venal

venal adj. (VEE-nuhl, VEE-n-l)

1 : capable of being bought or obtained for money or other valuable consideration
: made matter of trade or barter;
especially : open to corrupt influence and especially bribery

• "venal legislator"
• "venal services"
• "venal votes"

2 : originating in, characterized by, or associated with corrupt bargaining

• "venal throne"
• "venal arrangement with the police"

—"venal." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged . Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (9 Jun. 2007).

————————————————————————————————— ETYMOLOGY

mmLatin venalis = for sale

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Venal IN USE

Karbala, Iraq, 2004

FROM "Tribal Loyalties" by Edward Wong—The New York Times, Sec. 6: Book Review, Sunday, May 27, 2007,18.

A book review of The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, by Ali A. Allawi, Yale University Press.

"As the Iraq war enters its fifth year, an old saying can be heard more and more often in the homes, cafes and streets of the country: “Because of a lack of horses, they put saddles on the dogs.” There are no real Iraqi leaders, a Kurdish friend told me, and the Americans have blindly, and often desperately, propped up politicians who are venal, ineffective and more than a little megalomaniacal."

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Venal IN USE

From "The Rove Da Vinci Code" by Frank Rich —The New York Times Magazine, May 21, 2006.

Politicians, particularly but not exclusively in the Karl Rove camp, seem to believe that voters of ''faith'' are suckers who can be lured into the big tent and then abandoned once their votes and campaign cash have been pocketed by the party for secular profit.

Nowhere is this game more naked than in the Jack Abramoff scandal: the felonious Washington lobbyist engaged his pal Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, to shepherd Christian conservative leaders like James Dobson, Gary Bauer and the Rev. Donald Wildmon and their flocks into ostensibly ''anti-gambling'' letter-writing campaigns.They were all duped: in reality these campaigns were engineered to support Mr.Abramoff's Indian casino clients by attacking competing casinos.

While that scam may be the most venal exploitation of ''faith'' voters by Washington operatives, it's all too typical. This history repeats itself every political cycle: the conservative religious base turns out for its party and soon finds itself betrayed.

Above: Jack Abramhoff

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VENAL versus VENIAL

In Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions, Harry Shaw — writer, editor, lecturer, teacher, and word mavin — clearly and compactly distinguishes venal from venial and offers tips on how to remember each word's meaning:

These words look alike and sound somewhat alike but venal
(VEE-nuhl, VEE-n-l) has a connotation of corruption. Venial (VEE-ni-uhl), a term of mild reproach, means "excusable," "pardonable." It may help to keep them straight by remembering that venal comes from a Latin term meaning "for sale" (venalis) and venial from Latin venia ("forgiveness").

Associate venal with penal and venial with genial. "This corrupt administration has entered into many venal agreements." "Not sending them a wedding present was my venial offense against bood manners."—Harry Shaw. Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions. New York: Washington Square Press. 1975.

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QUID PRO QUO = "something for something"

A VENAL greement
is a quid pro quo
with corrupt
influence.

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defenestration

Defenestration

Bruce Mitchell 1996
Oil on canvas 18" x 48"

DEFINITION from the Oxford English Dictionary.

defenestration n.

(de-fen-uh-stray'-shun)

mThe action of throwing out of a window.

Defenestration of Prague, the action of the Bohemian insurgents who, on the 21st of May 1618, broke up a meeting of Imperial commissioners and deputies of the States, held in the castle of the Hradshin, and threw two of the commissioners and their secretary out of the window; this formed the prelude to the Thirty Years' War

[from Latin de down, down from + fenestra a window.] 1620

• I much admire the manner in which the defenestration is shown [in a picture].—1837SOUTHEY
  

• Which commencing at the defenestration of Prague..terminated in the peace of Westphalia.—1863 NEALE

mHence (as a back-formation) fenestrate verb transitive (usually jocular), to throw out of a window; fenestrated past part. adj.

• Two of the defenestrated men.—1620 H. WOTTON

• The word defenestrate means ‘to throw out of the window’..but there is no good authority for its use.—1915 Lit. Digest
  

• Prague..seemed a good place, gloomy and defenestrated" [perhaps, punningly "windowless"?].—1927 C. CONNOLLY

• Anne Ramsdell, a brilliant math professor at Oxford,..escapes death by stabbing but is thrown out of her third-story window... Anne meets and falls in love with the man who had defenestrated her at Oxford.— 1974 Publishers Weekly

"defenestration" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 1 June 2007 (http://dictionary.oed.com).

