Prolix: What everyone else is
And what you and I, my parsimonious friend, are not
People sure do love the sound of their own voices, don’t they? Other people, that is - not you and me.
Whereas they drone on endlessly about their pathetically trivial interests, you and I only demand the floor when the matter we wish to discuss is of great import and our opinion on it of even greater import still. That this occurs with mind bending frequency is, of course, merely a function of our boundless knowledge and breathtaking wisdom.
Today’s Lingwistics is dedicated, therefore, to everyone who is not you or me. The long winded, the wordy, the verbose. The ramblers and ranters, prattlers, gassers, embroiderers, sidetrackers, hold forthers and embellishers. The softheaded babblers who keep interrupting those of us who actually have something to say.
Or should I say “the prolix”? This word, which I stumbled upon recently in a piece by a learned gentleman with an impressive vocabulary, has been with us since the 1400s and flying largely under the radar ever since.
Under my radar, anyway. I had to look it up.
It’s from Old French prolixe which lifted it more or less intact from the Latin prolixus, “extended, stretched out”, which in turn was a cobbling together of the prefix pro (“forth”) and liquere (“to flow”). The Romans (and the Old French and Middle English, presumably) used the word to refer to actual things, like hair or horses’ tails or the walk on a bitter winter’s night from the bedchamber to the privy. Some time in the early 1500s, however, some long suffering reviewer of second rate early Tudor-period morality plays commandeered it, and the modern meaning not only took hold, but shunted aside the previous, more concrete, sense of the word.
This is handy for me. As a writing coach I’m always on the lookout for memorable bon mots to help my students remember important things. Now that I’ve discovered prolix, I intend to use it to remind them to not rattle on for too long by way of the following ditty: “The greater the prolix, the greater the bollocks.”
I await the inevitable call from Taylor Swift’s agent seeking permission to set it to music.
If you’ve ever wondered what the noun form of prolix is - and who hasn’t? - you’ll be delighted, I’m sure, to learn you have two options, prolixity or prolixness. The reason you have two choices is very simple: no one - ever - has used the noun form of prolix, so no one really knows or cares what the correct choice is. (You may also have noticed that a pedant might justifiably say my ditty above should therefore read “the greater the prolixity, the greater the bollixity”. Which is why pedants rarely produce offspring.)
Adjectives whose noun form is as little used as a conscience in Washington D.C. are more common than you might think. They include askew (askewness), brusque (brusqueness you know, but are you aware of brusquerie?), crepuscular (crepuscule, made semi-famous by the wholly wondrous Thelonious Monk), feral (ferity), and vespertine (vespertinity).
A word that looks related to prolix but isn’t (or if it is, the relationship is distant) is prolific. It derives from the Latin prolificus, from proles (“offspring”) and the combining form of facere (“to make, to do”). The combining form of a word, since you ask, is a version that never stands alone and carries a noun-like or verb-like meaning. Examples include astro-, micro-, -ogy and -phobia. That some combining forms are sometimes used as whole words (bio, phobia, etc) is by the by, and any dissent on this matter should be addressed to the proper authorities.
Prolific also warrants a place in today’s newsletter as possibly the hardest of all adjectives to wring a noun out of. Prolificness has been tried and, you have to say, seems a natural if inelegant choice. But it’s not universally accepted; other attempts include the 1700s’ prolificacy (drawing on profligacy, perhaps?) and, a few centuries earlier, prolificacioun. This led Fowler to wryly note “prolific is in common use, but to make a satisfactory noun from it has passed the wit of man.”
Proles, a disparaging insult used by those who think they’re better than others (a fault with which I am unacquainted), is actually a real word first noted in the late 1600s. If someone - a pedant, say - dies sine prole, they die without offspring but with a flash legal term attached to their death certificate.
And that for this week, dear reader, is that. Otherwise, I fear I risk, having already burdened you with great bollixity, to compound the matter with even greater prolixity. And that will never do.
Bits and specious
According to Wikipedia, Thelonious Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer in history, after Duke Ellington. His composition ’Round Midnight is widely agreed to be the most recorded jazz standard composed by a single artist. Because I rate Ruby My Dear above even that great number, here’s Monk’s quartet playing that song live.
What happens when a great writer reads Proust? In this case, he keeps his counsel. (With thanks to Henry Oliver.)
Do you worry about when to use will and when to use shall? Me either. But here’s a lovely article on the matter anyway.
Quote of the week
The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, and to have the two as close together as possible.
George Burns
Well I feel attacked. Yours in prolixity! 😀