My mother and I got into it yesterday about writing.
Now, I adore my mother: she’s fantastic; most of the time.
Yesterday, however, she took issue with my word usage.
Preface: Mom is Catholic. Went to Catholic high school and university. She knows her St. Thomas Aquinas, Grotius, Pascal, and a good smattering of just war theory. She’s good coming heavy with the ethics when I screw up, Buddhist or not. When she aims, she doesn’t miss.
12 lbs of joy and discovery
So in an email yesterday we were discussing Catholic and Buddhist ethics. Mom wanted to know specifically how Buddhists view the Three Soures of Catholic Morality. I resisted a flashback to Sister Agnes and the 12 inch wood ruler with which she routinely slapped my hand. Transgression, unknown. She was a sadist but I learned my Latin declensions perfectly, especially for pain: dolor, masculine, Third declension”
Dolor, doloris, dolori, dolorem, dolore, dolor
But I digress. . .
“In Catholicism,” my Mom wrote, “for an action to be morally good the object, the intent and the circumstance must all be morally sound or the action is corrupted.”
“Interesting that there are three sources in Catholicism, because in Buddhism ethics are rooted in the Noble Eightfold Path through three main components: right speech, right action, right livelihood,” I replied. “However, to achieve merit and harmony in Buddhism one is not required to act in a supererogatory manner, whereas some Catholic actions imply it.”
She laid into me in the next email. “See, you’re grandstanding–she meant grandiloquent, a vice I am very guilty of–with your words again,” she said. “What does that even mean? It sounds like something out of the Kama Sutra!”
“First, the Kama Sutra is Hindu. Second, what did I say?” I replied.
“You’re a word snob. Supererogatory is what you wrote. What does that even mean?”
“Mom, it’s actually a Catholic concept,” I replied. “It’s something that is morally good, but not required to be done; it is to go above and beyond what is morally or ethically required.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?” She said.
“Why use eleven words when one gets the job done?”
And then I mouthed off to her, like a dumb-ass.
“How hard is it to use a dictionary app on your iPhone?”
“If you weren’t an adult I’d beat you, right now.”
“I know, Mom, but still. I’m a logophile, a verbivore. I can’t help myself.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“I love you too.”
Gustave Flaubert believed in the perfect word in the perfect place.
So do I.
mago
Are dictionaries even published anymore?
Are they used for anything besides doorstops, and does anyone know how to use them?
So many questions, so few answers.
I have around five Spanish English dictionaries and three Dutch English dictionaries (?!) and at least three Merriam Websters not to mention a couple of pocket dictionaries. They’re all in box in a dusty shed, along with a whole lot of other books.
Supererogatory? I’ve seen the word before, but never looked it up. At this stage of life, if I don’t know a word and can’t figure it out in context, then I gloss it over. I mostly communicate in grunts and snorts anyway so vocabulary building is not my forte anymore. Stumbling into the twilight. . .
Purple Library Guy
Hmmm . . . I’m on both sides of this. On one hand, there are definitely times when one erudite word fits perfectly and avoids clumsy messing around. On the other hand, very often adding syllables just dilutes meaning. For instance, why does anyone even utilize the word “utilize” when they could just use the word “use”? And as an old English Lit person, I’ve seen too many writers throwing around jargon to obscure the fact that they aren’t saying anything much. And that’s before we even get into the issue that if you use a word your audience does not understand, you have not actually communicated at all.
On the third hand, sometimes ornamented prose is just FUN, if it’s done well.
On average, I think as I’ve gotten older I have tended to use simpler words.
Mark Level
A very fun and interesting anecdote, thanks Sean, much appreciated. You obviously got your smarts from someone, even though you only discuss mom here.
My condolences on the Catholic School thing, luckily my dad had too much ambition to stay in South Dakota, my family alone lived NW of Chicago, and we went to secular public schools, heard the horror stories of beatings and abuse from my 26 cousins (dad had 4 sisters, Catholics aren’t as fanatical as Mormons about breeding but still plenty of ’em.) My parents did send the 3 of us, I the fortunate oldest, to weekly “Catholic education” with an elderly harpy who was very sex-negative and superstitious, the latter very few Catholics escape. When I was 8 or 9, my sis 2 years behind me in school, my brother another 2, parents must’ve used birth control figuring 3 was enough. So this old lady let slip, “Even in today’s times (1967 or 68) Doctors and scientists don’t know how babies are created!!” I think even at age 8-9 I didn’t really buy this, reported to Mom what the nice old lady shared with us.