—————————————————————————————————— Defenestration IN USE:

From "Operation Freedom from Iraqis"
OP-ED Essay by Frank Rich,

The new White House policy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has joked, is "bame and run." It started to take shape just before the midterm elections last fall, when Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memo (propitiously leaked after his defenestration) suggesting that the Iraqi people might "have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."

Frank Rich. "Operation Freedom from Iraqis." OP-ED The New York Times. Sunday, May. 27, 2007.

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Rumsfeld:
"Say wha- . . . Me?
Out that window?
Right now!?"

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A "Word's Worth" Exclusive:

What Probably Happened:

The Moments Preceeding the Defenestration

As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stares through the fated window on the top floor of The White House—with the President peering over his shoulder through the same window—he says:

"You know, Mister President, outside that window are millions of Americans standing stalwart in gratitude to me (and thus by extension, to you, sir) for the policies and practices that I have given you in well-advised advisements, advisements which I then advisedly brought to fruition, undiminished in any way by apparent (i.e., seeming) need, hewing ever and increasingly more full-heartedly to the guiding principal of parsimony in the field, all of this, I should say, Sir, redounding splendidly to the benefit of us — ultimately, Sir, I should say, Sir, with respect, Sir — of us all."

Concurrently, throughout the Secretary's encomium — not a word of which reached the President's ears — The Defenistrator-qua-Decider-in-Chief pondered how to manage the next problem: that of gracefully moving the Secretary, whose shoulders are broad of beam, through that single available window—one of good height from the ground, but of narrow dimensions in construction—one not propitiously designed for ease of departure during a defenestration.

Bush: "I ga-duh defatstresna yuh, Rummy."

Rumsfeld: No! Not by window! Please! Maybe the back stairs? Or helicopter from the roof?
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At sea, of course, we
call it "walking the plank."
Cleverly, the cartoonist here
has created a leaning (to the
Right*), listing structure that is
part White House, part ship at sea.

*Antanaclasis: a form, yes, of the Pun.

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A QUESTION:

Now that we've discussed the meaning of defenestration, the question arises: What does fenestration mean? To throw something or someone up from the ground into a building's high window? No. Read on . . . .



DEFINITION from the Oxford English Dictionary.

fenestration

(fen-uh-stray'-shun) 1846

1. The arrangement of windows in a building

• The fenestration of Soane's building was praiseworthy.—1846 Civ. Eng. & Archit. Jrnl.

• I see no difference of principle in the fenestration of the Early French and the Early English Pointed styles.—1879 Sir G. G. SCOTT

2. Anatomical a. The process of becoming perforated; the formation of small holes. b. The condition of being fenestrated or perforated.

"fenestration" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 1 June 2007 (http://dictionary.oed.com.)

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Q&A

Q. Who or what qualifies for a defenestration?

A. Anything, anybody. The window's wide open.

"Defenestration of Bedclothes"
www.citynoise.org

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Read more >> Options >>

bonhomie

The cast of "Cheers," a TV
show, which, like a glass of
Sam's best champaigne,
bubbled with bonhomie.

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DEFINITION

bon·ho·mie n. [bon·hom·mie] or bänm·hom·mie]
Good-natured easy friendliness : warm open geniality : atmosphere of good cheer
• "Christmas bonhomie"
• "the bonhomie of a fraternity reunion"
• "an undying bonhomie radiated from her" -- Jean Stafford

ETYMOLOGY:

French: bonhomie from bonhomme "good-natured man" (from bon good + homme man) + -ie. —Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam- Webster, 2002.

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Bonhomie IN USE

In the following article, a northern journalist returns to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina to find "still palpable" the "Cajun bonhomie that [once] lit up Crescent City."

My most memorable evening was my last, when a group gathered at Galatoire's. It was a Saturday night, and ambling down a sparsely populated Bourbon Street to the 101-year-old restaurant did not bode well; on my last visit, the street was a shoulder-to-shoulder honky-tonk. But my spirits brightened considerably once we stepped inside. The place was packed with what were obviously regulars, who turned the long, mirror-lined dining room into an infectiously entertaining party. One of its ringleaders was our waiter, Gilbert "Louis" LaFleur. I can recall almost nothing about the food that evening, save the considerable sting of the two Sazeracs that I nursed over several hours. Instead, what's embedded in my memory are LaFleur's indomitable high spirits, a Cajun bonhomie that lit up Crescent City restaurants for more than 40 years, most of them at Galatoire's. His booming voice, as it led rousing rounds of "Happy Birthday," is my favorite mental postcard of the trip. LaFleur personified the soul of a city that was down but clearly not out, and I was grateful to him for capping my visit on a much-needed high note. Three days later, my host sent an e-mail: The day after our dinner, LaFleur suffered a heart attack and died--New Orleans finds its recipe for recovery. Despite Hurricane Katrina's swath of destruction, the spirit of bonhomie in the city's food community is still palpable.—Author: Nelson, Rick. | From: Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) | Date: August 24, 2006.

