This post is the second in what I have hoped to be a weekly celebration of words (but has soon devolved into a desultory deliberation on diction). As always—super good.
The words below also come from a Paul Farmer book; today, it’s The Uses of Haiti. See a few quotes in the previous post.
(Note: definitions are paraphrased from the indispensable American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. [A vade mecum, perhaps?])
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charnel house
“In times of strife, when hospitals become charnel houses, the university has seemed bucolic; tygers are rare in the groves of acadame.”
charnel house: a place where bones or bodies of the dead are deposited
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withering
“Thompson concludes his withering attack on the French philosopher Louis Althusser and other scholar-demagogues by accusing them of taking young men and women of good will on a ride: ‘The terminus of that ride is outside the city of human endeavor and outside the domain of knowledge. So we can expect them to be absent from both.’”
withering: overwhelming, devastating
(My note: apparently, wuthering, as in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, is a location not a word. Moving on.)
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invective
“Review of the historical record is nothing more than ’sound-bites and invectives about Washington’s historically evil foreign policy.’”
invective: characterized by abusive language
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plebiscite
“Wilson’s Marines organized a plebiscite in which the Constitution was ratified by a 99.9% vote, with 5% of the population participating, using ‘rather high handed methods to get the Constitution adopted by the people of Haiti,’ the State Department conceded a decade later.”
plebiscite: a direct vote in which the entire electorate is invited to accept or refuse a proposal
(My note: the word plebe, which refers to a first-year student (or a cadet) at the U.S. Military Academy or the U.S. Naval Academy, immediately comes to mind. Plebe is probably short for plebeian, referring to the common people of Rome.)
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Pyrrhic
“But, as we shall see in the following chapters, this victory has been a Pyrrhic one.”
Pyrrhic: a victory that is so costly it may not have been worth the effort
(From Wikipedia: “The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties when he defeated the Romans during the Pyrrhic War at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC.”)
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indemnity
“As late as 1824, the French monarch Charles X pressed Haiti’s President, Jean-Pierre Boyer for 150 million francs and the halving of customs charges for the French trade—all as indemnity for the losses of the plantation owners [in Haiti's revolutionary war].”
indemnity: compensation, reparation
(By the way, I’m reminded of the words immunity and impunity, lexical choices which always have seemed to confuse me. Let’s go to the dictionary. Immunity is a legal term that means “exemption from legal prosecution.” Impunity means “exemption from punishment, penalty, or harm.” I guess the words are closely related, but immunity has move of a judicial connotation to it. [Now, I'm just as confused as ever.])
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interregnum
“Again, a troubled interregnum followed; again, the British, French, Spanish and North Americans vied for influence and control”
interregnum: the interval of time between the end of a sovereign’s reign and the accession of a successor.
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au courant
“Such ‘reclamations’ were au courant in the German, French, British, and United States communities.”
au courant: informed on political affairs
(My note: apologies for the French. I won’t let it happen again. Also, foreign-language words, such as au courant, are generally italicized when used in English.)
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intransigent
“The widespread hope that Haiti could change radically had been dealt a telling blow by the intransigent CNG.”
intransigent: uncompromising
(Transigent, apparently, isn’t a word—although it should be. Intransient isn’t a word either, but transient means “passing with time.” I think.)
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genteel
“The bishops were unable to call for their genteel removal by the police . . .”
genteel: polite, characteristic of the gentry (upper class)
(My note: Unsurprisingly, the word has the same etymology as gentleman.)
Did you know that’s where we get the word equestrian from, too? The Romans called all the regular (aka poor people) plebians and the rich (aka public and military figures) patricians. Then they had another class called equestrian and those were the people who weren’t necessarily rich but they had horses so they kinda were. Hooray Humanities!
You, dear girl, are outta’ control.