The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language by Mark Forsyth
Authors: Mark Forsyth
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middle of your office. Try to speak. You can’t. You’re too out of breath, swallowing air like a man who has nearly drowned. At last, gazing around you with wild innocent eyes, and with your scuddle complete, you finally manage to ask with perfect seeming-sincerity, and as though you don’t already know the answer to the question: ‘Am I late?’
1 Scots dialect was invented by poets who couldn’t think of a rhyme.
Chapter 5
10 a.m. – The Morning Meeting
Staying awake – listening – arguing – yes, no, who cares? – mugwumps – keeping quiet
Officesare peculiar places and nobody is ever quite sure what happens in them, least of all the people who work there. But the day tends to begin with a morning meeting, in which everybody decides what they will fail to do for the rest of the day. This is usually held around a little table, or, in a particularly modern office, standing up or even walking, a strangely nomadic habit known as
pedeconferencing
. Indeed, if trends continue, the offices of the future will hold their morning meetings at an all-out sprint, with the winner getting to be boss for the day.
Medieval guilds would call this a
morn-speech
, the ancient Greeks a
panegyris
, the medieval church a
synod
. In Turkey a council of state was called a
divan
, after which the item of furniture is named – so in Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, when all the demons of Hell are ‘rais’d from their dark divan’, it has nothing to do with comfy seating arrangements. However, the best word for a meeting is a
latrocinium
.
A latrocinium is, technically speaking, a robber-council. So, when deciding what to thieve next, Ali Baba and his 40 thieves wouldhave held a 41-strong latrocinium in their magical cave. It is up to the conscience of the individual office-worker to decide whether it is a latrocinium that they attend, but as the word is incomprehensible and sounds pleasantly similar to latrine, it should be used at all possible opportunities. Moreover, latrocinium has a great and significant history. The word was first applied to the Second Council of Ephesus, a grand meeting of the fifth-century church to decide upon the exact nature of Christ and who should therefore be burnt. It was so riotous, raucous and disagreeable that the Pope declared the whole thing null and void, called it a latrocinium, and then held another council at Chalcedon, which reversed all of its decisions. As most morning meetings, like most mornings, will someday be thought better of, latrocinium has resonance.
So, everybody here? When you read the minutes of a meeting, whether it’s a board-meeting, an AGM or an orgy, you will find near the top the cumbersome phrase ‘apologies for absence’, or in some particularly verbose cases ‘apologies for non-attendance’. This can be done away with. You see, there is a single (and singularly suitable) word for that:
essoinment
.
Essoinment is the act of
essoining
, and essoining is (OED):
To offer an excuse for the non-appearance of (a person) in court; to excuse for absence.
So all that the minutes of the meeting really need is ‘Essoinments’ followed by a list of names. Once the essoinments are given, the
constulting
(or being stupid together) can begin.
Eutychus in the boardroom
Atany given meeting somebody is bound to go on too long, and it’s usually the first speaker. It doesn’t really matter if the speaker is St Paul himself, as is clear from the Book of Acts, Chapter 20:
And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.
This is a story to remember if
1 Scots dialect was invented by poets who couldn’t think of a rhyme.
Chapter 5
10 a.m. – The Morning Meeting
Staying awake – listening – arguing – yes, no, who cares? – mugwumps – keeping quiet
Officesare peculiar places and nobody is ever quite sure what happens in them, least of all the people who work there. But the day tends to begin with a morning meeting, in which everybody decides what they will fail to do for the rest of the day. This is usually held around a little table, or, in a particularly modern office, standing up or even walking, a strangely nomadic habit known as
pedeconferencing
. Indeed, if trends continue, the offices of the future will hold their morning meetings at an all-out sprint, with the winner getting to be boss for the day.
Medieval guilds would call this a
morn-speech
, the ancient Greeks a
panegyris
, the medieval church a
synod
. In Turkey a council of state was called a
divan
, after which the item of furniture is named – so in Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, when all the demons of Hell are ‘rais’d from their dark divan’, it has nothing to do with comfy seating arrangements. However, the best word for a meeting is a
latrocinium
.
A latrocinium is, technically speaking, a robber-council. So, when deciding what to thieve next, Ali Baba and his 40 thieves wouldhave held a 41-strong latrocinium in their magical cave. It is up to the conscience of the individual office-worker to decide whether it is a latrocinium that they attend, but as the word is incomprehensible and sounds pleasantly similar to latrine, it should be used at all possible opportunities. Moreover, latrocinium has a great and significant history. The word was first applied to the Second Council of Ephesus, a grand meeting of the fifth-century church to decide upon the exact nature of Christ and who should therefore be burnt. It was so riotous, raucous and disagreeable that the Pope declared the whole thing null and void, called it a latrocinium, and then held another council at Chalcedon, which reversed all of its decisions. As most morning meetings, like most mornings, will someday be thought better of, latrocinium has resonance.
So, everybody here? When you read the minutes of a meeting, whether it’s a board-meeting, an AGM or an orgy, you will find near the top the cumbersome phrase ‘apologies for absence’, or in some particularly verbose cases ‘apologies for non-attendance’. This can be done away with. You see, there is a single (and singularly suitable) word for that:
essoinment
.
Essoinment is the act of
essoining
, and essoining is (OED):
To offer an excuse for the non-appearance of (a person) in court; to excuse for absence.
So all that the minutes of the meeting really need is ‘Essoinments’ followed by a list of names. Once the essoinments are given, the
constulting
(or being stupid together) can begin.
Eutychus in the boardroom
Atany given meeting somebody is bound to go on too long, and it’s usually the first speaker. It doesn’t really matter if the speaker is St Paul himself, as is clear from the Book of Acts, Chapter 20:
And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.
This is a story to remember if
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