Now, my mom converted (reluctantly) from Methodism, her family from Detroit were far higher in the class structure than my poor campesino grandparents with a 5th grade education, on land stolen from Nativies in Salem, S.C. My maternal grandfather, Almon Alouiscious Allen (no, I didn’t make that up) was a mechanical engineer working in the Detroit area before and during WW II.
Mom went to the old harpy and gave her Le Mot Juste, a J’Accuse!! She basically said, if you are going to tell stupid lies about biology and science to my young children, they will no longer be attending. Message received, we went back for some months, 6 at most.
I hope you are joking, or even better she was, with the “If you weren’t an adult, I’d beat you, right now”!! That is very harsh. My parents rarely resorted to violence, at most I faced minor corporal punishment 3 times in my childhood, once when my dad found out I smoked pot at age 19 he gave me a (deliberately) glancing blow across the chest, didn’t hurt at all.
Catholics and Conservatives mostly (but not always) are extremely anti-Intellectual, my dad often reverted to factory mode on that one. In 2002 there was a case before the Supreme Court about taking the (extremely absurd) “under God” added to the pledge against the Commies in the 1940s or 50s out of the Allegiance (Serf) Pledge. Dad had admitted to me and the family that he had “lost his faith,” thought organized religion was pure bunkum. I was very proud of him.
So I said I was hoping the Supremes would remove those 2 words, so insulting to the Deist Masons who directed and led the (partial) “Revolution” against British Royal Tyranny. And were forced to add a Bill of Rights, 10 items, by a still revolutionary population contra abuses they’d directly suffered– e.g. quartering soldiers without consent, searches without warrants, etc. Obviously the Supremes punted and did nothing.
Dad opposed it, I asked why? “Because those little pencil-necked Jews at the ACLU want that!!” Yes, this was a shamefully anti-Semitic statement, I was shocked. So he didn’t believe in God, but he supported young people being propagandized with what he knew (at that time) were lies, because Social Control. Humans won’t behave ethically, especially not the young ‘uns, without believing a wrathful Sky-God will torture them for eternity if they “sin.” Got it!!
I’m sure your mother is very smart viz the Catholic causistry, I have known many smart Jesuits, finished the coursework for a California teaching credential at a Catholic University because it was far better than the secular alternative in Hayward, CA, which I did a year at and exited. And I don’t think it caused significantly more, either.
I left Catholicism my Freshman year at University of Chicago before I turned 18, either due to an anthropology class assignment or read it in the newspaper, no longer recall. The story of a famous Church in Rome, really a fairy-tale. It was in Jerusalem but when the “evil” Saracens were taking over Jerusalem, the little holy church decided to escape to the Popeish place, grew wings and flew, landing cleanly and intact!!
Now, a comment viz Catholic intellectuals. There are some I actually respect. Sadly, I can’t recall the one who wrote for the NYRB’s name right now. He and his wife flatly refused the “marriage training” from their Diocese before the wedding, knew it was anti-sex and misogynist swill. I tried to find the name I can’t recall, just found BS, see a sample here–
https://firstthings.com/greatest-american-catholic-intellectuals/
Nope!! Not buying it. Is Avery Dulles from the evil family that murdered JFK? I’d bet the odds are high. I might’ve heard of #7, none of the rest. Below the list I greatly respect Flannery O’Connor, esp. for the story “Everything that rises must converge”, I know of Walker Percy as well from when I lived in New Orleans. I read The Moviegoer. It was pretty good. He certainly wasn’t full-on Dorothy Day, but he had a sense of justice, I think tepidly opposed racism against blacks in Louisiana. That ain’t much but it’s something.
As to Catholic theology, like the Moonies, Scientologists, Mormons (totally made-up) & other total wackadoodle cults, it’s a hoot, great for some belly-laughs.
