Word Trivia

“Words are all we have.” – Samuel Beckett

Often when I run a across a new word, I am more interested in its origin than its meaning. Such was the case this week. The word I looked up was ‘eonism.’ It is a term used in psychiatry and means the adoption of feminine mannerisms, clothing, etc. by a male (according to my Random House Unabridged Dictionary).

Because of Chevalier Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Thimothée d'Eon (1728-1810), this word was coined. According to The Encyclopedia of Useless Information by William Hartston, d’Eon was a diplomat, spy, dragoon officer, swordsman, lady-in-waiting, chess player and part-time nun. No one was sure of his/her sex. In the 1760’s a whopping $230,000 was wagered on the matter. A judge declared d’Eon a woman and she was ordered to always dress as one. However, the doctor who certified his/her death announced d’Eon was definitely a male, causing the woman he’d been living with for twenty years to faint. The news is said to have also caused King George III’s madness. You can read more about Chevalier d’Eon at Wikipedia.

D’Eon may be responsible for this one word. Shakespeare, however, according to wikianswers, is responsible for creating 1,500 new words, including the upstairs, bedroom, belongings and bandit.

According to the an article in the Guardian, “The oldest words in the language, such as "I", "we" and the numbers one, two and three, have barely changed over the past 9,000 years, probably because they are so fundamental to everyday communication. The most resilient words were found to be those that are used most frequently, but are also likely to be nouns or numerals.

“Other types of words, such as adjectives and adverbs, evolve more quickly, making them susceptible to dying out and being replaced. Half of the words we use today would be unrecognizable to our ancestors 2,500 years ago.”

If you are interested as to how new words make their way into the dictionary, stop by Worldwide Words.

Do you have any word trivia to share?

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Tags: Beckett, Chevalier D’Eon, Shakespeare, King George, word origins,

Birthdays and Copyrights

“Birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat more cake.” –Unknown

When editing The Ride, I was asked to delete lyrics from a scene I had written although I had only used one line of a Beatle’s song and had even given credit to the group. My editor informed me that using lyrics requires obtaining written permission and can be quite expensive. Copyright protection, I learned, is for the life of the composer plus 70 years.

I am allowed, however, to use song titles. This made no sense to me but I complied because I’d rather not take the chance of being sued. To me the scene was much better when my characters were singing the words aloud together at the top of their lungs. But, hopefully the reader can still ‘hear’ what I wanted to get across.

With this in mind, I thought it interesting to read in the Encyclopedia of Useless Information by William Hartston that “Happy Birthday to You” was composed by Mildred and Patty Hill in 1936. This means that the song should not be sung in public without paying royalties.

How many times might servers burst into this tune during one night in a busy family restaurant? Think of the income these ladies are missing out on! Either Mildred and Patti are quite generous with the use of their song, not into lawsuits, or they’re not familiar with this copyright law.

I don’t want to break any laws. Therefore, before my family has a chance to sing a lively rendition of this traditional song to me today, I must warn them to use only the title and skip the lyrics if we’re in a public place. After that, well…I plan to eat more cake.

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Tags: The Ride, copyright, Hartson, Encyclopedia of Useless Information, happy birthday,