first sexagesimal division of an hour, which was the common base unit in ancient times. "Second" is from pars minuta secunda [second small part]. It's no coincidence then that the term for our small moment of time, the second, is similar to the number two, it's the second order of smallness in dividing an hour.
It is rare that I discover a word that I've never seen before, but when it does happen I like to learn all I can about it; what it means, how you pronounce it, what words are like it, where it came from, and how it came to be known. So first, kudos belong to Galileo Blogs for stumping the woman occasionally reffered to as the "walking dictionary".
Adjectivally, the sense that it was used in Galileo Blogs, "picayune" describes something as small, insignificant, or not worthy of note. A synonym would be "lilliputian". As a noun it specifically refers to a Spanish coin of little value, the Half Real, or more generally it can mean any coin of piddling value. So, to clarify, "picayune" is an English word for a Spanish coin that is worth half a real. A real was a Spanish unit of currency before they switched to euros. It was used and traded in the Spanish colonies of America, predominantly the Louisiana to Florida region.
There seems to be some variation on its pronunciation. My old American College Dictionary [Random House] circa 1940s claims that it is pronounced pik-i-un [i = "ih" as in big or it and u = "yoo" as in use or cute]. Whereas, the modern online dictionaries seem to come to the consensus that the middle syllable is pronounced with a schwa [an upside down e pronounced "uh"], or possibly an "ee" sound. Though, whether it's pronounced "pik-i-yoon", "pik-uh-yoon", or "pik-ee-yoon" they all agree that the final syllable is stressed. I'm going with the schwa because it sounds more natural when I say it and more closely resembles how I originally sounded out the word.
Finally, picayune is derived from the Louisianna French word picaillon [small coin; NB: newer sources recognize this, while the older ignores] which is a modification of the word picaioun ["old copper coin of Piedmont"] taken from Provencal. My old dictionary claims that it is then ultimately derived from the Latin pecunia [money]. However, after picaioun of Provencal there are numerous different theories, so I'll call it undetermined.
Ok, so I know I've been posting on an unprecedented scale and this is not something I could ever maintain. But I just had to write down this sudden personal revelation because I've been pondering the meaning of perfect and what is perfection for a while and this is a very big clue for understanding. Disclaimer: I'm an amateur Latin student, not an etymologist. This is not an 'official' or historically accurate etymology, it is a connection I found between perfect and a Latin equivalent. Take it as a folk etymology, and I'll research it's validity later [I have a Latin test I'm supposed to be studying for!].
Let's start with the base [wink wink, nudge nudge]. Facio/facere is the Latin verb for "to make or "to do". You add per- [through] to get perfacio/perfacere, which means "to make/do through", or more commonly in English "to accomplish". The perfect passive participle of this verb is perfectus/perfecta/perfectum which means "having been accomplished" [in the various genders]. For example: "en, perfecta tibi bello discordia tristi;" [in no particular word order, if you know Latin] means "Behold, sad discord/dissension/strife having been accomplished/perfected in war for you".
So "perfect" in English comes from something having been accomplished [or perfected]. What that something is, I'm not entirely sure yet but I have an idea.
Update [4.28.06 11:12 pm]:
I've discovered the Latin etymology book I bought sucks. It doesn't
explain any of the meanings, it just lists English words that come from
a certain very common Latin root. So I went to Online Etymology Dictionary and it has to say [brackets are added by me for clarity and bold for emphasis]:
So, I was correct in essence, but I still need to think about how this applies to the concept of perfection. Here's something interesting:... from L. [Latin] perfectus "completed," pp. [participle] of perficere "accomplish, finish, complete," from per- "completely" + facere "to perform" (see factitious). Often used in Eng. as an intensive (perfect stranger, etc.). The verb meaning "to bring to full development" is recorded from 1398 ...
The concept of a perfectionist originally developed in the mid 17th century. I'm thinking "may be attained in earthly existence" refers back to the idea that perfection is something accomplished (facio --> I do) as opposed to perfection being Platonic in the sense that it is an ideal that can never be realized.... Perfectionist is 1657, originally theological, "one who believes moral perfection may be attained in earthly existence;" sense of "one only satisfied with the highest standards" is from 1934.
So, now comes the hard part.
