The Surprising Etymology of "Diagnosis"

I have a pretty astute readership, so I’m sure many of you are already aware of the unusual history and etymology of the word, “diagnosis.” It sounds Latin on the front end, but a little Greek in the caboose. So which is it? A more specific description would be that it is borrowed second-hand from the Anglo-Saxon.

“Docga næsgristle” is a two-word phrase that by Middle English had been collapsed to the single word, “Dognoste.” The word “docga” is a weak masculine noun that around 500 A.D. in what is now England and Southern Scotland would have referred to a dog. “Naegristle” identified the cartilage at the end of a dog’s nose.

Ever since the domestication of canines, the state of a dog’s nose has been man’s best indicator of its health. If the “dog’s nose is” warm and dry, the dog is probably sick. If the “dog’s nose is” cold and wet, the dog is probably healthy. The phrase “dog’s nose is” grew out of the word “dognoste,” and through voluminous repeating eventually whittled itself down to “diagnosis,” which as Middle English and the development of modern English prosody began to coalesce around 1200 A.D., came to mean the identification of an illness.

So the word “diagnosis” is neither Greek nor Latin per se. It is a conflation of the words “dog’s nose is,” originally derived from the Anglo Saxon as a metaphor for human health via the muzzle of man’s best friend. This is one of the many reasons why I am so in love with words. (Please note, this was originally posted on April 1, 2016).

I Do Not Like Orgasm as a Verb

For me, the word “orgasm” has always felt best as a noun. As potentially earth-shaking a noun as it is though, there are challenges in expressing it with appropriate connotation. “Having” an orgasm is a little grabby, “experiencing” an orgasm too distant, and “achieving” an orgasm seems well, self-congratulatory. Other usages can invoke anything from the pornographic through the cloying to the gynecological. As plentiful as these ejaculations are, none of them seem to be wholly satisfying.

In my opinion, we must nonetheless continue to strive, always in search of the right tone, the right bed of verbs and adjectives upon which to present our orgasms so they are received with the romance, lust, piety or combination of the three we intend. And we must do this is as a means of fighting the recent rise of the word “orgasm” as a verb: I orgasmed here, I orgasmed there ... it’s just terrible. It is present in all dictionaries as a verb, and I don’t like it. Never have. There are a few bright spots in the use of “orgasm” as a verb, notably the future perfect, which states that one will have orgasmed. And who could think of a more perfect future than that? Moreover though, there is a great inelegance to my ear in the verb usage of “orgasm.” 

It takes a word that describes the quintessential expression of humanity, and that even in its comparatively benign noun form does so already hobbled by a certain clinical sheen that at the outset handicaps its possibilities for romantic expression. The last thing it needs is to be set into motion, indiscriminate seeds cast helter-skelter with no vision of a higher mind, a view only to procreation rather than civilization; indeed, in verb form, "orgasming" seems naked of any beauty its noun usage might have had.

If we could drive orgasm’s verb form out of common usage if not out of our dictionaries, that would give me indescribable pleasure. 

There is No Such Thing as a Woman Lawyer

I have recently been hearing professional broadcasters on radio and television using phrases like, “woman lawyer” and “woman athlete.” It must stop. The word “woman” is a noun and it may not be used to modify another noun. The common adjective you would use here is of course “female.”

De-emphasizing gender in society is a coming and welcome trend, and referencing gender in any kind of qualifying context is very last year. You see it in retail, you see it in product design and in a lot of marketing, and I enthusiastically recommend adapting to rather than fighting this trend. 

My interdictions against the creep of poor usage are a fool's errand, but I believe them to be worth a try. Moderate preservationists like me get twenty fingers or toes in the dike at a time, and still plenty slips through, much of which I consider fine. But some of these leaks I don’t much care for at all. And this is one. Woman lawyer. It's not okay.

So really, we’ve covered two items here, and in the interest of full disclosure, its source was first the grammar part, and then my fiancé clued me in on the sexist component of the usage in general. Slicing through flesh and bone and directly into my nervous system, the adjectival use of “woman” ran me up a wall with a teeth-chattering, mind-numbing electric shock. And later on, the sexist nature of gratuitously applying an irrelevant qualifier was impressed upon me by my fiancé. 

For instance, stop saying "female attorney." She's your attorney.

No, Islam Doesn't Hate the West

The Grammar Dance could make a daily go of diagramming Donald Trump’s fractured syntax, but it would make me literally ill to spend that much time with the Tyrannosaurus Rump. This past week he aimed his bile again at Islam, but in such a way that compels me to straighten out a rudimentary usage gaffe that he has since repeated numerous times.

“Islam hates the West,” he says. That’s like saying Christianity loves Lima beans or Judaism is curious about the company you keep. Islam is a religion, not an individual or group of individuals. It is a set of beliefs rather than a description of the individuals who subscribe to those beliefs.

He might permissibly have said, “Muslims hate the West” or “Islam preaches hatred toward the West,” but he may not say, “Islam hates the West.” This usage is an anthropomorphization of a religion, an ascription of human attributes to a non-human entity. He sounds stupid when he says it. He is stupid when he says it.