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IN USE:

From The Chicago Tribune

The White House and congressional leadership met this morning to try and bridge the partisan gulf between them on Iraq War funding and it was soon clear that all the bipartisan bonhomie on display yesterday on the immigration reform had vanished today.

Republicans and Democrats each, not surprisingly, blamed the other side for the continued stalemate.

For the White House and Republican lawmakers, the problem was that Democrats kept insisting on timelines for drawing down U.S. troops, "surrender dates" as Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House Minority Leader acidly described them. — Posted by Frank James at 1:15 pm CDT http://newsblogs.chicsgotribune.com

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IN USE

Audrey Tautou as Amélie

One film critic speaks for many in his response to the 2001 film Amélie:

"With its generous bonhomie, unexpected twists and ceaseless invention, Amélie is, in my humble opinion, not only the most accomplished film of the year but the best of the new millennium."—James Cameron-Wilson

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The Bonhomie

—————————————————————————————————————————————
A 14th CENTURY FRENCH TERM OF DERISION: "Jacques Bonbomme"

Circa 1356, French nobility begin using the term "Jacques Bonbomme" (James Goodman) as an ironically down-turned epithet for the rebellious peasantry.

May 21, 1358, hundred peasants of Beauvaisis tackle the castles of their area, raping and killing the inhabitants, burning the residences. Their revolt extends very quickly to the farming community from the Paris basin.

It was the largest of the "jacqueries" attacks in the French campaigns.

These revolts are thus named according to the name of Jacques or Jacques Bonhomme given to the peasants

Here is how The Century Dictionary accounts the term "Jacques Bonhomme":

Bonhomme (bo-nom'), Jacques. [F., 'James Goodman.'] A contemptuous sobriquet which the nobility in France gave to the people, par- ticularly the peasants.
See Jacqlerie [immediately below].

Jacquerie (zhak-e-ree’) n. French., A revolution the effects of which were to be felt at every fireside in France.
• "a new Jacquerie, in which the victory was to remain with Jacques Bonhomme." –Macaulay, Mirabeau

The French name Jacques, being extremely common, came to be used as a general term for a man, particularly a young man, of common or menial condition. — The Century Dictionary (http://www.leoyan.com/century-dictionary.com/index.html)

•
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bon·ho·mous adj. [bän häm' uhs]

Full of bonhomie : warmly genial

"bonhomous." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (26 May 2007).

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Bonhomous IN USE

From The Washington Post

George Tenet: a "bonhomous boss-pleaser"

"There was hope [among New York Dems] that Bob Woodward's book 'Plan of Attack' would provide the unassailable smoking gun -- a fake-WMD skeleton in Scooter Libby's closet, or an up-close moron moment with the president vivid enough to power negative reinforcement forever on late-night TV. But Woodward mainly gives flesh and blood to all the shadows of the first term: How Secretary of State Colin Powell was cheesed off with the rush to war but went along with it anyway. How Vice President Cheney was caught in the psychodrama of unfinished business in Iraq from the first Gulf War. How CIA Director George Tenet is the kind of chunky, bonhomous boss-pleaser who shouts "It's a slam dunk!" in a meeting with the president when he knows it's what he wants to hear. A dinner party Woodward memorably describes at Cheney's house with all the neo-con cronies dumping on Powell feels like a trolls' convention in the Hall of the Mountain King, but then nobody ever thought a night at Dick and Lynne's place would be a fizzy edition of 'Dinner for Five'."

—Date: April 22, 2004 | Author: Tina Brown"Bucks Without the Buzz: Democrats' Sedate Party" From: The Washington Post

mm]George Tenet

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Bon Ami

Q. Do bonhomie and the brand name "Bon Ami" mean the same thing?

A. No. In standard American English, "bonhomie" signifies "of cheerful spirit," while "Bon Ami" signfies a well-known brandname for a powdered household cleaner sold by the Faultless Starch/Bon Ami Company of Kansas City, Missouri. Happily, both words carry happy overtones. Also, bonhomie is pronouned [ bänm·hom·mie ], whereas the English brand name Bon Ami is pronounced with a stress on the second syllable: [bon AH'·me].