First, let me restate (in order to make very clear) that every individual thing has many characteristics. The task of identifying a differentiae consists of identifying the causal (defining) characteristic (or combination of characteristics, as the case may be), i.e. that (those) which make the individual a part of this concept and not that.
The class and the professor named a few characteristics which seem to follow poetry; emotion, structure (form), metaphors or any image (a metaphor being an image which means something other than it's literal definition), to name a few. While considering which one defines poetry I asked myself: which one is in all poetry, which one can poetry not do without. Of course, I came to the conclusion of emotion. But later it occurred to me that all art is created from emotion. It must be, because an emotion is experienced in response to a value and art is idealized values. So an artist would have an emotional response to his art because it is his values which are being idealized. So, not emotion, that is already implicit in that poetry is an art.
The professor gave some examples of experimental forms of 'poetry' in class which were confusing in that they had some of the characteristics of poetry, yet still did not seem like poetry. The first was a paragraph of prose that was very beautiful, elaborate, and eloquent in it's use of metaphor. The second, a sentence vividly describing an image. While they were emotional and descriptive, they were not poetry in a strict sense, though unnervingly alike to poetry. They were examples of art with characteristics of poetry, undefining characteristics. An example of an undefining characteristic is a human hand. Humans generally have two hands; hands (with 8 fingers and 2 opposable thumbs) are considered to be human. But losing a hand or not being born with any does not preclude one from being human. Conversely, by randomly attaching a human hand to a dog a la Frankenstein or through genetic modification does not create a human, only a weird dog. Similarly, poetry has characteristics which, though common, are not causal in defining poetry. Such things that have some of the undefining characteristics of poetry are called poetic. The examples of experimental 'poetry' were poetic, but not actually poetry in nature. The one thing that neither contained was a structure of poetry, they were both written in the form of prose rather than poetry.
The definition of poetry is art with a repetitive structure. A repeating structure is the one thing poetry can claim that no other language art can. Not, I should point out, simply repetition; anything redundant can accomplish that. No, poetry must be repetitious in it's form, in how it is produced rather than the content that is produced.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Amanda Carlson said...
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Thank you, Lisa!
I'll copy it down with my notes from Tuesday, then read through it all.
See you tomarrow.
- Agmini said...
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Hey, sorry I didn't make it to the meeting tonight. This is the entry that my Disney survey is in, if you want to take it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ladyisla/20401.html
- Amanda Carlson said...
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Thanks, I'll check out your journal tonight when I'm working at the library.
Don't worry about the meeting. Nick was taking a test so Coire did the presentation/moderated discussion. He's a philosophy major, he has a tendancy to unintentionally go over people's heads. And it didn't help that the topic, ethics, is quite large.
- John Stark said...
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Jason Rheines had a good course on Poetry this summer. The Ayn Rand Bookstore just put it up for sale: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/store/prodinfo.asp?number=MR01M
I found it very informative, especially his definition of poetry and his thoughts on simile and metaphor.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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That sounds wonderful; thank you, John! I wanted to reason it out myself first. But I'm not entirely satisfied with my final definition, and I'd like to know wht the professional philosophers think. Though, for $70, it'll have to wait.
I began with calling poetry an art, in that poetry is an idealized creation of man. The definition of art is: a selective recreation of reality. A recreation of reality because art is not reality itself, yet reality is it's only subject. Selective because the artist does not portray reality exactly, he chooses which aspects to portray depending upon his values and idealizes those values. Please, don't ask me to define value, I thought about it and I can't do that yet. I have a working definition which I use to judge a value, for now, but I don't understand it well enough to defend the definition. Art is judged good to the extent of the artist's ability to idealize the value(s), and it is appreciated by an individual to the extent that that individual agrees with the value(s).
Then it occurred to me that I can narrow the genus further, poetry is expressed only in one particular medium. You can't paint or sculpt a poem: if you tried, what you'd end up with is a painting or a sculpture based upon a poem, but not a poem itself. At first I wanted to call this medium 'literature', and it's definition was: language arts. In other words, art which is expressed in language (written or oral). But after consulting a great friend, I think this is the wrong concept for this definition. Literature can include history/science/technical textbooks which aren't art, though it's written. But, whatever the label, the definition is correct; so poetry is a language art.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Agmini said...
