Tuesday, October 26, 2010

orrery

Mostly, this is a blog about words or concepts I see fairly frequently, sometimes even use, but don't really know as much about as I ought. Every once in awhile though, a word will sneak into a perfectly ordinary sentence that I could swear I have never heard used before. I don't mean technical words, or foreign ones, I mean ones that the writer of the sentence uses casually, as though it would be easily transparent to the common reader. If the common reader is anything like me, though, they are almost certainly wrong.

"Orrery" is one of those words. I came across it in the forward to The Discovery of France, by Graham Robb. Although I haven't gotten any further than the introduction, it looks like an interesting book, claiming to be an exploration of a now vanished, rural France that Robb thinks has not been adequately charted. He knows urban France and he knows the France of literature, which he has studied, but this France he apparently discovered largely by biking around it.

Anyway, in attempting to give an idea of his objectives, he speaks of trying to give "a sense of the orrery of disparate separate spheres" Now quite frankly, I have no idea what he talking about there. I can plug in various guesses--disonance, connection, echoing--but really, none of it would I stake a dollar on. Maybe we better just move on to the definition.

...All right, all right--I must have seen this word before, even if I don't remember it. An orrery is a mechanical model that illustrates the orbits of planets and moons around the sun or a sunlike center. I don't know if Robb's model is truly heliocentric, but I assume if it is that sun would be Paris--or perhaps the King. And of course his sentence makes perfect sense now. I suppose spheres should have been the key.

When I read that these mechanisms were often operated by clockwork, I thought "Damn--I knew this word had something to do with hours!" But my etymological investigations showed me to be wrong again. This one however, could not have been deduced.

An orrery is called that because it was named after Charles Boyle, the fourth Earl of Orrery, who was also and more familiarly to American ears, the Earl of Cork. (Sometimes it seems like all roads lead to Cork in my life, though I don't know exactly why they should.) Was Lord Boyle a famous scientist in his spare time? Well, possibly, but in fact this invention was thought up by George Graham (so, though English, possibly some sort of distant relative of mine) put together by a J. Rowley, and given to the Earl and named in his honor.        

According to Wikipedia, Orrery comes from the Gaelic orbhraighe, or Orb's people, so a tribe, which later became the name of the territory and then the barony. I can't find out more about this Orb or Orbh, but I hope he--if it was a he--liked to ponder the night sky in his time. It would be fitting.

25 comments:

  1. "A sense of the orrery of disparate separate spheres."

    I understand what he means but it's a really horrible sentence.

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  2. Well, to be fair, it is only part of the sentence. It was the only part I scribbled down while I was at work. But yeah, it could be better. Most of his writing is not like that,at least so far, which makes it all the odder.

    And here I was, thinking you were going to take issue with the Gaelic.

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  3. No, I'm sorry I can get past its horribleness. Are you sure you're quoting it correctly? Maybe you left out a comma after orrery? Spheres in an orrery of course can be compared - its the reason you build an orrery in the first place - so disparate is not a good word.

    He should have said something like this:

    "Employing the metaphor of the orrery I wish to convey my impression of a country made up of distinct, separate spheres."

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  4. Also I'm wondering if he really did write disparate separate or if that is misquote by yours truly.

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  5. Damn. Blogger malfunctioned as I was sending my comment. Anyway, thanks to Amazon look inside, I was able to find the quote, which I did misquote slightly. It starts,"I have tried to give a sense of the orrery of disparate, concurrent spheres..."

    Well, in any case, I'm glad to know the word. It probably won't come up that often, though.

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  6. Seana

    Christ that's worse. Of course the spheres are concurrent, in an orrery everything moves together. The word is redundant. And disaparate still doesnt work. The whole thing is a mess.

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  7. Oaky. I guess I'll just have to hope that the rest of the book is written in simpler tone. I can see the impulse. Once he thought of the orrery image, he just really wanted to use it.

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  8. I love to come here and learn new words. I had never come across "orrery" before.

    Something in me wants to cry, "The horror, the horror!"

    Followed by, "The orrery! The orrery!"

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  10. Thank you Seana, I'm sure "orrery" will be handy when it comes to using obfuscation to entertain myself. (And here's to hoping that sentence made sense..)

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  11. I got that horror echo, too, Kathleen. "The Orrery" would be a good title for a horror short story, I think.

    Glenna, you can play around with using it, but I wouldn't do it over on Adrian's blog if I were you.

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  12. I have been asking myself the question, "Horror or Orrery?", but it is an impossible one (to say).

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  13. Philip, tricky, yes, but very fitting for the season.

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  14. I think we have an orrery here in Philadelphia, built by David Rittenhouse, for whom Rittenhouse Square is named. The strangeness of the word goes nicely with the notion that the physical world can be nearly replicated with a mechanical device. That notion seems quaint at the very least today.
    ======================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  15. I don't know if we've discussed this before, but the Rittenhouses also have a Santa Cruz connection. In fact, one member is a bit reviled here because he left his earthquake damaged property a hole in the ground long after other spaces had rebuilt.

    Most people I know don't think that the building that finally went up actually solved anything.

    Maybe the family should have stuck with orreries.

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  16. I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered such a discussion, so I don’t think you had brought up the subject before. I quite like the article’s reference to “the city’s 19-year-long game of post-Loma Prieta Tetris.”
    ======================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  17. I should mention that it was not until I got to San Francisco that I realized how the earthquake had changed the immediate environment.

    The convention hotel and the hotel where I stayed would have been right next to the old Embarcadero Freeway, I think.

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  18. I think in the case of the Rittenhouse Building, they probably should have kept on playing.

    I didn't know that part of San Francisco well enough to really feel the loss of that part of the highway viscerally, but that kind of change of the cityscape affects people for a long, long time.

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  19. I didn't remember that part of the city at all from my previous visits in 1978 and 1987. I may have driven over it.

    I read an article that mentioned the Ferry Building's rejuvenation after the highway was torn down, for instance, because now it was connected directly to the city again. (And I read about the Ferry Building, in turn, in Dashiell Hammett. I don't think the freeway lasted long, so the earthquake may have been the occasion of some inadvertent urban renewal.)

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  20. The Ferry Building is really quite the happening place these days. I haven't ever been there to do anything but wait for the ferry, but it's quite a gourmand's alley, apparently, and they even have a decent little bookstore, or really book annex where you can while away the time.

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  21. I bought some delicious fruit in the Ferry Building, and I also browsed in that bookstore. I like that the building has become an urban attraction while retaining something of its original function as a ferry terminal.

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  22. I've taken the ferry up to San Rafael when visiting my sister many times. It never gets old.

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  23. I checked the ferry schedules one evening to see if they would let me go ... somewhere for dinner and still get back to San Francisco

    What is the most attractive ferry destination for a visitor?

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  24. I think Sausalito is probably most known for dining, but Larkspur Landing which is the San Rafael side has had some good restaurants and views when I've been up that way for dinner in the past.

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  25. I should have thought about asking you that question while I was there. (I didn't know before I arrived that I'd be so close to the Ferry Building.)

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