My friend Jewel sent me a Washington Post article last week about Elon Musk and the term cisgender. In case you don’t know, cisgender refers to a person whose gender identity coincides with the sex with which the person was born. It’s in contrast to transgender, where one’s physical sex and inner gender identification differ.
It seems that Elon has his panties in a bunch over the term, threatening to suspend anyone from Twitter who uses it. Elon cites an anti-trans activist who maintains that a “pedosexual” doctor (who has been accused of pedophilia) created the term in 1991. On account of this tainted history, Elon regards the term as a slur.
The article describes a much longer history, leaving out the doctor altogether. As early as 1914, the prefix cis was being used by people researching gender identity and sexual orientation. The Oxford English Dictionary has traced the actual term cisgender to a University of Minnesota grad student, who used it in a 1994 paper. The OED officially added the word in 2015.
So, about that cis. It’s a Latin preposition meaning “on this side of.” That’s all it means. Cisgender people feel firmly “on the side of” the gender associated with their physical accoutrements. Others, such as transgender people (trans meaning “across, on the other side of”) feel as though these are two different sides–physical sexuality vs. gender identification.
To be blunt, the cisgender option permits us to avoid normal as a descriptor, which implies that trans, non-binary people, and others are not normal, which is indeed stigmatizing. The term pulls us away from judgmental sounding labels. There’s nothing debasing or dehumanizing about it.
At least that’s what A Grandmother’s ABC Book says. It’s on page 56.
Super patriots may believe that blue jeans and their name began in America, but non vero (Italian for “not true”). Both the word and the pants began in 16th century Genoa, Italy, the city that gave jeans their name. The fabric was dyed with blue indigo and was used for dock workers’ clothing. It was durable enough to stand up to the wear and tear of working on ships and docks.
A similar sturdy fabric, denim, was woven in Nimes, France. This similar fabric we know as denim, or de Nimes, meaning “from Nimes.”
Originally, the singular form jean referred to the fabric. As it appeared mostly in pants, the s was gradually attached (as in trousers, slacks, and so on).
My book explains that the letter J was originally a variation of I and was pronounced like our Y. The god Janus was a later form of Ianus, and, as you might remember from your high-school Latin classes. Julius, as in Caesar, was spelled Iulius. In 1524, a guy named Gian Giorgio Trissino decreed that I and J should be two different letters, and so they have been ever since.
The jeans we know and love are 150 years old. In 1873, a Nevada tailor named Jacob Davis added rivets to denim pants to make them sturdier. He collaborated with Levi Strauss, a San Francisco merchant, to acquire a patent.
The two men could have had no idea what they had wrought. If you Google blue jeans today, you find a Georgia pizza shop, a song by Lana Del Rey, a software company, and lots and lots and lots of jeans. Lots.
In a family Jeopardy game this evening to celebrate my son’s birthday, the Final Jeopardy category was “Science Language.” Here’s the Final Jeopardy answer:
Coined by chemist Van Helmont, the word ‘gas’ comes from this Greek word meaning ‘unformed mass.’
All together now! Everyone sing the Jeopardy tune while we all think it over, and don’t forget to make a wager! “Doo, doo, doo, doo doo, doo, doo, dooo . . . “
If you guessed chaos, you’re wrong, because you didn’t put your response in the form of a question! The correct response is, “What is chaos?” If you responded correctly, you may have won an imaginary $16,800, as I did!
The hyper-correct response is actually, “What is khaos?” That’s the Greek spelling. The Greek alphabet had no C, a redundant letter in that the letters K and S take care of its sounds. It shares a history with G, gamma, the third letter of the Greek alphabet. (You can read about this history in an interesting new book called A Grandmother’s Alphabet Book.)
Khaosdid not mean only “unformed mass.” The word also named a deity, the first to emerge from the primordial ooze after creation. She formed the misty atmosphere surrounding the earth as it emerged, and thereby gave birth to the birds.
Jan Baptista van Helmont, a 16th century Flemish chemist, used the word to give gases their name. In the manner of the time, he’s identified not only as a scientist, but also as a physician, mystic, and philosopher. Gases are nebulous and amorphous, seemingly insubstantial. It took a mystic and philosopher to identify and name them.