The Etymology of "Batshit Crazy"

I rather like the term “batshit crazy.” It has a fantastic ring to it and telegraphs very well the notion that the individual, group or entity being described is indeed not your common or garden crazy, but rather a level beyond madness’ ordinary limits.

Alas, its etymology does not point where I had hoped it would point. I was praying that a particular form of insanity descended upon spelunkers due to repeated inhalation of bat guano, but there appear only to be anecdotal citations in that direction, perhaps others who likewise wished it were so. It seemed the Occum’s razor for me, as in my native New England, the phrase, “crazier than a shit house rat” enjoys some popularity and indeed owes its etymology to the syndrome of rats who haunt poorly maintained outhouses being afflicted with violent and unpredictable personalities.

The term “batshit” began to appear as an equivalent to “bullshit” in military jargon of the 1950s, even showing up in that context in some printed material. Its attachment to “crazy” was not seen at that time, but it bears mentioning, as that coining of "batshit" as a single word appears to be its first, and documentation on it is solid.

An old expression for madness was “bats in the belfry,” the belfry of a church representing the head of a person, with the idea being that one’s mind was full of blind, winged night rodents, a metaphor of madness that carries with it the charm of grotesquerie, like a story by Poe or a drawing by Edward Gorey. The best guess then at the evolution of “batshit crazy” seems to be a gradual profaning of "bats in the belfry" via the incorporation of the previously familiar term “batshit” from its 1950s military usage.  And in this way, the expression as we know it stumbled to its feet.

There is a character in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove named Colonel “Bat” Guano (1964), an obvious reference to “batshit,” and Hunter S. Thompson used the phrase “batshit insane” in the Fear and Loathing books in the early 1970s. Between those two high-profile cultural usages, “batshit,” “batshit crazy,” and “batshit insane” came into common parlance, and have had waxing and waning popularity since, but thanks in no small part to the 2016 presidential race, all three are back and ready for action.

You Say ISIS, I Say ISIL, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

A rose by any other name is still a rose, but is the same true of the terror world’s latest scourge, ISIS? Or ISIL? Or ISI? Or IS? Or DAESH? What’s in a name?

The winning appellation thus far has been ISIS, an acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (which is popularly understood by Americans to be Syria). Its predecessor, which called itself ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) grew from an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Mujahedeen in Iraq, and a fun bunch of guys called Soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions.

By 2010, Jabhat Al-Nusra, a large Syrian opposition militia group, collapsed into ISI and the “S” was added for al-Sham. For Westerners, the last “S” in ISIS stands for Syria just fine with our usage and understanding. The more austere and stately IS stands for Islamic State, and while it sounds like the place where the B-student terrorists go to college, it is as acceptable in usage as ISIS, but for eyeball-grabbin’ newsertainment, ISIS has been the popular expression.

So why does President Obama insist on using ISIL in his addresses? ISIL is an acronym for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The Levant refers to all of the countries that border the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, which would additionally include Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Jordan, and in the administration’s view, more accurately reflects the ambitions of Al-Baghdadi’s militia, as well as the nations that are most immediately vulnerable to its threat. Some component of the pundit class sees the president’s use of ISIL as unnecessarily obtuse.

Your final option is DAESH, which I understand is a real stinker as far as DAESH members are concerned. Secretary of State John Kerry prefers calling it DAESH, as it carries with it a very nasty dig. It too is an acronym, but for an Arabic phrase that is pronounced “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa ash-Sham.” The actual meaning of the words are, “The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham,” which is fine on paper, but when spoken, apparently DAESH sounds like the words that mean “the sowers of discord (Dahes),” or "one who crushes underfoot (Daes).”

A sower of discord can include a thief, an adulterer, or worst of all, an apostate, and apparently it drives these indiscriminate murderers wild with hatred and rage, but hey, what doesn’t? A DAESH spokesperson communicated through the AP in 2014 that they would, "cut the tongue of anyone who publicly used the acronym DAESH.”

So take your pick. Go full John Kerry-style and give a Wahaabist mullah the finger by using DAESH, or  follow the president’s lead and use the conspicuously contrarian ISIL. Perhaps you’d prefer to keep it short and sweet with IS, or stick with the popularly preferred ISIS. A rose by any other name is still a rose, and it is likewise so with deluded zealot assassins, so in my opinion, it matters not a fig.

As long as we are naming things properly, this is the real Isis.

Words That Ought to be Obsolete, But Aren't

Digital technology has made a lot of words obsolete, but perhaps even more interesting than those cluttering the digital dustbin are the words that despite their illogic persist in current parlance. Two that come to mind are taping and filming.

Not much is taped or filmed these days. Even major Hollywood studios have switched largely to digital formats, though a good bit of 35mm filming continues. Film provides a warmth and color range that many directors believe digital cannot quite deliver. Nonetheless, expense and convenience rule the day and film is in the preponderate minority.

Likewise in audio recording there exists a school of thought that 2” magnetic tape, notably for drums, delivers a natural compression that can only be captured on analog media. Even so, most recordings released these days are recorded in digital formats.

With common popular recording, on cell phones or using contemporary recording devices, almost no one is filming to videotape or recording to audiotape. Yet, the process of digital audio and video capture is quite commonly referred to as taping or filming. Other such misnomers include dialing a phone number and doing paperwork in your office that never ends up on paper. Can you think of any others?