With a cautionary note that we begin to border on the hazards of fine-pointed confusions when we realize that

1. In "bonhomie," English has a French-borrowed synonym meaning "good cheer":
2. In "bonhomous," English has a French-borrowed adjective meaning "full of bonhomie";
3. English has no French-borrowed word for "good fellow."
4. In "Bon Ami," English has a brand name for a powdered household cleaner.
5. In "Bon Ami," French has a word that means "good friend."
6. And while we are looking at the OED page displaying bonhomie, we might add—to no good purpose other than fun—that a word we have not thus far talked about, bonham, a word that might appear to be a French borrowing, is, in fact, an Irish borrowing that means "sucking-pig." (Who know? Some day you may have need for the word to impress a friend on a visit to an animal farm or for a six-letter word during a round of Scrabble.—B.J.)

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pastiche

Pastiche is a knowing imitation:

Or an arrangement of many-in-one:

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PRONUNCIATION

Pastiche: [ pah-steetsh' ] .

——————————————————————————————————

DEFINITIONS

pastiche noun

1. a. A novel, poem, painting, etc., incorporating several different styles, or made up of parts drawn from a variety of sources.


Eiji's fantasies are..pastiches of Japanese pop culture:..gangster movies, Sega video games and manga (comic books)2002

b. A musical composition incorporating different styles; a medley.

• Set to a musical pastiche by Paul Sullivan (including rock, Japanese flute and the ‘Lone Ranger’ theme), the work suffered from Keystone Kops-like silliness. 2003

2. a. A work, esp. of literature, created in the style of someone or something else; a work that humorously exaggerates or parodies a particular style.

• In "Holy Disorders" there is a marvellous pastiche of a ghost story by M. R. James. 1990

b. The technique of incorporating distinctive elements of other works or styles in a literary composition, design, etc.

• Mr. Burne-Jones is not accused..of plagiarism, but of pastiche, which is a very different thing 1892
• London-based artist Gavin Turk uses pastiche to make visual points by recycling a variety of pop icons 2000.

OED Online.com

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IN USE

Pastiche in its sense of "incorporating distinctive elements of other works or styles into a design" (many-in-one) made an appearance in a recent Time Magazine review of the film “Shreck the Third":

The ugly green guy (voiced by Mike Myers) and his retinue are back for Take 3 of DreamWorks' fractured fairy tale, this one directed by Chris Miller. Here, the happily married Shrek, shrinking from the prospect of becoming king, goes searching for a proper heir and instead finds the feckless Artie (Justin Timberlake). A laugh-packed opening gives way to meandering plot lines and lots of moralizing, with our hero sounding as dewily p.c. as an Ogre Winfrey. It's a goofy request, but maybe filmmakers should have a better reason to do a threequel than that its predecessors earned billions. Or could it be that the buoyancy of pastiche comedy is just harder to sustain the third time around? (May 28, 2007)

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GLOSS

The definition of pastiche to which we are giving primary focus in this posting — "incorporating distinctive elements of other works or styles into a design"—applies in the context of the Shrek review in this sense: "Shrek the Third"'s (first-time) director, Chris Miller, is borrowing on the distinctive Shrek stylistic elements that were created for the first two Shrek films made by other film artists.

"Shrek the Third" was one of three films reviewed by Time. Each review comprised a single paragraph and was given its own headline—a single evaluative word beginning with the syllable un-. The full set of the three reviews were headed with this announcement to film fans:

Cheat Sheet. What you should see, what you should skip—and what you won't be able to avoid

How was each film rated? Read on:

• “Letters from Iwo Jima” won an UNMISSABLE.
• “The Wendell Baker Story” suffered an UNNECESSARY.
• And "Shreck the Third,” on its artistic merit, received a pass but, on its boxoffice potential, picked up an UNAVOIDABLE.

In terms of its "buoyancy" as a comedic pastiche (to use Time's aquatic metaphor), "Shrek the Third" took a dive.

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ETYMOLOGY:

Pastiche came to English in 1878 from the French pastiche, which derived from the Italian word pasticcio, meaning either "medley" or "pastry cake."

Online Etymology Dictionary http://www.etymonline.com

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IN USE:

Pastiche
in its sense of
"many-in-one" has become
the name of a game invented by
Kate Wilhelm, the goal of which is "to create
legal sentences using words drawn from a pile."

