aardvark to zythum

[ard- vark] noun

[zeye-thum] noun

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AARDVARK TO ZYTHUM

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*New Century Dictionary *

Like from a to z, its progenitorial synonym, from aardvark to zythum signifies

thoroughness in action, long suffering, or successful completion of a task or process.

From a to z, based on the analogy of the English alphabet, is a generic, uninventive phrase available for identifying any kind of continuum. From aardvark to zythum, on the other hand, with its intentional verbal (rather than alphabetic) content, gives it a particular aptitude for identifying continua that are of their essence verbal, including stories, essays and speeches in paper publications and hypertext displays — as in this example sentence from the OED:

You want to know the last time the Guardian..mentioned anything from aardvarks to zythum..then just a couple of seconds there it is: up on your screen. (1985 Guardian (Nexis 18 July).

As to the meanings of these two nouns — this is, after all, I remind myself, a blog about the meanings of words — the Century Dictionary identifies

aardvark as "the groundhog or earthpig of South Africa" &

zythum as "a kind of malt beer in ancient Egypt." [Hence this pronunciation suggestion for zythum:"Try some!"]

Most of us know that an aardvark is some sort of animal, many of us, even, that the word opens with a stutter of a's.

But ask anyone — except lexicographers and accomplished word mavens — what zythum means, and you get nary a word.

This is so, because, surprisingly, the definition of zythum is for most of us of less significance than is its location in many dictionaries, at the end. Preeminent among these lexicons is theOxford English Dictionary, where first we read its definition,

zythum — a kind of malt beer in ancient Egypt,

followed immediately by the reason most of us remember the word:

"Much of the word's continuing use is due to its status as the last word listed in several dictionaries."

For the record, here is the OED's sample sentence for the word zythum:

Synonyms: a to zed (British), top to bottom, top to toe, cap-a-pie, stem to stern, fore to aft.

For the thousands of years that the Egyptians were building pyramids they were brewing zythum to quench their thirsts, to satisfy their gods, nourish their appetites and to help them relax. (2001 Jrnl. (Newcastle) (Nexis) 8 June 28

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WHEN TO USE AARDVARK TO ZYTHUM:

"From aardvark to zythum" gives us a literary alliterative to the cliche "from a to z" or, as the Brits put it, "from a to zed.

It's a phrase that's available when we are looking for an arch effect in a sentence, without causing any undue confusion for the reader. Were you to yawn through a blind date with a person lexically oblivious to the meaning and causes of, say, the the word "vapid," you could report the next day to your best friend:

I brought up topics (as I put it) from aardvark to zythum, but all [Mort or Mona]

could say is "Don't know much 'bout that" or "No kidding" or "Say wha?

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If you have an a to z situation at hand in which your topic relates in some way to language,ideas, or publications, try saying

"I investigated every word in Willard Wordsworth's notebooks, from aardvark to zythum," rather than reverting to the bromidic from a to z, as in "I know of a guy who read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, from a to z." Zzzz.

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This is not to say I dismiss the opinion that deployment of aardvark to zythum might strike a grandiloquent chime in some auditor's ears. Use aardvark to zythum only in situations where you sense that your reader or listener is savvy to your word play.

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AARDVARK TO ZYTHUM in the subtitle of Bennet Cerf's Good for a Laugh:

Bennet Cerf, television and book-world wit of the early 1950's, published a book titled Good for a Laugh, to which he added, for added kick (from animal or brew), this subtitle:

A New Collection of Humorous Tidbits and Anecdotes from Aardvark to Zythum.

I told you it was a literary word.

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The elegant renditions of the letters A and Z at the beginning of this posting come from the Century Dictionary (1891), a historical lexicon that any logophle worth his or her bookmarks — paper or digital — visits regularly online, for its historical scholarship, comprehensive scope, and refined, sumptuous wood-engraved illustrations.

Wikipedia reports:

The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was one of the largest and most highly regarded dictionaries of the English language. The first edition was published from 1889 to 1891 by the Century Company of New York, in six, eight, or ten volume versions (originally issued in 24 fascicles) in 7,046 pages with some 10,000 wood-engraved illustrations.

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pullulate

"a pullulating mosh pit"

Fightstar live at the Glasgow

ABC 30th April 2009 -Flicker

FROM THE COMPACT OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY:

pullulate,

/pul yoo layt/

• verb

1 reproduce or spread so as to become very widespread.

2 teem with life and activity.

□ pullulation noun

□ pullulating adj.

—

FROM ONELOOK SEARCH DICTIONARY:

pullulate

▸ verb: become abundant; increase rapidly

▸ verb: breed freely and abundantly

▸ verb: be teeming, be abuzz ("Her mind pullulated with worries")

▸ verb: produce buds, branches, or germinate

▸ verb: move in large numbers ("Beggars pullulated in the plaza")

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WORD ORIGIN

1619, from L. pullulatus, pp. of pullulare "grow, sprout," from pullulus, dim. ofpullus "young animal." —OnLine Etymology Dictionary

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PULLULATE IN USE: DESCRIBING A MOSH PIT

mosh pit: Mosh is a type of dance. Moshing is typically done in a mosh pit or circle pit. —Answers.com.

