Authors: Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Wisdom's Kiss (53 page)

MOSSBACK [American] Originally a large, old fish; during the Civil War, a man who fled to avoid conscription by the Confederate army, implicitly hiding until his back sprouted moss. It now denotes any narrow-minded or old-fashioned person.
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MYCOLOGY (my'COLL'uh'gy) [From Greek
mukes,
"mushroom"] The scientific study of fungi.
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SAGACITY (sa-GAS-ifee) [From Latin
sagire,
"to discern quickly or keenly"]
Sagacity
originally meant "good sense" as in "sense of smell": a sagacious hound. It has since evolved into "good sense" as in "shrewdness" or "judgment": a sagacious advisor. Oddly, the word has no relation to the similar descriptor
sage
(SAJE), which derives from the Latin
sapere,
"to be wise" (also a root of
Homo sapiens).
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SANG-FROID (sang-FRA) [From French
sang,
"blood" +
froid,
"cold"] Cold-blooded or, more aptly, cool-headed. Someone with sang-froid displays composure in the face of adversity or danger. The word is not necessarily a compliment: sometimes a little emotion—empathy, say—is very much what the situation requires.
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SILVICULTURE (SIL•ve•cull•chure), or SYLVICULTURE [From Latin
silva,
"wood," +
cultura,
"cultivation"] The cultivation of trees; forestry. It is akin to agriculture [from Latin
agri,
"field"], the science of farming, and horticulture [from
hortus,
"garden"], the science of gardening.
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SLATTERNLY (SLAT-urn-ly) [Archaic] Untidy, messy.

A
slattern
was a messy, dirty woman, by implication a loose woman, and derived from the obsolete, wonderfully descriptive verb
slatter,
meaning "to splash or spill."
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TEMPERANCE (TEM•pur•ence) Moderation, especially in regard to drinking and eating; alternatively and just as commonly, complete abstention from alcohol. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American temperance movement at various times promoted both definitions, though the movement is most associated with the effort to end alcohol production and sales by outlawing them via prohibition. The word
temperance
derives from the Latin
temperare,
which means either "self-restraint" or "mingling"—two very different definitions each based in the concept of balance. Thus the notion that someone whose four humors (see
MELANCHOLIA
) were in proper proportion would be well balanced, or in a good temper.
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VICTRIX (VICK•tricks) [From Latin
victor
+ the feminine suffix
-ix]
A female victor. A female aviator once bore the honorific of aviatrix; a female director, directrix; a female executor, executrix. Thus, a female victor was a victrix, a victress, or even a victrice. English similarly contains the outmoded
authoress, poetess, proprietress, manageress,
and
editress.
Such words are now seen as inherently disparaging—the belittling
governess
or
mistress,
for example, compared to
governor
or
mister
—which explains why
actress, stewardess, heiress,
and
hostess
are now obsolescent, and
adulteress
is just plain goofy.
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