Psammophiles were in the news last week, thanks to Dev Shah, winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The word is pronounced “sam- uh-file.”
If you know your Greek roots, as Bee competitors usually do, the “-phile” part would be fairly easy, especially when you’re told the definition. “a plant or animal that prefers sandy areas.” Dev made the leap from “prefers” to “loves,” that is, “phile.”
You know lots of “-philes,” I’m sure. A bibliophile loves books. An Anglophile loves everything English. I am married to a cinephile. More obscurely, barophiles like the pressure of the deep sea. Psychrophiles love the extreme cold.
To figure out what psammophiles love, Dev had to know that the prefix “psammo-” is from the Greek word for sand. That’s how he knew to begin the word with a silent “p.” Sand rice and sand toad flax are psammophilic plants (also known as psammophytes). Certain gerbils and scorpions are psammophilic animals.
Dev’s expertise in etymology earned him $50,000 and bragging rights for the rest of his life. Who says Greek and Latin are a waste of time?
Oakwood High School Student Writers, 1969. Lynn’s in the white shirt, standing center right. I’m the short-haired girl sitting to his right. (Sorry to all the people I didn’t identify and cropped out of the picture.)
My school friend Lynn Hamilton passed away last week, succumbing to an aggressive pancreatic cancer. I knew Lynn in grade school and became friends in high school. We studied English, social studies, and Latin together and debated as part of our school’s National Forensic League team. After graduation, we went on one date. Since then, I’ve always chatted with him at our high-school reunions. I say chatted with him, but I really mean argued, as you’ll soon see.
Sometimes thematic stars align. This is the week I felt moved by Judy Woodruff’s PBS NewsHour report on healing our country’s divisions. She shared encouraging findings that communication across party lines can actually bring people together. And then Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, published his University of Chicago Class Day Ceremony address, which some students protested and which he expected some to walk out of. Stephens asserts that a serious education is impossible “without the opportunity to encounter people and entertain views with whom and with which you might profoundly disagree.” All of which relates to me and Lynn.
Lynn and I were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. People talk about divisions in our time, but the 60s were not exactly halcyon days. Our Latin teacher, Edith Cope, a conservative lady, used to bring up hot button issues for discussion, usually unrelated to Caesar’s battle strategy or Cicero’s rhetoric. Lynn and I would reliably weigh in on our chosen sides. I recall earnestly defending the civil rights movement and college protesters, while Lynn and Miss Cope called for calm, order, and caution as a brake on headlong social change.
I was merely parroting my parent’s generally liberal ideas, as I do to this day. My dad opposed the Vietnam War and even grew a beard during that era. (He shaved it off when it occurred to him that it might seem like an affectation.) In Latin class one day, I naively shared the story of my dad’s acquaintanceship with Alger Hiss, a liberal cause célèbre and conservative bête noire.
In case you’ve forgotten, Alger Hiss worked for Franklin Roosevelt’s State Department and in the late forties was accused of spying for the Soviet Union. He served over three years in prison for perjury. Back in the day, the political left and the right lined up for and against Alger Hiss. One of my dad’s bosses had attended law school with Hiss and asked my dad, who was hospitalized in New York City in the mid-60s, if he wanted to meet him. Hiss became a faithful, friendly visitor of my dad during his hospital stays.
Anyway, for some reason I shared this information with Miss Cope and my classmates, who could not have cared less about Alger Hiss. Except for Lynn, of course. Ever after, he good-naturedly reminded me of this scurrilous commie connection every chance he could.
Here, for example, is what Lynn wrote in my senior yearbook. You should know, first, that we had read, ad nauseam, examples of Cicero’s “preterition,” that is, mentioning something by saying you’re not going to mention it.
Like Cicero, I will pass over the fact that your close association with Alger “Babes” makes you highly suspect. I even wonder if I should add my signature to such a liberal book. Seriously, with your charm, beauty, and intelligence, you should go far. (I hope not into politics.)
I don’t remember for sure, but at our last class reunion in 2019, Lynn probably brought up Alger Hiss. I do remember that he disparaged Hillary Clinton, which annoyed me, and my response probably annoyed Lynn. Despite our differences, though, we somehow always remained friendly. Lynn was warm and kind and contributed ten times more to his community than I have to mine. See for yourself here.
