Short Wednesday Leftovers

There was something which I wanted to write about yesterday, but I was rather busy with one thing and another. (Some of us call it "work"...) Actually I did not write it yesterday because I left the book I needed sitting somewhere and forgot where it was... then found it too late at night and had other things to write (maybe some year they will be here!)

You see, I got this very interesting book last week when I was at the Loome used-book stores. (Well, it wasn't by Chesterton, but then you should remember what it say at the top of this page: anything "from pork to pyrotechnics"...)

The book is a curious monograph called Modern English Word-Formation and Neo-Latin by Anna Granville Hatcher. The book studies the origins of "copulative compounds" - that is, words like "Word-Formation" and "Neo-Latin"... (hee hee)

I flipped through it and two GIGANTIC long words caught my eye. They were even in Greek! It suggested a nice fun thing for a Short Tuesday paradox...

So, from now on, you can look forward to LWoSW: which is "Long Words on Short Wednesdays" - and even though it is late, here is the first installment...

Long Words on Short Wednesdays 2005/06/22 (late!)

If someone asks about long words, many people suggest the famous 28-character "antidisestablishmentarianism".

Or they refer to the perhaps even more famous 34 character Poppins word (which I do not recall as having been in the book): "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Chesterton has one which exceeds this by four letters: the title of a poem in his The Coloured Lands... "Plakkopytrixophylisperambulantiobatrix" which I am told, can be sung to the same "Poppins" song. (No, I will NOT provide a .wav file for you!) It would be phrased thus:

Plakk-o pyt-trix o-phil-lisp-er am-bu lan-tio ba-trix

Ahem. To resume, about this book and its long words. In some other book (which I also cannot find at present) there are some nice long Greek words, which somehow make it even funnier, because they can actually be translated - and I always DID wonder what the Poppins word meant! (The poem tells about the GKC word, which I omit for reasons of brevity...) I think the other book was by D. L. Sayers, who was a WONDERFUL writer... (ah, I am sorry, I am wandering off topic again...)

Anyhow, there are a BUNCH of nice long Greek words, which I cannot render in Greek characters just now (I have to learn the incantation to do it, and Hogwarts is on summer break at present!) So I will write it in English...

Batracho-muo-machia = "War between Mice and Frogs" (a poem, once thought to be the work of Homer!)

Then in a footnote were these (which was what caught my eye in the first place!)

hO spermagoraiolekitholachanopOlides!
hO skorodopandokeutriartopOlides

Note: the big O is long (omega); the others are short (omicron).

The first word (31 Greek letters) means "market-sellers of seeds, peasepudding and greengroceries".

The second word (29 Greek letters) means "Bread and garlic selling hostess"

They are apparently from Aristophanes, who wrote odd plays about Frogs and such. I remember there is another Greek word he used which is supposed to be the frogs croaking, and some school or other uses it for a cheer. What a cool thing that must be at a football game! I think it was spelled like this:

"Brek-kek-kek-kek-kex. Ko-ax, Ko-ax."

Wow. Try it yourself. Go ahead- say it out loud, in your office or in the library - go right ahead! (You have to do it with a Greek accent. Maybe buy some garlic...)

Yeah - it's just like frogs. (No more "ribbit" for us.)

OK, maybe this is a bit too long for a Short Wednesday. But - hey - it's Thursday...