When I was in the OTO, I read a lot of Crowley, who had fun (like H.L. Mencken, who he once tried to meet in Europe; sadly the H.L. Mencken he did meet was not the great cynical writer) with the absurdities of “faith.” He had fun with the Thomist (Aquinas) tale of how Yeshua was implanted in the womb of a Virgin, Maria or Mariam (meaning bitter sea in Hebrew). So YHVH God (okay, could’be been Alhim Tzabaoth, the original creator of the Universe in Genesis, emitted his holy semen into his hand (as above, so below), put it into the mouth of a Dove which was fulfilling the “Holy Spirit” archetype and he descended from the Heavens, Coelum unto the Earth and it’s atmosphere, flew unto Mary/Maria and spat out the God-Sperm into her genitalia. How could anyone not find this credible?
But let’s not forget that Virgin Birth is another trope the Catholics stole from Ancient Pagans. Nothing new under the Sun.
I could do a long digression on Trinitarian virtues, habits, etc. but enough said for now. Don’t walk under any Ladders!!
Mark Level
Salem, S.D., typo. I was luckier to be born in Sioux Falls than I would’ve been in South Carolina, that’s for sure.
Like & Subscribe
Supererogatory? I’ve seen the word before, but never looked it up.
I know it’s a favorite of mine. I use it at least once a day if not more in my discussions with Pope Leo. For example, just a month prior we were discussing whether or not it’s supererogatory to condemn AI or if we are morally obligated as a duty to condemn AI. We decided it was the latter versus the former.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Mago: yes. I own a 1,300 page, 12lbs Chambers Dictionary. I also own the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. And of course, I own the Chambers Thesaurus.
I love my dictionaries. I use them at least weekly.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Mark Level: thank you for the kind words. They are always encouraging.
I am equal parts my Mother and Father. But, I rarely write about him because he is online. He reads Ian’s site. He’s active and engaged in my life. But what we discuss isn’t really fit for public discourse. We talk a lot of business–his, not mine–and he is super smart. He’s a CPA and probably in the 95th percentile when it comes to intelligence.
Mom is the ultimate pragmatist. Very smart, but not curious like Dad and I are. I thank my lucky stars every day that I’m a pragmatist like my mother and not a idealistic, romantic like my father. And please make no mistake. I absolutely adore my father. Maybe I will say something about him in a post coming up who knows?
Mark Level
Thanks, SPK, always enjoy a little back and forth with you. And to Purple Library Guy, we share the same profession (though I retired in 2021), I sometimes use simple words with an audience that will understand them, and more rich, arcane words with smarter friends or audiences.
I don’t have all those Etymology Books that Sean has, used to have a 2 Volume OED, wrote a great essay, it was actually my roomate’s. 15 pp. of small type on James Joyce’s Finnegan’s wake, probably only covered 6-7 pp. thereof, for a Berkeley Extension TESL class in which the Professor was fortunately a Joyce Fanatic.
I received an A+ in that class, and it wasn’t only the paper. Our Professor had read us the Lord’s Prayer in Old English & my roomate (with the OED) and I caught 2 words easily: “lof”, I was raised Catholic, know of Daily Bread, that was easy, and Theon, as best as I recall, clearly referring to God or Theological subjects.
My paper had 137 footnotes, some from very odd mystical sources like Frater Achad, aka Charles Stansfeld Jones, a weird mystic who lived in a tent in Canada and was friends with the doomed writer & great Qabalist Malcolm Lowry, who wrote under the Volcano.
I specifically cited the use of Caanan and QNA by Joyce. QNA means “jealous” in Hebrew and is related to their hatred of the Caananites. I also shared as a Native Spanish Speaker (okay, it’s my 2nd language which I learned quickly at age 23 traveling from Texas across Central America and back over 6 months, was the Major for my Bachelor’s Degree while History was my Minor) that in Spanish the word celoso/a has 2 denotations, the negative one English has but a positive one as well, you could “jealously” defend a sacred item or a lover, e.g.
Joyce also used Ain Soph, a highly abstract space “above” the Tree of Life in Qabalah, a kind of Negative Space from which Worldly things were brought into being by a sacred Word. Joyce was a Qabalist, how many know? And he japed about “Crodhopper Crowley”, obviously a reference to Aleister C. They were contemporaries and in fact a lot of Joyce’s early poetry and Uncle Al’s are quite similar in themes and prosody.
I’ll cut to the chase and share some conclusions: I found “word-plays and punning usage” in English, French, Spanish, classical Latin and Greek, German, Celtic tongues generally, a few fragments of Arabic, one word in Persian (for a dancing-girl!)