Come December, [director Michael Haneke's film "The White Ribbon"] will go into general release, though the chances of its landing in your local multiplex are slim — no great loss, in the eyes of the director, for whom the modern movie theatre is a pullulating mosh pit. "I hate the smell of popcorn," he told me, adding, "I rarely go to the cinema."—Anthony Lane. "Happy Haneke: Michael Haneke and his movies," The New Yorker, Oct. 5, 2009, 60.

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PULLULATE IN USE: DESCRIBING A WRITER'S SENTENCE STYLE

[Martin] Amis [in his novel Money] throws out coinages like a slot-machine paying out: John Self's dispirited, sagging apartment is "the Sock", a haircut is "a rug-rethink". There are sentences that pullulate with excess, descriptions that hum with mad vitality. Self moans: "By now I am a crackling sorcerer of grub and booze." — Martin, Tim. "Amis's 'Money': An unfilmable book? There's no such thing." Telegraph.co.uk, Nov. 12, 2009.

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PULLULATING IN USE: DESCRIBING CAIRO'S ISLAMIC QUARTER

There’s a story about Cairo: that one day they pulled down the wall of an empty lot to find 50,000 people living inside, hitherto unsuspected. A walk through the pullulating streets of the Islamic Quarter (nearest metro Ataba) shows you just how crowded the city can be. Prepare for sensory overload, as soap-sellers, silversmiths and spice merchants foist their wares upon you between the hammams, caravanserai (roadside inns) and tea shops. —Sean Thomas. "Cairo: The Complete Guide," Times Online, Sept. 18, 2008.

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PULLULATING IN USE: DESCRIBING AN ART OBJECT

"Saffron Cream"

by Douglas Remy

I greatly enjoy creating patterns and symmetries, but machines will always create more perfect ones. So I also enjoy “busting up” or disrupting these patterns in various ways. In this piece, I have used a great many small objects, both industrial and decorative, to produce an extruded mosaic that is simply pullulating with patterns. The overall impression is one of order and harmony, but a closer inspection reveals an abundance of dislocations and asymmetries. —Douglas Remy, Doremiarts.com.

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PULLULATING IN EUPHUISTIC CONTEXTS

With such "energetic" definitions as breed freely and abundantly; increase rapidly;produce buds, branches, or germinate; move in large numbers; be teeming, be abuzz, as well as such synonyms as bourgeon, germinate, shoot, sprout, spud, pour, stream, swarm, and teem (WordNet), the verb pullulate veritably hums with unique intensity and imminent expectation.

That charged dynamic makes it attractive to writers who engage in the excesses the euphuistic style of writing. We're not talking here about euphemism — substituting an inoffensive or mild expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant — or euphony — combinations of words pleasing to the ear. We're talking about euphuism [e yoo' foo ism] which, as Garner reports,

derives from John Lyly's play entitled Euphues (1578) in which the characters speak in an affected, highly ornate style. Thus the term now denotes a convoluted, embellished prose style. —Bryan A. Garner. A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 266.

Unlike the well-tempered sentences above (describing a style of writing, a mosh pit, the streets of Cairo, and a work of art), the sample sentences that follow (describing a Canadian rock band and a former President of the United States) will come across, I'm sure you'll notice, as feverish and forced, using intensified vocabularies —energized here and there by the verb pullulate — each writer aiming for an overtone that is energetic in its pace and almost ecstatic in its urgency. (Yes, I know: that last sentence itself borders on or, perhaps, even crosses over into the euphuistic mode.)

PULLULATING IN EUPHUISTIC PROSE DESCRIBING "LOVE'S ORDEALS" BY WAY OF A TOAD METAPHOR

From The Dacios'

"Monkeys Blood" album.

Permanently stimulated by a synapse twisting brew of rock n’ roll sour mash, The Dacios [a Canadian rock band] are esteemed for their white-heat live performances.

But there’s more to this [band] than the brain pulverising roar of a supercharged V12 running full throttle through a nuclear junkyard. Linda J’s lyrical concoctions are a virulent antivenom which she expectorates in heaving torrents against the darkening forces of urban banality. Her unflinching psychic insights wrench the cancerous lesions of modern life into the glare and splay love’s ordeals on a dissection table like so many toads, their entrails pullulating with rheumy ooze.

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PULLULATING IN EUPHUISTIC PROSE DESCRIBING GEORGE W. BUSH:

George W. Bush, you condemnable addlebrained purulent flunk. If there is such a thing as hell you and that sallow malignancy Richard Cheney should be confined to it. To a creep feeder in hell. And each hellish afternon hosed down with pigwash. And every hellish evening left to fall asleep, biting each other, on a pullulating bed of chattering flesh fly larvae. —Corrente.blogspot.com.