I will miss my friend Lynn. I was lucky to have him to debate with, which Bret Stephens calls “the essence of fun.” Honest arguments, he says, allow an “intimate contact with others who, in their own ways, are being authentically and expressively and unashamedly themselves.” I’m grateful that Lynn remained unashamedly himself and allowed me to do the same.
I’d love to hear your reflections. Whom do you argue with? How does it go?
Wife of Jupiter and queen of the Roman gods, Juno gave her name to our brand-new month, Iunius Mensis, the Romans’ fourth month (with Martius as the first). Junio and Juin are two of her Romance language legacies. Juno is identified with the Greek goddess Hera.
June replaced a Middle English phrase meaning “earlier mildness,” which is a great name for summer’s first month. June itself might mean “young,” as in iuvenis for “youth”: Juno was goddess of the new moon.
Juno famously harassed Aeneas, protagonist of Vergil’s Aeneid. She was the patron of Queen Dido and her city Carthage, which became Rome’s bitterest rival. Aeneas famously threw over Dido in order to pursue his fated founding of the Roman civilization. Juno whipped up a storm to prevent Aeneas landing in Italy at the beginning of the Aeneid and never stopped bothering him.
The goddess represented women, marriage, and childbirth, but is largely known, unfortunately, for her jealous rages over Jupiter’s infidelities. To hide his adultery, for example, Jupiter changed the beautiful nymph Io into a heifer. Juno wasn’t fooled. She sent a gadfly to harass poor Io, who ran across the world, trying to escape the wicked bites, giving her name to the Ionian Sea. Her travels are also memorialized by the Bosphorus Strait, the boundary between Asia and Europe. Bosphorus means “cow-bearing.”
Juno is still on Jupiter’s case. NASA’s Juno mission flew past Jupiter’s moon Io last month, bringing all three characters together for a big pirouette in space. That’s not the end of Juno, though. Since 2016, she’s been keeping her eye on Jupiter, and will continue her surveillance far into the future, just like in the old days.
As of today, A Grandmother’s ABC is available for purchase, with text by me and photos by Margaret Ewing. Order it from Shanti Arts, the publisher, or from your local bookstore. Bookshop.org is another good option. Amazon is also an option (though not a particularly good one.)
I thought it might be nice to share an excerpt, to give you a flavor of the book. Each alphabet letter has its own chapter, written while I was creating a fabric alphabet book for my then in-utero grand-twins. I should say that the book was composed during the COVID lockdown and is addressed to the twins, to read when they’re older. The fabric book I created, pictured on the cover, was for babies. This published book is for grownups.
N is for Nest
At the back of our Cleveland Heights house is a second-floor porch that looks out on an overgrown apple tree in the backyard. Visitors have commented that the porch feels like a tree house. Over the years I’ve gone to the porch to think or cry, to read or just to enjoy a lovely day or a peaceful rainfall. A few times every summer, we cart plates and silverware and bowls of food upstairs for supper on the porch. Sometimes we celebrate birthdays there.
At home so much because of the lockdown, I spend many 2020 afternoons sitting on the porch doing needlework or reading. Grandpa and I both make it through Don Quixote, a 900+ page tome, for the first time, in a translation by Edith Grossman, which I recommend (I who know nothing of other translations or of Spanish, for that matter) because it is readable and the notes informative and not intrusive. It is my second or third run at Don Quixote. Previously put off by its epic length and by some of the antiquated language in other translations, this time I push through the long, sometimes repetitious speeches, enjoying the humor and realizing that the story really does move along if you give it a chance.
As it chugs along and I realize how modern the book seems, I ponder, What does modern mean as applied to a book written more than 400 years ago? Cervantes enables us to see the interior lives of his characters, not merely their adventures, as in other romances of his era. The author himself, or at least the narrator, demonstrates a wry self-awareness. In the second half of the book, his characters critique the first half. We moderns usually take credit for such sly self-referencing. Don Quixote is modern in that it reflects back on itself. In part, it’s a story about stories, a book about books. It’s writing about writing. It’s like a book about the alphabet, about the letter N from the Greek nu (Ν), from the Semitic word nun, which meant “eel” or “fish.”