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Hey, Amanda. This is Lisa (from class). I'd really love to discuss some of this stuff with you sometime outside of class. It appears we have some other common interests (some movies and stuff you have listed). Would you be interested in getting together to talk about stuff sometime?
- Agmini said...
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Oh, I have an account here but I don't use it much. You can email me, or go to my "blog" at LiveJournal, under the same name (ladyisla). I'm not going to post my AIM or anything else here, but if you want it, I can give it to you in class or something.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I'd love to! Do you have time after class on Tuesday? We could go to the Starbuck's in the Union, I'm addicted to good coffee and good conversation. Or we could hang out at one of the malls if it's a nice day.
See you in class. ^_^
- Agmini said...
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I have a 2-hour lab at 3:30 on Tuesday, so I don't think I could make it then. Today (Monday) I am free between 11:30 and 2:30, and from 3:30 until about 7. Could you make it anytime around there? I'm not sure what my Wednesday will look like yet.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I have free time from 11:30-3:30. It's pretty late right now, so I don't know if you'll read this in time. But I will have lunch at noon tomarrow downstairs in the Union between Pappy's and the Grant Street entrance.
- Agmini said...
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I will see you there!
I am taking a class in Greek Literature this semester and we had a very interesting discussion in class recently about poetry. We were asked to define it. The professor wanted us to talk about it, and then think about it over the next fifty-years or so. But ... Lets do this now.
So, what is a definition, what are we being asked to do with poetry? A definition is simply identification, it means stating explicitly that this is this as opposed to that. So in defining something we first need to narrow down what we're talking about, and then we need to state how it is different than everything else. That is why I think Aristotle is correct in saying that a definition is both a genus and a differentiae. For example, when you ask 'what is man, how do you define it?' you first narrow down what you're talking about from everything that exists to a specific category of things that exist of which man is a part (similar/related to, but not wholly compromising). This is the genus, and in this case the genus is 'animal'. Man is an animal, but not the animal. I don't see why you couldn't use a more or less specific genus, why this is the certain level of genus that one must use, but it would take a more thorough study of concepts than is necessary now to answer that.
Anyway, now the important part is stating what it is that makes this animal, man, different than any other animal. This is called the differentiae, and I think it is the most important, most difficult part of a definition because you must identify the causal trait, or as I call it 'defining characteristic', that makes it this and not that. For every individual object there are many numerous ways to describe it, characteristics, but it is the job of the definer to identify which one causes it to be a part of this concept and not another. For the concept 'man' the defining characteristic is reason, ergo --> man is the reasoning animal, it is an animal which reasons as opposed to any other animal.
So far this is my understanding of definitions and I do not think it is yet complete.
From CLCS 330 on Thursday:
Enemies of the ancient book (on papyrus):
time, fire, water, weather, vermin
Repository libraries: Alexandria (later), Pergamum, at temples, Bodleian (modern)
What is literacy (the bar could be set anywhere, really) vs functional literacy (enough to get through a normal day)
[This is probably the most important stuff, or at least the stuff he's most likely to quiz us on.]
Ancient VERSE: Semiotically MARKED language
--meter
--diction [special vocabulary, sometimes archaic]
--[sometimes] music [e.g. epos; tragic songs; melos] and dance
KV: Semiotics: the study of semiosis, Semiosis: the phenomenon and function of signs and signifying (or "signs at work") C.S.Peirce: "A sign is something that stands for something else to someone in some respect or capacity."
RR
W.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy
Thomas Gray, 'elegy in a County Churchyard' (modern "elegy")
[Though I guess this could be quizzed also...I don't know...]
Genres of VERSE:
the choral lyric:
Stanzaic form--the 'stanza' or strophe
--can be MONOSTROPHIC or TRIADIC [i.e. strophe, antistrophe, epode]
--RESPONSION for TRIADS--same scan for each type (all strophes have same scan, etc.)
Roman elegists: Catullus, Ovid...
Elegy: [written in COUPLETS--i.e. 'elegiac couplets'] not same as modern definition of elegy
--used for political verse, amatory verse, didactic verse, sometimes for ribald
--for the 'normal' scan of the 1st and 2nd lines of the couplet, you'll have to look at the notes...
iambos: [especially used for erotic/ribald verse, lampooning others]fd
Monday, October 03, 2005 9:06:00 PM