You can find the most obscure words in dictionaries. Well, obviously, you can find them because that’s where they are defined — but what I mean this time is that when you’re reading a definition of a perfectly common word, sometimes that’s where you run into some pretty unusual ones. For example, take this definition of “network:”
“Any thing reticulated, or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.”
Helps you visualized exactly what a network might be, right? In fact this particular definition is not useful at all; “reticulated” means “constructed or arranged like a net,” so the definition is basically “a network is anything arranged like a net.” Not only that, but “decussate” means forming an “X” shape, which would mean that any network where MORE than four nodes connect isn’t covered by that definition. But never fear, authors of dictionaries are “lexicographers,” which that same dictionary defined as:
“Maker of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.”
The source dictionary for all this is considered a major milestone in the history of English dictionaries: Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. It’s considered a milestone because, for one thing, it was the first time a dictionary cited actual examples of word usage. But it was also the work of just one person, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.
As the work of just one fellow, some of the definitions are pretty idiosyncratic — and nowadays kind of funny. The definition of “oats,” for example, is “a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” And you pretty much know where Johnson stood on taxation if you look up “excise:” “a hateful tax levied upon commodities.”
But the whole point of visiting this dictionary, at least this time, is because I coughed. A cough is defined as “a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity.” Serosity and vellicate definitely qualify as obscure, and probably were in the 1750s too. Nobody nowadays would have any use for the word “serosity,” because it stems from a whole mental model of physiology that’s obsolete: the idea of “bodily humours.” “Humours” were liquids (I think) that were thought to be responsible for how you felt and even acted, and “serosity” had to do with them. Basically, you cough to get fluid out of your lungs; it’s just that back then people had some (to us) screwy ideas about what that fluid was.
But how “serosity” might be “sharp” is not at all clear, nor is it obvious why serosity, sharp or not, would vellicate. Oh, right, what is “vellicate” — nowadays, if it’s used at all (which it isn’t), it just means to irritate. But back in the 1700s it was a medical term for anything that was acrid, such as a medication, or for anything that “pinched the body.” It comes from the Latin word “vellere,” which means to pull or pluck. It’s a word that seems to have been destined for use in pompous descriptions that turn out not to be all that helpful. Edmund Burke used it in “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” where he wrote “There can be no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular, rouse and vellicate the organs of feeling, causing a sense of pain, which consists in the violent tension or contraction of the muscular fibres.” As far as I can tell, that means that getting poked by something with a sharp point hurts and makes you jump involuntarily. But what can you expect, I suppose, from an essay with title fourteen words long? The whole thing just makes me cough some more.