What does this have to do with Ns or with nests, you may be wondering. As I sit on the porch making my way through Don Quixote, counting 200 pages, 300 pages, directly in my line of sight whenever I look up from the page, in a cozy fork in the apple tree, is a blue jay nest. It takes a while for me to notice it. We frequently have blue jays in our yard and put peanuts out for them to snack on. I notice that the birds seemed to be zeroing in on one spot in the middle of the tree—duh—and suddenly the nest materializes before my eyes. It looks a mess, with a white plastic filament dangling crazily from one side that resembles the plastic string I occasionally replace in our border trimmer. In reading about blue jays, I learn that they frequently incorporate one white material in the outer part of their nest. Our blue jays have apparently read this website.
I bring binoculars to the porch and learn to focus on the nest. I wait for a parent to alight and then train the lenses on the birds’ sheer perfect pattern of blue and black and white. After a week or two of watching the parents take turns sitting on the nest, I hear faint peeping. Eventually I can discern tiny open mouths, three or four, pointing up to the sky as the parents gracefully swoop toward them. After a feeding, the parent bird scooches in, back and forth, right on top of the babies. Every now and then, I worry that a big storm will knock the nest out of the tree or that a squirrel or predatory bird will attack it. I watch for weeks, while I read and sew.
Then a few sultry days pass by, too hot to sit outside. When I return at last to the porch, the nest seems deserted and there are no blue jays in sight. Either something catastrophic has befallen them, or they have fledged that quickly. If they left the nest, we should have six blue jays flying around our yard, but they seem to have all vanished at once.
A day or two later I am nosing around the flower patch Grandpa planted in the back corner of our yard. Our little dog Roxie is with me. A lot of squawking erupts from above, and when I look up into the trees, I see a bunch (a flock?) of blue jays hanging out. They don’t hold still long enough for me to count them. I figure that the fledged young are practicing flying close to home, learning from their parents, but I’m unable to make out who is who. One bird swoops right above my head, clearly wanting me and Roxie out of there, so we beat a retreat. I guess soon afterward they move into their own neighborhoods because I don’t see four or five blue jays at a time anymore. A couple of them still stop by to pick up peanuts. I assume they’re the parents, and they’re left here in our old backyard while their young have moved on to new homes and adventures. It all happens in a matter of months.
Your mom sends us ultrasound pictures of you today, as I’m writing in November. Each of you is visible, with the profile of a head clearly outlined. When your mom’s looking at the screen, she can see you moving around, the girl situated lower, close to the cervix, and the boy higher up. The pictures look like full-sized babies, but you’re still tiny, only about five inches long. We don’t know your names. But we can see you with our technology, we know you’re there, being nourished in your nest by your mom. All four of you are far away from us in Cleveland, though you’re in my thoughts all day as I stitch a yellow border around the outside of the nest page.
Your mom flew away to Brooklyn to live and raise her young. She and your dad will teach you to survive, and in twenty years or so, more or less, you’ll fly away. As you read this, someday in a vague future, you may have already fledged.
Therapist Lori Gottlieb in her excellent book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed defines ultracrepidarianism as “the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge or competence.” How have I survived so long without this extremely useful word? How many ultracrepidarians have I encountered in my life? (How many times have I myself exhibited creeping ultracrepidarianism?)
People have advised me to write books about various subjects I have no interest in.
Years ago, a friend of my husband gave me several second-hand dresses, because he thought they looked like what I should wear. Rather than what I did wear. He also advised me as he watched me bake cookies, that I should add more salt. Needless to say, he did not bake.
Sometimes I tell my husband how much he should charge for a movie he’s showing.
While you’re thinking of your own examples, let’s take a look at the word’s origins. The Roman writer and naval commander Pliny the Elder (24-79 CE) recounted the story of the Greek painter Apelles and a cobbler who criticized his artistic rendering of a shoe. Apelles accepted the correction, but the emboldened critic found further fault with the painting. “Ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret,” Apelles reportedly told the upstart. That is, “Let the shoemaker not judge above the sandal.”
Burn!
