kerfuffle

kerfuffle n. chiefly British: disturbance, fuss--Webster 3

[ker-FUH'-ful] [ScGlae cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled]
Alternative spellings: curfuffle, kurfuffle

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THE WORD IN USE:
New York Times
March 25, 2007
"When Will Fredo Get Whacked?"
Op-Ed Column
By Frank Rich

Even Bush loyalists have rarely shown respect for this crony whom the president saddled with the nickname Fredo; they revolted when Mr. Bush flirted with appointing him to the Supreme Court and shun him now. The attorney general’s alleged infraction —misrepresenting a Justice Department purge of eight United States attorneys, all political appointees, for political reasons — seems an easy-to-settle kerfuffle next to his infamous 2002 memo dismissing the Geneva Conventions’ strictures on torture as “quaint” and “obsolete.”
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ETYMOLOGY:
No one seems to know from where or why the first element of kerfuffle, "ker," appeared in 1843 in England. Possibly, some one attempted to represent an akinetic pause before a fall or a kind of wind-up or a deep breath before throwing a punch, a ball, or some other object in an ultimately concussive event.

Etymologists at the OED put it this way: "The first element ["ker"appears] in numerous *onomatopic or echoic formations intended to imitate the sound or the effect of the fall of some heavy body, as kerchunk, -flop, -plunk, -slam, -slap, -slash, -souse, -swash, -swosh, -thump, -whop, etc."

(*The onomatopic formation, or onomatopoeia, is a word derived from the sound of that which is being named or described. Examples: zip, skirl, bubble, sizzle.)

Kerplunk! So much for the mysterious yet effective and increasingly popular opening element: "ker." Now on to the root of the word.

The root of kerfuffle, "fuf" or "fuff," is unfamiliar to most Americans. The British, however, can draw from a large plate of familiar meanings, as the following offerings from the OED demonstrate. (I've highlighted language that seems to fitting to a disturbance or a fuss.)

• fuff: the ‘spit’ of a cat
• fuff: v. To puff. Said of a fire, breeze etc.; also, of a person in anger or out of breath. Also, to fume and fuff. . . .
• fuff: a. Used to imitate a sound, b. An exclamation of contempt.
• fuffle: rare v. To throw into disorder; to jerk about; to hustle, treat with contumely. Hence fuffled ppl. a. Also fuffle n., violent exertion, fuss.

In sum, kerfuffle, which means a disturbance or squabble, opens with "ker-" a sort of "proto-intensifier" and ends with the root "fuffle"--a fuss.

This is one of those words that's fun to see, to say and to hear. Each time I see kerfuffle, it seems to sub-audibly pop or fuff-up from the page like a dog happy to see me.

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BLOGGIN' JOHN SAYS:
Reading any further is up to you. If you do read all or any of the 27 quotations below, you'll be doing so for the sheer fun of it.

While deep in the "words worthy" depths of the OED Online, I spotted this set of quotations featuring "ker-words" and found them amusing. I thought others might enjoy seeing them as well.

Hey, maybe we could start a club, the Kerclub Club! Everybody would promise to further the power of ker-words by using one every day and reading books by the ker-savvy writers quoted below: Mark Twain, Zora Neile Hurston, T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, as well as scribes at Punch, The Observer, and The New Yorker.

Ker-wow! Am I ever ker-fired-up about these ker-words! Hope you like 'em too.

OPTIONAL:
"KER-WORDS" IN USE:

1836 Public Ledger (Philadelphia) 27 July (Th.), Down I came chewallop..and overset the chair.

1843 Major Jones's Courtship i. (Farmer), Kerslash! I went rite over Miss Stallinses spinnin' wheel onto the floor.

Ibid. (Bartlett), Kerslosh he went into a tub of water.

1844 ‘J. SLICK’ High Life N.Y. II. 88 We drew up co-wallop right afore Jase's house.

Ibid. 154 Ca-smash went the chair.

1850 Americans at Home I. (Bartlett), The dugout hadn't leaped more'n six lengths from the bank, afore..ke-souse I went.

1854 M. J. HOLMES Tempest & Sunshine 2 Then, again, you'll go in co-slush.

1855 Spirit of Times 29 Sept. 387/1 And the fust thing you knows he falls and down he comes kerflumix.

1858 S. P. AVERY Harp of Thousand Strings 44 He fell ‘kerslap’ upon the hot goose of the pressman!

1875 My Opin. & Betsey Bobbet's 99, I fell kerslap over a rail that lay in the grass.

1884 ‘MARK TWAIN’ Huck. Finn xxiii. 234 Jes' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-blam!

