Pylimitics

I mean to explore a fantastic word today, but in the meantime, let’s instead talk about a very pedestrian one. How about… “meantime”? “Meantime” has the same meaning as “meanwhile,” and they’re both in common usage. Both refer to the unspecified time that occurs between one thing and another. The interesting thing about “meantime” is that the “mean” part of it is completely different from two other English words that are also “mean.”

The “mean” in “meantime” comes from the Latin root “medianus,” which simply means “in the middle.” One of the other English “means” refers to a person or situation without some essential redeeming quality; a “mean” person is just not very nice. That “mean” comes from a Germanic root that meant “low quality” (as in “lower class person;” a commoner). That’s also the source of the “mean” that refers to poverty, as in “mean circumstances.” But oddly enough, you can instead be a “person of means,” and that “mean” means the opposite of poverty. The “mean” that refers to connotation (as in “what does that word mean”) comes from yet another root word, and that “mean” means “to say.” Meanwhile, the “mean” meaning middle (also used in math as a synonym for “average”) motors along meaning the same meaning it’s meant since the 1300s, when it first appeared.

The “mean” that means nasty could, in certain very specific circumstances, be due to a case of “naupathia.” Naupathia is certainly enough to drive someone to act in a mean way; it’s seasickness. The “nau-“ prefix appears in several other sea-related words, including “naumachy” (a practice battle at sea; a “naval exercise”), “naufrague” (someone who has been shipwrecked), “naupegical” (related to ship building), “nautics” (the art of navigation, particularly at sea), and the obsolete “nauscopy”, which was a method (or “alleged method”) for observing ships beyond the horizon (I’m pretty sure it never worked). And of course there’s “nausea,” which is really just an application of feeling seasick to any land-locked situation where one’s tummy is upset. But now we’re feeling naufageous (in danger) about the end of the paragraph approaching, so it’s time to wrap this up. If you know what I mean.