——————————————————————————————————

And his very weblog, I am sure you have already realized, comprises a pastiche of the "many-in-one" sort. It is a gathering of direct citations from a variety of word-books, dictionaries, and web sites; precis of lengthy passages; glosses of various kinds, primarily of a word's meaning and standard usage; and illustrative images of drawings, paintings, advertisements, and photographs—in short, a compatchment of many forms in the service of one word.

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Shadenfreude

From "School of Hard Knots" by Kevin Guilfoile:

My own knowledge [of tying knots] had always been like a rice paddy—acres wide and ankle-deep. In college I was an American studies major, qualified for little upon graduation but schadenfreude at the failures of "Jeopardy!" contestants. [Clifford] Ashly [author of "The Ashley Book of Knots"] had a love for knots and dedicated his life to cataloguing every single one of them. That was how a real man lived! That was commitment. I resolved to be his apprentice.

Kevin Guilfoile. "School of Hard Knots." The Funny Pages,
II True-Life Tales. New York Times Magazine. April 22, 2007. 38.

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Schadenfreude n. Malicious enjoyment of the misfortunes of others. 1852

Also with lower-case initial letter. [German, from schaden harm + freude joy.]

Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Online

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PRONUNCIATION

The word comes from the juxtaposition (collocation) of two German nouns, harm + joy. Thus, schaden + freude. So when saying the word, we enunciate it as if it were two words, with a sliver of a pause between them.

We pronounce the word [Shah'den-froi'duh] . . . with froi echoing "toy."

Shah' gets the primary stress, froi' a secondary stress. If we were shouting the word a long distance—say, mountain top to mountain top—we would hit the initial syllable Shah' a bit harder and longer than the other syllables, so that we would hear [SHA'.den-froi'.duh] or [Shaaa'.den.froi'.duh]. In close conversation, however, the two stresses would be in tighter parity—with Sha' still remaing stronger than froi': [Sha'den-froi'duh].

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GLOSS

Schadenfreude is an inclination many of us are none too eager to own up to. We're not talking here about a mere chuckle over a Will Farrow prat fall.

What we are talking about—scratch that—what I am talking about is the pleasure that long-time opponents of the second Bushie White House and of the recent Republican House and Senate feel [read enjoy] when one more malfeasant Republican or Bush lackey is exposed or enjailed (yes, enjailed is a word—as are injailed and engaoled—granted an old one, but a good one, worthy of renewal, first seen, (according to the OED) in 1631, and last seen I know not when or where, save on this page).

Twenty-four-seven cable news-programming helps schadenfreude maintain its wickedness within over time, enabling viewers to
• watch over, and over, and over again, yet another Justice Department aide resign to avoid a subpoena; or
• hear Attorney General Gonzales asseverate reliably on cue, "I don't recall"; or
• watch black-brimmed Jack Abramhoff strut from court house to car after pleading guilty to corruption of a sneak of Republican public weasels, or . . .

—"Listen;" (to quote e. e. cummings on the sly) "there's a hell of a good universe [read cable news network] next door: let's go!"

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IN USE

From the OED: shadenfreude in use:

1852 What a fearful thing is it that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet in more than one such a word is found... In the Greek , in the German, ‘Schadenfreude’.

1895 German Emperor William— But the Schadenfreude, or malicious joy, of the French was premature.

1901 Sometimes it [sc. Queen Victoria's smile] would be coyly negative, leading the speaker on, the lips slightly opened, with a suggestion of kindly fun, even of a little innocent Schadenfreude.

1920 The particular sentiment described in German as ‘schadenfreude’ ‘pleasure over another's troubles’ (how characteristic it is that there should be no equivalent in any other language for this peculiarly Teutonic emotion!) makes but little appeal to the average Briton except where questions of age and of failing powers come into play.

1939 There appears to be a certain amount of ‘Schadenfreude’ in London..at Germany's failure to get the German-Soviet Pact ratified.

1947 W. H. AUDEN, Age of Anxiety The Schadenfreude of cooks at keyholes.

1977 Solidarity or no solidarity, Widger was not wholly without Schadenfreude at seeing his informative colleague discomfited [1] for once.

[1] See Words Worthy's posting of March 2, 2007, on discomfit.

Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Online

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In no way does this writer encourage the Reader's listening to the whisperings of Shadenfreude. But if you do, dear Reader, at least you can now attach a proper name to your impropriety.

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