1885 J. RUNCIMAN Skippers & Shellbacks 85 They hoists him over and lets him go ker-whop.

1897 Outing (U.S.) XXX. 127/2 Across the lower end of the swamp..back we go kerslosh-kersplash for another quarter of a mile.

1899 F. T. BULLEN Way Navy 52 Down came the bunch of sacks kerslam on the deck below.

1903 Outing XLIII. 83/1 The sound made by the water when the frog dives, we used to express when we were boys, by the word ‘kerplunk’.

1908 Magnet I. 1, ‘Ker-woosh!’ ejaculated the junior, as he sprawled on the floor over Harry Wharton's legs. ‘What's that in the way?’

1923 Public Opinion 15 June 565/1 With both feet set down kerplunk he closed the interview.

1926 F. M. FORD Man could stand Up II. iv. 164 Kerumph the wagons of coal would fly over until we recalled our planes.

1935 H. G. WELLS Things to Come xi. 96 Can I go when I grow up? And see the other side of the moon! And plump back ker-splosh! into the sea!

1937 New Masses 26 Oct. 18/1 Their [sc. Hollywood journalists'] vernacular divides the failures into three subdivisions: flop, flopperoo, and ker-plunk.

1939 T. S. ELIOT Old Possum's Pract. Cats 17 Growltiger to his vast surprise was forced to walk the plank. He who a hundred victims had driven to that drop, At the end of all his crimes was forced to go ker-flip, ker-flop.

1939 J. CARY Mr. Johnson 41, I go trow him..In de river Thames, kersplash.

1942 Z. N. HURSTON in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 26/2 Ker-blam-er-lam-er-lam! And dat was de last of Brer Engine-driving Monk.

1959 M. GILBERT Blood & Judgment vi. 59 The boat hit the surface with a solid ker-splash.

1963 Punch 30 Jan. 178/2 The boot..kerplonked to the carpet as straight and true as Newton's apple.

1963 New Yorker 29 June 26 That's why I nearly went kerplunk when you walked out of here with him.

1970 Observer (Colour Suppl.) 15 Feb. 36/4 They wear..extraordinary bathing costumes with Mighty Mouse zigzags across their chests, so that one half-expects them to rush about the beach shouting ‘Pow!’ and ‘Zap!’ and ‘Kerrump!’

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celerity

celerity n. Swiftness, speed. Now chiefly (as distinguished from velocity) with reference to the movements or actions of living beings.
--OED Online, dictionary.oed.com.(3-27-2007).

•

celerity: a. Promptness, alacrity.
b : swiftness, speed
--Webster 3. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (28 Mar. 2007).

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ETYMOLOGY


Celerity derives ultimately from the Latin root celer, which means swift. The full etymology: [ME. celerite, a. F. célérité, ad. L. celeritt-em, f. celer swift.]
--OED Online, dictionary.oed.com.

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COMMENTS FROM B'N'J'N:


The OED's definition of celerity (top of the page) usefully delimits the word's work "chiefly to the movements or actions of living beings." The Webster 3 makes no specific reference to actions of living beings; rather, it gives simple attention to the qualities of alacrity and speed.

Celerity and velocity share a history that goes back to 1834 . Velocity was the first of the two words to appear, in 1480. Then in 1843 along came celerity. Both words were understood to mean "speed" and their parity lasted 109 years.

Then, in 1934, Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén, through his work in a field of physics called magnetohydrodynamics, devised a method of speed measurement called Alfven speed, or velocity. Thus it was that in 1943 velocity took off into a rapidly rising and ultimately perduring career in the world of scientific measurement.

With velocity now decamped to science, celerity took full control of "the movements or actions of living beings." See examples of it in use below.
--OED Citations on celerity, velocity, and Alfvén.
--The Complete Word Book. Mary A. De Vries. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1991.

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CELERITY IN USE

From the OED (with starting dates):

• 1591 HORSEY I speed my bussynes with as much seleritie as I can.
• 1607 TOPSELL The cats followed with the same celerity and agility.
  
• 1751 JOHNSON My quickness of apprehension, and celerity of reply.
• Mod. [Modern Period] The celerity of the squirrel's movements.
  

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From The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996.
" Celerity is never more admired / Than by the negligent." William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act 3, sc. 7, l. 24-5.
“A good rebuke,” as Antony remarks (l. 25).
--Columbia University Press, 1996.

