More joy: a beautiful two-volume New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has fallen into my clutches. I have been getting by at home with an Encarta dictionary (complete with pictures and American spellings) for the past decade, always meaning to make the move to Oxford and always finding something less dictionary-like to spend my pennies on. These babies have thumbnails. And gold lettering. And little blue speckles on the sides. So beautiful.
And in further book-bliss news, I have been lent Dr Johnson's Dictionary of Entertaining and Historically Stimulating Words (if I may abbreviate its title so abruptly). I haven't yet had the opportunity to properly investigate the delights within. But here's a question.
On the back, it says:
Va'ticide n.s. [vates and caedo, Latin.] A murderer of poetsFantastic! I gave it a quick Google to see if I could find an instance of it actually being used. Had there ever been a rampage by a vaticidal maniac? Was vaticide more of a problem in some parts of the world than others? Sadly – happily, in fact, for the poets among us – there were no examples to be found. (Although it does appear to be the name of an Australian heavy metal band – disturbing image alert.) But to my surprise, the word was translated overwhelmingly as "the murder of a prophet". Murder, not murderer. Prophet, not poet.
To the shiny OED I went (although 'went' is probably the wrong word, considering that I have had it clutched lovingly to my bosom for the past two hours). It translates vates as a poet, especially one divinely inspired; a prophet-poet. So a bit of both, then.
But to me, the murder of a prophet and a murderer of poets are two quite different things. And if I am going to use such a fantastic word, I want to know what it means! Any offers?
The word is derived from, as you say, vates, which means seer, one who predicts the future. So the word actually means 'killer of fortunetellers' and therefore should refer to someone who mercilessly hunts down Mystic Meg and shuffles off her mortal coil without her seeing this coming. Vates I guess refers to the seers and soothsayers of ancient Greece and Rome, wailing women and Delphic oracles and the like, and not prophets in the Biblical sense, who are gifted with the knowledge of God rather than of the future.
ReplyDeleteWhether the etymology of the word contains someone who deals poetically with the prediction of future events I know not. But would quite like to know. Many of these words in English have a far narrower range of meanings than they used to have. The most notorious example in the etymological word is 'prayer, which in English has only one debased meaning. But the word is used to translate about 16 different meanings in just Greek, for instance ie prayer of supplication, prayer of praise, prayer of intention and what have you.
I have spoken.
And I meant 'in the etymological world' but hey someone else can sub this ha ha
ReplyDeletePerhaps soothsayers such as Mystic Meg avoided being slayed for the very reason they did see it coming. I'm sure many have tried ...
ReplyDelete