Stock Rants #2: "Polyamory" and word origins.

[kiya]

I was going to write up a bunch of these so I could just reference them later, and then I got distracted by a shiny object and just did the one. And then I was reminded last night, and this is the one that came out last night, so I am storing it.


Okay. I know that you think the "Polyamory is wrong! It should be 'multiamory' or 'polyphilia'! Mixing roots is wrong!" is cute. So here's the deal: you can think it's cute, so long as you turn in your ipsomobile license and accept having your teleopticon privileges revoked.

And maybe it's not "everything associated with a minority group has to go through an extra layer of justification" in its background, and I really need to grow a sense of humor or something (see userpicture), but frankly, the idea that suddenly my bastard whoreson of a language needs to practice stringent root purity is ludicrous. English is a language of Norman knights trying to pick up Saxon barmaids (and all parties involved are fooling around with the Celts on the side because they have sexy syntax) that aggressively pursues other languages to beat them up for their stray vocabulary, and someone's prating on about a coinage having hybrid parentage? Get. Bloody. Real. ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT!


Also, anyone who finds this joke entertaining or worthwhile who also has ever used the so-called 'word' "compersion", which, in addition to sounding like a syndromic disease that is dismissed by the medical establishment as patient hysteria, has no fucking roots at all and is in fact lexical gibberish, needs to be taken out behind the barn and shot, twice, because there is no possible cure for that level of unmitigated damnfoolishness.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This is beautiful.

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

I love the rant. Also the phrase "unmitigated damnfoolishness", which I must appropriate and spread about in all its glory.

[keshwyn]

Yes'm. I will not inflict that on you again - it was only funny the first time, anyway, and after that, it got old FAST.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Oh my. *fans self* Rants wot make me laugh are alsways welcome.

ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT! made me giggle helplessly.

There are certain kinds of stupid to which the household response is meaningful eye contact and a murmurmed 'Double tap time' so I heartily second the taken out behind the barn sentiment.

[its-just-me.livejournal.com]

A rose by any other name IMO.

I'll just call it Bob

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

This is particularly good: you can think it's cute, so long as you turn in your ipsomobile license and accept having your teleopticon privileges revoked. I find that when people vigorously object to something in the language, almost always they themselves use similar words or constructions frequently, without a second thought.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Glee!

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

I want to start calling my boyfriend's car an ipsomobile now.

[kiya]

The other option is "autokinetikon", of course.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Both are equally awesome.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

You leave Binky out of this!

[coraline]

i <3 you :)

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

yup, this! as a wordsmith of some skill, i bow to your superior rantage. :>

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

thank you, this is fantastic!

[cos]

Something I've said often enough that I'd consider it a "stock rant" too, but I've never said it this entertainingly.

coslinked.

[ryanfirewitch.livejournal.com]

You. Are. Awesome.

This reminded me, I would love to figure out how to translate "Middle Egyptian, Motherfucker! Do you speak it?" to hieroglyphs.

[kiya]

Which of course reminds me of this post.

[necturus.livejournal.com]

Also, anyone who finds this joke entertaining or worthwhile who also has ever used the so-called 'word' "compersion", which, in addition to sounding like a syndromic disease that is dismissed by the medical establishment as patient hysteria, has no fucking roots at all and is in fact lexical gibberish, needs to be taken out behind the barn and shot, twice, because there is no possible cure for that level of unmitigated damnfoolishness.

That reminds me of an old song, one verse of whoch goes:

"Illigitimum non carborundum
Domine salvum fac
Illigitimum non carborundum
Domine salvum fac
Gaudeamus igitur
Veritas non sequitur
Illigitimum non carborundum
Ipso facto!"

Now *that* is lexical gibberish. "Carborundum" isn't even Latin.

And to your polyphilia and multiamory, I offer ta`addud al-ahbab ("multiplicity of beloveds").

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

You're quite right of course. I'll cop to having complained about mixing of Latin and Greek roots in the past; in a slight defense, I've never even heard the word "compersion" before this. What is it?

