A Day in May
By Raul S. Gonzalez
How did a day in May, than which—poets sing—there is none livelier, ever evolve into Mayday, which is what sea and air craft in distress signal to seek succor? This one case of those word quirks that fascinate people with a feel and fondness for the language of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Gibbon and Churchill.
Take, for instance, the word “scapegoat,” which is very much in vogue these days, thanks to the Contemplacion execution. I bet that you can’t find another word that contains within itself 10 other words that appear sequentially, without the change of a letter, thus: “scape,” “cap,” “cape,” “ape,” “peg,” “ego,” “go,” goat,” “oat,” “at.” Then there’s that adjective that sports all the five vowels—a, e, i, o, u—in that order: “facetious.” I dare you come up with another such.
Was that “Contemplacion execution” I wrote in the preceding paragraph? That makes me as guilty of inaptness as such impeccable writers as Teddyboy Locsin, Canete Demain, J. V. Cruz, Adrian Cristobal, and Conrad Quiros, who should have known that “execute” means “carry out” and, therefore, what is executed is not a person but an order, a verdict, a sentence. But then again, wasn’t Flor Contemplacion “carried out” of Changi prison, feet first?
Quick now, what English word of eight letters has KST in the middle, in the beginning, and in the end? Inkstand, of course: KST middle, IN beginning, AND end.
That was easy. But let’s test you epistemology. What is “the beginning of eternity/ the end of time and space;/The beginning of every end,/and the end of every place?” Sireet. The letter “E.”
Have you ever wondered why both men of the cloth and apes of the jungle are called primates? Well, that’s not quite correct. Apes and monkey are “pry-mates”; monks and prelates are “pree-ma-tes.” But check that out; I’m not totally convinced they are dissimilar.
Primer as in “pry-mer” is what is used to load a musket or give paint a glow. Primer as “pree-mer” is what grade school kids and NBI agents must read to learn good manners and right conduct. No matter how used, privy is pronounced “pree-vee.”
If cheeseburger has cheese and chickenburger has chicken, does it follow hamburger has ham? Ronald McDonald says no, as hamburger is so called because it originated in Hamburg, Germany, and as everyone knows, burg is German for city. Is Hamburg then a city of hams?
According to editor Jerry Elsea, the word “ostracize” (to send to exile, to banish from society) came about this way: Centuries ago, an African tribe splattered wrongdoers with chicken eggs before casting them out of their village. One day, a crime so heinous was committed by San Tse, chief of the tribe, that the tribesmen felt hen eggs were too soft to pelt him with. And so the medicine woman, Dame Trio, asked: “What sort of egg do you want thrown at Mayor San Tse?” And the mob shouted, “Ostrich-size”; and Webster found himself a new word.
OK, let’s play a game. Form as many words as you can from unrelated letter sounds. Here goes: CD (seedy), MT (empty), XL (excel), DK (decay), NVS (envious). In his book, Wordplay, Max Nurnberg came up with this dialogue reportedly heard in Bubut’s Giraffe. He (to waitress): FUNEX? She: YSVFX. He: FUNEM? She: YSVFM. He: OKLFMNX. Per Bubut’s translation—He: Have you any eggs? She: Why, yes, we have eggs. He: Have you any ham? She: Why, yes, we have ham. He: Okay. I’ll have ham and eggs. OG, that’s a QT, if not a BUT.
From words to punctuation marks, specifically commas, there’s this New York Times editorial run just after Ninoy Aquino was assassinated: “He was shot, at pointblank range, as he was escorted from his plane by security guards.” This drew this correction from reader Edward Dorson of Denmark: “He was shot at pointblank range as he was escorted from his plane, by security guards.”
My favorite example of the transforming power of commas is this: “Woman, without her, man is a beast.” Now this: “Woman, without her man, is a beast.”
Incidentally, comma comes from the Greek “koptein,” which means “to cut off.” So I better koptein this piece now before Nila decides this paper can stand only so much corn and kopteins my column once and for all.
May all the days of your May be lovely and none of them turn into a Mayday.
This piece by the author originally appeared in the opinion section of the May 2, 1995 issue of the now defunct The Evening Paper in the Philippines.
