Vocabulary (October 19th)

The Medieval Latin word for a bell was “clocca.” So when a device was invented that rang a bell every hour, English speakers called it a “clock.” And when they noticed that a loose outer garment resembled a bell in shape, they called it a “cloak.”

A nagging ethical consideration can seem like a pebble stuck in your shoe: You can’t ignore it, and it won’t go away. So English adopted the Latin word for a small stone, “scrupus,” as “scruple,” meaning “a moral concern, a qualm.” And a person with rigidly heeded ethical principles was said to be “scrupulous.”

Our word “noon” comes from the Latin “nona” (nine). “Nona” referred to the 9th hour after sunrise (3 p.m.), not to 12 p.m., as it does today. The Romans considered the entire period before “nona” (3 p.m.) to be morning (“matinus” in Latin). That’s why the English word “matinee” refers to a performance before 3 p.m.

The ancient Romans compared the sharp pain of remembering and regretting past mistakes to a physical bite. So their word “remordere,” from “mordere” (to bite), meant “to bite again” and, metaphorically, “to feel the sharp pang of guilt or distress over past wrongs.” English adopted this Latin root as “remorse.”
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The Romans threshed grain with a “tribulum,” a heavy board that was studded with sharp pieces of flint or iron and dragged over the grain to separate the seed from the chaff. An early Christian writer saw a similarity between the tribulum and the abrasive afflictions of life, so he called such a hardship a “tribulatio,” which became “tribulation” in English.

During the 1600s, a Latin scholar thought it would be a riot to refer to an unruly crowd as a “mobile vulgus,” a Latin term meaning “fickle rabble.” “Mobile vulgus” was soon abbreviated to “mobile” (then pronounced “mah-billy”) and eventually to “mob.” So today’s “flash mob,” convened largely with the use of cell phones and other mobile devices, is a mobile vulgus in more ways than one.


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