Original Public Meaning

Recently my students have started to use the word "extra" as an adjective meaning something like "over the top" or "ostentatious." Today we look at "extravagant," a word that approximates this new slang but one that also has its own fascinating etymology related to "wandering" and "straying." To help us understand the idea of extravagance, we take a look at Susan Sontag's "Notes on 'Camp'"—it's an essay that instead of giving a clear definition of campiness sketches the aesthetic of kitsch and excess.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Questions of "distribution" have always been central to ethical and legal matters. The etymology of "distribute" itself comes with its own knotty questions and deceptive cousins—for instance, the loose and probably false connection between this word and "tribe." To close things out, we consider the opening paragraph of René Descartes's Discourse on the Method and its insistence that "good sense is the best distributed thing in the world."

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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We're back after a brief hiatus with the word "exhaust," a word that has broad application in English—sometimes a verb, sometimes a noun. It's an opportunity to review the idea of a "perfect passive participle," a fundamental grammatical concept observed in Latin words like exhaustus, from which our English word "exhaust" arises. Finally, we consider the character Neddy Merrill from John Cheever's story "The Swimmer." Exhausted at the end of the story, Neddy is just as exhausted as the stirred martinis that he has drunk over a summer afternoon.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The word "dissolve" likely brings up an image of a chemist's solutions or a sugar cube breaking apart in water. But this word has applications in a wide range of areas: a dissolute person, the dissolving of Parliament, even the final dissolving of the body and soul. As a more recent example, we consider the phrase "dissolving margins," a recurring theme in the Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante, where a chaotic moment in life can disrupt our sense of order and definition.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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In English, the notion of "conscience" is often confused with "consciousness," words that share the same etymological roots in Latin. Generally, we might define "conscience" as that "little voice" in our head that tells us what's right and what's wrong. In today's episode, we consider how that notion of a private, internal conscience developed from a word that originally meant a "joint understanding" with others. We also look at the recent encyclical published by Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, which raises important questions about the nature of conscience—and of consciousness—in an era of technological change.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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We normally think of ambition today as a kind of personal virtue, alongside traits like "grit" and "tenacity." But in the Roman world, ambitio—from which our English word "ambition" directly descends—was often viewed with suspicion. In today's episode, we look at the violent and tumultuous world of politics in the late Roman Republic through the work of Sallust, the Roman historian who chronicles the seditious—and ambitious—deeds of the politician Catiline in his Bellum Catilinae (or Catilinarian Conspiracy).

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The arts give us so many terms with interesting histories: arpeggio, pirouette, collage. Today, we turn to the technical terminology of architecture and consider the word "cornice," a word that comes to English from Italian but that has murky roots in Latin. Its obscure origins give us an opportunity to consider the changing nature of the modern cityscape—as beautifully described in Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle—where even the ledges are alive.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The word "symphony" has a straightforward origin: it comes directly from ancient Greek roots for "together" and "sound." But it offers an opportunity to explore the history of linguistic rules around word formation and the notion of "barbarism" in English. Finally, we read a poem from the celebrated American writer Billy Collins, "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House."

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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A wobbly suspension bridge, a tightrope walker, a rocky precipice—there are many images that might unsettle those with a fear of heights (or acrophobia). Today we consider the last of these examples, "precipice." It comes to us from the Latin praeceps or "headfirst," a word that brings to mind the fast, rushing downfall one might experience from such heights. As a literary reflection, we look to Italo Calvino's description of Octavia, the "spider-web city," in his postmodern novella Invisible Cities.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The English noun "maxim" sounds like it should have something to do with a "greatest" or "biggest" or "maximal" thing. Instead, it means a general, even foundational rule. In today's episode, we look at the curious origins of "maxim" in Latin's superlative adjective maximus, which means "largest." As a more modern reflection, we revisit the criticism of the Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford articulated by a particular ascendant political figure of the nineteenth century: Abraham Lincoln.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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