OED helped me quite a bit. Additionally I had owned for many years’ prior The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, still have my well-thumbed copy today. Do you know Spanish Palabra (a word) relates to the shape of a Parabola? Well, it does.
Themes I found in the pp. covered in at least 3 “association clusters”, see the M.H. Abrams Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. II, 5th edition, 1986 included:
Endings, manifest reality vs. the unmanifested, as also the ideal v. the actual, alchemy (esp. some clusters around the word Azoth, the quintessence accd. to some), “night language” and dreams, both astronomical and astrological measurements, sleeping, the flow of water, drinking booze (very Oirish), land (both cultivated as a campo and not), time, “ere” often used punned with Ire-(land) and later, after, “fin” in Finnegan or finish, waking from sleep or from death (ressurection, NDEs), fish and riverine life, disease, Hermeticism (Hermes lord of the crossroads) and secret societies, political groups (esp. Irish), the Old Testament, Greek Myth, Color symbolism. The latter had some coded Red ranting, anti the British oppressor, Redcoats, and Perfidious Albion.
Oh, and I remembered who that great, progressive Catholic is/was, Gary Wills, see here– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Wills
Gary Wills proved you could be a faithful Catholic and still a great Humanist (despite a short time working for William F. Buckley) and a freethinker. Most religions can be tempered or redeemed IF you have the judgement and courage, even Catholicism!! (Zionism cannot be redeemed, it is not a religion, unless like Norm Finkelstein, Aaron Mate, and Max Blumenthal, one classes it as a Satanic church, A Synagogue of Satan. I knew a nice Satanist once, was my roomate; years later he came out as gay and dropped that silly stuff, many people are capable of growth, some sadly not.)
mago
Malcom Lowry, holy shit. There’s an arcane reference I haven’t seen in ages.
Thesaurus? I own a couple of well worn copies.
Let’s not forget Strunk and White and the Elements of Style as long as we’re referencing references.
capelin
I have a dictionary right on my desk, exploited a couple times a week.
Never look up a word online if it’s on paper. Like cash, or other vital skills (feeding oneself…) it’s use it or atrophy those neural pathways.
Grew up with well-thumbed dictionary’s in the house. My parents especially liked their biographical dictionary, and were forever wavin’ it about, using it to settle discussions, and adding notes.
Like & Subscribe
He’s a CPA …
Well, I’ll be. It’s a small world afterall, isn’t it?
Here’s a discussion for you and your mother with some more big words to piss her off. From a deontological perspective, can the duties of a CPA be considered moral? From an axiological perspective, can you be a CPA and be considered a good person?
For myself, my answer to both those questions in regard to the two contrasting ethical systems is a resounding NO. Therefore, I renounced my CPA designation 16 years prior and no regrets. What an interesting process it was. The director of the society of CPAs was astounded, nay dumbfounded, that I requested it. He claimed it was a first. No one had voluntarily renounced their certification that he knew of — I was a first for him.
Why? Because it’s an ignoble profession. It’s the banality of evil. It cannot be morally justified.
Considering that, is my renouncement of my CPA designation and by virtue of that my condemnation of the profession, supererogatory or is it a moral obligation? For me, it was the latter although in the least it is certainly the former.
Has there been sacrifice involved in this decision? You bet ya. Like Ian, the tradeoff is teetering on the precipice of poverty and homelessness every single day. That, unfortunately, is the price we pay in this diabolical system for a clear conscience or I should say clearer conscience because a totally clear conscience is near impossible if not entirely impossible.
It’s true, my children surely don’t love me as much as you love your father. I didn’t shower them with riches. They have not been able to travel the world on my dime if they had wished to do so. I did not have the means to purchase their love if I was so inclined to purchase their love as many wealthy parents do with their children yet pretend otherwise.
That is not to say that I don’t love my children and they don’t love me. I do love them and provided, and continue to provide, that love in non-material ways but those non-material ways don’t carry the same weight and punch in a system driven so emphatically by money.
The modern nuclear family of means is a john and prostitute set-up. The Jesuit high school I attended was the human version of Best In Show. My classmates were effectively well-groomed and pampered show dogs for all intents and purposes. They were symbols of status and wealth. They were a shout out to the world that their parents had arrived. Oh, the Corvettes and the BMWs and the Olds 442s, and the list goes on and on, lining the parking lot every day. No buses for these boys, no sir. They were special and they knew it — my classmates. They were effectively expensive hookers turning tricks for mommy and daddy so they too could say to the world, “see, look at me, I’m somebody.”