Though euphuistic sentences such as these move forward a-wrenching and a-puffing, laboring and belaboring points in extremis, I find they can, in small doses, be fun to read, even if only to smile at the romping enthusiasm of their authors.

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A MEMORY DEVICE

The editors at mnemonicdictionary.com offer this tip on remembering the meaning of pullulate: "Think of pollination, [which] spreads freely and abundantly."

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auto-da-fe

Auto-da-fe

by Francisco Ricci, 1683

noun

[auto-dǝ-fay']

auto-da-fe: The public burning of a heretic who had been sentenced by the Inquisition.—Chambers 21 Century Dictionary

In the popular imagination, "auto-da-fé" has come to refer to burning at the stake for heresy. —Wikipedia

18c: Portuguese, meaning "act of the faith." Also in Spanish: auto-de-fe.

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AUTO-DA-FE IN USE

As [Rush Limbaugh] and Sarah Palin conduct their auto-da-fé of moderate Republicans — “Moderates by definition have no principles,” he told his radio audience on Monday — Limbaugh is more than ever the face of his party, as Rahm Emanuel said.

He’s also the mouth.

—Maureen Dowd. "Who Are You Calling a Narcissist, Rush? OP-ED, The New York Times. November 4, 2009.

Maureen Dowd could have used any number of words or phrases as the direct object of her sentence — dress down, rebuke, remonstrance, lambasting, reproval, censure, repremand, to mention a few — but she was interested in something more dramatic, more attention getting. So she chose the rhetorical figure called hyperbole, which Richard Lanham defines as "exaggerated or extravagant terms used for emphasis and intended to be understood literally; self-conscious exaggeration."

Dowd achieved the hyperbolic effect by using auto-da-fe as an extreem metaphor for the chastisements Rush Limbaugh and Sara Palin had directed at moderate Republicans. What Dowd intends to transfer from the events of an auto-da-fe are not the horrific circumstances of the event (described below), but the element of rigid autocracy, which the Catholic Church exercised to keep its members in line. For Limbaugh and Palin, the authority would be assumed authority.

Later in the article, Dowd delineates the arrogance she sees in the actions of Limbaugh and Palin:

But the tactics of Limbaugh, Palin, Cheney & Fille are more cynical: They spin certainty, ignoring their side’s screw-ups, and they exploit patriotism, labeling all critics as traitors.

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We also find auto-da-fe used in its extended sense in an editorial title from The Washington Times :

Obama's auto da fe

In a unprecedented move, the Obama administration essentially fired TK Waggoner, the chief executive of General Motors. This is unheard of in American history and sends an ominous signal to millions of shareholders for whom the auto maker is part of their retirement plans.

The Washington Times, March 31, 2009

As with the Limbaugh-Palin example, the author of this editorial title selected out the element of rigid autocracy from the auto-da-fe event, not the horrific circumstances of the ceremony. In addition, auto plays a pun, a type of pun called an•ta•nac'la•sis, which employs a word in two different senses, in this instance, as is obvious, auto, from the Portuguese, meaning act, and auto, from modern English, short for automobile. Clever.

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THE EVENTS OF THE AUTO-DA-FE

Auto-da-fe penitent wearing

san benito and coroza,

in a sketch by Goya.

Dear Reader,

Because the following account describes some truly of horrific events, consider it "optional reading."

—Bloggin' John

[Public execution] was rarely a simple matter of dispatching the victim. Even those who confessed immediately were tortured. Execution was not the sentence – it was an additional sentence. At the end of the trial a public ceremony was held called an Auto-da-fé (Portuguese for Act of Faith). The victim was dressed in a penitential tunic ( san benito) painted with a design. Impenitents wore tunics painted with pictures of their wearers burning in Hell with devils fanning the flames. On their heads they wore 3-foot-long pointed pasteboard caps (corozas), also painted. Around their necks they wore nooses, and in their hands they carried candles. Anyone judged likely to speak out against the Inquisition was gagged. After a procession came a Mass and sermon, in which the Inquisition was praised and heresy condemned. The sentences were read aloud and then carried out. As usual the secular authorities were obliged to burn victims on the Church’s behalf on the grounds that ecclesia non novit sanguinem – the Church does not shed blood. Burning generally took place on Sundays or festivals in order to attract the largest possible audience. Participation was a meritorious act – so for example any persons who helped collect firewood would earn a remission of their sins.

A slow roasting was considered preferable to quick incineration. Victims were tied high up on their stakes, partly to give the crowds of faithful a good view, partly to prolong the agony. Sometimes there was further torture before the fire was lit. For example Protestants who refused to recant had burning sprigs of gorse thrust into their faces until they were burned black. The whole event was a popular festival for the devout, who enjoyed the spectacle and ridiculed the victims in their death agonies. The events were closely linked to royal spectacles. The king was obliged by his coronation oath to attend these mass burnings. Such burnings were even held to help celebrate royal marriages.

www.languedoc-france.info/cathar/1209_inquisition.htm

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Enough about auto-da-fe. I've researched as much about its oppressive ideology and inhumane effects as I can tolerate. —Bloggin' John

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