[kiya]

It supposedly means something like "feeling happy because my partner is happy with their other relationships". It has no discernable etymology, just a bunch of syllables thrown together by someone with no sense of euphony or language.

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

I always thought they just wanted to dodge "compassion" and then pulled it out of their ass.

Also, one of the ugliest words ever and I avoid it like the plague.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Heeeeee hee hee. This is definitely the part that made me giggle the most.

[tzeenj.livejournal.com]

yeah, OK, I used it once, but only because I had so other word, or anything that wold taken less than a small paragraph, to express the sentiment. Mea culpa. :(

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Beautiful rant.

I hate linguistic purists, primarily because they seem to be extremely selective as to which parts of the language they choose to make their battlefield.

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

So true.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

THIS.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

I always wondered where the fuck "compersion" came from. "Com-" is recognizable, but I never could parse "persion."

[kiya]

Someone's arse.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Okay, I giggled a bit throughout the rant. This comment here made me laugh uncontrollably. Thank you.

[mindways]

...because com-persion is the opposite of ass-persion? ;)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Y'know... this made me go researching. Sadly, I don't have an OED subscription available to me, but dictionary.reference.com seems to be helping.

'aspersion' leads to the verb 'asperse' ("1. to attack with false, malicious, and damaging charges or insinuations; slander.
2. to sprinkle; bespatter.
Origin:
1480–90; < L aspersus besprinkled (ptp. of aspergere), equiv. to a- a- 5 + -sper- (comb. form of spar-, var. of sparg- sparge ) + -sus, var. of -tus ptp. suffix

Following those roots gives:

a- 5 
var. of ad-, used: (1) before sc, sp, st (ascend) and (2) in words of French derivation (often with the sense of increase, addition): amass.
Origin:
ME, in some words < MF a- < L ad- prefix or ad prep. (see ad- ), as in abut; in others < L a- (var. of ad- ad- ), as in ascend

and

sparge
–verb (used with object), verb (used without object)
1. to scatter or sprinkle.
–noun
2. a sprinkling.
Origin:
1550–60; < L spargere to sprinkle, scatter

...
So... then on to the 'com' prefix:
a prefix meaning “with,” “together,” “in association,” and (with intensive force) “completely,” occurring in loanwords from Latin (commit): used in the formation of compound words before b, p, m: combine; compare; commingle.
Also, co-, col-, con-, cor-.

Origin:
< L, var. of prep. cum with

Put it all together and you get a word which SHOULD be 'comspersion', but I can accept that 'msp' is a bit unruly, and which means 'with sprinkling' or 'in association with spattering'... which sounds like some of both the better and the worse sex I've had, and like the group dynamics of too many poly situations I've seen and/or been in. ;)

[kiya]

You have officially delighted me.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

/me smiles broadly. :)

(Someday, we must meet. People have been being shocked at me for ages that we don't already know each other.)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

... or, I'll continue to smile broadly, but retract the no-doubt confusing second statement, as I JUST realized that I was mis-reading your username and you have, as near as I can tell, no reason to know me, or vice versa. :) But hi. ;)

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that everybody here understands that the actual point of the joke is to hang a lampshade on the phrase 'polyamory is wrong', not to actually make a serious literary criticism.

Is it a bad joke? Oh sure. But there is a difference between 'entertaining' and 'worthwhile', and while the joke has little chance of being one, obviously it has been the other often enough that people make t-shirts of it.

Also, 'compersion' at least sounds a little better than 'frubbly', the UK term for it.

[kiya]

It's not so much a bad joke as one that turns around on the joker and makes them look catastrophically ignorant. Humorous linguistic pedantry to make a point works much better when one isn't displaying major linguistic ignorance; if nothing else, ignorance gives an easy route to miss the point by. And really, the joke is not even a funny-once for me; it's a funny-never, because it reflects so poorly on the person who makes it. (Some of that poor reflection is, admittedly, because I have never seen it outside a context of "Har har har look at me I'M SO CLEVAR", and have seen it every so often in that context for years. I'M SO CLEVAR people can easily exhaust the humor or effectiveness out of anything.)