Mark Level
Well, LAS, assuming everything you say is true, I have to say I have much more respect for you than I thought I did!! Now your moral clarity in refusing to be a predator speaks highly of you, making that sacrifice. I did that when I was 19 and threw away my Upper Middle Class Privilege card, worked in a Chicago warehouse (early Amazon type thing, packing boxes), then worked in the Oil Patch in Western Louisiana, and Port Arthur Texas by the time I was 20, had to learn to fight when I was on a boat serving the oil rigs, only got beat on twice, won the 3rd fight decisively and was left alone. Over time I got my upper-middle class cred back though, by my early 30s. I was that little whore for mommy and daddy that you describe, but thankfully Dad put the qibosh on that by being a bigot and insane egotist. My parents were from the Silent Generation. Growing up as a smart little nerd in the mid-70s I hated Nixon, the government, the military (“killing gooks is fun”), stopped saying the Pledge of Alliegance by 8th grade. 2 things that saved my soul– at age 13 or 14, discovered Mad Comics (pre-magazine, read that soon after), the Harvey Kurtzman stuff, Jewish humor, no respect for any shibboleths; then after hating the MoR music of my generation, dumb cock-rock etc. got into The Who and proto-punk, New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, the MC5 etc. When I was 17 I heard Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation, and my 3rd Eye Chakra opened, I was on the road to Enlightenment. “I belong to the Blank Generation and I can take it or leave it each time!!” Fuck the rules, the system, think for yourself, develop your own ethics.
It is a shame about your mindless hate for Russians, all Russians except the self-hating and traitors of course. Russia is a great civilization, certainly greater in most respects than the USA if one measures in the long-term, and they have a very long term being founded in the 9th Century, when USA started we were 9 millenia behind them. Did they have terrible things in their history, Czarism, serfs, political violence, no doubt as does every other country. As to your repeated mouthing of State Dept. and CIA talking points, that seems to contradict the idealism you just shared and shade over into “being Evil.” Kind of sad but you are more of a mixed bag than I expected.
Try a thought experiment of reading views opposed to your own biases with an open mind. I do this all the time and it has helped me see thru ridiculous ideas unconsciously absorbed. I’m so Left that the MSM always gives me an opposing view. It’s generally a bad idea when one says an entire group is trash, with few exceptions (Nazi Skinheads, Azov, Rapists, Financial Elites, etc.) “Those worthless Armenians, the Turks did the world a favor!” e.g. (Not an accusation, just an example.)
Ok, topic change: Being in my late 60s, recently I get a few word slips, e.g. the Jesuit University I went to was only slightly more expensive than Cal State Hayward, for “cost” only slightly more I used “causist,” near homonym that migrated from discussing Catholic dogma.
There’s still a very large amount of data in my brain, and I can recall nearly all of it in time, maybe not at the moment it’s needed though, later. And I need to read and correct what I write before posting, right?
Before LAS blowing my mind, I only meant to put one short comment in here, a very risible moment from my teaching career.
So once in most likely a sociology course I was teaching to Juniors, I referred to the “Penal System”. A not-very-bright boy did a homonym drift and assumed I meant “Penile” and called me out!! Thought I was pushing dirty words on teenagers. I just said, here let me write the word on the board, “Penal.” I said “How many athletes in this class?” Many boys’ and girls’ hands go up. I said if you commit a foul, what do you get, “a Penalty” immediate response from many. I said in the Jail/(In)Justice/Penal system you can get “penalized” and incarcerated (from Latin Carcel, the best thing about being a Catholic young is introduction to Latin, thence to Greek.) Fire put out, and some learning occured.
Mark Andrew Oglesby
In short Ian, a waste of my reading time!
mago
@Mark Andrew Oglesby, wow, what a name. Who could make that up?
So, what pray tell (or is it prey?) is on your reading list, assuming one exists.
Mark Level
Good call, mago. MAO (secretly Maoist?) didn’t even realize the joint was a Sean P. Kelly production, not Ian at all, so whining about TL;DR is very off topic.
MAS, aka Mark Level, Spanish, More!! (As the Taco Bell Chihuaha useta say, “Queremos Mas!”)