Pliny pointed out that this line became a Roman aphorism: Sutor, ne ultra crepidam, meaning, “Shoemaker, not beyond the sandal.” An English proverb, “Cobbler, stick to your last (the mold for a shoe),” expresses the same sentiment.
Nowadays we would say, “Stay in your lane.” See photo above.
Share your ultracrepidarian examples in the comments.
Valerie Fridland’s new book Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English provides enough material for an eternity of Wednesday Word posts. Literally.
Yep, Fridland takes on not only the non-literal sense of literally, but also um and uh, the pronoun they as a singular, and even the detested and abhorred vocal fry. She finds some good in all of these, and in like, dude, and many other linguistic shibboleths. As a linguist, she analyzes the need these usages are filling, or, if not a need, their usefulness in social interactions.
Her overarching theme is, “Chill.” (Or possibly, “Dude. Chill.”) Our apoplexy over language change is frequently built on sand. When you hear grammatical errors, does your head literally explode? In fact, Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, and Austen used literally in this intensifying sense. The word’s meaning is shifting, like very and awfully before it. We’re expending a lot of mental energy over an inexorable historic process. Language changes, and it always has. Ain’t nothing we can do about it.
Yes, Shakespeare also employed ain’t, as well as double negatives.
Language changes most often climb up from the bottom of society’s ladder. Young women, especially, often drive this evolution. Fridland writes, “It’s a good bet that whatever . . . eventually makes it into the grammar books probably started with the very folks whose speech is most criticized and reviled. The disenfranchised? Check. The young? Check. The female? Check. And while many of the curiosities heard in the speech around us may die out as quickly as a trending TikTok, some will go the distance and become the speech that our grandkids rebel against. And yes, that is a sentence-ending preposition, the likes of which Shakespeare, preposition strander himself, would be proud.”
Of course, you can still edit out the likes from your sentences and restrict your use of literally. You can still be annoyed by others’ speech habits. Just try not to frame your annoyance as the end of civilization, or as snobby put-downs of other people’s speech habits.
In the comments, you can share what drives you crazy, with the understanding that I will respond as Valerie Fridland, with charming history and explanations. I told you. I can draw on this book, like, forever.
I was hoping that my new book, A Grandmother’s ABC Book, would be available by Mother’s Day, but it’s becoming clear as the day passes that’s not going to happen. (That’s a joke.) The release date of June 6th is fast upon us. You’ll be able to order it from your local bookstore or from the publisher, Shanti Arts.* Plenty of time for next Mother’s Day!
I myself have a little trouble going all in on Mother’s Day, because, as for a lot of people, that relationship was problematic. I had no problem buying a gift for my mom or taking her out for brunch with my sisters, but sometimes the greeting cards stumped me. They often had messages like, “You were always there for me,” or like this one from Facebook today: “Your mother is the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep, the colors of a rainbow, she is Christmas morning.” Nope. I always kept looking until I found a generic Happy Mother’s Day! greeting.
It’s great that a lot of Mother’s Day messaging these days includes gay and transgender mothers, adoptive and foster mothers, and nurturers who were not necessarily mothers. We also need to acknowledge that not all mothers are the wind beneath our wings, nor are they necessarily supportive, attentive, smiling, patient, caring, selfless, helpful, inspiring, and understanding. (Some of us managed to be one or two of those things for about half an hour once a week, on average.) Certain mothers have their own struggles to contend with and fall far below the Hallmark standard. Some of you know the story from Missing: Coming to Terms with a Borderline Mother.
Share in the comments your own reflections on the day.
And if you have or had one of those Hallmark moms, or a close facsimile, I’m happy for you. Maybe she would enjoy A Grandmother’s ABC Book, particularly if she’s reached that milestone. Here’s how the publisher describes the book.
In September 2020 author Kathy Ewing and her husband learned that they would soon be first-time grandparents—of twins. Overwhelmed with delight and with time on her hands due to the COVID pandemic, Ewing decided to make a cloth ABC book for the twins and also write a companion book of family stories based on the alphabet. Entertaining and inspiring, A Grandmother’s ABC Book is about looking ahead—to the excitement of grandchildren, to the promise of a joy-filled future, and to the thrill of sharing one’s life and stories with the next generation.
*There’s always Amazon, too, but opt for an independent bookstore whenever you can.