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Celerity in Use As a Brand NAME
Celerity, with its denotation of speed and its intimation of efficiency is well qualified to serve as a brand name. Celerity IT Technology and Business Integration Consulting tells prospective clients that "Celerity’s services are designed with one primary objective in mind, to make our customers more productive, and therefore more profitable."
--Celerity IT Technology and Business Integration Consulting

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Celerity in Use: Electronic Gaming
The source of the three definitions of celerity presented in the next paragraph is The Urban Dictionary of Slang, an on-line dictionary built upon citations contributed by on-line visitors rather than by professional etymologists. Sites like this are worth visiting if only to see English at play, and it's possible that one might be just be looking at a word in its "incubation" period before moving on to standard dictionaries. So the citations from The Urban Dictionary of Slang are not "authoritative," in any scholarly sense. Rather they are active curiosities with potential for wider use.

Here are definitions of celerity culled by an Urban Dictionary of Slang contributor named Nathan:

• "[T]he [s]peed, haste, rapidity or quickness" of gamer's movements;
  
• "Celerity is the defining trait of reflex oriented activities like tennis or *"halo"; and
  
• "Gamers often haveceleritous reflexes and athletes run celeritously." (Nathan) Jul.17, 2004.--The Urban Dictionary of Slang http://www.urbandictionary.com.

*"Halo" is a best-selling space-combat game for the X-Box.

Beside defining celerity, Nathan wanted to show the adjectival and adverbial forms of the noun. But modern dictionaries do not list adjectival or adverbial forms for celerity, because those words are no longer active. So Nathan invented celeritous (adj.) and celeritously (adv.), nonce words which get the job done well enough, even though they take forms different from those of the originals, which were celerious (meaning "swift, fleet") and celeriously (in a swift manner).
--OED Online, dictionary.oed.com.

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As lagniappe, I offer a curious word that the reader might someday have fun using at, say, a football game, a race, or a track meet. It is celeripedean (n. and adj.), which as a noun means "A swift footman." Here's my guess at its pronunciation: [cel-er-i-PEED'-e-an].--OED Online, dictionary.oed.com.

"Congratulations, Alexander! You have won the race! We celebrate you: a celeripedean's celeripedean!"--B'N'J.

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grandiloquence, stultiloquence

grandiloquence: [gran-DIL'-uh-kwence] n. Pompous speech or expression; bombast.

Grandiloquence refers to an attitude of haughtiness, especially in one's means of communication.
-Olsen, David. The Words You Should Know. Holbroke, MA: Bob Adams, 1991.

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THE WORD IN USE
"I may not always employ the grandiloquence my opponent does, but I believe I have a commonsense solution to the problem he has just outlined."
--Olsen, David. The Words You Should Know. Holbroke, MA: Bob Adams, 1991.

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ETYMOLOGY
grandiloquence 1589, from L. grandiloquentia, from grandiloquus "using lofty speech," from grandis "big" + -loquus "speaking," from loqui "speak."
--Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com

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BLOGGIN' JOHN COMMENTS
Imagine you go to a meeting, where you hear three speakers, each one creating, to your ear, a radically different effect.

• The first speaker expresses thought with "fluency, force, and appropriateness, so as to appeal to the reason or move the feelings" [OED]: eloquent

• The second talks in a style that is inflated, over-the-top, bombastic: grandiloquent.

• And the third babbles on with silly, foolish verbiage.
  

What would be useful here is a word appended with the suffix -loqui that aptly describes the babbling, foolish style.

Here are two possibilities.

• We have what might be termed a "not-word," ineloquent, which Webster 3 defines as "not eloquent : lacking in eloquence." The word is helpful, I suppose, in its "negative capability," but its insubstantiality ranks it among vague, lightweight descriptors.
  
• Happily, we also have a far more substantive alternative, a word with some condescension in it, stultiloquent, which Webster 3 defines as "silly talk; babble." This word smirks and sneers, as did its Latin progenitor, stultiloquentia, whose root, stultus, means foolish. Stultiloquent a good fit for describing the "silly, foolish" expression of the third speaker mentioned above.
  

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Thus we have a set of three descriptors to cover the full range of possibilities:

• grandiloquence, with its errant pomposity and bombast;
• eloquence, with its fluency, force, and appropriateness , that effectively appeal to reason and the emotions; and
• stultiloquence, with the "fool power" (pun intended) of its robust root, stultus.
  

And, oh yes, I almost forgot there is also ineloquence (with its vague range of "negative capabilities").--B'n'J'n

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