On "compersion" vs. "frubbly", I would prefer to sound twee than like I'm suffering from a wasting illness, but on the whole I err on the side of using actual words. I find 'compersion' hideous in sound, even aside from the fact that it is apparently composed of a random collection of affixes.

On the lampshading thing, I am ... let's say I believe the majority of the commenters have reason to be personally acquainted with people shouting "polyamory is wrong" in their faces. Just because it's supposed to make a point doesn't mean it does it well.

[redbird]

Anyone who would have the poor taste, or chutzpah, to shout something like that in my face is not likely to be dissuaded by a linguistic joke, just file that as "right, redbird is an elitist as well as a pervert/sinner."

Someone who cared about me and thought that what I'm doing is wrong wouldn't be putting it that way, they'd be saying things like "but what about cattitude?" or "how can you really be in love with three people?" or such.

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

::shrug:: I certainly don't care about the joke enough to defend it further; I suppose it simply didn't occur to me that it would annoy anyone enough to actually inspire a rant. It really is supposed to be clever, I think, more than making a point, and I concede that it doesn't do either particularly well. Guess it's just not shoved in my face often enough to irritate me.

As for compersion/frubbly, I do think that the concept deserves a concise term and don't think that either one is particularly good. I don't much care for 'NRE' to describe the shinies that go along with a new relationship, either; I've largely been describing the glee I'm feeling about my new relationship with sariel_t as ... well, 'shiny'.

[kiya]

Ha! This is the internet! Anything can annoy someone enough to inspire a rant. ;)

"Shiny" is a good word. I honestly think that it's one of the better ones - unnecessary jargon is unnecessary.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Ha! This is the internet! Anything can annoy someone enough to inspire a rant. ;)

Ah, I see you suffer from xkcd-386ism.

[kiya]

Well, yes, but this was much more simple observation of trends over time.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I like frubbly - partly because it has no pretensions, and partly because it was invented at one of my birthday parties (the one where this picture was taken, in fact) :-)

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

That is a good reason to like it.

I just can't say it without feeling like I have a wattle.

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

OK, everything is made up for by you wanting to beat compersion to death, making me adore you. :)

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER!

I'm quite sure that wasn't *intended* as a reference to Lester Freamon (at the end of his rope) yelling that at a stonewalling witness in The Wire s2, but it made a funny rant even funnier imagining that it was. :)

(And "compersion" always squicks me, and I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps because most of the people I've personally known who use that term are the "I like to watch hurr hurr derp derp" kind.)

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

It's a Pulp Fiction reference, from the scene where Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta kill a bunch of dudes after talking at them for five minutes.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay! Well, it's also Lester and Bunk interrogating a bunch of guys from a boat that visited Baltimore and dumped a crate with 14 dead women. They all speak English, but pretend they don't to avoid questioning. The normally stoic, unruffleable Lester completely loses it.

[diagonti.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

This is an awesome post. You have made my morning.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Heh :) I look forward to the remainder of the stock rants.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

James D. Nicoll, to meet the Piper quote.

[kiya]

It was indeed a deliberate reference to james_nicoll.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Well, see, the quote about Norman knights is supposedly "Norman men at Arms" and it's attributed, but unsourced, to HB Piper.

I have loved the people who have screwed up the Nicoll quote, only to have it corrected, and then they tried to make excuses about who really wrote it, only to be directed at the author's blog.

[artan]

all parties involved are fooling around with the Celts on the side because they have sexy syntax

Hey, we've got more than just syntax... Check out those verb forms!

[tzeenj.livejournal.com]

yeah, but you've spawned one of the very few languages that make my brain lock up.

[sammee42.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this rant!! Amazingness!! :)