Tuesday, August 25, 2009

heinous--or, how one word leads to another



Yep, I used this one recently. And, yes, I'm pretty sure I used it correctly. I'm even pretty sure I spelled it correctly. Does that mean I know what it really means?

Nope. Not a clue.

Here's my working definition: dastardly, low-handed, beyond the pale.

And here's what it really means:

Extremely wicked; evil and shocking. Flagitious. From the Old French heineaux, which relates to the modern French, haine, or hatred.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. So "hateable". Just what I thought, though I should have guessed that French connection... Wait a minute. Flagitious. Who the heck ever heard of that?

Well, apparently, I did. At least, I did read Edwin Abbott's Flatland at some point, so certainly came across this quote:

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure...

But I must have glided right over it, as is my wont.

Flagitious: Extremely wicked, deeply criminal, shockingly brutal or cruel.

And where does it come from, then? Why, from the Latin flagitare--to demand earnestly or hotly. In this, shall we say, heated aspect, it is related to "flagrant", a word I think we're all much more familiar with, which stems from flagrare , "to blaze, to burn".

Apparently, flagitium was an early Roman form of public humiliation, in which, in the most typical scenario, a debt-collector would gather a crowd around a person or their home and loudly shame them for not paying up.

Sounds a bit brutal itself.

"Flagitious" seems to have largely passed out of our daily speech, but one thing the word kept turning up in the course of my Googling was a girl grindcore band. From Japan.

If you're into that kind of thing, here's a good post about Flagitious Idiosyncracy in the Dilapidation. There's even a link to a download.

Call me naive, but somehow I don't think they researched the debt collecting practices of ancient Rome when it came time to thinking up their name.

17 comments:

  1. Would a flagitious deed subject the perpetrator to flagellation?

    Speaking of barbaric crimes and punishments, my v-word is conin
    =================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  2. This I do not know. I considered myself lucky to finally track down a link between flagitious and flagrant, which I thought might be the case, but I have been known to pursue a false link or two.

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  3. Flagellate is related to flagrum, according to the short etymology in my desk dictionary, but I won’t whip myself over it.

    I fell in love with flagitious the first time I read it, which may have been in Flatland.
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  4. TNot related then, I guess. Though conflagration would be.

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  5. Conflagration and flagrant seem to be related. Now, let me just reach into my pocket for my full-size O.E.D. and look for more etymologies.
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  6. Yes, fire or at least burning seem to be the common element for all three.

    Someday the complete O.E.D. will be pocket-sized, I bet.

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  7. Nope, I want a full-size, old-fashioned multivolume version.
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  8. It's understandable, but the times will out.

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  9. Heinous crimes I had heard about, but flagitious was new and unknown (like it was to the Japanese girl group, I suspect).

    We used to learn this little rule for spelling, "i after e, except after c", and I always noted 'heinous' as an exception to this rule, so I remembered the spelling.

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  10. So far, the only person who 'flagitious' seems not to be new to is Peter. And I include the girl grindrock band.

    The funny thing about 'heinous' is that I'm pretty sure that in my mind it is sometimes pronounced 'he-in-us'. That would be because I have rarely spoken the word aloud, where ridicule would promptly have corrected me...

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  11. nice post...really u have come up with something different!!

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  12. Thank you, Nazish! And I'm enjoying your metaphysical ponderings over on your blog as well.

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  13. How can you not love a Japanese female grindcore group with a name like Flagitious Idiosyncracy in the Dilapidation? These things warm your heart.

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  14. I liked the fact that in Dickensian England people who couldnt pay their debts were thrown in prison until they could. Nice logic there.

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  15. Marco, all power to this Japanese girl band, but I have to admit that I didn't listen to them. Perhaps it was this description that scared me off:

    Vocalist Makiko uses two different vocal styles, one being a high pitched, shrill scream that is definitely intoxicating as well as a low pitched growl.

    Adrian, yes, debtors' prison sounds a lot worse than having people standing outside your house screaming at you. Having lived by the Boardwalk for a couple of year, I imagine I could hold up to the screaming quite well. You could always pretend they were really calling for someone else.

    But prison? I don't know.

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  16. I have been trying to get to the bottom of this 'copy' issue, but so far,no go. I mean, basically is just text, but when and why it became known as 'copy' I haven't discovered yet.

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